Remembering the Weight of Life and Death in a Profane Age

Procul o, procul este, profani. ‘If ye are unholy, begone, begone.’ Such strong-worded sayings were a regular part of Pinckney Sumner’s education at Harvard. Pinckney’s training in the then-puritanical ways of Boston’s elite stuck with him for the rest of his life and helped shape the moral sentiments of the future abolitionist and pride of the family, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Pinckney retained a sense of the heroic, a divine duty to protect, which he put to good use. Upon reaching the rank of sheriff, Sumner, Sr. bestrode the streets of Boston with a blue coat, ‘‘yellow breeches, white tipped boots, a tricolored hat, and a sword worn at his side,’’ (Charles Sumner, p. 46). He also chose to conduct his own executions. 

To religious fanatics such as the Savoyard aristocrat Joseph de Maistre, executioners like Pinckney Sumner were potent symbols of everything that was good and awesome about an authoritarian society. ‘‘All greatness, all power, all social order depends upon the executioner; he is the terror of human society and the tie that holds it together,’’ (Freedom and Its Betrayal, p. 162). The executioner dispatches criminals without a passing thought, except perhaps to take pleasure and satisfaction in his skillful handling of the iron mace. When he has done his job, the executioner ‘‘sits down to table and eats, he goes to bed and sleeps, but when he awakes next morning his thoughts run on everything but his occupation of the day before,’’ (Freedom and Its Betrayal, p. 162). Not so with Pinckney Sumner. He was anything but care-free and unmoved by the carrying-out of his duties. 

He considered the job ‘‘disagreeable’’ and took pity on the wretched souls he was charged with sending to the next life. He sought, where possible to comfort the condemned, explaining that religion ‘‘can soften the bed of death.’’ According to Zaakir Tameez, author of a recent biography on Charles Sumner, at a particularly remarkable execution, Pinckney ‘‘accidentally stepped on the foot of his prisoner, took off his hat, and apologized before hanging him,’’ (Charles Sumner, p. 46). Unlike the executioner of Maistre’s imagination, Pinckney took ‘‘no pleasure in the death of the wicked,’’ (Ezekiel 33:11). Indeed, mercy and good-will for the condemned runs through the history of Christianity. It lies behind the expression, ‘‘may God have mercy on your soul,’’ a common benediction offered to the guilty at trial. Located at the Cleveland Museum of Art is a late 17th century Germanic executioner’s sword, with the following inscription engraved on the fuller of the sharp blade: ‘‘When I raise this sword, so I wish that this poor sinner will receive eternal life.’’ This Christian expression of good will, even when punishment is required, stands in sharp contrast to the nihilism and hatred which comes through the messages found on the bullet casings of men like Tyler Robinson, the lead suspect in the assassination of the right-wing personality Charlie Kirk. Instead of calling forth blessings, Robinson allegedly taunted his victim with the following message: ‘‘Hey, fascist! Catch!’’

When Erika Kirk, wife of the slain Charlie Kirk, sought to exemplify these Christian virtues by publicly forgiving her husband’s assassin, President Trump followed her moral act with a repudiation of the ethic of forgiveness. Trump responded to Erika Kirk’s assertion that the answer to her husband’s killing was ‘‘Love for our enemies, and love for those who persecute us,’’ with the fascinating admission that ‘‘I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them…Sorry, Erika.’’ The President was not bluffing, or trying to appear tough. He was expressing his genuine affective state. The President’s default inclination is to grow in rancor towards those who injure him, and to consummate this hatred with jubilation when his enemies either croak or are mercilessly defeated. When news of the death of Robert Mueller—the career public servant who once investigated Trump—broke out, President Trump was found rejoicing. Amidst the public outpouring of sympathy and admiration for this distinguished lawyer was Trump’s curt, ‘‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead.’’ 

