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Achilles, I have taken a shine to you. You have pressed your position well, and in a serious manner. And it would be lovely if we could teach, say, the doctrine of the Four Cardinal Virues (we could use Josef Pieper!), and perhaps review selected chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics (the discussion of eudaimonia, the discussion of the great- souled man, perhaps the types of friendship) and Cicero's "De Officiis". Finally, let us throw in Aquinas's "Treatise on Law", Kant's "Groundwork of a Metaphysics of Morals", and perhaps the section "What is Moral?" from the "Beyond Good and Evil", by Nietzsche. This would cover the waterfront pretty well...For a bunch of precocious collegians! For children, it makes more sense to post something like the Ten Commandments. In any event, we are obliged to tell children what to believe, because they are ignorant, and do not have much aptitude for higher order abstraction. The whole thing turns on whether or not such a posting constitutes "establishment", or, more particularly, proselytizing. I argue that the post means almost nothing to those not already within the religious tradition alluded to, and therefore cannot amount to proselytizing, and therefore is exempt from prohibition.... |
