Can we know right from wrong?

Would it be wrong to steal to feed your children, if there were no other way to feed them?

And people say murder is wrong, but would it have been wrong to murder Adolf Hitler, thus saving so much suffering in the world?

Or what if someone had murdered the Boston Strangler, thus saving the lives of many innocent women? And would it be wrong to kill someone who was trying to kill you? And what about the killing in war, for which we give medals? Isn't such murder morally acceptable-even praiseworthy in a good soldier?

So, we don't even know that murder is wrong. Therefore how can we say that we know anything at all about right and wrong?

Bibliography

Plato, The Collected Dialogues, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1961. See especially the Republic.

Plato, Great Dialogues, trans. Benjamin Jowett, New York: New American Library, 1956.

Robinson, John Mansley, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1968.