![]() ![]() Of course, this is a perennial moral issue, but there are warning signs that we need to refocus our attention on the issue now. ![]() ![]() That is why it is so important for us as a society, globally and locally, to try to shape these choices. And because the ideals to which we aspire do so much to determine the ways in which we behave, we all have a vested interest in each person having heroes, and in the choice of heroes each of us makes. Anthony as a hero is going to have a very different sense of what human excellence involves than someone who chooses, say, Paris Hilton, or the rapper 50 Cent. A person who chooses Martin Luther King or Susan B. Our heroes are symbols for us of all the qualities we would like to possess and all the ambitions we would like to satisfy. We largely define our ideals by the heroes we choose, and our ideals - things like courage, honor, and justice - largely define us. We need heroes first and foremost because our heroes help define the limits of our aspirations. But still the concept retains that original link to possibility. Today, it is much harder to detach the concept of heroism from morality we only call heroes those whom we admire and wish to emulate. ![]() Originally, heroes were not necessarily good, but they were always extraordinary to be a hero was to expand people's sense of what was possible for a human being. But people who had committed unthinkable crimes were also called heroes Oedipus and Medea, for example, received divine worship after their deaths as well. Many of these first heroes were great benefactors of humankind: Hercules, the monster killer Asclepius, the first doctor Dionysus, the creator of Greek fraternities. For them, a hero was a mortal who had done something so far beyond the normal scope of human experience that he left an immortal memory behind him when he died, and thus received worship like that due the gods. The term "hero" comes from the ancient Greeks. Thoreau is one of my dearest heroes, and I do not know who I would be without him. But even if that disaster should strike, I know I would find solace by asking how Henry would respond to such a setback, and I know I would be a better man by following his example. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically." If - horrible thought - I should fail to earn tenure here, I would largely blame that damned quotation. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. And I try as often as I can to remind myself of Thoreau's warning to all philosophy professors: "There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Somehow he convinced me that living deliberately meant becoming a philosopher, and I have not looked back since. I read about living deliberately, about sucking the marrow out of life, about not, when I had come to die, discovering that I had not lived, and I was electrified. When I was 16 years old, I read Henry David Thoreau's book Walden for the first time, and it changed my life. ![]()
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