One of the invocations of Justice with impressive allure is the assertion that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." This phrase keeps cropping up. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. frequently used it, crediting the Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker:
"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe: the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards Justice."
Parker fought those who sought to justify slavery and oppression from Biblical, or any other, authority. In 1841 he wrote the greatest of the Transcendentalist manifestos, compounding the republicanism of the authors of American Constitution with the liberalism of the true Church. Parker defined democracy, for the first time, as:
"...Government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people."
President Lincoln adopted this phrase in his pithy elimination of the "all", perhaps as a concession to the political reality.
Showing posts with label Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Justice. Show all posts
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Milton's Paradise Lost - how did things go so terribly wrong?
Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost and Found.
We are now 401 years after Milton’s birth in 1608. For perspective, note that Shakespeare lived approximately 1564-1616. Eleven volume series of all Milton’s works is come out, edited by Thomas Corns and Gordon Campbell
Paradise Lost, is a dilation on a moment in Genesis, written by a blind man who had fallen into “evil days”, with respectable people saying awful things about him, and calling for his arrest.
He names Satan’s palace Pandemonium – “all the demons”.
In his defense of free speech published earlier –“Areopagitica” – the title alludes to an Attic assembly or court – he compares Truth to the broken body of Osiris. We can never know Truth until the Messiah comes; therefore we must all search in every way we can, each for himself. Compare this to the Arthurian epic Search for the Holy Grail. Censorship can play no role in the Search for Truth.
Milton’s unrelenting optimism runs through all of his writing, even as he faced personal conflict and limns the tragedy of The Fall. With an explosive imagination, and cool statecraft, he marches with martial vigor into the war with Evil, hunting for the jewel in the head of the ugliest toad, and prefiguring the Nietzschean reduction “That which fails to kill me, makes me stronger”. Milton says “That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.” This, during a time of terrifying anarchy, the world that also produced Hobbes’ “Leviathan”.
Milton was Unitarian. Did not see the Son of God as the same as God or part of a Trinity. In Paradise Lost, he places the Son at the Creation, as a Son, a competitor of Satan.
The question he poses in Paradise Lost – how did things go so wrong – starts back to the moment that Adam and Eve (“our first parents”) ate the apple and brought “death into the world, all our woe”. Note the way he bring us all in – “our” parents, “our” woe. Then he steps back before Adam and Eve, in the tale within the tale, to the narrative of Lucifer who grows jealous of the promotion of God’s Son to the position of Messiah. Lucifer organizes a revolt, loses, and is “hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition”. Cast into Hell with his many followers.
In Milton’s view, God creates earth with its “images” of Himself, to make up for the angelic absence. Then Satan, hearing of the new toy, determines to take it by cunning for himself and his demon horde. The theme of the plotting failed revolutionaries echoes the bitter irony of Milton’s role as apologist for the Puritans, and his support for the regicide. Place and power is what is “lost” in the personal Paradise.
Satan seems charismatic as a leader of minions, although a tortured soul, slinking away in shame after seducing Eve. Milton’s God is dull, fixed, and sends Gabriel to do his fighting. Gabriel of course, does it badly, and fails to protect Eve and the earth from the demon snare. Gabriel does some trash-talking, threatening Satan, who in turn calls him a “limitary Cherub”. Perhaps our next Milton hankering to explore an unforgivable tragedy should write the epic of Gabriel.
Milton shows great compassion for mankind. Adam and Eve are holding hands in the garden basking in love when we first meet them, and we leave them exiled to a fallen world, again holding hands together. Milton says he set out to justify the ways of God to men, but he ends up defending human dignity to God. The freedom to fail – here Milton rejects mainstream Puritanism (moving directly to the center of Unitarianism) with its predestination.
My mother once listened rather openly to a socio-biological narrative of how individual decision-making is reducible to chemistry. Animal instinct and knee-jerk reactions are locked into the molecular structures of ganglia and brain capacity. The uber-train of “choice” actually runs on a double-helix rail. Once she realized the story led to a kind of determinism, however morphological, she reacted viscerally, strongly rejecting any suggestion that human beings do not have unfettered free choice. When I suggested that her response was a possible predisposition rising from her Miltonian Christianity, not to mention its consistency with her chemistry, she did not see the ironic humor. The idea of choice playing a necessary role in salvation, the idea that choice asserts itself, remains fixed in certain minds, even long after other beliefs have shifted.
This concept of individual freedom is also at the heart of the relationship between Adam and Eve. Adam alone was warned about Satan, and sought to husband Eve by having her near. His very act of trying to protect her – and it is fair to observe she never understood From What? – moved her to seek her own solitude. He will not relent and let her go off by herself until she argues that she must have freedom, even at the risk of harm: “What is faith, love, virtue unassayed?”
