Choice is all the rage these
days, but it does not mean what it used to mean. In a free society where people are
free -- responsible -- who can consistently not be "pro-choice"? However, when
the word still had some shape and consistency, a difficult choice meant to accept
difficult consequences in the form of suffering, disapproval of others, ostracism,
punishment and guilt. Without this, choice was believed to have no
significance. Accepting the consequences for affirming what really counts is what
gives Antigone her nobility; unwillingness to do so is what makes her sister Ismene less
admirable. Now, when we speak of the right to choice, we mean that there are no
necessary consequences, that disapproval is only prejudice and guilt only a
neurosis. Political activism and psychiatry can handle it. In this optic
Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina are not ennobling exemplars of the intractability of human
problems and the significance of choice, but the victims whose sufferings are no longer
necessary in our enlightened age of heightened consciousness. America has no-fault
automobile accidents, no-fault divorces, and it is moving with the aid of modern
philosophy toward no-fault choices.
~Allen Bloom~ |
