Dr. Justice T. David MARSHALL

MARSHALL, Dr. Justice T. David

 

In memoriam Died November 20, 2009

Even at our greatest, one must, upon reflection, be humbled by the utter insignificance of our individual lives. At best, we merit a fleeting reference here, or a bookmark there. Each of us is but a drop in the veritable ocean that is mankind. We are born to die; to give birth; to let loose our grasp in favour of those to come. Our brief day begets a long night to come.

 

And still, individuals, like drops, count - the whole is nothing without its parts. Perhaps, then, and in the final analysis, this is the most any of us should dare to dream - to be remembered fondly, if at all, by those who shared with us our brief moments in the sun. To ask for more, surely, would be to ask for too much. 

 

T. David Marshall is loved and fondly remembered by Jill Marshall, his children Jillian, Julie,

Albert, Thomas, David Jr., by their families and his friends.

 

T. David Marshall, Jr. 2013

 

http://www.lifenews.ca/announcement/4228182-marshall-dr-justice-t-david

Fact: Religion is not Reasonable - Promoting Unreason (faith) has its Consequences

Science is not a "thing," a doctrine or a set of beliefs — it is a mode of thinking and method of inquiry. There is no Book. Once this concept is grasped, the errors in reasoning committed by the writer of the May 3 letter to the editor entitled Muddying the Waters ought to become obvious. But, because an understanding of these errors will, invariably, continue to elude some, I fear it necessary to bring more to bear upon the subject.

There is an unsettling fact I think most religiously inclined readers will be loath to accept: Religion is not reasonable.

I mean this in the most analytical sense, of course, in that religious belief is not based upon reason, but upon authority. The claims to "Truth" by Jesus or Mohammad rest entirely upon the basis of their assertions to have been (in the case of Jesus) the son of God, or (in the case of Mohammad) to have communed with God through an intermediary: These are not reasons — these are simply further claims.

This is precisely why such doctrines are called "faiths." It takes an active willingness to suspend one's otherwise critical faculties in order to believe — on the basis of no evidence — that the claims proffered by such men are true. This is, incidentally, the very definition of irrational behaviour.                       

 

Science, however, is unlike religion. The only basis for its claims is that they are reasonable — that is, reason-based. Our belief in the accuracy of the statement "the Earth goes round the sun" is not premised upon who utters the statement, but upon what reasons we are given for believing it to be so.

There is, in this sense (and contrary to the assertions of the writer), no falsity to the dichotomy proffered by Scott Thompson in his April 30 column on the Comment page entitled Terror in the Name of God. Reason, and the application of reason to the discovery of truths about our world (a process we commonly call "science" or "scientific"), really is on one side of the equation, while superstition and unreason really are on the other.

The question posed by Thompson as to whether those who support and promote an unreasonable view of the world ought to be, in some way, held accountable for the actions of followers who take religious texts seriously, is a pressing one.

Apologists for religion, such as the writer, want everyone to believe that it's simply the work of a few extremists — a few bad apples — who bring a measure of disrepute to religion.

But this, surely, is a faulty, ahistoric and myopic view that betrays a certain naiveté about the true nature and effect of religion (as systems of irrational beliefs) upon the minds of otherwise morally decent people.

Religious observance — which is simply another way of saying "a dogmatic and unreflective fidelity to the dictates of an authority that demands obedience" — really is linked to the 9/11 attacks, the Boston bombings, the denial of condoms to AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan African communities, the genital mutilation of girls (and boys), and to the deaths and enslavement of millions in a way that a mode of thinking or method of inquiry can never be.

I grant without reservation, of course, that for the majority of followers, faith has not entirely dulled their moral faculties. Despite, for example, the Koran's (and the Bible's) ringing endorsement of such inhuman practices as slavery, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and murder, most religiously inclined folks have found a way to navigate around these less-noble parts of their faith in order to act decently toward others. But this feat has always been achieved in spite of religion, not because of it.

In this respect then, it should come as no surprise that those who are attracted to unreasonable claims in the first place will include highly unreasonable people who are utterly incapable of reasoning their way out of their faith's commandments to, for example, murder infidels, subjugate women or kill homosexuals.

And so, contrary to the writer's assertion that all faiths should get a free pass, I would suggest that any system of unreasonable claims — whose leaders actively recruit and retain people who are themselves apt to believe such things — ought to share some of the blame when things go, as it were, entirely by the Book.

Thankfully, for reason and science, there is no such Book — and so far as I know, no downside to being "extremely" reasonable.

