Monday, January 27, 2003

Of the punishment of Cowardise From Essays After Montaigne Verily there is reason a man should make a difference between faults proceeding from our weaknesses and those that grow from our malice. For in the latter we are directly bandied against the rules of reason, which nature hath imprinted in us; and in the former, it seemeth, we may call the same nature, as a warrant, because it hath left us in such imperfection and defect. And some hold that this rule was first put in practice by the Law-giver Charondas, and that before him the lawes of Greece were wont to punish those with death, who for feare did run away from a Battell: where hee onely ordained, that for three dayes together, clad in womens attire, they should be made to sit in the market-place: hoping yet to have some service at their hands, and by meanes of this reproch, they might recover their courage againe...'Rather move a man's bloud to blush in his face, than remove it by bleeding from his body.' Was the man who dressed as a woman to gain admittance to a lifeboat as the Titanic sank thinking that he would not be discovered eventually, or was he thinking that a life of disgrace would be preferable to the cold, watery death that he was facing? Or is it more likely that he had passed beyond such rational calculation into the moment of pure feeling and action that we call panic or desperation? Did the real threat of humiliation sway him at all? Would he have behaved differently if he believed himself to also be under threat of death for his cowardice? The calculation, or lack thereof, that preceded it must be considered when determining how cowardice might appropriately be punished. And the intention of that punishment must be considered as well. Is it meant as revenge, a deterrent, or a means to rehabilitation? If punishment is intended as simple revenge, it doesn't much matter how someone comes to choose cowardice--revenge can be effectively exacted regardless. However, if cowardice is the result of weakness rather than malice, as seems likely, exacting revenge would be difficult to justify to a civilized sensibility. If it's intended to serve as a deterrent, punishment would have to enter any calculation in which a potential coward might engage before acting. In that case, the relative effectiveness of, say, humilitiation or death as a deterrent will depend on the nature of the potential coward's fears. Someone who fears humiliation or death more than the danger at hand may be deterred from cowardly behavior, assuming that it seems credible that the punishment will follow from that behavior. But for punishment to be a deterrent, we must assume that cowards engage in some sort of calculation prior to their cowardice, that they are able to consider their choices and the consequences of those choices with some clarity. That seems unlikely. Given that, perhaps rehabilitation is a more achievable goal in the civilized punishment of cowardice as a weakness, with revenge being reserved for cases of cowardice as an act of calculated malice (if such a thing is possible). As death cannot serve to rehabilitate, humiliation would appear to be the punishment of choice in most cases of cowardice. And in the context of a war, humiliation holds a greater prospect for maintaining the ranks for future battles. All else being equal, it's far more difficult to win a war if both you and your enemy are killing your soldiers. 7:56:22 AM     What do you think? ()

Men are punished by too-much opiniating themselves in a place without reason From Essays After Montaigne Valour hath his limits, as other vertues have: which if a man out-go, hee shall find himselfe in the traine of vice: in such sort, that unlesse a man know their right bounds, which in truth are not on a sudden easily hit upon, he may fall into rashnesse, obstinacie and folly. For this consideration grew the custome wee hold in warres, to punish, and that with death, those who wilfully opiniate themselves to defend a place, which by the rules of warre cannot be kept. Otherwise upon hope of impunitie, there should bee no cottage that might not entertaine an Armie. Once again, we have the notion of right conduct during war as an attempt to limit war's devastation. It's tempting to imagine that times past were better than the present. The Abrahamic religions teach us that Paradise has been lost and will only be restored by the return of God in one form or another. Proust goes one step further by claiming that we cannot perceive any paradise until we've lost it. We're always looking back upon or forward to something better than the present moment. We should be mindful of that impulse when reflecting upon the conduct of war four-hundred or more years ago in light of the current conduct of war. The temptation is to see a steady devolution, but is that justified? War as we now know it, and as we've known it since at least the U.S. Civil War, is incomprehensibly destructive, razing all in its path at an astonishing rate. The tens of thousands of people that it once required a months-long siege to kill can now be killed in a day's battle. And war has become less and less likely to be conducted on a battlefield away from non-combatants, their homes, their businesses, and their civic institutions. On the other hand, a larger and larger proportion of the world's population has come to believe itself exempt from the experience of war. The overwhelming majority of American, northern European, and Japanese men of my generation have never had to seriously contemplate participation in a war or even the most rudimentary military service. We would probably have to go back to the Pax Romana to find a time and place where so many men have found themselves in such a situation. I'm not so naive as to believe that there was a time when the conduct of war (or the conduct of any other movement of history) was free of deceit and cynicism. I would imagine that every war in recorded history could be usefully subjected to revisionist analysis (if that hasn't already happened). But I do believe that there was a time when notions of right conduct during war were more widely accepted. Even if they were honored more in the breach than the observance, they were at least honored. They were among the many factors that facilitated the development of civilization to its present state. Yet it's difficult to ponder the present state of civilization, and the apparent trajectory of the U.S. at the forefront of that development, without seeing a terminal decadence and the erosion of all of those factors that facilitated that development. 7:54:23 AM     What do you think? ()

© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist. Last update: 11/2/03; 10:33:41 AM.

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