Ethical Dilemmas

My college tutor once confronted us with the following ethical dilemma:-

     A fire is raging in an art gallery. You rush in, knowing you have only a few minutes to save a unique and very valuable painting. But in the hall you find a drunken and smelly old tramp, who has sneaked in to doss down for the night. You do not have time to save both the tramp and the painting. What should you do?

This rather improbable scenario was intended to make us think about utilitarian ethics. Which should be considered more valuable: the life of a socially worthless individual, or an irreplaceable  artistic masterpiece - a Rembrandt, let us say? (You can, if you wish, substitute "dog", or indeed any other word, for "painting")

I always think it is useful, in dealing with such questions, to ask what that rather underrated political philosopher Adolf Hitler might have said. Hitler, I'm sure, would argue that it depended upon the tramp's race: if he was a negro or a Jew we should certainly not bother to save him. If he was an Aryan, it might depend on his background: if he was a war veteran who had fallen on hard times, he deserved to be saved out of gratitude; but if he was simply a life-long derelict, then not. Stalin or Mao would surely have abandoned the tramp to his fate as being economically worthless.

I would deduce from this a utilitarian argument: I would not wish to live in a society in which someone in a position of power could decide that my life was less valuable than a painting (or a dog), perhaps on grounds similar to those cited above, or on others equally reprehensible to me. I do not see how this could ever be in my interest. I am, of course, always free to decide for myself that my life isn't particularly valuable ("Don't worry about me: save the Rembrandt!" - or, alternatively, "save my dog!"); but I don't want someone else unilaterally to make this decision for me. That is how dictators and conquerors have always treated the mass of the people - even their own subjects.

In principle, then, we must always treat the preservation of human life, any human life, as being of supreme importance.  

In a Strange Land

Cerdic and Zar walked on through the jungle, marveling at the peculiar vegetation. The gravity was much the same as on Earth, but the space-suits, which regulations obliged them always to wear on unexplored planets, were cumbersome and hampered their movements. There were paths leading in various directions, and they wondered who, or what, had made them. But that could come later. Their task for now concerned Vallon, who had disappeared the day before, leaving nothing except his helmet. They had been sent out to find him, or, failing that, to discover what misfortune had befallen him.

Zar paused to look at a huge, brilliant red, trumpet-shaped flower on a bush alongside the path. An insect-like creature the size of a humming-bird flew in, searching for nectar. It feasted for a brief moment, but then the trumpet closed in on it and trapped it. The bush also folded in on itself, the better to enjoy its meal undisturbed.
   "Ugh!" said Cerdic, "Like a Venus fly-trap, but much bigger! This planet is a dangerous place!"
   "I wonder what attracted it?" said Zar. "Was it the colour, or the scent, or what?"
   "No way of telling, as far as the scent's concerned," said Cerdic, "We can't take our helmets off to investigate."
   "Why not? All the instruments say the air here's quite clean: plenty of oxygen. I'd love to breathe proper air again, after all those months on the ship!"
   "Vallon must have taken his helmet off, and look what happened to him!"
   "We don't know that anything happened to him! He just hasn't come back; that's all. He may be walking around here somewhere, enjoying the flowers!"
   "Then why's his radio not working? Why hasn't he been in contact, if only to reassure us that he's all right?"
   "Has it occurred to you that perhaps he doesn't want to come back? Now that after all that time cooped up on the ship, he was free again? He wanted to enjoy it as long as he could. Now maybe he'll turn up again, safe and sound!"

They came to the place where Vallon's helmet had been found. "No sign of any violence anywhere here", said Cerdic, "And no damage to the helmet. It looks like he just took it off, dropped it and walked on"
   "It's like I said, then", replied Zar. "I'm willing to bet he's still alive and unharmed, looking at the scenery, probably not far from here. Let's keep walking, but keep our eyes open. By the way, I wonder who made these paths?"
   "That's what I'm wondering too", said Cerdic.

After a while they came across a space-suit lying on the track. It could only have belonged to Vallon. But of the man himself there was no sign.
   "He obviously found it an encumbrance", said Zar, "So he dropped it and went on without it. I can see his point: these things are really awkward in full gravity".
  "I don't like it at all!" protested Cerdic. "Haven't you noticed something really strange? To get out of your space-suit, you have to take it to pieces, but this one's fully assembled. Now, why would he take it apart, get out of it, and then go to all the trouble of putting it back together again? It's almost as if he'd been sucked out of it somehow. We'd better scout around a bit more, and then take it back to the ship for proper analysis if we still don't find him".

