Freedom and Virtue in John Milton's Comus and Areopagitica
The martyred author of Utopia, Sir Thomas More-executed for treason against the king-is credited with the final words, "If I must live in a world in which I cannot act within my conscience, I do not wish to live!" Generations later, the fiery patriotism and explicit candor of Patrick Henry led him to utter the renowned "Give me Liberty or give me death!" Along the same lines of these two men, John Milton's "Areopagitica" argues that the essence of life is freedom to choose how one lives it. In another of Milton's works, the masque play Comus, the Elder Brother's statements concerning virtue establish some of the foundations for his argument in the work he wrote "in order to deliver the press from the restraints with which it was encumbered" (716).
The root of Milton's assertions lies in his complete hope in the prevailing of virtue. In these two works, confidence in virtue and in the ability of good men to practice it is crucial. The first part of the Elder Brother's statement is, in fact, a comment on confidence, in response to his brother's question concerning the unfavorable odds stacked against the Lady, their sister. He says, "Yes, and keep [confidence] still,/ Lean on it safely . . . against the threats/ Of malice or of sorcery, or that power/ Which erring men call Chance" (584-588). The Elder Brother's remarks show that he believes in the triumph of the Spirit against all odds, including the Fates and Fortune. As he states, "this I hold firm;/ Virtue may be assail'd but never hurt,/ Surpris'd by unjust force but not enthrall'd," because it is founded upon the "will and arm of Heav'n" (588-600). Milton's argument in the "Areopagitica" holds true to these ideas also, that we must have confidence in virtue and its ability to triumph over all trials and temptations because-if it is truly of God-it will stand predominant over all evils. In outlining his argument, Milton reminds his audience over and over of the duty they have to trust in the virtue of their fellow men; just as God allowed Adam to have the choice to err, so must the state give men the right to choose, to try their own ideas of virtue.
The Spirit describes:
Great Comus . . . whose pleasing poison
Meaning, "good death". But the word “euthanasia” today means taking action to achieve a good death. Euthanasia is often used by doctors; the doctor would prepare the patient a lethal dose of drugs and administer the drugs to them or the doctor injects the patient with lethal injections. There are two different forms of euthanasia, active and passive. Active euthanasia is the hastening of a persons’ death by injections or a different form of assisted suicide while passive euthanasia is the withholding of treatment or medications that are currently keeping the patient alive (Barbuzzi, p.1, 2014). Informed consent from the patient is required for both passive and active euthanasia. . According to the Barbuzzi, informed consent is, “A patient’s expression of knowledge and acceptance of the risks, benefits, and alternative treatment options of a medical procedure and subsequent permission to a physician to perform the procedure” (Barbuzzi, p.1 2014).Suicide, self-deliverance, auto-euthanasia, aid-in-dying, assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide, physician-assisted dying can all be justified by the supporters of the right to die movement for the following
passage: "The courage and resistance shown by the Navajos at Big Mountain, by Polish workers,
Rather, he should always protest for his autonomy. Thoreau expands on this subject in Civil Disobedience. After expressing his desires for a small government, he questions the idea of government itself: “Must the citizen ever for a moment...resign his conscience to the legislator?...[W]e should be men first, and subjects afterwards” (Civil Disobedience 171). Placing the individual over the government, Thoreau shows his passion for the self. That person’s actions may go awry, but, at least, the person still has the right to learn from his or her wrongs. Thoreau likens a meaningful existence with unyielding trust in a person’s inner voice. Without nurturing this voice, an individual loses his or her personhood. Such unwavering loyalty to the self best characterizes the transcendental ideal life, where one only needs to follow intuition to be
American author, John Steinbeck once said, “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts - perhaps the fear of loss of power”. As seen in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, people of authority can feel pressured to go along with actions or make decisions they know are wrong because they fear losing their power and influence in society. They also tend to let to their opinions and motives impact their work and responsibility to make good decisions. The Crucible demonstrates how people of authority, like Parris and Danforth, try to use good judgement to make fair decisions, but are often influenced by their own personal opinions whether they realize it or not.