T. David Marshall is a lawyer and former lecturer in ethics and lives in Cayuga.

Available at: http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/2555864-fact-faith-is-not-reasonable/
See also http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/2257233-didn-t-galileo-show-us-truth-is-not-found-in-authority-and-obedience-/
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TDavidMarshall

'Fiscal Impact’ vs. Individual Autonomy

The bottom line doesn’t justify government regulation of our private selves

To the extent that the writer of the article entitled “Healthy choices and John Stuart Mill,” (Comment page, Jan. 24) was encouraging Canadians to become more healthful, one can hardly find fault with his opinion. Good health is a laudable goal, no doubt.

But there is something deeply wrong with the balance of this writer’s thesis, which suggests nothing less than the total disintegration of any discernible boundary between our public and private selves. Of this, I believe, something should be said.

The idea this writer promotes — that the public administration of societal goods warrants government regulation of the details of our lives, so long as our life choices have “prejudicial” fiscal impacts on “the system” — is at the very least, a very bad one. Even he could not help but point out a couple of the systemic reasons why we, as a society, might balk at (for instance) taxing people with high blood pressure.

But his reasons (he cited bureaucratic bloat and cost) were largely unimaginative and failed to adequately capture what I think is the core reason why most Canadians would, upon reflection, reject his thesis.

I will start with an uncontroversial claim: Each of us inhabits both a public and private sphere.

If I am brushing my teeth I am likely to say, in that instant, that I inhabit the private sphere of my life as an individual only. No one is watching me, nor would I expect or want someone to be. I am a citizen in that instant too, of course, but the defining characteristics and obligations associated with that role, (as a citizen), I am apt to think, will play little part in how I go about the task.
Conversely, if I am a member of a jury, I am likely to admit, in that instant, I inhabit the public sphere of my life. In that role, the responsibilities and duties I bear as a citizen will determine, in large part, the choices open to me. It would be improper — and it would be an abdication of my duties — to choose to brush my teeth during the trial, for example.

How we define this boundary between our public and private selves — and the corresponding obligations and freedoms these roles necessarily entail — is, therefore, of vital importance in determining what we owe and what we are due. But upon what principles do we determine one thing to be public and the other private?

If the writer’s thesis were left to stand, our public responsibilities and private freedoms would be determined by the quotient of “fiscal impact.” As he would have it, if “my life choices end up costing the community” money, then these choices — be they about my body or the things I might put into my body — are fit for public regulation. This, I think, is an unacceptable way of distinguishing the public from the private.

In part, it is unacceptable because it is under-inclusive. The quotient of “fiscal impact” does not, in any meaningful way, capture the myriad of reasons we are likely to cite in support of a just division between our public and private spheres.

When one chooses, for example, to become vegetarian or to start taking the stairs, one is unlikely to see these decisions as being informed by considerations of the fiscal impacts or benefits that might accrue to society. Rather, one is likely to view these decisions, and one’s ability to choose for ones’ self, as matters of personal autonomy and individuality.

Thus, respecting the autonomy and individuality of others — as a correlative to the claim each of us makes for ourselves — is at the core of our deliberations when determining the proper division between our public and private selves. This core aspect, however, is lost when we give primacy to the quotient of fiscal impact.

It is tempting, of course, to view our obligations in purely economic terms. It makes determining what we owe each other — and what we are due — as easy as pulling out a calculator.

But to do so is to obscure, and diminish, what it means to be fully human. Our fellow citizens are not simply debits and credits — they are individuals deserving of respect. And to respect anything less — the taxpayer or the bottom line only, for example — is to fail to pay heed to what really matters: our humanity.
T. David Marshall is a lawyer practising in Hamilton

http://www.thespec.com/opinion/columns/article/877586---fiscal-impact-vs-individual-autonomy

Henry David Thoreau

T. David Marshall

Marshall Philosophy Lecture Series

October 2012

Topic: Henry David Thoreau’s Essay, Civil Disobedience and the Importance of Active Citizenship

INTRODUCTION

“I went to the Woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner…”[1]

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concorde, New England, in 1817. He died in 1862. Civil Disobedience was published in 1849. This essay is cited as inspiration for some of the greatest thinkers of the last 2 centuries, including such giants of history as Mahatmas Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau was a rugged individualist and friend of humanity. He saw the individual as the singular and indivisible unit and source of morality, and felt that every man's nature was mutable and amenable to reason. The source of every man's sense of right and wrong, according to Thoreau, was his conscience. When Henry David Thoreau was sick and near-death he was asked if he had made his peace with God - to which Thoreau replied: “I did not know we had ever quarrelled”. Throughout his life, Henry David Thoreau sought to live by the dictates of his conscience, cost what may: this manner of living, he thought, rendered God's forgiveness unnecessary.

