Frankenstein and Philosophy

by Michaud, Nicolas

  Do we have any right to change the natural order of things and bring the dead back to life? Or is it simply human vanity that allows us to play at being gods? This question was important to the Victorian romantics, and it remains one for environmentalists today. Is Frankenstein a modern Prometheus, bringing us instead of the great gift of fire, the even greater gift of life? Or is he an arrogant fool, who cannot foresee the unintended consequences of his meddling in the natural order of things?

  Production and Change

  Frankenstein shows us a changing world. There is a tendency for societies to evolve according to their own internal forces. Acorns grow into oak trees, and tadpoles metamorphosize into frogs. Similarly, feudal societies with the right technologies advance into capitalist societies.

  Societies evolve because new technologies and means of production allow certain processes to operate more efficiently. But as these new efficiencies allow important improvements in some areas, they create problems in other areas. Because of this, a new resolution must be found that incorporates a solution to these difficulties. But the new resolution causes its own difficulties and the process goes on.

  Watching a society evolve over time is to watch this process play out over and over. For example, male median wages stagnated in the 1970s at a time of increasing consumer demand. This was resolved by women entering the workforce in large numbers to raise household incomes. But then because there were more workers median wages fell, and workers had to work more hours. Meanwhile, who looks out for the children (or creations)?

  We find a similar story playing out in Frankenstein when it is clear that the creature cannot live among humans, so it has to go. The creature agrees to go to the North Pole. But there is a problem. . . . The creature is a social creature, and demands a companion. Victor agrees to create one. However, after creating a companion for the creature, Victor realizes they are not just things, but a “he” and a “she!” In the facing of creating a potential race of monstrous creatures, things quickly spire out of control for Victor.

  History and Moral Progress

  Capitalism is a creation, and like Victor’s creature has a good side and a bad side. Often Marx is presented as being against capitalism, but this is only half true. Capitalism is a necessary stage in the developmental process that can lead to communism. And this is an important point for Marx. Much of human history involves improvements in the technologies and means of production of societies. But we have the Dark Ages to prove the process can go the wrong way. Europe spent centuries with technologies and means of production inferior to those that had existed earlier in the Roman Empire.

  Hunting and gathering societies have the important feature of social equality. They are in effect primitive forms of communism. But life is so precarious in those societies that agricultural societies are an improvement; an advanced agricultural society will under normal conditions be able to offer all its members enough food to eat. Similarly, a functioning capitalist society is an improvement over a feudal one in that it offers its members a higher standard of living. But this comes at a price. Does this higher standard of living comes at too high a moral cost?

  In the film version of Frankenstein, we witness the frightful breakout of cholera at Ingolstadt, and the frantic rush of people trying to escape the city to avoid the quarantine. In other words, we see a large number of selfish individuals willing to put others at risk for their own safety. Cholera is a city disease often caused by water supplies contaminated with the fecal matter of those infected with cholera. We also witness the hostility of the mob to the creature who is falsely accused of being the agent of contamination. There are many known cholera riots during the Victorian era where the inhumanity of humans towards each other is on display. City life, the life that helps breed capitalism, is often brutal by hunting and gathering standards.

  Alienation

  Life for the working class during the Victorian era was quite harsh. Marx was clearly aware of how precarious the working class individuals and families found their financial situation. Where we often suggest that many middle class families in our era are but one paycheck away from ruin, this situation was literally true for working class individuals in the times when Marx and Shelley were writing.

  Both Shelley and Marx were concerned about spiritual as well as physical wellbeing. Spiritual, in this sense, does not mean anything religious. Marx famously referred to religion as the opium of the people, and considered it a diversion that distracted the working class from organizing for better conditions. But Marx also thought that humans could reach a kind of spiritual self-actualization, but were hindered by capitalism.

  Humans are capable of great productivity, creativity, and social awareness. Marx thought that in the communist society we could reach our highest potential as full human beings. Under capitalism with its rigid division of labor, workers are forced to use their talents in boring and repetitive tasks that maximize efficiency—they don’t get to self-actualize. Instead, Marx suggested in The German Ideology that under communism we could choose to develop our talents in any areas we want. I could choose to do one thing today and another thing tomorrow. If I wanted to I could “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner” if I choose to do so, and I am not committed to becoming a “hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

  We can see in Victor Frankenstein the opposite of a self-actualized individual. He dies without friends and family, disgusted by the utter perversity of the consequences of his labor. Victor is the truly self-loathing and alienated individual. He is in this regard surpassed only by his creature—who seeks not self-actualization, but self-annihilation.

