The one figure who defines modern thought is Aristotle, not of course because modern thinkers have followed him, but because since Galileo and Descartes and Bacon, scientists and philosophers have defined themselves by their opposition to Aristotle
Willie Smith III was executed today in Alabama for the brutal and capricious murder of a woman he had kidnapped from an ATM. The usual critics of the death penalty have not been silent in their opposition to Smith’s execution.
In turning the conventional on its head, Gilbert was able to see into the paradoxes that lay just beneath the surface of Victorian morality.
This essay on the ethics of W.S. Gilbert has been revised and considerably expanded.
There are many studies, commentaries, and guidebooks to the world of Sir W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. I have read or consulted several them over the years, and I will provide a little bibliography as this series—undertaken in response to requests—but I disclaim any specialized knowledge that is not in the hands or in the heads of perhaps tens of thousands of people who have read, watched, and listened to their work for many years.
Instead of plunging headlong into the tedious history of self-defense legislation, let us rather begin (as Plato or John Locke might) by imagining a state of society in which there is no legitimate authority or, at least, no legal power to protect the innocent or punish the guilty. We do not have to dig into the ethnographic accounts of such violent peoples as the Ifugao of the Philippines or the Yanamano of South America. The Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic peoples of Europe provide a rich record of violent periods in which self-help and vengeance were a normal means of protection...
Reading Rousseau can be entertaining and at times ennobling, but it is a bit like practicing white magic or playing with Tarot cards. We are inviting the demon into the house of our mind. Fugite hinc. Latet anguis in herba.
When a Christian engages in lawful homicide, either as executioner or soldier, it is the ruler and not he who is morally responsible for the killing. The soldier or judge is merely the instrument of a ruler whose power comes from God, as Christ informs Pilate during the interrogation.
Diversity breeds moral confusion, which is aggravated by the high population density that encourages a comfortable sense of anonymity. Anyone who has lived 50 or 60 years in North America can understand what has happened
The admonition to resist not evil is not aimed at army commanders, kings, and emperors, much less at settlers in a violent wilderness or urban homesteaders, but at members of a face-to-face community of the sort that Jesus had experienced in Galilee and in which Christians are going to live as members of a parish and diocese.
