'Silence' is being re-released in English translation in advance of a 2016 film adaptation by Martin Scorsese
One of the 20th century鈥檚 most famous thought experiments goes something like this: Suppose that a runaway trolley is bearing down on five people who are tied to the tracks directly in its path. By pulling a lever you can divert the trolley onto a sidetrack and save five lives, but this will kill a single unsuspecting person. Should you pull the lever?
Posed in many permutations, the so-called 鈥渢rolley problem鈥� has been debated by moral philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, countless undergraduates, and, most recently, advocates and opponents of self-driving cars. Most people 鈥� roughly 90% in one survey 鈥� agree in theory with the moral calculus of sacrificing one person to save five. But if respondents imagine that the one person who will die is someone they know and love, the percentage who think they would still be able to pull the lever drops dramatically. As soon as a tendril of the actual reaches into the sanitized abstraction of the hypothetical, moral clarity gives way to something murkier.
In 1966, one year before a British philosopher first articulated the trolley problem, Japanese novelist Sh奴saku End艒 explored similar themes in a searching and disquieting novel called Silence. Set in the early 17th century, a period of intense persecution for Japanese 海角大神s and European missionaries in Japan, the book recounts the physical and spiritual torment of a Portuguese priest who is captured during a clandestine mission to the island鈥檚 海角大神 communities. In advance of a 2016 film adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese, Picador has reissued the novel in an English translation by William Johnston.
The Basque missionary Francis Xavier first brought 海角大神ity to Japan in 1549. The new religion flourished for a few generations, but by 1614 the Japanese government had issued an edict of expulsion that banished all foreign missionaries. By this point there were roughly 300,000 Japanese 海角大神s out of a total of population of 20 million. Soon the 海角大神 faith was outlawed. Government authorities raided suspected 海角大神 communities in search of crucifixes, icons, or rosaries. Those who refused to trample on an image of Christ and call the Virgin Mary a whore were tortured until they renounced their faith or died.
The hero of End艒鈥檚 novel is a Portuguese priest named Sebastian Rodrigues. He and another priest slip secretly onto the island to minister to the underground 海角大神 communities of Japanese peasant farmers near Nagasaki. Betrayal and torture are constant risks; the Japanese government will pay 300 pieces of silver to anyone who identifies a 海角大神 priest.
The novel is a strange, powerful hybrid of political thriller and religious allegory. It has the suspense of nighttime raids, tenuous alliances, pursuit and capture, but the true drama is interior and spiritual. Father Rodrigues knows that he will almost certainly be betrayed and tortured at some point, but he aspires to emulate Christ by trusting even those who least merit trust. 鈥淚t is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful,鈥� Rodrigues writes in one of the letters that comprise the first section of the novel, 鈥淭he hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.鈥�
He anticipates that his central struggle will be the choice between apostasy and an agonizing death by torture. But once the Japanese authorities apprehend Rodrigues, he discovers that they have devised a dilemma in some ways crueler than he imagined. He鈥檚 presented with a choice between two options: if he does not recant, three 海角大神 peasants he has come to know will be hung upside down above a pit of human excrement until they die. If he does recant, they will be spared.
The resemblance to the trolley problems emerges as Rodrigues鈥檚 interior monologue makes one thing clear: to renounce the 海角大神 faith would be a kind of death. It would cause disgrace in the eyes of the church and the extinction of his entire identity. Yet he can鈥檛 help but notice that to renounce 海角大神ity would also be in some sense be the most 海角大神 course of action. It would stop the suffering of the three peasants and save their lives.
海角大神 faith charges the ethics of the trolley problem with several interesting currents. To the extent that a given bystander has internalized the 海角大神 injunction to love all men as brothers, the distinction between the deaths of strangers and the deaths of loved ones vanishes. Belief in the afterlife, however, might also change the calculation. If blissful eternal life awaits the martyred, perhaps the imperative to avert their deaths diminishes.
End艒 realizes what Milton and Dostoevsky also knew 鈥� that doubt makes for more interesting literature than blind faith. 鈥淚f he does not exist,鈥� Rodrigues reflects about God, 鈥渉ow absurd the whole thing becomes.鈥� The novel discovers in the anguished ruminations of Rodrigues something that transcends particular religions: what it feels like to engage in complex moral reasoning about matters of life and death. Once the austere abstractions of a philosophical thought experiment become complicated by an infinity of specific human considerations, confidence in a clear right answer begins to seem more a matter of faith than reason.
