Author Archives: Peter Levine

why Dante damned Francesca da Rimini

I looked at statistics for this site recently and was surprised to see

that the most popular search terms that take people here include "Dante,"

"Paolo," "Francesca," and "Inferno." I am

surprised because I think of myself as a civics, democracy, and political-reform

guy; I have not contributed much to the study of Dante, and this website

certainly doesn’t offer much on the topic (beyond the one page

about my ongoing Dante project). Today, however, I posted one of my

published Dante articles, and I will add more soon—all in the interests

of serving my audience.

In "Why

Dante Damned Francesca da Rimini," I argue that there are

two explanations for Dante’s decision to place Francesca in Hell (even

though her real-life nephew was his patron and benefactor). First, he

may have sympathized with this fellow lover of poetry who tells her own

sad story so movingly, but he realized that she had committed the mortal

sin of adultery. Thus he damned her because his philosophical reason told

him that she was guilty, and he wanted to suggest that moral reasoning

is a safer guide than stories and the emotions that they provoke. For

the same reason, the whole Divine Comedy moves from emotional,

first-person, concrete narrative toward abstract universal truth as Dante

ascends from Hell to Heaven.

But there is also another,

subtler reason for his decision. Francesca loves poetry, but she reads

it badly. Her speech is a tissue of quotations from ancient and medieval

literature, but every one is inaccurate. In general, she takes difficult,

complex texts and misreads them as simple cliches that justify her own

behavior. Meanwhile, she says nothing about her lover or her husband—not

even their names—which suggests that she cannot "read"

them well or recall their stories. Her failure as a reader suggests

that Dante was not necessarily against poetry and in favor of philosophical

reason. Instead, perhaps he wanted to point out some specific moral pitfalls

involved in careless reading.

on praising one’s own children

I like to say nice things

about other people, in their presence and also behind their backs. Yet

I try not to say overly nice things about myself. Praising others makes

me feel good (and often comes naturally); praising myself makes me feel

guilty. I used to be able to follow both principles consistently—until

I had kids. Now, I often want to say nice things about my children, even

when they are not around. But many people see praising one’s own offspring

as a way of bragging about oneself. This is especially true of other parents,

for we moms and dads are a very competitive lot (even the nicest ones).

Indeed, when I praise my own children behind their backs, I feel a tinge

of guilty pride that resembles the feeling I would have if I had just

bragged about myself, even though I honestly do not see myself as responsible

for the good things that my children do. (Then again, I’m not sure that

I’m responsible for any good things I may do.) Is this feeling

of pride a sign that it is wrong—immodest—to praise one’s children

when they are not present? Or is it right to praise them, as long as one

does not feel pride when doing so? (After all, they are individuals in

their own right, so why should anyone think about their parents when they

are discussed?) Or is it right to praise them and to feel proud

about their good qualities, even though it is wrong to praise oneself?

thinking about the fetus without analogy

Here’s a question prompted by a seminar discussion today. (The speaker

was my colleague Robert Sprinkle.) Would it be possible to consider the

moral status of a human fetus without analogizing it to something

else? The standard way to think about the morality of abortion is to ask

what fetuses are most like—babies, organisms (fairly simple

ones at first), or tumors. We know that babies cannot be killed, that

simple organisms can be killed for important reasons, and that tumors

can be removed and destroyed without regret. So an analogy can help us

to answer the fundamantal moral question about abortion. (It’s not necessarily

the end of the matter. Judith Jarvis Thomson, and many others, have argued

that you may kill a fetus even if it is like a person, because

it is inside another person.) But a fetus isn’t something else; it’s a

fetus. So could you simply consider it and reach moral conclusions?

One might reply: "There is no way of reasoning about this entity;

there is nothing to say to oneself about its moral status—unless

one compares it to another object whose moral status one already knows."

But how do we know the moral status of (for example) human beings? Presumably,

experience and reason have rightly driven us to the conclusion that human

beings have a right to life. Similarly, most of us have decided that insects

do not have rights. Couldn’t we reach conclusions about the moral status

of fetuses without analogizing them to anything else?

(Some religious readers may say: "Experience and reason are not

the basis of our belief in human rights—we get this belief from

divine revelation." But there is no explicit divine revelation about

fetuses, so the question arises even for religious people: Could we think

morally—and perhaps prayerfully—about fetuses, without analogizing

them to other things?)

at the White House

Today was the White

House Forum on American History, Civics, and Service, a big event

in my field. Our Civic

Mission of Schools report was distributed to all 250 of the White

House’s guests and received a lot of attention.

The Forum exemplified official Washington. The President delivered

an especially prepared greeting from a gigantic video screen. Much was

made of his new initiative to support history teaching. The First Lady

and Lynne Cheney, guarded visibly by the Secret Service, made speeches;

and everyone stood each time one of these women took the podium. (Some

of the sanctity of high executive office transfers to spouses, apparently.)

Patriotic video montages of American history were displayed on the screen.

