Antigone, stay silent
In 442 BC, the famous ancient Greek dramatist Othophocles wrote Antigone. This famous tragedy occurred in Thebes, which was ruled by Creon after the death of Dipus. The original two princes Eteocles and Polynekes, one loyal to the city-state, the other defected to foreign enemies. The war ended with them sending swords into each other's chests. Creon buried Eteocles generously, but he did not allow anyone to send Polyneces to the underworld on the grounds of treason. For this reason, Antigone, the common sister of Polynekes and Eteocles, resisted Creon's "law of men" at the cost of her own life, in accordance with "the law of natural necessity" Buried the brother of the corpse wilderness. She said of Creon, the secular, state-apparatus-guaranteed, positive-status incarnation of real written law:
"I dare, because the god of justice who lives with the underworld gods has not made such a decree for mortals,
I don't think a mortal can abolish the immutable unwritten laws of the gods with a single decree,
Its existence is not limited to today and yesterday,
It is permanent, and no one knows when it appeared. "
Since then, natural law and positive law have been entangled with each other, weaving the unbreakable Gerdios knot on the long historical rope of legal philosophy: what is the eternal scripture in the human heart? Is it the erratic natural law, or the rigorous and detailed positive law? If the laws of this world are written in the black blood of sin, can and should we escape from it and go to God? It has been debated endlessly for centuries. Among them, the most tortured by conscience is the judges who are part of the legal system. They are obliged to be loyal to the law. Even if the balance of justice has been melted into a sword of murder, the judgment of sin must be stained with innocent blood. avoid anywhere. What makes guarding the law a coordinated crime, a knight of justice siding with a dictator? Their plight is the most extreme manifestation of the plight of everyone who believes in the law, and their struggle is a microcosm of the struggle of all law-abiding citizens.
The film hits the gavel in this question. In 1947, two years after the end of World War II, a group of Nazi judges took to the dock in Nuremberg. They were accused of complying with Nazi laws to prevent racial pollution and deprivation of reproductive rights during World War II, which were valid at the time but are now considered evil. persecuted aliens. Prosecutor Colonel Rosen vehemently criticized their crimes against humanity, while defender Rolfe argued that "they just applied the law properly and performed their duties."
It would be too shallow to see this film as a reckoning of evil judges and expose German atrocities. In fact, the prosecution and the defendant continued the contest between Antigone and Creon a thousand years ago—the simple natural law feeling and the calm positive law spirit.
Colonel Rosen is full of vigor and has a strong sense of morality and mission. His accusation is a symphony of sorrow played by blood and tears. You may not be able to hear the tune, but your heart is deeply shocked - just like the law of nature exists in every day. The heart of a good man is known to us without words. He showed the horrific images of the concentration camps in court, and everyone had tears in their eyes. However, the judge said in small talk outside the trial: "I'm really worried that Rosen is going to screw it up." The concentration camp tragedy can provoke the wrath of the goddess of justice, but not the hammer of the law: and the judge in this case (punishing blasphemy justice ) irrelevant evidence would not be admitted, and his repeated protests in Rolfe’s defense were mostly ineffective. Yes, the gift that Adam and Eve brought out of the Garden of Eden, the myth of being born with the first people in ancient times, has repeatedly hit a wall before the modern fortress of the rule of law-as early as the 6th century BC, it was blocked by the method of the Twelve Bronze Tables. Conviction of idealism, different applications...Natural law lacks too many qualities, it can't bring people stability - it allows emotional catharsis, but you don't know when this flood will pour down your head and drown yourself. Living under the laws of nature is bound to be unnerving. Like Rosen, he was born in the military and pursues justice, but he may go astray with violence at any time.
Thus, the positive law appeared. In contrast to Rosen, Rolfe represents a strict positive law: the law is written, the crime is determined, and the positive law will not throw you in jail on charges you can't foresee. Written in black and white, it's as clear and clear as Rolfe in a courtroom. Positive law gives everyone the clarity and sense of security to foresee the consequences of legal actions. It can be said that the civilization of human society has always transitioned from natural law to positive law. It is the belief in positive law that guarantees a peaceful and stable social order. In the film, Rolfe said to Ernest, the former Nazi justice minister: "I admire you very much. I want to be a great jurist like you." Here Rolfe's expectations do not point to the Nazi spirit, but It is a tribute to the positivist legal school headed by Ernest. His support for positive law reflects the attitude of German judges to positive law during World War II.