Thoreau was a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great transcendentalist philosopher. They lived together, as friends, for many years. Of philosophy Henry David Thoreau had this to say:

“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”[2]

This is Henry David Thoreau.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (Published 1849)

There are many ways to read Thoreau’s 1849 Essay. It is about civil disobedience – of course - but it is about the events of 1849; it is about slavery and his nation’s prosecution of an unjust war. It is also about Active Citizenship.

At the bottom of page 11, Thoreau states the following: “Action from principle - the perception and performance of right - changes things and relations…”

Throughout the essay Henry David Thoreau implores his reader to act from principle.

“The mass of men serve the State… not as men mainly, but as machines with their bodies. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; [Most men]… Put themselves on a level with wood and earth and a stone…Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”[3]

Being human, for Thoreau, is inextricably tied up with the notion of being “active”, and, of acting out of principles consonant with one’s conscience. Henry David Thoreau states, on page 6, that men who serve the state as mere machines - or what we might today call automatons – “have the same worth...as horses and dogs.” This is so, according to Thoreau, because such people, who allow themselves, unwittingly or wittingly, to be rendered mere things at the disposal or use of others, degrade the very thing that makes them different from beasts or objects – their independence in thought and action and their ability to choose the ends they seek.[4]

To this end, Thoreau is critical of his fellow citizen’s inaction with regard to some of the most pressing social issues of his day - among these, the issue of slavery:

“There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; while esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing[.] They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret…there are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.”[5]

Virtue and Active Citizenship, according to Henry David Thoreau, are one and the same. To be virtuous is to act with conviction and to “not leave to the mercy of chance” what the dictates of conscience require be done.[6] To abandon one's conscience, is to abandon what makes one fully human.

“Is there not the sort of bloodshed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.”[7]

According to Thoreau, impartiality is always partial, for it necessarily favours the status quo. Action from principle, on the other hand, and the perception and performance of right, stirs the individual moral agent from his slumber, and enlivens him to the evil he abets through his disinterest in his own moral power.

“It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support… I must first see, at the very least that I do not pursue [my own aims] sitting upon another man's shoulders.”[8]

Here, Henry David Thoreau states the obvious: it is not my duty to save someone from drowning but it is my duty to exercise my moral judgment and ensure I do not contribute to that person’s plight.[9]

CONCLUSION

At first blush, perhaps, Thoreau’s idea of Active Citizenship does not appear very active – “its not a man’s duty…to devote himself to the eradication of any…wrong” he says. But this is to miss the insight Thoreau provides the attentive reader. Just as Martin Luther King Jr.[10] would discover in his quest for greater racial equality in the United States, and, just as Ghandi discovered in his quest to liberate India from the clutches of the United Kingdom[11], Thoreau knew that the one condition necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.[12] As Thoreau rightly asserts, “The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue” in order to sustain it – nothing more.[13] Being an active citizen then, according to Thoreau, means only this: taking seriously one’s moral agency and duty to act according to the dictates of conscience in order to avoid either harming another, or lending one’s weight to the machine that would do so in one’s stead. Why all men have a conscience is so that they might use it in order to check themselves.  Its good use, when “well done, is done forever.”[14]

DISCUSSION and FACT-SCENARIO QUESTIONS

---

[1] Walden

[2] Walden

[3] Civil Disobedience, pages 5 and 6

[4] For those interested in this topic of what it means to be Human, you may wish to read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,

[5] Civil Disobedience, pages 8 and 9

[6] Civil Disobedience, page 9

[7] Civil Disobedience, page 15

[8] Civil Disobedience, page 10

[9] Civil Disobedience, See bottom of page 7

[10] See MLK Jr.’s discussion of what he terms “the moderate” in his Letter from Birmingham Jail

[11] Ghandi, in fact, used Thoreau’s example as a model in order to mount a campaign tactic that paralysed British India and ultimately helped hasten the United Kingdom’s departure from the sub-continent – this tactic became known simply as “non-cooperation”. 

[12] This adapted phrase is often attributed to the philosopher Edmund Burke; It also appears, with attribution to Burke, in Primo Levi’s book Survival in Auschwitz

[13] Civil Disobedience, page 11

[14] Civil Disobedience, page 14