The local butcher—Paul Momund—crudely insults Lecter’s aunt. Now, it’s generally a bad idea to insult the love interest of a serial-killing-cannibal-in-training, and Lecter doesn’t respond with a socially and morally acceptable asskicking. Instead, he decapitates Momund for his insult and prepares his cheeks in a way indicative of high culinary skill, refinement, and appreciation. Lecter’s treatment of Momund would be overkill (pun definitely intended) for pretty much any non-Lecter person but it fits the sort of actions we’d expect of him later on. This action foreshadows the “ruthlessness plus culinary sophistication” that makes Lecter so intriguing.
Lecter’s second act of cannibalism occurs after he’s left France and his aunt behind. After learning that the troops responsible for the death of Mischa are alive, he travels home to Lithuania to track them down. At the scene of her murder and his torture, one of the soldiers finds him with an eye towards killing Lecter before he can exact his revenge on the group. But, as many come to find out, it’s far easier to think you’ll kill Lecter than to succeed. The soldier out to kill Lecter—Enrikas Dortlich—ends up like Momund. Lecter kills him and eats his cheeks.
So, we’ve got the first two cases of Lecter’s murder and cannibalism. How could one possibly think about these actions as morally justified? Well, the details of their deaths and actions in Lecter’s story suggest a defense that such an intellectually capable person might give. “Consider,” we can imagine Lecter saying, “the ancient tradition of the lex talionis—the law of the talon.” (Whether you choose to hear this via Brian Cox’s, Anthony Hopkins’s, or Mads Mikkelsen’s distinctive voice is up to you.) “Indeed, Nature sets down her own laws and we, as part of Nature itself, must obey her. Even the word of God recognizes the balancing Nature exacts from us: ‘life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot’. My treatment of Momund and Dortlich simply recognizes these laws and respects them.” Lecter’s hypothetical defense blends what philosophers call Natural Law Theory with a lex talionis perspective on punishment.
According to Natural Law Theory, there is a set of moral laws or codes that derive from nature (generally speaking). There are certain natural goods or rules that determine morality. For instance, life is a crucial part of nature and, thus, we should expect to find moral codes making certain kinds of killing—like murder most obviously—wrong, and certain kinds of aiding life—like protecting the innocent or self-defense—morally correct. Depending on the particular version of the theory, we might find a fairly extensive list of the goods and actions promoted by nature: procreation, community, and so on. Lecter’s imagined defense above appeals to “Nature” as the source of morality for the actions in question. The actions he has done ultimately are right because they are sanctioned by Nature. How exactly? That’s where the law of the talon comes in.
The lex talionis is an influential approach to the justification of punishment or, in fancy philosophical lingo, retributive justice. Lecter appeals to this law as a law of Nature: it’s part of the “natural order of things” that we should meet actions in kind. Someone assaults you, then you are either obligated or permitted (depending on the strength of the theory in question) to assault them back. Someone steals your property: you may take from them in equal proportion. The law of satisfaction reigns here: do that which makes the crime against you satisfied. Now, the lex talionis isn’t necessarily connected to the Natural Law Theory, but Lecter can use it to rationalize his deeds.
What does this tell us about the death and cannibalization of Momund and Dortlich? Lecter views his actions simply as satisfaction or returning like for like. Dortlich is obvious: he murdered and ate Mischa. The law of retribution cries out that Dortlich should be killed and eaten himself. Lecter simply obliges the natural law demanding that Dortlich pays back what he’s done. What of Momund? He’s no killer and he’s no cannibal. But use a bit of Lecter’s own intellectual creativity. Momund treats Lecter’s aunt simply as the meat he sells by treating her so crudely. She’s not really some person to be respected but a mere thing to be used and insulted. Lecter, in turn, views Momund as he views her: as a piece of meat. His viewing is just more literal than Momund’s, but the attitudes seem to match. Lecter simply treats Momund as he treats people (especially Lecter’s aunt). The lex talionis is in effect here: Momund’s dehumanizing attitude towards others results in his (literal) dehumanization into dinner.
