In Defense of a Non-Natural Moral Order

[Acrobat]

[ If you died trying to protect any value that you rationally determined was worth risking your life for. 

That's interesting.

It seems to me that there are some values worth risking one's life for, for the value themselves.

There's a new film coming out from Terrance Malick, about the life of Franz Jagerstatter, a simple Austrian Farmer who refused to take the Hitler oath, refused to partake in the War, even though everyone else in his village and community supported it. He was spat on, abused, treated as a traitor, and eventually executed. He didn't save anyone's life, he didn't protect or hide any Jews (though if given the opportunity he may have), but allowed himself to die for the sake of some value he refused to sacrifice, a pearl he'd rather die than give up.

We all might be able to recognize that there was some thing profoundly good about this man. Something so profoundly human about him, and inhuman about his community. Yet this good seems to fail any attempt to categorize it into our particular moral schemas. It's not for sake of the preservation of his life, or the avoidance of death, but for the sake of something deeper, like the preservation of his soul, his being, that transcends any material benefit or aim.