A huge reproduction of a manuscript copy of the Constitution was the backdrop

all day. Teenagers were paraded (silently) on stage and bedecked with

medals—quite literally. Speakers were introduced with long recitals

of their achievements; there was also much thanks to funders and assembled

dignataries. Almost all the speakers quoted at least one framer of the

Constitution (often deploying little-known and highly relevant quotes—to

their credit). Martin Luther King Jr. was also cited widely; and many

sentimental stories were told about disadvantaged children. No one mentioned

the name of a political party or a major ideology, lest the spirit of

nonpartisanship be disturbed. There was general air of congratulation,

directed at the people and organizations in the room and at America itself—with

one exception: at least half the speakers wagged their fingers at young

Americans today for their shocking ignorance of history.

My academic training makes me want to rebel against this kind of show.

I want to ask: What do we know about the trends in historical knowledge

over time? What do we know about the factors that make historical education

successful? What is the impact of a historical education, or of historical

knowledge, on people over their lifetimes? What will the impact of the

new presidential initiative be? (At $100 million over three years, it

represents a vanishingly small commitment in the context of the federal

budget.) Since there are competing grand narratives of American history,

how do we know which one is more correct? Is Howard Zinn’s story of greed

and violence (which was explicitly criticized during the session) false?

Is it less valid than the "moderate triumphalist" narrative

that one speaker recommended as an alternative? What are the effects of

such stories on youth development?

Notwithstanding all these questions and doubts, I recognize that public

institutions are not academic seminars. Mutual praise is oil that probably

has to be poured periodically over civil society. Vague statements of

commitment from the President of the United States are not empty; they

are useful ammunition in struggles at the local level. And leaders are

entitled to make a big deal about $100 million programs that they have

proposed. You would have to be a kind of political puritan to expect them

not to capitalize on the symbolism of such initiatives. It doesn’t only

take truth and critical debate to make large institutions run; they also

need symbolism, ritual, and even etiquette. Washington does these things

well.

medical information on federal websites

My blog is listed as "exemplary" on the blog

of Dr. John Gøtze, a Danish guy. At the risk of appearing to

logroll, I would heartily endorse "Gotzeblogged" (as he calls

his blog) for providing relatively technical (yet accessible) information

relevant to e-democracy and e-government.

There has been a lot of controversy about specific cases in which medical

information was changed on government websites, allegedly because

of the political or moral biases of the incumbent administration. I have

some thoughts about what to do about this problem—if it is a problem.

For now, here are the relevant facts, as far as I can tell:

In 2002, various agencies of the United States Government removed information

about condom use and abortion from their Websites, allegedly because

elected politicians favored sexual abstinence before marriage and opposed

abortion on moral or religious grounds. The National Cancer Institute

(NCI) had posted information denying a link between abortion and breast

cancer, but Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) objected, calling this denial "scientifically

inaccurate and misleading to the public." The NCI Website was then

changed to say (for a time) that the evidence was "inconclusive,"

until a scientific review panel required the Website to reinstate its

original language. Likewise, the Website of the Center

for Disease Control and Prevention removed its positive assessment

of condoms’ role in preventing the transmission of disease and removed

citations of evidence showing that education about condoms did not lead

to earlier or more sexual activity. After the removal of these statements

was criticized, some similar material reappeared online with the following

text added in bold: "The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually

transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse, or to be

in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has

been tested and you know is uninfected."

This last sentence is literally true. However, critics disagree with

the strategy and motives that they see lying behind such statements.

Participants in this controversy divide into two camps. Some believe

that it is the responsibility of public health professionals to reduce

the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. Private,

voluntary behavior that does not transmit such diseases—or otherwise

increase morbidity and mortality—is not the business of medicine.

For this group, it seems best to advocate condom-use aggressively. Universal

condom-use is a more realistic goal than universal abstinence, and condoms

generally prevent the spread of disease. Caveats about the effectiveness

of condoms, like the one in bold on the revised website, may have the

effect of discouraging condom use. As Representative Waxman wrote in

an official complaint, the website was "carefully edited to deny

the public important information about the role condoms play in reducing

sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies."

Another group, however, believes that there are two evils to

be minimized: (1) the transmission of dangerous disease, and (2) pre-

or extra-marital sex, which is bad in itself. Ed Vitagliano, who represents

the conservative American Family Association, said, "Science shows

that condoms are not 100 percent effective, and offer no protection

for certain sexually transmitted diseases like the human papilloma virus

and to a lesser extent chlamydia and herpes …. We fall on the side

of safety, encouraging children to wait until marriage, not only

for moral reasons, but also for scientific reasons" (emphasis

added). For this group, it makes sense to advocate abstinence, since

this is a good in itself as well as a means to avoid spreading various

diseases. Wholehearted, public advocacy of condom-use may strike such

people as tacit support for non-marital sex. They disliked the website

that was written under the Clinton Administration, seeing it as morally

biased in favor of promiscuity. The other side in the debate, however,

saw the revised text as morally biased in the opposite direction, and

the conflict led to the current text, which still offends some observers.

Sources: Robert B. Bluey "HHS Defends Its Advice

About Condoms, Abortion," www.cnsnews.com, December 27, 2002; Adam

Clymer, "Critics Say Government Deleted Sexual Material From Web

Sites to Push Abstinence," The New York Times, November 26, 2002,

p. A18; Lawrence M. Krauss, "The Citizen-Scientist’s Obligation

to Stand Up for Standards," The New York Times, April 22, 2003,

p. D3; Adam Clymer, "U.S. Revises Sex Information, and Fight Goes

On," The New York Times, December 27, 2002, p. A15.