It’s important here to realize that the lex talionis doesn’t merely work to justify his killing but his eating as well. Even if someone else had murdered Momund and Dortlich, Lecter could use the lex talionis to defend eating them: he treats Momund as Momund treats others and returns Dortlich’s treatment of Mischa back to him even if we separate out the fact that Lecter killed them. So, the lex talionis in Lecter’s hands can justify the cannibalism itself; even if separated from the act of murder providing him with the corpses to eat.
The Lecter of Hannibal Rising shows the vengeance exacted against those who do him wrong and the ways he treats those victims reinforce a kind of “eye for an eye” attitude in returning to those exactly what they’ve done to you. When someone eats you (or your sister), you eat them back. When someone treats you like meat, you owe it to them to treat them the same—as meat—and eat them.
The Ickiest Dinner Party EVER
Another way to categorize Lecter’s post-vengeance victims would be by their overall role in his story. Lecter selects both minor and major characters to serve and the reasoning behind each category can be different. How might Lecter consider the minor characters killed and eaten? First off, we can think about the famous, unnamed Census Taker that Lecter eats with a nice Chianti and fava beans. The TV series features a dinner party Lecter throws composed of various characters from the show: Andrew Caldwell, Michelle Vocalson, Darrell Ledgerwood, Christopher Ward, and probably unnamed others. Andrew Caldwell is a doctor killed in the “Sorbet” episode. While drawing blood from Lecter, he suggests that Lecter would probably lie about his health, but that such lies would be useless given that the blood will speak to Lecter’s true conditions. Later on, Lecter comes upon Caldwell on the road as a result of a broken down car—a coincidence, I’m sure. The police later find Caldwell’s corpse as we see Lecter packing his fridge with organ meat.
Lecter finds Caldwell’s name via his business card in a Rolodex. In the same episode, we see the same Rolodex Lecter uses to select other characters he kills and cooks for his party. He finds Vocalson, a customer service representative; Ledgerwood, general manager of a book store; and Ward, an IT consultant, in the list of cards. After selecting each person’s card, we see Lecter preparing meat in the artful ways we come to expect from him: implying the specific end of each person. Throughout the show, we can suspect many of the fine culinary triumphs Lecter eats and feeds to his guests contain the remains of some unnamed victims that serve only to be served.
What does Lecter think of these minor characters and the ethics of his actions towards them? The kill/dinner list from “Sorbet” is important and crucial to understanding how Lecter sees his actions. In the same episode he speaks of his own eating. “The feast is life. You put the life in your belly and you live.” I seriously doubt Lecter’s giving us a grand metaphysical theory that “you must consume life to live.” If that were true, Lecter wouldn’t have to take so much joy in the presentation, eating, and appreciation in consuming. No—the point is how Lecter thinks of the parts of the feast: simply as lives to be consumed. The show’s hero, Will Graham, comes up with the same view of Lecter’s attitude towards the people he kills and eats. In speaking of the Chesapeake Ripper (Lecter), Graham claims “that’s how he sees his victims. Not as people, not as prey. Pigs” (Hannibal, Season 1, “Sorbet”).
This seems to be how Lecter views the minor characters; simply as food to be consumed. How can this be? Well, Lecter might offer the following: “Philosophers have engaged for millennia in the debate about human nature and, more importantly, its role in
morality,” Lecter begins, “but consider the moral role of the community in living a human life. Humans are social animals. But what of those animals among us who aren’t social? The ones that either can’t or won’t abide the merest of social rules? Well, they just can’t be all that human now, can they? The obstinately rude animals around us lack the social community needed to distinguish man from beast. By rejecting communal or social rules in their rudeness, they are rejecting us and rejecting the part of them that makes them like us. In the end, they just aren’t human in any meaningful sense.”
Lecter invokes humanity as the standard for morality here: those that are human are moral beings worthy of treatment as such but non-human beings just aren’t moral beings at all. In this, Lecter offers a variant of a theory given by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. For him, humans are defined by their rationality and our reason is what determines morality. The moral law is nothing more nor less than the fully rational law. Since laws are universal in scope, the moral law simply becomes the obligation to act in ways that are universally applicable without exception. Only beings capable of conceiving and acting in accordance with laws, then, are moral. Lecter adopts the same attitude substituting social politeness for rationality and rudeness for irrationality.
