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Israeli Elections: what would Milton do?

01/17/2013 11:15 By WILLIAM KOLBRENER

'Milton writes a person exercises their reason only through the activity of choosing.'

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As the elections in Israel approach, I ask myself the admittedly strange question: what would John Milton do? And though the author of Paradise Lost, lived centuries ago and worlds away, he would, I think, have a clear message for us in Israel today: don’t just affiliate, vote!

In his prose work of 1644 Areopagitica, Milton writes that “a man may be a heretic in truth.” Yet paradoxically, Milton argues that someone may advocate a position that is true – doctrinally impeccable – and yet still be a heretic. Milton preserves the name of heretic, but not for something a person believes – Milton is a strong advocate of difference – but for how he believes it. The heretic is the one, Milton writes, who just affiliates, “believing things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines.” A heresy is any belief, blindly and uncritically held, the party line, accepted without questioning. For Milton, it is not so much the beliefs one espouses, but the exercise of conscience choice in making those beliefs one’s own. Areopagitica, a tract celebrated by, among many others, American Supreme Court Justices for its espousal of freedom of speech, is really more about the responsibility of reasonable choice, of acknowledging the individual freedom to make decisions on one’s own. “Reason is but choosing,” Milton writes in Paradise Lost: a person exercises their reason only through the activity of choosing.

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Israeli Elections: what would Milton do?

'Milton writes a person exercises their reason only through the activity of choosing.'

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