Terry Schiavo, the Enlightenment, and Good Friday

Terri Schiavo seems to be doomed to have to starve to death. She seems to have been given the opportunity to practice her “right to die.” Peak Talk does a good job summarizing the various positions on this case. Peggy Noonan ponders the Western love affair with death. Steve Sailer ponders the economic benefits baby-boomers find in euthanizing the elderly and infirm.

The best analysis I can provide is to quote some lines from “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Ivan tells his story to Alyosha about the day Jesus was brought as a prisoner to the office of the Grand Inquisitor in Seville.

The Grand Inquisitor berates Jesus for all the suffering that he has caused and how people like the GI must protect people from themselves, because Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion does nothing to end suffering. The GI’s suffering for his flock is even greater, as he says to Jesus:

Know that I am not afraid of you. Know that I, too, was in the wilderness, and I, too, ate locusts and roots; that I, too, blessed freedom, with which you have blessed mankind, and I, too, was preparing to enter the number of your chosen ones, the number of the strong and mighty, with a thirst ‘that the number be complete’. But I awoke and did not want to serve madness. I returned and joined the host of those who have corrected your deed. I left the proud and returned to the humble, for happiness of the humble. What I am telling you will come true, and our kingdom will be established. Tomorrow, I repeat, you will see this obedient flock, which at my first gesture will rush to heap hot coals around your stake, at which I shall burn you for having come to interfere with us. For if anyone has ever deserved our stake, it is you. Tomorrow I shall burn you. Dixi.

…

When the Inquisitor fell silent, he waited some time for his prisoner to reply. His silence weighed on him. He had seen how the captive listened to him all the while intently and calmly, looking him straight in the eye, and apparently not wishing to contradict anything. The old man would have liked him to say something, even something bitter, terrible. But suddenly he approaches the old man in silence and gently kisses him on his bloodless, ninety-year old lips.