Missing Things

18 February 2010

A thought about enlightened monarchy

An enlightened monarch is one who embraces the principles of the Enlightenment and uses them to support his own reign; i.e. a ruler who does things like patronize the arts, improve his subjects' standard of living, etc, because if he fulfills his responsibilities and makes his people safe, free, and happy, they'll tend to prefer that he stay in power rather than rebel.

With that in mind, that golden rule of compassion and self-giving, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you", seems more like enlightened selfishness.

If that's the case, what does selflessness look like?

2 comments:

  1. Can't you expound on that in order to show that trusting in Christ in order to avoid Hell is selfish, too?

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  2. Probably... Especially if you take the Pascal's Wager approach of "I'm going to believe in God instead of be an atheist because there's minimal risk and infinite potential payoff, as opposed to zero payoff and infinite potential risk". It's okay as a starting point, but from that angle it's not what God is after.

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