  Estranged Labor

  When we look at Marx we can see how capitalism causes alienation in four ways. Marx believes that capitalist political economy begins with “the fact of private property,” but he finds the idea of “private property” poorly defined. How do I know I own a thing? It seems obvious, but when we think about it we realize that, I can only say “I know I own it because I own it.” Maybe someone else (like the government) can back me up and say, “Yup, he owns it!” But what does that really mean? Classical political economy assumes but does not show how private property causes “the division between labor and capital, and between capital and land.” How this translates into the ability to own, transfer, and possess objects, rivers, mountains, animals, slaves, and our creations, remains painfully unclear.

  Private property is the source of greed and envy and ultimately competition. In the 1980s there was a popular expression “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Thus, the assertion is that winning is the point of life and one wins by accumulating the most luxurious commodities. We value ourselves by the commodities we own, and the worker for the commodities he or she creates. The more we value the commodities the worker creates, the less we value the worker (because what really matters is the thing, not the person who makes it).

  As Marx suggests, this “devaluation of the world of men” is directly proportional to the “increasing value of the world of things.” The worker finds that while labor produces commodities it also turns labor and the worker into commodities—humans become resources rather than people.

  We experience the product of our labor as an object as “something alien” as a “power independent” of ourselves. When we objectify the product of our labor as something alien to us we become estranged from it. Ultimately, as the objects of our labor become estranged to us, we become estranged to our labor itself. Marx finds a similar phenomenon goes on with religion. The more we find our value depends on God, the less value we can find in ourselves. The more we value what we are paid for our labor the less we value the products of our labor and the less we value ourselves as productive individuals. In other words we no longer make what we create out of pride or love, as Dr. Frankenstein did when he began his process; we make it only because we are paid to do it.

  In a capitalist economy the focus becom
es, inevitably, the money. But, like Dr. Frankenstein, who came to loathe his creation, when our production lacks emotional investment it can because very dangerous indeed. The alienation of workers from their product of their labor makes the product of labor an object, what Marx calls an “external existence,” something we experience as being outside ourselves, something alien to us. And ultimately the life which we have conferred on this object “confronts [us as] something hostile and alien.”

  The Creature as Commodity

  Quickly, Victor became so estranged from his labor that he couldn’t even give his creature a name. Victor’s creation is, if nothing else, a stunning scientific achievement, but is always discussed in the most denigrating terms. The creature is an “it” and never a “he” even though he might well be fertile. The terms Victor uses in describing his creation include “wretch,” “deformity,” “monster,” and “filthy demon.” Instead of taking any pride at all in his scientific achievement, Victor is disgusted by his own efforts and by what he has produced.

  Victor has clearly become alienated from his labor and the object of his labor. He finds, as Marx suggests, that his relationship to his creation as one where the creature “is an alien object exercising power over him.” And as the story unfolds this self-fulfilling prophecy becomes true; the creature enacts his revenge for Victor’s rejection by killing his brother and wife. The creation is also alienated from the act of production. Victor abandons the role of a working scientist since he finds his labor “an alien activity not belonging to him” but as an “activity which is turned against him.”

  He is told by his creation that it is now his turn to “obey” and I cannot help but think of how we are often slaves to our work, and slaves to the objects we produce. This is exemplified when the creature coerces Victor into making him a mate, and the scenario plays out with great irony as Victor has become so alienated at his labor that he destroys the second product of his labor and seeks to destroy his first creation. Even in the reinterpretation of the movie Victor’s second creature is not the reincarnation of his loving wife, but something alien and foreign to him.

  Marx believes that estranged labor leads to two more forms of alienation. First he suggests that under capitalism we become alienated from our “species being.” It is natural for us to want to be productive and self-actualizing. But as we become estranged from our labor and the act of production both our natural and spiritual properties become alien to us. We don’t value our own potential as a species. We don’t value the natural world. We only value the commodities that we produce: We have become estranged ultimately from our “human being.” We are commodities that produce commodities.

  Frankenstein is a gothic tragedy, and the creature never really has a chance. In the right setting he could have been Victor’s Adam, but as Marx would suggest under capitalism, and its superficial values he finds no intrinsic value in himself nor in others. He becomes and sees himself as an alienated, ugly, vengeful, murderous thug.

