Notre Dame Law School NDLScholarship Journal Articles Publications 1979 Hope in the Life of Thomas More Thomas L. Shaffer Notre Dame Law School,
[email protected] Stanley Hauerwas Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship Part of the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Thomas L. Shaffer & Stanley Hauerwas, Hope in the Life of Thomas More, 54 Notre Dame L. 569 (1978-1979). Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/931 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Hope in the Life of Thomas More* Stanley Hauerwas** and Thomas L. Shaffer*** Rarely are we able to be the intelligent spectators of an historical event, more rarely still its actors. At such times the darkness lightens and the space contracts until we apprehend the rhythm of our daily actions as the rhythm of a larger welcome which has included us within its composition. -Iris Murdoch' I. Hope and Power in More's Witness The seduction of power is as perennial as the threat of power spurned. Power is a medium for good and evil. Lawyers and politicians and their victims -Nixon and his cronies, for examples-come and go; but the moral problems of how to use power, how to live with it and leave it behind, remain. One way to look at the moral problem of power is to ask how a virtuous person uses power, and lives close to power, without losing the sense of self which is necessary to negotiate the temptations of power.