Before they had gone much further, Cerdic stopped and muttered, "Now isn't that odd!" Zar, when he looked, was just as surprised, for what stood before them was a large apple tree, complete with very appetising-looking fruit.
   "What on earth is that doing here?" exclaimed Zar.
   "It's not on earth, that's the problem! So far we haven't seen a single plant that looks anything like our vegetation, and now we find this! Can you explain it?"
   "No."
   "There's only one possibility I can think of, and it's very worrying. It's as if something here has been observing us, penetrating into our minds, discovering what we want, and then creating this tree just for us ..... Hey, what are you doing? Stop it!"
   He shouted this because Zar had started to remove his helmet.
   "It's forbidden!" Cerdic shouted.
   "I don't care!" Zar replied. He took a deep breath. "Ah, the air's beautiful! So good to breathe properly again! Now let's have a look at those apples. I haven't tasted fresh fruit since we set out!"
   "It's a trap!"
   "Why are you so suspicious? Look; quite possibly something here is reading our minds, but why shouldn't it be friendly? I'm prepared to trust it, anyway. Now, let's try these apples ..... hmm, they smell all right ..... taste all right too! Delicious, in fact! Why don't you try one?"
   "I'm reporting you when we get back! You're disobeying the most basic instructions! You shouldn't be let out at all!"
   "I've had enough of you! Look, man; don't you realize? We've found a Garden of Eden here! Vallon saw that. Perhaps he won't come back at all now. I can see his point. I'm off! You might see me again; or then again, you might not. Goodbye!"
   Zar ran away through the bushes. Cerdic tried to follow, but, handicapped by his cumbersome helmet, soon lost sight of him.

Zar trotted on, headed for he knew not where, breathing in the pure, clean air, rejoicing in the vegetation and insects around him. Already he had almost forgotten about Vallon, and Cerdic and the ship. There were no more of the fly-trap plants to be seen. Although he was on an alien planet, the plants and flowers seemed in an odd way familiar, reminding him of the countryside of his childhood on Earth. The buzzing insects were brilliantly coloured. He was certain the planet was happy, and friendly. But then it came into his mind; if this was indeed Eden, and maybe he was Adam, then there was something missing. Where was his Eve? If the planet could indeed read his mind, it would sense what he needed. She must surely be here somewhere! Then he saw her.

She was reclining amidst the vegetation, in what resembled a deck-chair, though it was probably a gigantic flower. She was very beautiful: the first beautiful woman he had seen since he boarded the ship all those months ago. She belonged to him.
   Zar dropped his helmet and climbed up onto the chair-like flower, and laid down beside her. He kissed her. Her arms wrapped round him in tight embrace and her mouth clamped immovably onto his. And then the flower folded around them and the enzymes from her mouth entered his body, dissolving the tissues until every bone had been liquefied, and sucking them all out until the empty spacesuit could be discarded, as Vallon's had been.

Shrewsbury Black and White Buildings

The centre of Shrewsbury contains more black-and-white buildings from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century than any comparable town in England. This is a selection of them

This is Rowley's Mansion, now surrounded by car parks on Barker Street

This building, on the corner of Butcher Row, is misleadingly known as the Abbot's House.

At the northern end of the High Street we find Owen's Mansion, dating from 1592, above the shop fronts

Opposite this we find Ireland's Mansion, about 1575, which Pevsner considered the finest Tudor building in the town:-

A few yards along the same street we have the entrance to the oddly-named Grope Lane (perhaps indicating a place of ill repute: a haunt of prostitutes)

At the top of Grope Lane is Bear Steps

Castle Gates House, on Castle Street, was originally on the Dogpole (another odd Shrewsbury street name!), but was re-erected here by the Earl of Bradford in 1702.

This is possibly the oldest of all: the King's Head pub on the Mardol. The king depicted is Henry VII: not a common choice for pubs.

There are many other examples in the town, which I shall include on a later entry.