And, as with the lex talionis above, Lecter’s hypothetical rationalization can work on his cannibalism even if we leave his murdering aside. If morality comes down to respecting humanity as Kant famously claims, then corpses have no moral standing. They aren’t human and, thus, eating them isn’t disrespecting anyone. Lecter can morally justify his cannibalism, therefore, just as easily as his murder of these minor characters with no change in the Kantian reasoning provided.
Lecter’s Rolodex of names supports the hypothetical, tweaked Kantianism here. The Rolodex isn’t a hit list. If so, then he would just kill them straightaway. They aren’t a list of grudges. He doesn’t seem to view the people named in it with malice or take a sadistic pleasure in killing them. In reality, they are simply a grocery list. Lecter lists those who, by being rude, fail to meet his standards for humanity. They are simply non-human animals fit to be slaughtered, cooked, and eaten. They are simply pigs to Lecter, as Graham notes. And there’s nothing immoral, on Lecter’s view (or Kant’s for that matter), about killing and eating a pig.
Some People Just Need Some Killing?
We’ve looked at the early vengeance-based kills in Hannibal Rising and the less-than-famous kills for a dinner party in the series Hannibal. Other movies have more memorable victims/dinners than these two. Paul Krendler from Hannibal, and Benjamin Raspail and Frederick Chilton from Silence of the Lambs, are well-known characters Lecter kills and eats. Or, at least in the case of Chilton, he very heavily hints at Chilton’s imminent demise.
Having kidnapped Clarice Starling, Lecter holds her at Krendler’s house until it’s time to kill and serve the owner. Probably Krendler’s death is the most interesting we see in the films: Lecter opens his skull, fries a bit of his brains, and eats that part while Krendler is alive and conscious. That scene sticks with you. Raspail’s death, however, is unseen but something to which Lecter confesses: the police find his corpse in a church missing a few organs. And, finally, Chilton’s end is not seen and not even accomplished in the films. Instead, we are led to believe he’s dead (he’s missing in Hannibal) but the end of Silence of the Lambs assures us: Lecter has tracked him down and tells Clarice that he’s “having an old friend for dinner.” It’s the film’s version of To Serve Chilton. What drives Lecter to kill and eat these characters?
Krendler taunts and plagues Clarice throughout the film. He’s lewd, abuses his authority, and accepts a bribe to harm Clarice, providing a character that the audience actual wants to be killed. So, we have several items that make him an excellent candidate for Lecter’s expertise: he’s tremendously rude (and we know what Lecter thinks should befall the rude), he antagonizes Lecter’s friend in Clarice, and he’s generally incompetent as a law enforcement official. Any one of these makes him suitable for being on Lecter’s kill list but the trio makes him suitable for Lecter’s grocery list. Killing Krendler makes Clarice’s life better and probably improves the lives of anyone who knows him.
Lecter kills Raspail for incompetence. When Raspail, a musician, performs with the Baltimore symphony, Lecter hears his playing as a serious detriment to the overall quality of the music. In fact, Raspail is so bad that Lecter thinks he’s even ruined an entire work just by his poor playing on its own. Lecter feels no ill will towards Raspail but his death serves to enhance the aesthetic quality of the symphony. In killing Raspail, Lecter has improved the lives of anyone listening.
Finally, it seems very plausible that Lecter kills Chilton out of equal parts revenge and, again, incompetence. Lecter disapproves of Chilton the person as well as Chilton the psychologist. By killing Chilton, Lecter can satisfy his own desires for vengeance as well as remove a therapist he considers woefully inadequate in one fell swoop. Ultimately, in each person’s death, Lecter thinks he’s improving some segment of the world. Killing Krendler improves the life of Clarice, offing Raspail helps the listening experience of anyone attending the Baltimore Symphony, and dispatching Chilton improves his life as well as psychotherapy in general.
This suggests a response from Lecter justifying his actions by the benefits they have. We can imagine Lecter: “every rudimentary chef knows that you must break some eggs to make an omelet. Just consider these people some bad eggs that must be broken to make a fabulous frittata out of life. No one could miss Krendler: his rude and atrocious character worsens everyone around him. And I should receive an ovation for Raspail’s fate. I saved the symphony from something worse than death: his playing. Frederick’s death is no loss to anyone except the patients he tortures and the discipline of psychology he has trampled. Indeed, each of these actions was a great boon to humanity: morally, musically, and psychologically. By killing these men, I’ve made the world better than I found it.”