Adam praises her logic. They both recognize that she is right about the importance of being exposed to the risks of being wrong. Once alone, Eve is immediately tricked by the snake, and is condemned to die. Adam then chooses to take his bite of the forbidden fruit and fall with her. He would rather die with her than live alone: “To lose thee were to lose myself.”
Milton’s depiction of the Son of God at the Creation, is one of the first attempts to create a coherency between the Hebrew Bible with the New Testament. And we see the nature of evil – a despondent Devil having no hope of a happy home, devoting himself to destroying the lives of others.
Milton died still revising Paradise Lost in 1674. Hounded by calumny and accusation to the end, and facing poverty, the plague, intellectual isolation, loneliness, and his own demons. But he left us with the greatest work of epic verse in the English tongue. And it rings with hope and imagination.
Things go terribly wrong. It's not just YOU, your life. The planet. The universe. The "broken-ness" of the Osiris body. The lack of Judgment or Justice. So... celebrate! There is not a moment to lose!
We are now 401 years after Milton’s birth in 1608. For perspective, note that Shakespeare lived approximately 1564-1616. Eleven volume series of all Milton’s works is come out, edited by Thomas Corns and Gordon Campbell
Paradise Lost, is a dilation on a moment in Genesis, written by a blind man who had fallen into “evil days”, with respectable people saying awful things about him, and calling for his arrest.
He names Satan’s palace Pandemonium – “all the demons”.
In his defense of free speech published earlier –“Areopagitica” – the title alludes to an Attic assembly or court – he compares Truth to the broken body of Osiris. We can never know Truth until the Messiah comes; therefore we must all search in every way we can, each for himself. Compare this to the Arthurian epic Search for the Holy Grail. Censorship can play no role in the Search for Truth.
Milton’s unrelenting optimism runs through all of his writing, even as he faced personal conflict and limns the tragedy of The Fall. With an explosive imagination, and cool statecraft, he marches with martial vigor into the war with Evil, hunting for the jewel in the head of the ugliest toad, and prefiguring the Nietzschean reduction “That which fails to kill me, makes me stronger”. Milton says “That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.” This, during a time of terrifying anarchy, the world that also produced Hobbes’ “Leviathan”.
Milton was Unitarian. Did not see the Son of God as the same as God or part of a Trinity. In Paradise Lost, he places the Son at the Creation, as a Son, a competitor of Satan.
The question he poses in Paradise Lost – how did things go so wrong – starts back to the moment that Adam and Eve (“our first parents”) ate the apple and brought “death into the world, all our woe”. Note the way he bring us all in – “our” parents, “our” woe. Then he steps back before Adam and Eve, in the tale within the tale, to the narrative of Lucifer who grows jealous of the promotion of God’s Son to the position of Messiah. Lucifer organizes a revolt, loses, and is “hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition”. Cast into Hell with his many followers.
In Milton’s view, God creates earth with its “images” of Himself, to make up for the angelic absence. Then Satan, hearing of the new toy, determines to take it by cunning for himself and his demon horde. The theme of the plotting failed revolutionaries echoes the bitter irony of Milton’s role as apologist for the Puritans, and his support for the regicide. Place and power is what is “lost” in the personal Paradise.
Satan seems charismatic as a leader of minions, although a tortured soul, slinking away in shame after seducing Eve. Milton’s God is dull, fixed, and sends Gabriel to do his fighting. Gabriel of course, does it badly, and fails to protect Eve and the earth from the demon snare. Gabriel does some trash-talking, threatening Satan, who in turn calls him a “limitary Cherub”. Perhaps our next Milton hankering to explore an unforgivable tragedy should write the epic of Gabriel.
Milton shows great compassion for mankind. Adam and Eve are holding hands in the garden basking in love when we first meet them, and we leave them exiled to a fallen world, again holding hands together. Milton says he set out to justify the ways of God to men, but he ends up defending human dignity to God. The freedom to fail – here Milton rejects mainstream Puritanism (moving directly to the center of Unitarianism) with its predestination.
My mother once listened rather openly to a socio-biological narrative of how individual decision-making is reducible to chemistry. Animal instinct and knee-jerk reactions are locked into the molecular structures of ganglia and brain capacity. The uber-train of “choice” actually runs on a double-helix rail. Once she realized the story led to a kind of determinism, however morphological, she reacted viscerally, strongly rejecting any suggestion that human beings do not have unfettered free choice. When I suggested that her response was a possible predisposition rising from her Miltonian Christianity, not to mention its consistency with her chemistry, she did not see the ironic humor. The idea of choice playing a necessary role in salvation, the idea that choice asserts itself, remains fixed in certain minds, even long after other beliefs have shifted.
