Frankenstein and Philosophy

by Michaud, Nicolas

  From that point onwards the daemon really becomes the killing monster that everyone has already seen in him, and Victor comes to realize what an awful mistake he has made by creating the daemon and handling him the way he did.

  I Had Turned Loose into the World a Depraved Wretch

  Now let us have a look at what constitutes Victor Frankenstein’s failure in more detail. Victor had always been a thoughtful young man with a strong interest in the natural sciences. So it’s difficult to understand how he could have failed to see in advance that first creating a being with enhanced human traits and then deserting him and denying his existence was a bad idea. If he had not run away in shock but taken his time to teach the daemon himself and accustom him step by step to humanity (and the other way around, of course), it is most likely that nothing bad would have happened. Victor refused to abide by standard scientific safety measures, which he ought to have known as a scientist, and therefore some of the blame is his. I say some of the blame, because, as we have seen, the daemon is an intelligent, self-aware being responsible for his own actions. Yet Victor has to account for the daemon’s environment, which makes the daemon resort to violence after every possible peaceful attempt to make his existence known to mankind himself had failed.

  Nevertheless, the daemon is everything Victor had hoped to create in his pursuit of enhancing and perfecting the human body. But the hideous features of the daemon—the only aspect that came out worse than the human standard—prevent everyone from getting to know him, and even Victor himself fails to give the daemon a chance because of his ugliness. The achievement of perfection in almost every aspect came thus at the cost of downgrading the superficial features: Many aspects of the daemon are indeed enhanced compared to our simple human traits, but the first impression rests nevertheless on the horrid outward appearance, denying the daemon access to human society.

  As a result, we have a scientist who wants to find new ways to abolish diseases, get rid of death itself, wants to understand the foundation principles of life, and on the other hand a being that is enhanced both physically and mentally, but unable to be accepted by society as the great scientific breakthrough that it is, let alone as an intelligent creature. Victor had wanted to achieve enhancement but had not foreseen the negative effect of the daemon’s existence on society or on himself. Paradoxically the daemon turned out to be both exactly what Victor had hoped for and what he had never wanted to create. Scientific results that end up like this are victims of something called the “Midas problem.” The legendary King Midas wanted everything he touched to turn to gold but realized too late that even his food and drink were transformed and he risked starvation. Similarly, scientific experiments can lead to results that do not meet the original goals. If you want something you have not experienced before, it might later turn out to be less desirable, or even not desirable at all, when you finally have it.

  Victor becomes a victim of the Midas problem because he has created the unwanted daemon, whom he is afraid of himself, although he succeeded in his initial goal. His desire to improve human beings was fulfilled, but the result turned out to be completely undesirable in retrospect. Victor’s failure, therefore, was that he did not understand that something that is desired is not necessarily desirable. Desirability is not like visibility or audibility: You can desire something that is not desirable, as Victor’s example teaches us, but you can’t see something that is not visible and you can’t hear something that is not audible. To compare these characteristics is to miss the point that desires come from the human mind and do not have their origins in nature.

  So we see that our desires are not reliable when we have to decide whether we should or should not take an action. We can have mistaken conceptions about the result of our actions if we do not know everything concerning the action, and that is always the case if we desire to achieve something we have no knowledge of. Victor did not know how his experiment would turn out, he just thought he did, and would, in his words, “pour a torrent of light into our dark world.” He was surely wiser after the daemon had killed some of his family members and friends, but when he had started his experiments he had sought something beneficial to the human race and pursued this goal simply because he thought it was good to do so.

  In accordance with the Midas problem, Victor made the mistake of enhancing the traits of a human being so that it became aggressive towards humanity and could even destroy our whole race if given time. What we can learn from Victor’s tale, therefore, is that enhancement, taken by itself, is not something good or desirable on its own account. In fact, something can be enhanced so that it is made worse than before. Enhancement cannot exist alone but needs to apply to something, and it is that something that defines whether the enhancement process turns out to be good or bad. So if something is enhanced, it is made better, but only regarding the attribute that the enhancement is meant for, and that does not mean the enhancement itself will be used for good.

  Enhancing the human ability to withstand disease is desirable because it is good for us not to fall ill. Enhancing the capability to easily kill and to subdue the human race is not desirable because we cannot morally justify the deliberate slaughtering of intelligent beings. To create a being that is so much more powerful than a human with no access to society and companionship combined with the ability to feel abused, neglected and shunned is to create a situation that must end poorly. The daemon is worse off for being unable to become a part of society, and humanity is worse off for having to deal with a human-hating threat that can neither be controlled nor destroyed.

  That is the reason why Victor’s creation of the daemon was an enormous failure in the history of enhancement. His example is especially memorable, and makes his tale a classic horror story even today, because not only did his enhancement result in gruesome consequences, but he did so with the best of intentions. Victor was not intending to enhance something in an immoral and terrible way. If he had wanted to build a dangerous daemon because he wanted to create a new weapon or because he generally hated humanity the daemon would have been a full success and his tale less tragic (though still horrible). But doing research in order to free humanity from illness and death sounds like a good thing to do, and we can understand his actions, or at least his intentions.