Milton does not believe everything that the analogies imply. Man has been given reason, but each man uses this gift differently. "Best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil" (211). To an evil man a book about evil will fill his brain with even more vile ideas. A man like that does not practice temperance and should not be reading books of that nature. Men of pure minds, on the other hand, can read any book without being corrupted. Milton thinks that one is pure if he has knowledge of evil and rejects it, like The Lady did in Comus. Books written on evil topics can't hurt a man "if the will and conscience be not defil'd" (211).
The seat of faith resides in the will of the individual and not in the leaning to our own reasoning, for reasoning is the freedom of choosing what one accepts as one’s will. In considering the will was created and one cannot accuse the potter or the clay, Milton writes to this reasoning, as “thir own revolt,” whereas the clay of humankind is sufficient and justly pliable for use as a vessel of obedience or disobedience (3.117). The difficulty of this acceptance of obedience or disobedience is inherent in the natural unwillingness in acknowledging that we are at the disposal of another being, even God. One theme of Paradise Lost is humankind’s disobedience to a Creator, a Creator that claims control over its creation. When a single living thing which God has made escapes beyond the Creator’s control this is in essence an eradicating of the Creator God. A Creator who would create a creature who the Creator would or could not control its creation is not a sovereign God. For who would not hold someone responsible for manufacturing something that could not be controlled and consider it immoral to do so? To think that God created a universe that he has somehow abdicated to its own devices is to accredit immorality to the Creator. Since the nucleus of Milton’s epic poem is to “justifie the wayes of God” to his creation, these ‘arguments’ are set in theological Miltonesque terms in his words (1. 26). Milton’s terms and words in Paradise Lost relate the view of God to man and Milton’s view to the reader. Views viewed in theological terms that have blazed many wandering paths through the centuries to knot up imperfect men to explain perfect God.
This affirms what was stated earlier; that in the traditional epic form the hero is defined by traits of bravery, courage, honor and victory but Milton’s reformed epic values freedom in Christ, love, humility and dependence in Christ. Milton’s faith caused these values to be placed above those of the traditional epic. Although the poem ends on a dark event the ending is still somewhat hopeful as Adam and Eve leave the garden hand in hand having acquired these virtues through their error.
Following the Holocaust, survivors did not know where to go. For youth, they had practically grown up inside the concentration camps or Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. However, they understood that it was near impossible for them to return to their hometowns because of the hatred against Jews. Many youth and other survivors migrated west to other European territories that
He was interested in nature’s relation to humans. Henry David Thoreau is best known for following in the footsteps of Emerson’s idea of transcendentalism. To get a better understanding of Thoreau’s ideas of transcendentalism, I will briefly talk about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay entitled “Nature.” It is written to show importance to nature. In the introduction of Nature, Emerson reveals the purpose of his essay, which is that man takes nature for granted. Emerson says that humans do not experience nature and God directly. Emerson makes the point that the goal of science is to come up for a theory about nature. However, man will never understand the true form and spectacles of nature. Emerson makes another point saying nature and spirit are the only true mechanisms of the Earth. Emerson continues in his introduction to explain that nature is everything other than the human spirit. He speaks of nature and the spirit as if they were a form of “Yin and Yang.” In order for the spirit to exist, nature must exist. In the next eight chapters Emerson gives mediated high praise to nature. In the beginning of the first chapter Emerson expresses his belief that most adults lost the ability to approach nature as an awareness to separate us from our material world. As children, we see nature for the beauty it truly is. However, as we grow old nature becomes so accustomed to us that we forget the magnificence about it. Chapter 2, “Commodity” Emerson
To conclude, Thoreau believed that people should be ruled by conscience and that people should fight against injustice through non-violence according to “Civil Disobedience.” Besides, he believed that we should simplify our lives and take some time to learn our essence in the nature. Moreover, he deemed that tradition and money were unimportant as he demonstrated in his book, Walden. I suggested that people should learn from Thoreau to live deliberately and spend more time to go to the nature instead of watching television, playing computer games, and among other things, such that we could discover who we were and be endeavored to build foundations on our dreams.
