44 My discussion of plexonia and mortality has benefitted from Thomas W. Smith, Revaluing Ethics: Aristotle’s Dialectical Pedagogy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), pp. 136-140.
45 For helpful comments, I’d like to thank Marissa Walsh, Christian Bauman, and the editors of this volume. For a more in-depth (though somewhat technical!) discussion of Aristotle’s views about the value of “external” goods, see John M. Cooper, “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune,” in his Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). Translations in this chapter are my own.
46 “‘We Are All Migrants’: Immigration, Multiculturalism and Post-Politics after September 11” Third Text 57 (Winter 2001-02).
47 IV, P39 Schol. In The Collected Works of Spinoza Volume I, edited and translated by Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 408-617. When Spinoza refers to “the Body,” he does not mean only an assemblage of mechanical organs; he means the entire person whose physical and mental states taken together comprise the Body. For Spinoza there is no meaningful distinction between such states: he asserts that “the Mind and the Body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of Thought, now under the attribute of Extension . . .” (III, P2, Schol.).
48 For an entertaining virtual illustration of this process and its alarming rapidity, visit the Zombie Infection Simulation web-game at http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/.
49 Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco, City Lights, 1988), p. 22 and passim.
50 Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, p. 126.
51 David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 94.
52 See the Journal of Consciousness Studies, special issue on Zombies, Volume 2, No. 4, (1995), and for criticism, Edward Ingram, “The Mark of Zombie,” Philosophy Now (December 2000-January 2001), pp. 32-33.
53 Translated as Letters from a Stoic by Robin Campbell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), Letter VII, pp. 41-42.
54 The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), p. 54.
55 New York: Scribner’s, 1932, p. 16.
56 A similar argument can be made about the questionable morality of “bum fights,” in which homeless people are paid to fight one another in gladiator-like street combat. Bum fights have been denied broadcast time on television, but videotapes are available for sale on the Internet. (Thanks to Bill Irwin for this information.) The subcultural interest in bum-fights could transfer directly to zombie gladiatorial competitions without the moral stigma of inducing down-and-out conscious persons to attack one another for money.
57 Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), p. 13.
58 My fellow zombies, let us hope the conscios fall for this. By keeping up the propaganda machine we may at last avert their dastardly plans to organize the first zombie gladiatorial combats at Lincoln Mall later this year. We rally after this week’s release of the new StarBright Pictures premiere of Night of the Living Emeritus Professors. We shall mix with conscios sympathetic to our cause and strengthen their numbers, while trying to get some international press coverage to call attention to our plight. We must appeal to their better moral judgments if we are to avoid the impending catastrophe by the Sports Planning Commission. Unite! What’s so great about awareness? Cover up your birthmarks! Blend in with the crowd! Let the conscios watch themselves hacking each other to pieces if they like the idea so much! All power to the brain stem! No idea what I just said!
59 Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity (St. Louis: Mosby, 1964).
60 Antonio Damasio’s patient “Elliot” demonstrated similar behavior after a tumor damaged his frontal lobes. See Damasio’s Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Avon, 1994), especially Chapter 3.
61 For further discussion, see Jeffrie Murphy, “Moral Death: A Kantian Essay on Psychopathy,” in Ethics 82 (1972), pp. 284-298; Antony Duff, “Psychopathy and Moral Understanding,” in American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977), pp. 189-200; and Lloyd Fields, “Psychopathy, Other-regarding Moral Beliefs, and Responsibility,” in Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 3 (1996), pp. 261-277.
62 Bram Stoker, Dracula (New York: Bantam, 1981), pp. 303-04.
63 For a more detailed argument for the moral capacity of artificially created humanoids, see William Lycan’s Consciousness (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1987), especially pp. 123-130
64 An excellent treatment of free will can be found in Timothy O’Connor’s Persons and Causes: the Metaphysics of Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
65 This model is seen in Joss Whedon’s vampire series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
66 Koko, the gorilla who uses sign language, has an IQ between 70 and 95. Twenty-five percent of children have an IQ within the same range.
67 Perhaps the only exception to this was when Angel was infected with a mystical disease by Faith. The only cure was to drink the blood of a Slayer.
68 Even under extreme conditions killing another person to eat them seems to be wrong. It may be justified to eat people who have died from other causes like dehydration or exposure given extreme circumstances.