  So before we enhance something and interfere with our human nature we need to figure out whether it is a good idea to do so, and whether we are prepared to live with the consequences to the best of our ability.

  “Avoid Ambition, Even if It Be Only the Apparently Innocent One of Distinguishing Yourself in Science and Discoveries”

  The fact that enhancement is not desirable all by itself is a great challenge for modern scientific research. It seems simple enough to think about the consequences before starting an experiment in order to avoid the Midas problem, but the fact remains that there will always be uncertainties when desiring something that has never been experienced before. Victor did in fact think about the results of his work but did so in a purely positive way—he pondered the usefulness of his knowledge for the sake of humanity. He never asked the question whether it really makes sense for humans to never die or if we really need superhuman strength and speed. Instead he just thought about the possible benefits.

  So what could Victor have done to avoid his failure, and what could be done in the future to prevent science from unknowingly creating something equally harmful to mankind? There are a couple of things that need to be considered when doing scientific research, especially if it concerns any possible interference with human nature.

  Science should not be a process behind closed doors. Victor apparently thought it should be, since he never told anyone of his years of secret research in his own accommodation, where he studied alchemy and finally uncovered the secret behind the process of creating life. When the daemon escaped, however, the result of Victor’s research interacted with society. Victor’s research took place without anyone knowing, and while this may be fine with fundamenta
l research, as soon as any experiment reaches a stage where humans or nature could be affected, careful review and ethical supervision is necessary because once something exists there can be no guarantee that it will not find a way into the world outside the laboratory. Victor’s tale shows us what can happen if science is not monitored.

  This demonstrates vividly that science must not be pursued without any moral guidance, be it from professional ethicists or “just” from public opinion. Science cannot operate in an ethics-free zone, and if Victor had followed this simple rule, this whole catastrophe would most likely not have happened. Modern scientific research is too complicated and too delicate to be handled by one person alone. Both for the sake of the scientist and for the sake of society the responsibility concerning how much scientific and technological interference with our biology we can morally justify must be shared by everyone who could be affected. A scientific breakthrough of Frankensteinian dimensions comes with too much responsibility for a single scientist to bear. After all, Victor himself died when attempting to undo his experiment by killing the daemon.

  What is needed, and what could have saved Victor from the beginning, is a proper analysis of each scientific enterprise, especially when concerning the possible alteration of the human body. Humans are far from perfect, but precisely for that reason we need to look carefully at our desire to change our current biological equipment. Just because we want to become stronger or more intelligent does not mean that we should do everything in order to acquire an enhanced state. We need to learn from Victor’s failure and take a very close look at all the possibilities we will have in the future to change our bodies, so that we do not end up creating something we have never wanted and maybe cannot control once it has left the stage of research and entered our lives. It is so important that science is conducted in the open within full view of the world it can so drastically benefit . . . or destroy.

  Can We Believe Them?

  My account of the philosophical problems around the daemon’s creation process and Victor Frankenstein’s failure in pursuing his desire for perfection of the human body and mind are based on the assumption that both Victor and the daemon are entirely honest with their respective audiences. Whenever I referred to the Frankenstein narrative, I took the examples directly from the text.

  It might be that Victor was changing some parts of his story for Walton when he related his tale, either on purpose or unknowingly; and the daemon could have been deceiving or erring as well when he spoke with Victor and told him about the first two years of his life. What if Victor was more of a monster than the daemon, but he did not want Walton to know that? What if the daemon tricked Victor into believing he is kind, although he has murdered humans ever since he left the place of his creation? There are even more possibilities to interpret the connection between the scientist and his creature if we ask questions about their own plans and agendas apart from what they said.

  Erring and lying are simply human, after all.

  7

  Frankenstein and Zarathustra—Godless Men

  CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM

  There are eerie similarities in the original story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and the fictional but mysterious Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. Both Shelley’s monster and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra are rejected by humanity, their journeys are long and arduous, and both spend significant time in darkened seclusion. They even both seek respite from a cottage-dweller at the beginning of their journeys!

  Both stories herald new possibilities for humanity, the monster as the potential for technological power, and Zarathustra preaches about the “Übermensch,” who epitomizes the great realization of human power. And although these similarities are uncanny, their differences are profound, both reflecting on what belongs to God and what belongs to humanity.

  Dr. Frankenstein abhorred the monster, his gift to the world. But Nietzsche said Zarathustra was the greatest gift yet made to mankind! The monster is gargantuan in stature, strength, and stamina; Zarathustra is but a man who teaches about the idea of the overcoming of humanity through the “will to power.” Nietzsche’s quest was to cast the seed of Zarathustra’s will to power among humanity; Dr. Frankenstein refuses to provide a mate for his monster. The stories end with very different images of humanity’s future. . . . the monster leads Frankenstein to the land of darkness—the North Pole; Zarathustra seeks the great noontide for man.