This time, however, positive law is sitting in the dock.
The German judges did not understand that, as a law student, when I watched this film, I was deeply puzzled about it - how did the pursuit of positive law turn into such a situation?
At the end of the film, facing Rolfe's prediction that "in the political situation, although they are sentenced to life imprisonment, but they will be free within 5 years", the presiding judge said: "You are very smart and logical, but, Logic is not everything."
Logic is not everything. This is the answer.
Rigorous and orderly logic is the Achilles' heel of natural law and the lever of positive law. By virtue of it, positive law has moved the entire human society step by step, but unexpectedly stumbles itself.
In the era of the classical natural law school, although positive law was the mainstream legislative model, the natural law derived from God still shines brightly in the starry sky above everyone's head. In the 19th century, Nietzsche said: "God is dead." The steam locomotive of the Industrial Revolution broke through the door of the monastery, and science, logic, and reason became a new trinity—positive law completely abandoned the constraints of natural law, and tried to use science in vain. Research methods frame natural law. Justice is no longer God's treasure. In Bentham's draft of arithmetic, it is named "the sum of pain and pleasure is positive". Everything is being materialized and quantified. All jurists are so smug that they can't wait to use a beaker to call morality volume of. After all, who doesn't like concise numerical reports, detailed and powerful logical reasoning? Thus, the law becomes a mathematical formula, as if substituting the facts in and getting the verdict.
Throughout the film, the Germans excused their crimes and said the most: "We didn't know..." They didn't know the existence of the concentration camps, and they didn't know the outcome of the genocide. After watching the horrors of the concentration camps, the German judges , shocked no less than Americans. For judges, a trial is a trial, and it is "appropriately applying the law and performing duties." For a soldier, fighting is fighting and "destroying the enemy." Do we need to investigate whether the sinner has been wronged first?" The process has long been clear, the division of labor has been scheduled, and what everyone has to do is to complete the task scientifically.
This is the most logical thing to do. Like a student using a math formula to figure out the homework left by the teacher.
Hart once divided people's attitudes towards law into internal and external views. Internal views refer to the inner recognition of the law, and external views refer to the law as a forced obligation. However, these "don't know" Germans, what is their attitude towards the law? How do they feel about their behavior? They may hate unjust laws, but they work with them comfortably. They don't need attitude, in this "scientific" age, knowing doesn't matter, attitude doesn't exist. , freedom of conscience is replaced by a multi-level division of labor. We focus on our tasks, but we do not know how to ask the world with our hearts.
Therefore, we can understand the words of the German officer's wife in the film: "German is much more beautiful than English, and it is more sad." The poetry of a nation and the atrocities of this nation can coexist. She sang the anti-war Lily Marlene, While sending her husband to the front line.
Can this modern story be compared to Antigone? At the end of Antigone, Creon is devastated by the destruction of his family and realizes his mistake. However, what was tried in Nuremberg was not Creon, who supported the positive law, but a group of conscientious and moral "Antigones" who would sincerely hate evil laws.
However, they remained silent.
They are more than silent! In "The Reader", Hannah, a Nazi female officer who would rather burn them alive in a church in order to prevent Jewish prisoners from escaping, shot and killed his guard at the head of the Berlin Wall in order to arrest the youth who smuggled into West Germany. They don't know how to open the door, they don't know how to lower the muzzle of the gun by 1 cm, they refuse to watch, refuse to listen, they can only keep silent to the world, accept the order to complete the order, and evade the responsibility of conscience.
They guard the law but collaborate in crime, knights of justice and squires of dictators.
All because of conscientious silence.
Because of this, after World War II, the reflection on positive law began. The positivist jurist Radbruch put forward the famous Radbruch formula: when the stability of the law and the justice conflict, and the law is too unjust, the stability should be sacrificed to save. Hart created a new school of analytical law, which no longer adhered to the principle of "only doing logical reasoning without providing moral evaluation", and introduced "minimum morality" into the definition of law.
Antigone's cry of "evil and illegal" finally echoed through the millennium dust.
The judges finally understand that applying the law is not a math problem. Antigone in my heart cannot keep silent.
In the play, this change is reflected by Ernest's active confession and reflection in the dock. "When we say we don't know, we really don't want to know," he said.
Everything else is an excuse. Speaking of obeying the law, Antigone does not want to speak, and his conscience does not want to be responsible.
Antigone, stay silent.
View more about Judgment at Nuremberg reviews
