The list is long, but no less specious than the “spherical predominance” or “planetary influence” Edmund contemptuously adduces. Or maybe it is because of “the patriarchy.” Or “hetero-normativity.” Or “transphobia.” I burned down a police station/shot a cop/looted a store but it was because of “systemic racism.” I take drugs, but it is because I am oppressed. I am habitually late for work, but it is because I grew up poor. Today, of course, we don’t find excuses for depravity in the stars but in our upbringing, our bank account, our sex, our skin color. He understood that his infirmities were his and his alone: “Tut, I should have been that I am, / had the maidenliest star in the firmament / twinkled on my bastardizing.” Indeed, with a little ingenuity, we can argue that our bad behavior, being instigated by something outside ourselves, makes us victims, hence deserving of pity if not celebration.Įdmund wasn’t taken in by such subterfuges. The worm of our infirmity is not in us but elsewhere, hence we are not truly, not fully, guilty of our bad behavior. Planetary influence and all that we are evil in,īy a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasionīack then, a crutch, an excuse for bad behavior might be astrological: we lie or cheat or pander not of ourselves, but because of an external influence beyond our control. Liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of Treachers, by spherical predominance drunkards, If we were villains by necessity fools by Of our own behavior-we make guilty of ourĭisasters the sun, the moon, and the stars as When we are sick in fortune-often the surfeit This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, He is also given some of the play’s most brilliant lines. The line is spoken by Edmund, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester and one of the play’s chief villains. The title, as many readers have recognized comes from “King Lear. In 2015, in my role as publisher of Encounter Books, I published “ Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality,” a gimlet-eyed analysis of the profession by Theodore Dalrymple.
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