These guys get the nicest treatment but they're still slaves Sick people are taken very good care of and the Utopians believe in euthanasia the killing of someone terminally ill, with their consent, to spare them from chronic pain.
Women can't marry until they are 18, men until they are Oh, and pre-marital sex is absolutely not allowed. They enforce this quite harshly because they believe that no one would agree to marry otherwise.
Hythloday doesn't seem to have a very happy view of marriage in general. So, how do they marry? This part is pretty weird. After two Utopians are engaged, they see each other naked once before they have to marry.
Possibly helpful to remember here how much more clothing they would have been wearing back in the day compared to the present. Utopia is the only country in that area where they practice monogamy only being married to one person and they do allow for divorce if there's any cheating going on or things are really, really miserable.
However, this can't just be some natural flaw in the person or old age, because that is just not cool; you need to stick marriage out if that's the case. Cheaters are forced into slavery and if they are caught again, they are executed. Speaking of punishing, there aren't actually fixed punishments in Utopia. Every particular situation is considered by the senate.
They find slavery a useful punishment because everyone can see them and be like "nope, that is not for me! They believe that if such liberties were condoned, it would discourage people from marrying. The choosing of a mate is treated as a matter of the greatest importance.
Before the two parties give their final consent, the young woman, accompanied by a sedate matron, is presented naked to the prospective groom, and under similar circumstances the young man is exhibited naked to the prospective bride. They consider it strange that in other countries the parties to a marriage are not permitted such an inspection in choosing a mate for life. No one, they say, would buy a horse that was covered by a blanket so that only its head and hoofs were visible.
Divorce is not permitted except in cases of adultery or "insufferable perverseness" of one party. Provision is made for a couple to separate if they find themselves incompatible — provided they can obtain the consent of the Senate, but that is permitted rarely and only after serious deliberation.
If one party in a marriage is found guilty of adultery, he or she is sentenced to slavery, while the innocent spouse is free to marry again. Hythloday proves himself either more moral or more irrationally prudish than the Utopians in disapproving of their pragmatic premarital customs. Still, the comparison of selecting a mate to buying a horse does seem inarguably dehumanizing. Matrimony is never broken in Utopia except by death, adultery, or intolerable behavior on the part of one of the spouses; in the latter case, the council may license a person to divorce their present spouse and wed another.
However, the spouse who misbehaved lives in infamy, and is forbidden from remarrying. Not being able to marry after committing adultery might seem like a punishment that is disproportionate to the crime—after all, sex is natural, promotes pleasure, and no reason is given for why having multiple partners should be considered a punishable offense.
People who commit adultery are punished with bondage, and if both offenders were married, their former spouses can get married to each other if they want , or else to whomever they desire. If a person still wishes to be married to the partner who cheated on them, they are allowed, but on the condition that they must follow their partner into labor and drudgery.
If someone commits adultery twice, they are sentenced to death. To the modern sensibility, it is perhaps shocking that adulterers are sentenced to the same punishment as murderers. Still, the Utopians seem skeptical that adulterers can be rehabilitated.
Why else would they prohibit them from remarrying, or go so far as to put them to death? All this suggests a view of sexuality and romantic love that seems utterly foreign to modern ideas. For all other crimes, there is no prescribed sentence in the law. The council judges each offender on a case-by-case basis. The most common punishment for heinous crimes is slavery, which causes the offender grief while also profiting the commonwealth.
If a bondman rebels, however, they are killed like a desperate wild beast. People who are patient in bondage and who repent of their crimes live in hope of having their punishment mitigated or lifted. People who intend to commit adultery or any other crime are subject to the same punishments as those who actually commit them.
In Utopia, the intent is considered as evil as the act. To its credit, Utopian justice treats offenders in most instances as individual people, not as cases to be processed by a mechanical, inhumane system. Note, however, that punishment is not designed to rehabilitate offenders or make them more virtuous, but rather to cause them grief, which is perhaps not so admirable.
We might wonder how Utopians discover whether or not someone has had criminal thoughts—and should thinking about committing a crime really merit the same punishment as actually committing it? At the same time, this reflects a certain idea expressed by Jesus in the Bible—that lusting after a woman is the same as actually committing adultery with her.
The Utopians take especial pleasure in fools by which the author means either witty and intelligent professional clowns, or, in what is the likelier case here, the mentally disabled. It is deeply shameful to hurt one of these fools in Utopia, but the Utopians believe that it profits the fools themselves to be objects of pleasure.
Utopia cares for all of its citizens, which reflects a general respect for human life that transcends ruthless practicality although ruthless practicality certainly governs many aspects of their society. Honesty and humility are what a good Utopian husband really values in his wife. Make-up is a sign of pride to the Utopians, and so is as useless as gold is to them.
Husbands more practically value those qualities which make for a happy marriage. Bad Governance, Pride, and Idleness. The Utopians punish sin, as we have seen, but they also reward virtue. Sculptures of good men, especially great benefactors, are set up in the marketplaces to remind people of their good acts and to encourage virtue.
0コメント