I’ve been asked whether yesterday’s post, “Blaming the Victim,” was about the student at Georgetown University who wrote after being mugged that it happened because people like him are “privileged.” He said that until there is economic equality, “we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins. I can hardly blame them.”
No, I wasn’t commenting on him. At the time I wrote the post I hadn’t even heard of him.
A young man dresses up in expensive clothing, stuffs his pockets to the bulging point with money, then walks into a rough neighborhood. Someone hits him over the head, takes his money, and leaves him bleeding in the street. If you suggest that he acted recklessly, you are accused of “blaming the victim.”
Why is it so difficult to make a few simple distinctions?
The perpetrator is entirely to blame for robbery and assault.
But the victim in this case is to blame for foolhardiness and indiscretion.
Once upon a long time ago I shared the foolish Romantic view that animals are somehow lessened by entering into partnership with man. But if man is greater than animal, why shouldn’t we say that they are enobled by it? The sheepdog or rescue dog which we admire is not a person; it is not rational; it does not understand the reasons for our commands. Yet i
A Higgs boson particle walks into a Catholic church. Surprised, the priest asks, “what are you doing here?” The particle replies, “You can’t have mass without me!”
I am always surprised by the resistance which the classical definition of man as a rational animal stirs.
Rationality has two aspects, one concerning how I decide what to do, the other concerning how I recognize the way things are.
People often speak as though acting naturally were the opposite of acting rationally. For the other animals, it is. For humans, it isn’t. Because we have a rational nature, all of our natural inclinations must pertain to reason in some way, or they would not be natural to us.
Thanksgiving Day
Natural law thinkers view the happiness of the community as the complete set of conditions, physical and social, that need to be satisfied in order for individuals to be able to pursue happiness effectively, both through their own actions and through the actions of smaller communities such as families, churches, and neighborhoods.
Every person’s life is bound up with his membership in the community. I am more than just a solitary atom; I am a part of a whole. But the individual's identity is not exhausted by his membership in the community. As Thomas Aquinas explains, the kind of unity that the commonwealth enjoys is not a "unity of essence" or a "unity of matter," but only a "unity of order," amounting to no more than the fact that things stand in a shared relationship. "To be one in respect of order is not to be one unqualifiedly speaking," he says, "since unity of order is the least of unities."