Such heartlessness often seems to confirm the idea that Trump is a pagan—harsh, haughty, and hedonistic, like the gods of the Hellenes. The author Leighton Woodhouse has accused Trump of bearing all of the marks of a ‘pagan King,’ and has condemned the administration for acting like the ancient Greeks. The administration, he says, ‘‘appears unconstrained not only by the limits imposed by the Constitution but by the standards of an average American’s conscience.’’ That may be true, but even the Greeks and Romans, for all their spectacular brutality, observed basic principles of restraint in the face of death. Death in the ancient world was considered a sobering event, one which even the most tyrannical human beings could not help but be overcome by. In Herodotus’ Histories, the Persian King Xerxes is portrayed as a cruel and wrathful tyrant. Yet, even his hardened heart could not stand the thought of death. Herodotus says that ‘‘when he saw the whole Hellespont hidden by ships, and all the beaches and plains of Abydos filled with men, he called himself happy—and the moment after burst into tears.’’ When asked why this sudden emotion, Xerxes replied, ‘‘I was thinking and it came to my mind how pitifully short human life is—for of all these thousands of men not one will be alive in a hundred years’ time,’’ (The Histories, 7.46.2). 

The brevity of life, and its frequent interruption by the pitiful sight of death, was thought to warrant careful ceremony. Indeed the time of death was no ordinary time. It imposed unusual strictures on human life and called for delicacy, diplomacy, and sobriety. When death arrived, all loose talk and free ways had to be put away. In their stead, thoughtful discretion was encouraged by the solemnity of the occasion. As far from the Mediterranean as the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), the Fanti people strictly observed the taboos of the culture by avoiding any speech that might make explicit mention of death. As John Parker outlines in his study of death in West Africa, the topic of death, owu, was carefully handled by the humble and great alike: ‘‘No great chief or royal…was ever said to have ‘died’ (wawu); rather, their passing was reported metaphorically as odupon kese atutu, ‘a great tree has fallen,’ nana ko akuraa, ‘nana has gone to the village’ or, adding a further layer of circumlocution, okyeame ho dodo no, ‘the okyeame (the chief’s linguist) is indisposed’. Even ordinary folk did not ‘die’; yereto ne mme, it was said: ‘‘palm trees [for use at the funeral] are being felled,’’ (In My Time of Dying, p. 44). Today we simply say of the deceased that they have ‘passed.’ 

Death was also a serious affair. The Roman jurist Ulpian called burial the negotium humanitatis, the business of mankind. Burial rites are established by custom to publicly mark the interruption of human life and communicate to society the importance of treating human existence with due reverence (What To Expect When You Are Dead, p. 23). The Roman poet Ovid reports that tombs were honored in Ancient Rome, with the goal to appease the souls of the dead. He adds that this custom was established by ‘‘Aeneas, the fitting patron of piety’’ through whom ‘‘the people learned their pious rites,’’ (Fasti, 2.547). More often than not, norms of restraint, even upon the most boisterous and untamed members of society, were enforced by ritual customs surrounding death. David Hume considered custom to be the main transmitter of moral manners. By looking at a culture’s record of funeral rites, one can discern the ethical concerns of a people group. As Laurence L. Bonglie observes, Hume saw history as ‘‘the ordered apprehension of the moral nature of things,’’ (David Hume, p. 80). 

Over time, the funeral traditions of people groups take on a moral character of their own, and when observed can bolster the nobility of a clan. Death and its challenges soon become a predictable terrain for the exercise of virtue and a groundswell for the emergence of legendary heroes. This is especially likely to be the case, says the Swiss philosopher Benjamin Constant, when laws (funeral rites included) are seen to be derived from ‘‘a sacred source, the legacy of generations whose ghosts it venerates.’’ It is then that these laws ‘‘fuse themselves intimately with its morality…ennoble its character, and even when they are faulty, they produce greater virtue, and consequently greater happiness,’’ (Political Writings, p. 75). ‘‘When the forest-dweller of America displays the bones of his forefathers and refuses to abandon them, when the captive warrior chants while braving the most painful torture and is worried about only one thing: that he brings no shame to the shade of his ancestors,’’ says Constant, each devotee displays the works of heroism (On Religion, p. 138).

