Philosophy

A Day for Heroes

Here's one story. Today is the anniversary of the death of T.E. Lawrence, in 1935. He had come back from the Middle East, feeling that the British government had broken promises he had made on its behalf. He declined any high position in government, enlisted as a common soldier, and paid another soldier to beat him. He also worked hard to improve the conditions of common soldiers, using his connections to bring their situation to the attention of authorities. Nobody does that. Imagine the effect on the Arab world if Rumsfeld did exactly what Lawrence did, beatings included. It's unimaginable. But think what it would mean.

Here's another story: Sonja Gandhi announced today that she would not accept the post of Prime Minister of India. Her victory in the election was a triumph for tolerance over religious and nationalistic bigotry, a turn toward national sanity. But she feared, according a piece in today's Times, that the issue of her foreign birth was still strong enough in the public mind to compromise her ability to govern. And so, she accepted gratefully the victory she had won and declined to be a figure in a national melodrama. She knew when to stop, and she didn't see herself as irreplaceable.

Here's one more story: Socrates, awaiting death in prison for "corrupting the youth of Athens," is offered the chance to escape -- to flee to another city to raise his sons and to continue his philosophic work in some less public way than his Athenian marketplace badgering. He realizes that his flight might be understood as disrespect for the laws and customs of Athens, which are in a very fragile state after the loss of a 25 year war. He also realizes that his flight might eliminate any chance that philosophers or philosophic investigation will be part of the reconstruction of Athenian society. And so he stays and drinks the hemlock.

None of these stories is about what people had to do or about what one might have expected them to do, given all we know about human nature. They are stories about what people can do, sometimes, unaccountably. We call people heroes when they remind us of what people can do, sometimes, unaccountably.