  Differences aside, both creators, Frankenstein and Nietzsche, have an important similarity: Frankenstein and Nietzsche have become godless men and their creations are godless. Nietzsche and Zarathustra have rejected God and “good and evil,” while Shelley and Frankenstein are steeped in good and evil and the godlike revenge taken by the monster. Shelley subtitled Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus, after the Greek titan who for the crime of gifting fire to humanity is damned to an eternity of having his liver torn out by an eagle.

  The monster’s murdering of everyone Frankenstein loves is similar punishment for Frankenstein’s crime against God by gifting humanity with the ability to defy death. The monster becomes like the eagle that Zeus commands to feed on the bound Prometheus’s liver . . . know ye that such knowledge is reserved for the gods. But Zarathustra has the eagle as a companion, a creature of nature that honors the sun and by implication the great noontide of humanity. Nietzsche subtitled his book “for all and none,” suggesting the potential and mystery of a humanity free from a vengeful God. However, the subtitle also suggests that Nietzsche was uncertain humanity would understand the book.

  Both Nietzsche and Shelley were challenged by life: Nietzsche by disease, infirmity, and ultimately dementia at a young age; and Shelley, by the death of her daughter and early death of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Through their separate characters they reveal complex approaches to what it means to “be.” The changing event for both the monster and Zarathustra was not their births but their rebirths. The monster sees humanity as evil, and he uses his strength and will to power to destroy everything his creator loves and then eliminates the evils that are his creator and himself. Zarathustra looks into the future—not at the horrors of man, but at the hope for humanity in the love of life. The monster’s journey ends in self-immolation. Zarathustra’s journey is never concluded.

  Usurping God

  Shelley seems to ask us, “Behold the trinity of God, alchemy, and science—which will ultimately prevail in the hands of humanity?” Dr. Frankenstein describes the cause and generation of life in mystical and alchemical terms such as elixirs of life and even the philosopher’s stone. However, he outlines his anatomical activities in the creation of the monster as a scientist does, examining both life and decay.

  While Frankenstein molds his creation, he thinks little of the ethical implications of his activities. The alchemy of Shelley’s tale includes man as mother immaculately conceiving a human life from bits of dead flesh, bone, and sinew. Dr. Frankenstein himself explains that in his youth he preferred the work of the magician and occult writer Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus the alchemist to the dull tomes of science. More curiously, he coveted the works of Albertus Magnus, a saint and one of the first scientists to propose that there would be limits to science.

  At the moment of his final assembly of the monster, Frankenstein understands that he has changed from a good doctor to an evil creator and usurper of God. The pregnant question born of this book is, “What is the province of science; what is the province of God?” Science and technology in the early nineteenth century, when Shelley was writing, were advancing so fast that humanity couldn’t help but wonder if it too could create life.

  God Is Dead

  Sixty-four years after Frankenstein was published, Friedrich Nietzsche in The Gay Science proclaimed that the idea of God was dead. Yet he knew that the shadow of the dead god would exist in the mind of man for some time to come—even centuries. God’s death is meant to free humanity from the shackles of good and evil—the “thou shalt” of the di
vine, creating a freedom for the human will to succeed, to power, the “I Will.” Nietzsche’s avatar is Zarathustra who leaves his home by a lake at age thirty to climb into the mountains where he meditates in a cave for ten years. The biblical analogy to Christ’s leaving home at age thirty is quite intentional, not to promote Christianity but to propose an alternative view of the world where humans can be and become without interference from or owe obeisance to a deity, a world much like the one Dr. Frankenstein ushers in. After ten years, Zarathustra leaves his cave, returning to the world of people to teach them about the Übermensch: the successor to man.

  The Abyss

  Both Shelley’s Frankenstein and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra have created monsters. Frankenstein’s monster is a hulking eight-foot brute made from the dead, yet possesses the mind of a child. The monster is the spawn of evil but his childlike mind does not understand why his creator would abandon him and why the townspeople chase him out to wander in the wilderness. This shunning is his first encounter with humanity’s fear of difference, but not his last.

  Zarathustra’s Übermensch is not a being like Frankenstein’s monster, it is born in the analogy that “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch—a rope over an abyss.”1 The Übermensch is the idea that humanity can be succeeded by a being who is free from the teachings of the church, which make us docile and despisers of life in exchange for heaven. The Übermensch possesses and uses the will to power, which simply means the will to live life as if it could recur again and again exactly the same way. For some who read Nietzsche this eternal recurrence is literal—a repetition of the same life over and over again. That would be a stretch even for Nietzsche. Think of this as an analogy, that if we only have one life to live we should live it the best we possibly can and in such a manner that if we could live life over again we would do nothing different. . . . Nothing.