...ter on Hamlet, in his soliloquy, is frustrated at how actors can freely express their emotions without fear. However, his goal of vengeance has taken over all other aspects in his life and therefore, he willingly sacrifices his freedom of expression.
It was implied that the character in the game was a single parent, but being a woman would make this even harder due to the lower wages associated with less testosterone. I am a female, so if I was in this situation this lower wage would affect me. Being Caucasian, I would have an advantage in this situation, because being a minority would make it much more difficult to even get a job. The aforementioned author Barbara Ehrenreich notes in her writing that servers were primarily whites. America is continuing to grow more towards a service industry, and getting these kinds of jobs is difficult as a minority – practically impossible if English is not their first language. In “The Economic Plight of Inner-City Black Males”, author William Julius Wilson discusses how black males that grow up in the inner-city are stuck where they are due to many difficulties they face in getting a job. His research team talked with employers, and one drug store manager said this: “It’s unfortunate but, in my business I think overall [black men] tend to be known to be dishonest” (331). It’s this attitude that makes it even more difficult for minorities to get a job and get out of poverty. I have held a job since I was 15, and never had any problem attaining one in the service industry and now in the medical field. I could have been hired over someone on the basis that my color somehow made me a better
The theological aspects that arise in the excerpt are original sin, grace, atonement, and the resurrection of Christ. Lines 203 through 209 speak about man’s wrong doing to God. “But yet all is not done; Man disobeying, Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins Against the high Supremacy of Heav’n,…” Milton puts emphasis on the fact that all men must die “He with his whole posterity must die.” These lines introduce the concept of original sin in the excerpt. The doctrine of original sin is that because of Adam’s fall in the garden and their disobedience to God in eating the forbidden fruit, men are held accountable for their sin because of Adam’s disobedience men take on a sin nature.
In the opening lines of Paradise Lost, Milton wastes no time conveying to his readers what his purpose in writing the epic is. He writes in the beginning that he intends to “assert Eternal Providence, / and justifie the wayes of God to men” (I. 25-26). What exactly does this mean though? In order to be able to clearly judge and evaluate what these lines imply, it is important that one understands what exactly Milton’s thoughts we regarding “Eternal Providence” and the “wayes of God”. Stemming from this idea, it is important to also realize how the idea of free will intertwines with the omniscience of God. For Milton, God’s omniscient did not constrain the free will of Adam and Eve. However, this idea presents the reader with a paradoxical situation that Milton as an author was fully aware of. Paradise Lost presents the reader with eternal providence and free will as being part and parcel of each other, neither constrains the other, and it is these two aspects, along with that of knowledge that lay the groundwork in understanding Paradise Lost.
To him, reality and nature symbolized this higher truth, and, hence, universal laws are perceived in his work (Manzari 3). One specific theme involved the simultaneous relationship between the individual and government. “Civil Disobedience” embodied the ideal that citizens within the scope of government should do what they personally think is right and not what government dictates. Thoreau’s works constantly confronted the injustices perpetuated by the government (Harding and Meyer 135). Explicitly, “Civil Disobedience” discussed the topic of slavery and how Thoreau was morally opposed to the idea in its entirety. He paid homage to the fact that expediency does not take priority over justice. Meaning, the concept of slavery was all too convenient because nobody thought of an intellectual alternative. Thoreau believed in the notion of equality through his writings of, “…my government which is the slave’s government also” (Thoreau 3). The moral of his writings incorporated the ideal that no matter what the costs may be, justice must advance in society because, as humans, we are “ethically and morally obligated” to do the right thing (Neufeldt and Smith 70). He also focused on the contradictory platform of so-called democracy and ultimately the only option to refute such governmental flaws was to become civilly disobedient. On the other hand, in Walden,