A large hunk of metal in the shape of a human occupies a public space—maybe a park.

Thousands of statues around the United States and world fit this description. Many depict people who have done hideously immoral things. Almost all depict morally imperfect people (with baby statues, perhaps, being the exception).

直觉告诉我，有些雕像应该留在原地，有些应该拆除。This维克多·雨果的雕像应该留下来，以纪念这个人和他的伟大作品;the Hitler statue whose remains are capturedhere, however, deserved destruction.

But what principles determine which statues should be torn down? More specifically, what principles determine themoralityof statue preservation?

这个博客的背景是上周末在弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔发生的事件，以及它在公众讨论中的余波。I can’t, of course, enumerateall与保护公共雕像相关的原则，但我想提出一个观点，这可能会为我们国家的争论注入更多的清晰度。

The outlines of the weekend’s events are well known but worth rehashing. White supremacists—white nationalists, neo-Nazis, alt-Right, and KKK—gathered Friday night and Saturday to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from what was Lee Park and is now Emancipation Park. The supposed rationale for the protests was the preservation of “heritage” and “history.” But swastikas and chants such as “Jews will not replace us!” revealed the protestors’ underlying racism.

Many counter-protestors gathered on Saturday to fight that racism. Sundry scuffles broke out. But the horrific violence was when one of the racists, James Fields, rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one, Heather Heyer, and seriously injuring nineteen others.

President* Trump’s responses were deplorable (* = lost the popular vote). On Saturday, he condemned violence “on many sides” without a mention of racism. On Monday, he finally condemned the racist elements of the protest in a wooden, scripted performance that left many questioning its sincerity.

然后，周二在特朗普大厦(Trump Tower)举行的一场混乱的新闻发布会上，他为保存南方联盟领导人的雕像进行了辩护，比如李的雕像。

For present purposes, one moment in that Tuesday press conference deserves intellectual scrutiny. In defending the “very fine people” who were protesting the removal of the “very important statue,”Trump argued:

George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down — excuse me — are we going to take down — are we going to take down statues to George Washington? (CROSSTALK) How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? (CROSSTALK) OK. Good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

特朗普可能是在说这些问题，试图减少拆除李的雕像。His intended argument seems to go like this:Anyreason to remove the Lee statue would also be a reason to remove statues of Washington or Jefferson. After all, Lee’s moral turpitude had to do with slavery, and Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. But removing statues of Washington and Jefferson would be absurd. So the supposed reasons for removing Lee can’t be any good.(Or something like that.)

对这一观点的广泛反应是大声谴责杰弗逊和李之间存在“道德对等”的观点——然后继续前进。但我认为我们应该做得更好。If the morality of preserving a statue were simply a function of whether the person portrayed had ever done morally despicable things, then the Jefferson statues probablyshould(不管他的不道德行为是否与李的不道德行为“等同”)。Jeffersondidown slaves.

Furthermore, if we treat Trump’s question as genuine, as opposed rhetorical, it becomes a special case of the general question with which I started: which statues should be torn down? And how we answer this question has tremendous implications, since there are so many statues. Can we do better than just assigningdegreesof moral turpitude, with Jefferson the man falling above some arbitrary threshold and Lee falling below?

I think we can. Public monuments don’t just commemorate people; they also commemorateactions. In contexts such as public parks, they symbolize approval either (i) of the action depicted by the statue or (ii) of the action or deeds for which the person is or was famous.This statue, to take an arbitrary example, doesn’t just commemorate B. B. King; it celebrateshis guitar playing. Public monuments declare (albeit nebulously), “Yes, more stuff像这样!”—wherethat是一个动作类型。

Hence the difference between Lee and Jefferson statues is not merely a matter of moral degree but in moral kind. The action represented in the Lee statues, characteristically, is leading the Confederate Army,which existed to defend slavery. Jefferson statues commemorate the action of writing the Declaration of Independence, among other acts of statecraft. Only the Lee action in this case is morally base. Insofar as the statue commemorating that action declares更像!, the statue should be removed.

We can make this point even clearer with a pair of hypotheticals.

Suppose we found somewhere a statue of Jefferson chaining one of his slaves. Should we remove it? Absolutely. Why? Because it would commemorate the wrong action.

On the hand, suppose the Charlottesville City Council decided to replace Lee on a horse with a different Lee statue: a grandiose rendering of Robert E. Lee, Confederate General, as he signs the surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Whether or not Lee was overall a bad person, the action depicted in a Lee statue likethatwould be worth celebrating.

Under that circumstance, I would even support keeping his name on the park.