69 There is some concern that vegans (people who do not eat dairy and egg products as well as meat) may become deficient in vitamin B-12 which could lead to anemia, but because the body can reabsorb utilized B-12, even amongst vegans this deficiency is very rare.
70 For more information on this read Joby Warrick’s Article “They Die Piece by Piece,” Washington Post (10th April, 2001). Online try www.meetyourmeat.com and www.themeatrix.com
71 See John Robbins, The Food Revolution (Berkeley: Conari Press, 2001) for a very impressive list of vegetarian athletes.
72 Directed by Len Wiseman, 2003.
73 See Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Bob Madison, ed., Dracula: The First Hundred Years (Baltimore: Midnight Marquee, 1997); and Andrew MacKenzie, Dracula Country: Travels and Folk Beliefs in Romania (London: Arthur Baker, 1977).
74 See J. Gordon Melton, The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead (Farmington Hills: Visible Ink Press, 1999).
75 See the sections on substance dualism and property dualism in K.T. Maslin, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Polity Press, 2000).
76 London: Popular Press.
77 New York: Pocket Books, 1974.
78 Cambridge: Dedalus Press, 1991.
79 New York: Ballantine, 1958.
80 By P.N. Elrod (Geneva: TSR, 1993).
81 Directed by Stephen Sommers, 2004.
82 Directed by Stan Dragoti, 1979.
83 The term first was introduced by Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1874); see also Fred Feldman, “Hedonism,” in Lawrence Becker and Charlotte Becker, eds., Encyclopedia of Ethics (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 100-113.
84 Directed by Stephen Norrington, 1998.
85 New York: Harper Collins, 1999, p. 501.
86 Directed by Kevin J. Lindemuth, 1995.
87 New York: Del Rey, 1990, p. 123.
88 See Elizabeth Miller and Margaret Carter, “Has Dracula Lost His Fangs?” in Elizabeth Miller, ed., Reflections on Dracula: Ten Essays (White Rock: Transylvania Press, 1997), pp. 25-46.
89 Autobiography, in Charles Eliot Norton’s Hardvard Classics edition (New York): P.F. Collier and Son, 1909), Volume 25, p. 94.
90 See Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapter 5, lines 1114a5-13.
91 “Letter to Menoeceus,” in The Extant Remains, translated by Cyril Bailey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1926), Sections 124-25.
92 All my references to Interview With the Vampire are to the film version.
93 “Nothing to Us?” in Schofield and Striker, eds., The Norms of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198
6), pp. 75-91.
94 Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 208-09.
95 Therapy of Desire, p. 210.
96 Those interested in this argument should consult Bernard Williams, “The Makropulos Case,” in Williams, Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956-1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 82-100.
97 John Martin Fischer, “Why Immortality Is Not So Bad,” in David Denatar, ed., Life, Death, and Meaning (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), p. 355.
98 Therapy of Desire, p. 229.
99 Marti Noxon, “Into the Woods” (2000). The script refers to the vampires’ nest as a “drug den,” not a brothel.
100 Blade, directed by Stephen Norrington, 1998.
101 This is only my interpretation of the situation in Blade, as the script only hints at the nature of the arrangement. Another possibility is that humans are duped into contributing blood, believing it will be given to other humans. Even if my interpretation is off, the hypothetical case of mandatory blood contributions is a useful one.
102 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
103 Loren Lomasky, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
104 David Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin, Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). In this book, Schmidtz and Goodin take opposite sides of a debate; Goodin is another good representative of the welfarist point of view.
105 Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
106 Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
107 G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
108 Bram Stoker, Dracula (New York: Signet, 1997), p. 186.
109 Henry Hazlitt, The Foundations of Morality (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1964).
110 See, for example, Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
111 Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature (Chicago: Open Court, 1991).
112 The term welfarism has been used for other purposes. It sometimes refers to a specific brand of philosophical consequentialism, without specifying political conclusions. But that is not how I use the term here.
113 The reference to recipients’ needs is crucial. Many non-welfarists, including some libertarians, accept a distinct justification for taxation (or other forms of compulsion) as necessary to provide certain public goods that will benefit most or all members of society, including those who are made to contribute.
114 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap, 1971).
