One interesting thing about the Jules story, and the Oedipus story, is that it has a crime of passion at its heart. In typical ancient fashion, that it is a crime of passion is not seen as a mitigating factor. The only thing that matters is what Jules and Oedipus do and nothing—not circumstances, not passion, not misunderstanding—buys either any relaxation of condemnation. I think the ancients have something to teach us here.
If we thinking of morality in terms of duty (deontology) then our duty will be defined by moral laws. And that raises an interesting problem: What happens when circumstances arise that prevent me from doing my duty? That is, what if I couldn't do my duty even if I wanted to? Faced with this, any deontology has to make allowances. Even Kant, a guy who otherwise was not averse to driving the logical bus off the cliff when it came to moral questions, locates goodness in the will and not in the fulfillment of duty.
And what if the impediment is psychological? I should acknowledge and love my family but no one will hold someone in the late stages of Alzheimer's to that standard. Does passion also exempt me? Some societies have said yes and even in the modern western world we both charge and sentence crimes differently if passion is involved. That Saint Jules did not knowingly and with pre-mediation kill his parents would be in his favour in a court of law. It wouldn't be enough to find him innocent but he'd be charged and sentenced to a lesser crime because of it. The ancient family of moral myths that his story and the Oedipus story grow out of make no such allowance. It is his actions and only his actions that matter.
Legally speaking, it makes sense to mitigate and any morality based on duty will have a legal aspect to it. But when we think in terms of virtue, the opposite applies. To build my character, I train myself in certain habits so that I will be able to behave rightly in very tense situations. Being good enough everyday is fine but when we praise virtue we are always praising the person who behaved admirably when things got tough. A virtuous man would not have done what Jules does in the story and that is why the ancient story condemns him unhesitatingly.
The virtuous person, as Kipling would have it, is the one who keeps her head when everyone around her is losing theirs. In an apparent paradox, she is also the one who keeps her passion alive when others lose interest. The resolution to the paradox is that, no matter what, she succeeds at moments of passion. If there is a litmus test for virtue it coincides exactly with those moments when modern morality begins making exceptions.
As Christians, we frequently pray that we will not have to face our time of trial. That does not exempt us from preparing for it.
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