Kant and Sophocles speak for themselves. Bernard Häring was a moral theologian who advocated a personalist approach to moral situations which inevitably tended towards subjectivism and relativism (not to my taste, thank you); John Rawles' famous book 'A Theory of Justice' contained his equally famous thought experiment of the 'Veil of Ignorance.'
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– Ho! for the blood tests, the grudged faecal smears,
Then it’s drooping of flesh and thin rheumy leers,
The hospital beds, care home chairs, and then biers.
All that work-place role play and promotion in tiers
– Ho! for the politics, the sales meeting jeers;
The marriages, maintenance and children’s hot fears
Collapsing in hatred and screeched primal sneers.
Might Kant in his wig chart a way through these meres?
– Ho! for imperatives and love for one’s peers;
Or Häring or Rawles with two cautious cheers
Anaesthetize tragedy with a fondling of ears?
Oh, age-spare Sophocles like a mist which clears
– Ho! for those cold-eyed ones, truth-shaken seers,
Saw grimly that men with their loves and their spears
Are flung from their feet and swept over time’s weirs.
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© August 2016
– Ho! for the politics, the sales meeting jeers;
The marriages, maintenance and children’s hot fears
Collapsing in hatred and screeched primal sneers.
Might Kant in his wig chart a way through these meres?
– Ho! for imperatives and love for one’s peers;
Or Häring or Rawles with two cautious cheers
Anaesthetize tragedy with a fondling of ears?
Oh, age-spare Sophocles like a mist which clears
– Ho! for those cold-eyed ones, truth-shaken seers,
Saw grimly that men with their loves and their spears
Are flung from their feet and swept over time’s weirs.
====================
© August 2016
