Read Online Do You Think You're Clever? by John Farndon - Free Book Online Page A

blessed by good fortune. It was, according to Aristotle, about the good life in all senses of the word – a life that was materially pleasant and blessed with good things including a loving family and beauty, successful in terms of accomplishments, and morally virtuous. It is in some ways about having a good soul or achieving what Thomas Aquinas later called ‘blessed happiness’. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the word happy originally meant ‘lucky’.
    If I think of the moments in life that I remember most fondly – and so must be the moments of greatest happiness – I think I would have to agree with Aristotle. It’s not experiences of material pleasures alone that I cherish, but times when I was surrounded by the love of friends, times when I finished a creative work, times when I was praised by a much-valued voice, times when a kind deed made someone smile, times when I made a great catch at softball, times when I noticed passing beauties such as sun sparkling on water. Of course, there are times of material pleasure in there, too, but all these moments have another, deeper emotional significance as well as sheer physical gratification. I have a feeling that in none of these moments was I actually seeking happiness. Happiness was a by-product. Happiness is an elusive butterfly, the scent of a flower on the wind, caught fleetingly, almost accidentally. Nietzsche, renowned for his gloomy, nihilistic outlook on life, said the key to happiness is to appreciate ‘the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a moment’.

Smith sees Jones walking towards a cliff. Smith knows Jones is blind but doesn’t like him, so allows him to walk off the edge. Is this murder?
    (Law, Cambridge)
    Under English law, Smith is not guilty of murder because he did not actually intend to kill Jones. For Smith to be convicted of murder, it’s not enough that he foresaw Jones’s death clearly and did nothing to prevent it; he has to be shown to have intended it. Since he did not actually pushJones off the cliff, nor do anything to encourage him to walk towards the cliff, there is no way it could be proved that Smith intended to kill him.
    Our initial reaction to this story is that Smith’s silence seems shocking. How appalling, deliberately letting a blind man walk off a cliff. Surely he must be guilty! He is not, and if we reframe the story a little, then we begin to see why. What if the reason Smith doesn’t like Jones is because Jones is a gang leader who likes to murder innocent people for pleasure – and Jones has just herded up another group of victims? Then Smith begins to look more like a hero than a villain. Of course, if it’s Smith who is the murderer and Jones the saint pleading for the hostages to be spared, it all looks very different again. This is why the law has to be framed carefully, and judges and juries must have real, not circumstantial, evidence to convict someone of a crime – and why we must be extremely careful not to imagine motivations.
    However, Smith just might be guilty of a serious crime, although it could be hard to prove in court. In English law, that crime is involuntary manslaughter. Involuntary manslaughter is when someone allows the death of someone through extreme carelessness or incompetence or gross negligence. In the USA and other countries, Smith might similarly be guilty of criminally negligent homicide, a less serious crime than first- or second-degree murder. Negligence is not always clearly defined, but in English law it does include omission – omission to do something thatwould certainly have prevented death. The prosecution, though, might have a tough time showing that Smith really was culpable in this way, because there could be many entirely innocent reasons for his failure to warn Jones. We would probably need witnesses to show exactly how he behaved – and if there were witnesses, why didn’t they intervene? CCTV footage might show Smith clearly