115 Michael Romkey, I, Vampire (Greenwich: Fawcett, 1990), p. 5.
116 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 48.
117 Singer, 1979, p. 50. Jeremy Bentham, one of the earliest utilitarian philosophers, reached the same conclusion. “The question is not, Can they reason,” Bentham wrote, “but, Can they suffer?” Cited in Singer 1979, p. 50.
118 The capacity for planning indicates vampires would also satisfy Loren Lomasky’s suggested criterion of “project pursuit” (Persons, p. 26).
119 The vampires of Buffy and Blade might seem especially human in this regard, but other accounts still show vampires endowed with patience and foresight—Dracula being the most obvious example.
120 Also, note that humans with limited rationality, such as children, may not be granted the full complement of rights possessed by others, but their interests are still given moral consideration and legal protection.
121 Rawls, 1971, p. 12. Rawls defines moral persons as “rational beings with their own ends and capable, I shall assume, of a sense of justice” (1979, p. 12). He defines a sense of justice as “a normally effective desire to apply and to act upon the principles of justice, at least to a certain minimum degree” (p. 505).
122 “Some people are highly sensitive to issues of justice and ethics generally; others, for a variety of reasons, have only a very limited awareness of such principles” (Singer, 1979, p. 16).
123 The Buffy universe provides an even more telling example: Spike, a soulless vampire who nonetheless fights for good because of his love for Buffy.
124 Marti Noxon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “New Moon Rising,” (2000).
125 I assume, for the sake of the argument, that vampires need human blood for some reason—either for health or for survival itself. The vampire literature differs on this matter, with some accounts allowing vampires to live on animal blood, other accounts positing the importance of human blood.
126 See, for instance, Schmidtz and Goodin 1998, pp. 14-16.
127 The Addams Family, directed by Caroline Thompson, 1991.
128 The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776, Book I, Chapter X, paragraphs 101-118).
129 FAIR website, http://www.fairus.org/news/NewsPrint.cfm?ID=1221&c=15, accessed March 5, 2004.
130 Blade.
131 Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, third edition (New York: Regnery, 1966), p. 144.
132 Christopher Frayling, Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (London: Faber and Faber, 1991), pp. 20-22.
133 The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978).
134 The Uncanny, translation by David McLintock (London: Penguin Books, 2003).
135 “A Trail of Disorientation: Blurred Boundaries in Der Sandmann,” in Image and Narrative: Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative, Issue 5. The Uncanny, guest editor: Anneleen Masschelein (January 2003), at www.imageandnarrative.be/.
136 Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
137 Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1993).
138 Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1962.
139 Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 14.
140 Bram Stoker, Dracula, edited by Maurice Hindle (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), p. 448.
141 Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (New York: Penguin, 2003).
142 Sigmund Freud, The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex (The Penguin Freud Library, Volume 7, On Sexuality, London: Penguin, 1991).
143 There is a subtext of racial identity and conflict being played out in this scene too. Romero’s casting throughout the four films touches on significant race issues and warrants more investigation.
144 Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1993).
145 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilisation: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (London: Routledge, 1956).
146 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Liveright, 1950) p. 57.
147 Eros and Civilisation, p. 237.
148 Many thanks to Kasey Mohammad, Richard Greene, and William Irwin for their helpful feedback and assistance.
149 Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare (New York: Liveright, 1951).
150 For an account of horror that relates it to the arousal of the emotion of fear and disgust, see Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (New York: Routledge, 1990).
151 The idea that many entertainments are a means of enabling emotional management, especially for children, is explored at length by Gerard Jones in his Killing Monsters (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
152 On the connection between laughing and screaming, see my “Horror and Humor” in my book Beyond Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
153 This chapter’s background information on Halloween comes from Jack Santino, ed., Halloween (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994); Jack Santino, “Halloween in America: Contemporary Customs and Performances,” Western Folklore 42 (1983), pp. 1-20; Jack Santino, “The Folk Assemblage of Autumn: Tradition and Creativity in
Halloween Folk Art,” in John Michael Vlach and Simon Bronner, eds., Folk Art and Art Worlds (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986), pp. 151-169.
154 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979) p. 135.
155 “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” in Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 1990) p. 65.
156 “Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body,” in Peg Zeglin Brand, ed., Beauty Matters (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) pp. 112-154.
157 Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002) p. 5.
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