This concept of individual freedom is also at the heart of the relationship between Adam and Eve. Adam alone was warned about Satan, and sought to husband Eve by having her near. His very act of trying to protect her – and it is fair to observe she never understood From What? – moved her to seek her own solitude. He will not relent and let her go off by herself until she argues that she must have freedom, even at the risk of harm: “What is faith, love, virtue unassayed?”
Adam praises her logic. They both recognize that she is right about the importance of being exposed to the risks of being wrong. Once alone, Eve is immediately tricked by the snake, and is condemned to die. Adam then chooses to take his bite of the forbidden fruit and fall with her. He would rather die with her than live alone: “To lose thee were to lose myself.”
Milton’s depiction of the Son of God at the Creation, is one of the first attempts to create a coherency between the Hebrew Bible with the New Testament. And we see the nature of evil – a despondent Devil having no hope of a happy home, devoting himself to destroying the lives of others.
Milton died still revising Paradise Lost in 1674. Hounded by calumny and accusation to the end, and facing poverty, the plague, intellectual isolation, loneliness, and his own demons. But he left us with the greatest work of epic verse in the English tongue. And it rings with hope and imagination.
Things go terribly wrong. It's not just YOU, your life. The planet. The universe. The "broken-ness" of the Osiris body. The lack of Judgment or Justice. So... celebrate! There is not a moment to lose!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Faith and Justice
What is the relationship between Faith and Justice? Both are universal ideals. Both require and result in belief. Both explore and demand examination of intention. Cicero wrote that "The foundation of justice is good faith".
When the judges ignore good faith, justice is uprooted. When an Attorney General disobeys the law, justice is denied.
Bruce Einhorn served as a prosecutor in the Justice Department, and later as a federal judge appointed by President H.W. Bush. In an editorial printed 6/28/2008 in Opinion, LAT, he summarizes a report issued this week by the Department's inspector general. He notes that while serving as Attorneys General, JOHN ASHCROFT, and ALBERTO GONZALES, set up screening committees for career positions in the Department based on ideological rather than merit-based factors. They politicized the hiring and promotion, in violation of the law. Reference: title 28, Section 42.1(a), US Code of Regulations. Compare also, the Civil Service Reform Act specifically prohibits discrimination based on political affiliation.
This injection of illegal bad faith has poisoned the Justice Department.
When the judges ignore good faith, justice is uprooted. When an Attorney General disobeys the law, justice is denied.
Bruce Einhorn served as a prosecutor in the Justice Department, and later as a federal judge appointed by President H.W. Bush. In an editorial printed 6/28/2008 in Opinion, LAT, he summarizes a report issued this week by the Department's inspector general. He notes that while serving as Attorneys General, JOHN ASHCROFT, and ALBERTO GONZALES, set up screening committees for career positions in the Department based on ideological rather than merit-based factors. They politicized the hiring and promotion, in violation of the law. Reference: title 28, Section 42.1(a), US Code of Regulations. Compare also, the Civil Service Reform Act specifically prohibits discrimination based on political affiliation.
This injection of illegal bad faith has poisoned the Justice Department.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
On his Watch - US Attorney General, Alberto R. Gonzales
"Over the past 2 1/2 years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption and depravity of types I never thought possible."
Mr. Alberto R. Gonzales, appointed US Attorney General by his long-time friend, George W. Bush, at the ceremony "in his honor" on the occasion of his resignation from the scandal-scarred Justice Department. Under previous Administrations, the Department had the mission of ferreting out injustice. Now, it appears, we had an individual in charge of prosecuting injustice who by his own account was observing it.
Mr. Alberto R. Gonzales, appointed US Attorney General by his long-time friend, George W. Bush, at the ceremony "in his honor" on the occasion of his resignation from the scandal-scarred Justice Department. Under previous Administrations, the Department had the mission of ferreting out injustice. Now, it appears, we had an individual in charge of prosecuting injustice who by his own account was observing it.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
"The law" pretends to be what it is not.
At all levels of adjudication, the judge tries to appear as a "standard bearer" or even the "servant of law", as if his or her discretion was bound by its letter. Rule of Law is often presented as the alternative to a Tyrant's Will. In fact, however, the "rule of law" is not well understood. Like "justice" it is a concept that all sides invoke, simultaneously and from conflicting interests. There is universal and profound ignorance of "The Law", an abstraction, no matter how lengthy its recitation.
And if a Rule appears to apply, it has subjective exceptions which can, and often should, swallow it up. For example, there is the principle that the specific rule "prevails" over the general expression -- which is an admission that the law is swiss cheese. Semantically, words have no objective meaning - not a single word can survive deconstruction, and nor can the law.