In these words, Lecter justifies his actions with an appeal to consequentialism. A consequentialist views the morality of any action as dependent on its consequences. If an action has good consequences, then the action is good; if it has bad effects, then the action is bad. Of course, killing someone is generally bad. It leads to pain for the victim’s family and friends, and it removes a person and their life from the value of the world. But, Lecter asks us to reconsider killing Krendler, Raspail, and Chilton with the specific consequences or effects those actions have. Slaying Krendler removes a significant problem for Clarice in both her personal and professional lives. He’s dirty: Mason Verger is able to buy him off and bribery makes for a seriously flawed law enforcement official. His incompetence and his awfulness to Clarice mean that Lecter thinks of the world without Krendler as better than the world with him in it. Killing may be bad in general but not this killing. The same sort of defense could apply to Raspail. Lecter lives life in search of beauty: in food, music, art, and so forth. Raspail’s awful playing in the symphony makes the world less beautiful. In his death, Lecter promotes the music the symphony should have been playing all along and, in eating him, Lecter transforms Raspail’s ugly music into beautiful food. Lecter moves from the unattractive experience of hearing him play to the beautiful experience of him on the plate. Chilton’s death, in the same way, removes a hack from the lives of potential patients as well as a thorn in Lecter’s own side. The death of each leaves no black mark on the world, but in their dying they contribute to the improvement and beauty of the world. Though killing is bad in most cases, each death turns out for the good. Cracking these eggs makes for a tasty omelet.
But it’s not just their deaths that fit his hypothetical consequentialism. He isn’t just removing something bad but also creating something good—the high culinary dinner made from each victim. Here is where the cannibalism and his particular height of gustatory accomplishment become important. By killing, Lecter has made the world less bad but, by making them into aes
thetically and culinary pleasing dinners, he’s added goodness to it through the happiness of his dinner guests. So, as with the other moral theories used, we can separate Lecter’s murder of his victims from his eating them and find consequentialism here justifying his high-end cannibalism separately from murder. At the end of the day, we have a double whammy: Lecter’s murders remove badness from the world and Lecter’s dinner parties contribute goodness to it.
What Is So Bad about Eating People?
So far, Lecter can muster some justification from ethics for killing and eating his victims. Different sorts of victims require different sorts of moral defenses: his early victims fit an “eye for an eye” sort of theory, his dinner party ingredients fit a tweaked Kantianism denying their humanity, and his more infamous victims have a consequentialist justification. Does this mean that it’s actually okay for Lecter to have murdered and cannibalized these people? Unsurprisingly, the answer is “um . . . no.”
There’s one significant moral theory he hasn’t used, and the neglect is telling. Historically, virtue ethics occupies a significant role in philosophical thinking about morality. On this kind of theory, we should focus on a person’s virtues or character. If a person acts out of good character traits—AKA virtues—then that person’s actions are good. Likewise, if a person acts out of bad character traits—AKA vices—then that person’s actions are bad. Often, virtue ethicists associate virtues with living a flourishing human life. We should be kind, courageous, honest, self-controlled, and so forth because these sorts of traits lead to living a good human life; that is, living well. Meanwhile, liars, cowards, and mean-spirited folks tend to lead less-than-pleasant lives on the whole by actually being unpleasant themselves.
In justifying his actions above, Lecter focuses on what he’s done; thinking of their consequences or how they relate to moral rules. But a virtue ethicist would focus on the character Lecter displays in killing and eating his victims as well as the kind of life his character leads him to live. So far, we’ve seen that it’s fairly easy to distort these other theories into forms that seem to make cannibalism okay. Can we use virtue ethics—even a perversion of it—to justify Lecter’s actions? That seems impossible. What sort of person is Lecter: does he display positive character traits? Does he live well? I think the clear answer is “no.” What sort of person does Lecter’s killing and cannibalism uncover? Not a very good one: he’s cold, callous, manipulative, disrespectful, (excessively) proud, and so on. His personality doesn’t contain the sorts of traits that we associate with decent human beings—just the opposite, these are the traits we think of when we consider morally heinous people.
Hannibal Lecter and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy) Page 6