The connection between funeral customs, morality, and hero worship is evident in the works of the Greek and Roman poets. In Homer’s The Iliad, the hero Achilles allows the bereaved Priam to take his son’s body home for proper burial. The ‘‘monstrous Achilles’’ (The Iliad, 22.90) had initially refused to agree to a pact allowing the bodies of the defeated to be returned. Filled with a war spirit, he asserted that there could in principle exist ‘‘no binding oaths between lions and men,’’ (The Iliad, 22.262). But after hearing Priam’s entreaty, exhorting the swift-footed assassin to take pity on the plight of an old man, Achilles changed his mind. ‘‘Come, Achilles,’’ said Priam, ‘‘respect the gods, and have pity on me…I have endured what no other mortal on earth has done: to raise to my mouth the hand of the man who killed my son,’’ (The Iliad, 24.503,505-506). For all his lightning ferocity, Achilles proved himself susceptible to appeals to heaven. Priam’s moving speech, articulated in such a way as to remind the warrior that even in war, some norms of conduct are sanctified by the gods, ‘‘aroused in Achilles a desire to weep for his father,’’ (The Iliad, 24.507). 

This noble gesture was later complemented by other pieces of literature, particularly the work of the biographer Diogenes Laertius, in which he highlights the importance of not adding to the sorrow of death by speaking ill of the dead. ‘De mortuis ni nisi bonum’ (of the dead, speak nothing but good) was Chilon’s advice (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 184.74). The Fanti did not even speak of the dead, unless to call a curse on the speaker (In My Time of Dying, p. 44). These cross-cultural vows of silence serve to remind its practitioners of the gravitas of life and the need to be gracious to those who have gone before us, and are certain to follow. At its best, says Constant, death is an ‘‘eloquent and even necessary ally of all of the sentiments that transport us beyond this world, which is to say: all of our generous and noble sentiments,’’ (On Religion, p. 138). The present worry is that the virtue-producing norms of the ancient pagan and Christian cultures of death do not seem to have found a landing place in the President’s bosom. On the contrary, the President of the United States seems so deprived of the salutary effects of a humane education, so strikingly detached from the ordinary feelings of reverence which such a schooling can produce, that he cannot even muster the decency and self-control to remain silent when his perceived enemies die. 

Ordinary people, for example, naturally mark time by observing funerals, and are wise not to pursue their routine during a period of mourning. When King Louis XVI’s beloved son died of tuberculosis, his spine twisted by the torment of the disease, the hurried revolutionaries did not bother to observe the stoppage of time that death, especially of a child, imposes on mortal affairs. Proving their degradation, and foreshadowing the desecrations to come, Jean Sylvain Bailly and other deputies sought to pressure the King to answer their pressing constitutional questions. When Bailly showed up on June 6, 1789 to talk to the King, the latter taking note of the disgraceful timing simply remarked, ‘‘There are no fathers then among the third estate,’’ (The French Revolution, p. 39). There are times that are sacred, set apart, worthy of pause, restraint, and silence. ‘‘The primitive for whom fishing or a difficult hunt provides bare subsistence will devote a portion of the catch to a fetish. A bellicose people will lay down their arms to come together in front of an altar. Free nations will interrupt their deliberations to call upon the gods in their temples.’’ Even ‘‘Despots will grant their slaves days of respite,’’ (On Religion, p. 24). 

All human groups, from the meanest to the most exalted civilizations, find ways of expressing the idea that some things are sacred, and are accordingly moved by the tragedy of death to draw back from cruelty. ‘‘There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jests can be made,’’ wrote Edgar Allan Poe, an American (Tales of Mystery and Imagination, p. 306).