In addition, judges are keenly aware of the maxim that "the spirit prevails over the letter" of the law, which is another way ultimately giving sway to the subjective will of the judge over any possible theoretical objectivity in the realm of semantics.
And of course, one is always left wondering what the Legislative Law-maker intended in the first place? Where lobbyists write most of our laws, where many of the laws are simply reactions to extreme cases of abuse, where there is No Lobby willing to fund objectivity, order, common sense, and "public good" where factions write the rules.
However, there are a number of institutional self-correcting mechanisms "at work" in the legal system. One is the Separation of Powers, the "independence" of the judiciary from legislative and executive power. Another is the "due process" cluster of rights in which the conflict is ventilated by professional advocates with Notice and Opportunity to respond to each other; this creates a kind of "record" or precedence which give validity to the derivative decision.
Finally, there is the concept of EPIKEIA, which dates back to Classical Greece. This is rooted in fairness -- whatever the law says, its application must go beyond mere policing its margins, or automatically spitting out a result. Epikeia commands the consideration of application: In addition to the letter of the law, the executive police work, the matching up of the facts of the case to the laws which "apply", the Epikeian Step requires consideration of the result in the particular case in its possibly unique circumstances. Without throwing out or amending the law, is it sensible and fair to apply it to the parties before the court now?
Modern courts, however, are paralyzed by the accusation of "subjectivity" -- most judges want to hide the political facts of their appointment, the lack of merit in the "choice" made in seating them. They are sensitive, after all, to the mystery of how they ended up in such a seat of power; they understandably do not invite scrutiny into that example of a process of "application". Judges cling to the appearance -- and it is pure fiction -- of "objectivity". Now, Judges rarely discuss "fairness". Chief Justice Earl Warren was one of the last great judges to test the outcome against this segment of the franchise of the court. He understood the Epikeian burden, the importance of that pause before application of the Rule, to ask if it works appropriately in the particular case.
Just as Plato wrote that "Without an Absolute, the particulars are meaningless" -- and 2500 years of philosophy is the footnote consequence, and the phenomenon of angst is as fresh today as then-- so is every judgment meaningless without Justice.
And if a Rule appears to apply, it has subjective exceptions which can, and often should, swallow it up. For example, there is the principle that the specific rule "prevails" over the general expression -- which is an admission that the law is swiss cheese. Semantically, words have no objective meaning - not a single word can survive deconstruction, and nor can the law.
In addition, judges are keenly aware of the maxim that "the spirit prevails over the letter" of the law, which is another way ultimately giving sway to the subjective will of the judge over any possible theoretical objectivity in the realm of semantics.
And of course, one is always left wondering what the Legislative Law-maker intended in the first place? Where lobbyists write most of our laws, where many of the laws are simply reactions to extreme cases of abuse, where there is No Lobby willing to fund objectivity, order, common sense, and "public good" where factions write the rules.
However, there are a number of institutional self-correcting mechanisms "at work" in the legal system. One is the Separation of Powers, the "independence" of the judiciary from legislative and executive power. Another is the "due process" cluster of rights in which the conflict is ventilated by professional advocates with Notice and Opportunity to respond to each other; this creates a kind of "record" or precedence which give validity to the derivative decision.
Finally, there is the concept of EPIKEIA, which dates back to Classical Greece. This is rooted in fairness -- whatever the law says, its application must go beyond mere policing its margins, or automatically spitting out a result. Epikeia commands the consideration of application: In addition to the letter of the law, the executive police work, the matching up of the facts of the case to the laws which "apply", the Epikeian Step requires consideration of the result in the particular case in its possibly unique circumstances. Without throwing out or amending the law, is it sensible and fair to apply it to the parties before the court now?
Modern courts, however, are paralyzed by the accusation of "subjectivity" -- most judges want to hide the political facts of their appointment, the lack of merit in the "choice" made in seating them. They are sensitive, after all, to the mystery of how they ended up in such a seat of power; they understandably do not invite scrutiny into that example of a process of "application". Judges cling to the appearance -- and it is pure fiction -- of "objectivity". Now, Judges rarely discuss "fairness". Chief Justice Earl Warren was one of the last great judges to test the outcome against this segment of the franchise of the court. He understood the Epikeian burden, the importance of that pause before application of the Rule, to ask if it works appropriately in the particular case.
Just as Plato wrote that "Without an Absolute, the particulars are meaningless" -- and 2500 years of philosophy is the footnote consequence, and the phenomenon of angst is as fresh today as then-- so is every judgment meaningless without Justice.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Martin Luther King Jr - the genuine leader
HATE BEGETS HATE
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violaeence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken."
POWER / JUSTICE
"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
From WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY?" 1967 address.
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violaeence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken."
POWER / JUSTICE
"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
From WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY?" 1967 address.
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