Count no man happy till he dies.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King (trans. Robert Fagles)
Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives; must we, as Solon says, see the end? Even if we are to lay down this doctrine, is it also the case that a man is happy when he is dead? […] for both evil and good are thought to exist for a dead man, as much as for one who is alive but not aware of them; e.g. honours and dishonours and the good or bad fortunes of children and in general of descendants.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book 1 (trans. W D Ross)
In all of the discussion of racist statues one fundamental point is rarely mentioned: Above all, public statues represent the unwillingness of “great men” to simply go away. Those who bestrode their narrow world like a Colossus are loath to let death remove them from the scene, so like the stuffed dodo in a diorama they have their effigies propped up in the public square.
While they lived they received the adulation of the crowds, and the opprobrium of their opponents. If the great one’s supporters need a public icon as a focus for their devotions, the icon will have to continue to participate in the hurly-burly of public life, including the scrutiny of their lives and deeds brought on by shifting ethical standards. If Winston Churchill were alive today he would rightly have paint and rotten tomatoes flung at him by those appalled at his racist ideas and actions. Reasonable can believe that his near-genocidal actions in Bengal, among others places inhabited by darker-skinned people, are more significant than a few well-crafted speeches that bucked up the spirits of the Island Race. Reasonable people did think so during his life. The place where one is beyond praise or blame is called the grave, and no one is suggesting disinterring WC’s bones — though an earlier generation of Tories did exactly that with Oliver Cromwell, after the tide of history turned against him.
His supporters are welcome to hide his statues away in private shrines, or public museums. If you put them up in public you have to accept that people are going to continue to engage with them. Sometimes angrily. Sometimes disorderly.
Common Infirmities 