When Trump threatens to raze towns, to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, and to wipe out Persian civilization, such belligerent language, even if used as a bargaining tool, undermines the logic of the sacred. It suggests that the annihilation of innocent non-combatants is one of the many reasonable options available to a leader if he wishes to bring about strategic results. It implies that all means can be used to achieve an end, even if it includes the violent and abrupt end to innocent life. Liberals will recoil at this suggestion for it will carry with it the intolerable proposition that there is no shame or sacrilege attached to the destruction of human life—tout court. Ronald Dworkin, an eminent liberal jurist, objected to this way of thinking for it was contrary to the notion that life is intrinsically valuable, and therefore ‘‘intrinsically regrettable when human life, once begun, ends prematurely,’’ (Life’s Dominion, p. 69).

The New York Times’s Euan Ward recently reported that an Israeli airstrike on March 12, 2026 killed 4-year old Taline Shebab and her father Mohamad Shebab a few days before the girl would have turned five. She was one of at least 118 children who were killed last month as Israel pursued its war objectives in Lebanon. How may we explain the tremendous loss that has been inflicted on humanity by the killing of these children? One way to do so is to join Ronald Dworkin in pushing forward the moral intuition that it ‘‘is intrinsically a bad thing, a kind of cosmic shame, when human life at any stage is deliberately extinguished,’’ (Life’s Dominion, p. 13). Such desecration goes at the root of what it means for something to be sacred. ‘‘The hallmark of the sacred,’’ says Dworkin, ‘‘is that the sacred is intrinsically valuable because it exists,’’ and its ‘‘deliberate desecration would dishonor what ought to be honored,’’ (Life’s Dominion, p. 73-74). Human life, including that of Taline Shebab, is sacred, hallowed, inviolable, worthy of honor, not because it holds any instrumental value, but because it just is. Those who do not at least understand that are a danger to others, and the protective institutions upon which others depend. In fact, there is none more irreligious than the one for whom nothing, including life itself, is sacred. 

It is in this regard that one can speak of the demoralization of the executive office. The President has taken to posting at all hours of the day, and at all times of the year, some of the crassest comments one can find on the internet. ‘‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F***in Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP,’’ was the President’s Easter Sunday message to the obstinate Iranian regime. That the President of the United States would use the most holy day of the Christian calendar year to utter foul war threats against his enemies is sadly unsurprising. This is a person who does not seek to appeal to ‘‘the better angels of our nature,’’ as Abraham Lincoln famously did, but seems unrelenting in his boastful indulgence in the ugliest facets of the human personality. 

Worse still is the fact that the viciousness of his character does not appear to be constrained by the revered customs and solemn ceremonies of civilized societies. It has been the norm, for example, for Presidents to at least try to lead by moral example. When a photographer visited President William McKinley in his home in Canton, Ohio, in the summer of 1901, the President most known for tariffs, made sure to put down his cigar for the photo shoot: ‘‘We must not let the young men of this country see their president smoking!’’ (The Conservative Sensibility, p. 106). That was then, this is now. Today, the President of the United States, who claims to take inspiration from McKinley’s presidency, does not shy away from engaging in the same publican profanities as the crowds which gather around him at his political rallies. 

Trump’s unbending pursuit of war, vengeance, and destruction, during times of sacrality, in addition to his open contempt for the inherited rules of human decency and the expectations of his office, makes him the archetypal vessel of divine wrath. Such accursed persons, says the Apostle Paul, ‘‘are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes,’’ (Romans 3:18). It is the signature trait of the ungodly that there are no laws, whether formed in heaven or on earth, that can restrain their passions. It is important to remember that congressional power was established to check the destructive potential of human passions and to protect humanity from the vainglory of any one man. It is one of the many tragedies of our age that this institution has abandoned its moral purpose. 

Featured image is "Surmatants," Bernt Notke c. 1463.