A Student-Teacher

When I was 14, our biology teacher informed us that we would be having a student teacher in charge of us for several weeks, as part of his Diploma of Education. He was a young Australian: I don't remember his name. We weren't the best-behaved of classes, and he didn't keep much control: people used to flick gravel from the fish tanks about the room when his back was turned. His main claim to our attention was that he was a top-class athlete: a long-distance runner. In retrospect it's plain that he was only doing a postgraduate Dip. Ed. at Cambridge in order to get his "blue".
      But he was a good sort of bloke, and we liked him; so when we were warned that he was going to be inspected teaching us, we took pity on him. We told him that we'd read up the lesson beforehand in our text-books, and when he asked questions we'd all put our hands up - those with the rights hands up knew then answer; those with the left hands up didn't know the answer, but were just wanting to look keen. It all went well, and we heard that the inspector had complimented him on the enthusiasm he had managed to instill in the class.
     He continued with us for the rest of term, but he knew it was no use trying to teach us anything, and we just chatted about rugby for the remaining lessons. And he did all right by us, because on sports day he brought along his mate Herb Elliott, the great Australian Olympic champion, to present the trophies. So we may not have learnt much biology from him, but I still remember him with affection.

The Alternative to Democracy: Plato's Guardians

In Plato’s book “The Republic”, written about 380 BC, he gives us, using his mentor Socrates as his mouthpiece, a proposed system of government which has been debated ever since.

Plato criticizes democracy by means of a metaphor comparing a state to a ship in mid-ocean. Should we navigate by having a vote amongst the passengers? No, of course not. What we need instead is an expert; someone who is trained in the art of navigation. The rest of the book is concerned with the choosing and training of these experts, who will govern Plato’s ideal state.

Plato divides the inhabitants of his state into three classes: the Guardians (sometimes called “philosopher-kings”), who will govern, the Auxiliaries, who will assist them, and everyone else, who will undertake all the fundamental economic tasks of farming, manufacturing and so forth. He describes the education and life of the Guardians in great detail, ignoring the other classes (He even suggests putting forward an artificial myth; that the gods created man out of three metals; gold, silver and base metal, to correspond with the three classes)

       The potential Guardians should be chosen when still children, and given a lengthy education, both physical and moral, to equip them to rule. It includes the suggestion, revolting to our minds, that they should be taken whilst still young to witness battles, to accustom them to the sight of bloodshed. It seems that only when they are at least fifty will their basic education have been completed, and many will have fallen by the wayside in the process. In the highest stage of their education, which he calls the "dialectic", they are led towards a perception of the ultimate reality: "the Good"; and only then can they be true philosophers. The vast majority of people are incapable of rising to this supreme level.

   Plato includes women Guardians as well as men, apparently following the same syllabus. This is unexpected, because women in contemporary Athens had no public role, and he justifies it by the curious analogy that pedigree stallions and mares are looked after in an identical way!

     Plato was well aware that even the best political system can be corrupted by personal greed, or ambition for one’s children, and therefore he lays down some extraordinary details of the Guardians’ lives. They will all live communally, in messes, without private property of any kind, and will be forbidden even to touch gold and silver. (Here Plato was influenced by how the warriors of Sparta lived). The Guardians must raise their own families: any children they have will be taken from them and raised communally by nurses, so that no-one shall know who their parents or their children are. Perhaps, he thinks, extra sex might be granted for outstanding deeds, such as courage on the battlefieldChildren who do not have the necessary qualities to become Guardians will be discarded; but there will be the possibility of recruiting talented children from the lower classes of society. The Guardians will thus always be a non-hereditary elite.

     Plato includes a long discussion on culture. It is clear to him that most of the literature of his day won’t do: it gives out the wrong messages.  The Greek gods are frequently portrayed as immoral or vindictive in their behaviour, the poets and playwrights too often show wickedness triumphing and good men suffering unjustly. This will all have to change. In his Republic there will be rigid censorship: all literature must point to an improving moral, with virtue always rewarded and wickedness punished, and craftsmen and artists must show only beauty, not ugliness. Perhaps, he thinks, it might be best to banish all poets and artists from his ideal state. By these means, the future generations of Guardians will be protected against erroneous thoughts.     

It might be worthwhile putting Plato’s contempt for democracy into context. He was in his early twenties when democratic Athens was disastrously defeated by Sparta, whose social system bore a strong resemblance to Plato’s ideal republic. There followed the short-lived government of the “Thirty Tyrants”, [many of whom were personal friends of Socrates], who conducted a bloody purge of their opponents. After the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants, it was a jury of citizens in a restored democracy which condemned Socrates to death – it has never been clear why: no other philosopher ever suffered such a fate. The "Republic" must have been written after the death of Socrates, and in reaction to it.

      To return to Plato's analogy of a ship without an experienced navigator; he suggests that this will lead to the appearance of several alleged experts, offering radically different advice of what to do. Now the whole principle of democracy, as advocated by such writers as Rousseau and Mill, is that the public are intelligent enough to distinguish between good advice and bad advice, between the honest men and the charlatans. Plato, having observed the Athenian assembly of his day, is not convinced: he thinks the citizens are fickle and ill-informed, liable to fall prey to demagogues who make wild and irresponsible promises which then cannot be fulfilled. The notion that the people cannot be relied on to make sensible judgments has been the grounds ever since for attacking democracy and defending dictatorship and censorship. It is usually heard on the political Right. 

Plato’s system remains the only valid alternative to democratic government; namely, rule by experts, carefully selected and trained to be people not only of the highest ability, but also of the highest integrity, motivated purely by desire to serve the public good, without personal greed or ambition.  Could such a system ever be implemented? And if so, what would life under it be like?

        In Plato’s day, it was not impossible that a group of philosophers might have run a city-state on these lines. It would probably need to be small, and isolated from the outside world. (Plato had in mind the city-states of contemporary Greece, with only a few thousand citizens, and he never discusses international trade at all). Between 388 and 361 BC Plato made three visits to the court of Dionysus, tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, attempting to educate his heir, Dionysus II, but completely failed to turn the young man into a Guardian. The Spartan system, which had attracted Plato, went into irreversible decline not long after its victory over Athens. Within a century, the coming of the empire of Alexander the Great, and later that of Rome, made all city-states obsolete.  In the nineteenth century various attempts were made to set up communities in the wilds of America, whose people would be motivated by brotherly love rather than individual gain, but few lasted any length of time; usually foundering on the rock of competing egos.  

      On the other hand, some religious-based communities have proved more durable. Consider, for instance, the Roman Catholic church: the most durable structure the world has ever seen. All authority is vested in a hierarchy of priests, who are believed to have a direct access to God, and who are commanded to be celibate, without personal property, and absolutely obedient to their superiors; all of which would seem to fit Plato’s criteria. It is surely no coincidence that almost all the early Christian theologians were Greeks who were very familiar with Platonic ideas.

      The late Richard Crossman, who served as a cabinet minister under Harold Wilson in the 1960s, once wrote a book called “Plato Today”, in which he suggested other institutions working on the same lines. He cited the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and Hitler’s SS as examples. Both were elite organizations with high entry requirements, both were rigidly disciplined and both attempted to inspire their members with ideological fervor to take the place of individual ambition. As a less pernicious example, Crossman cited the British independent boarding school, where young men lived communally, in conditions far more Spartan than they would have enjoyed at home, and where they were trained to run the Empire: their education being overwhelmingly moral and “character-building” rather than technical.

The best attempt to portray life in a Platonic state can be found in the final section of Jonathon Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”, where he visits the land of the Houyhnhnms. They are intelligent horses, whose society is entirely Platonic. They have no contact with the outside world, no science, industry or even agriculture, nor do they have any spirit of curiosity, or wish to expand their knowledge. They keep their population numbers stable by voluntarily abstaining from sex, and have no personal affection for their foals. Lesser horses, who are of a different colour and of inferior mental capacity, are servants to the elite, accepting their lower status without complaint. The Houyhnhnms have remained the same for countless generations, and in consequence conformity has become so total that there is no longer any need for a police force. We are told that they compose poetry, though Swift wisely refrains from giving us examples (it presumably consists of portentous general statements in heroic couplets!), but have no other arts. Even conversation is devoid of discussion, since they all think in exactly the same way.

        Gulliver professes to find Houyhnhnm society immensely preferable to his own. This no doubt reflects Swift’s hatred of England in his day, and increasingly of the human race in general; but at the same time Swift has infallibly brought into focus the great weakness of the Platonic society, which has been shared by all its imitators down to the present day. It would be entirely stationary; not to say stagnant. It would never produce anything new in culture, technology or ideas. It is very doubtful if it would be flexible enough to cope with some major natural disaster, like a famine, an epidemic or an earthquake (and the Greek world was extremely susceptible to devastating earthquakes). It could never fully be isolated from outside pressures and influences. These weaknesses are obvious in all Plato’s imitators: the Catholic church, the Nazis and Communists, the British public-school system.

    Plato had no notion of progress. This is not surprising, since the concept was unknown before the end of the eighteenth century, when the French Revolution and the industrial revolution changed the world for ever. To Plato, society and politics were seen as moving in endless repetitive and meaningless circles, and any change was likely to be deterioration rather than improvement. The best he could imagine, therefore, was a form of society structures to guard against any change at all. We can only be glad that we do not live in such a society. As Churchill once put it: democracy is a very bad form of government,but all the others are even worse. 

Disinterested

People persist in saying "disinterested" when what they mean is "uninterested". These words are actually quite different.
     In the first word, having an "interest" in something has the eighteenth-century meaning of having a "stake" in it. Thus, if I am watching a game of football, if I have no commitment to either side (such as a bet on the result, or support for my local team), I am disinterested in the result; but if I hate football and couldn't care less who wins, then I am merely uninterested. The referee must be disinterested (that is, unbiased), but if he was uninterested he would be no use at all.
    The principle of British justice is that the judge and jury must be disinterested: without prior commitment or bias to either side; and juries are carefully selected to this end. This has not always been the case: in previous centuries, judges were seen as "lions under the throne", whose job was to help secure the conviction of the King's enemies, and made little pretense of being disinterested; Judge Jeffreys in the later seventeenth century being a notorious example. Judicial disinterest seldom applies under dictatorships; one need only cite the "revolutionary justice" of Soviet Russia, particularly under Lenin and Stalin, and of the tribunals in the "Terror" of 1793-4 of the French Revolution. But,once again, a judge at any time and in any type of court who was uninterested in the case before him would be useless.
    It was a classic Marxist argument that the promise of "disinterested justice" would always be a sham: class interest is all-pervasive. I wonder if the recent demand in Britain for more judges from the racial minorities, and fewer from the elite independent schools and universities, is based upon the notion that judges from privileged and rich backgrounds are unlikely to be truly disinterested? Or, more likely, that they may not be perceived as being disinterested?  

The church of King Charles the Martyr, Falmouth

Falmouth church in Cornwall is dedicated to "King Charles the Martyr"; which is highly unusual. The church possesses a portrait of King Charles, attributed to Sir Peter Lely (see below), and the east window shows Christ in majesty, looking remarkably like Charles, with Archbishop Laud in attendance alongside the archangels. How had this come about?

Today Falmouth is an important deep-water harbour ont the estuary of the Fal river, but it is actually quite a recent settlement, and the original town was at Penryn, a short distance upstream. The only significant building in Falmouth was the castle at Pendennis, built by Henry VIII.
     Cornwall was strongly royalist in the civil wars in the 1640s. Charles I's queen, Henrietta Maria, fled to France from Pendennis, and so did her son, the future Charles II. When he left, he vowed that if he returned he would build "a chapel for public worship" there, since there was then no church. A prominent local landowner, Sir Peter Killigrew, a staunch royalist, had similar ideas, and after the restoration of the monarchy for a charter for the town, promising to provide land of his own for a church and parsonage.
   He won support. The foundations of the church were laid in 1662, and the building was consecrated three years later. The church was thus built in the classical style fashionable at the time. Since then it has been extensively modified.

   King Charles I was condemned to death and beheaded in 1649, and was soon proclaimed a martyr by his supporters. Although he undoubtedly conducted himself with dignity and courage at the end, it is difficult today to what precise cause he was a martyr, except that of the principle of divine right monarchy. Really, like his equally unfortunate fellow-monarchs, Louis XVI of France and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, he was a well-meaning, rather weak-willed man of limited talents, caught up in a situation which it was beyond his abilities to control - in fact, an argument against hereditary monarchy with real political power.