  The Destruction of Victor Frankenstein

  Victor Frankenstein’s obsession with vengeance on his creation ultimately leads to his death. As he pursues the creature through the harsh arctic environments he weakens, and as he realizes he will never have vengeance on the creature, he loses the will to live. He has become alienated from his own labor and the product of his labor, and this estranged labor is now so hostile and alien to him that it actually proves fatal.

  The Victor we begin the story with has great human potential. He has great intellect, a loving family, a grand goal, and a commitment to scientific learning and research. But the alienated Victor we end with is a broken man. He has nothing but his own disgust with a wasted life. Science, as Marx would inform us, has the great power to transform society for the better. But under capitalism, science can be used as a tool of our own destruction. Victor’s scientific endeavors led not to his self-actualization, but rather to his alienation and death.

  The Destruction of Nature

  Super Storm Sandy has been called a Frankenstorm. Why? It is largely the result of man-made climate change. The rising temperatures of the oceans create a longer and stronger hurricane season. Rising temperatures cause additional moisture in the atmosphere and lead to more intense rainstorms and blizzards. When factors such as these combine the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts. And Frankenstorms are the result of exactly the sort of human hubris that motivated Shelley to write Frankenstein.

  Victorian London was reportedly one very polluted city with dark smoggy skies. Even non-Marxist economists can recognize the problem here. It is called the problem of externalities. In our era and Shelley’s it’s profitable to produce excess carbon dioxide and other pollutants. As long as oil is cheap to produce, British Petroleum will sell it to us and as long as it is cheap to buy many will use it. The external effects are real, but nobody bears the costs. The capitalists buy the regulations most profitable to them, and an alienated public simply will not pay attention.

  As the Marxist Vladimir Lenin once suggested the capitalists are so greedy that they will sell us the rope which we will use to hang them. In the case of man-made climate change, the capitalists are willing to sell us the rope with which we can hang ourselves.

  III

  I Made a Monster! Now What?

  9

  Is the Monster Free?

  PETER D. ZUK

  Man himself must make or have made himself into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or is to become. Either condition must be an effect of his free choice; for otherwise he could not be held responsible for it.

  —IMMANUEL KANT, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone

  Few monsters in history have conjured up as much dislike and fear as Dr. Frankenstein’s. In many Frankenstein movies, the monster is depicted as an unthinking brute, a nearly unstoppable force of indiscriminate destruction. But the original Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelley (1797–1851) paints a very different picture. Shelly’s monster is far more man than beast. He may be incredibly large and strong, but he also possesses a fearsome intellect. It’s this combination of physical strength and cunning that makes Frankenstein’s monster one that will continue to terrify us for a very long time.

  What explains this disconnect between the original version of the monster and the more animalistic one that we see in popular films? One promising idea is that a smart monster makes for a more frightening monster. When it comes to zombies and werewolves, we can run away or hide. But against a really clever monster, this won’t work. A clever monster seems to find us no matter how far we run or how well we hide. Shelley needs this kind of monster, and not just because it makes for a scarier story. This kind of monster isn’t just a danger to us; this kind of monster is a villain. And in order to be a villain, the monster must have freewill. He must be able to freely choose good or evil.

  Monster Court Is Now in Session

  Now why does Shelley need a villain rather than just any old monster? She needs a villain because her version of the Frankenstein story is supposed to contain a message for the reader, a message that couldn’t be conveyed as effectively without a villain. The monster is a personification of an idea. She has given a philosophical concept a vaguely human form.

  The concept that Shelley wants the monster to stand in for is scientific discovery. Shelley wrote in the 1800s, a time when the Age of Enlightenment was in full swing. Thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the ability of human reason to understand the world around us and change that world for the better. One important way of doing that was to perform scientific experiments in pursuit of knowledge. By coming to understand how the world works, Enlightenment thinkers argued, we can learn to control it, even master it, and in this way improve the human condition.

  Shelley disagreed with this point of view. She was involved with an intellectual movement called Romanticism that rejected, among other things, the Enlightenment’s strong support for scientific discovery. There are some thin
gs that human beings just aren’t meant to know, Romantic thinkers claimed. It’s not that Romantics were completely against science—they wanted to understand nature too. But they did believe that the highly rational methods of Enlightenment thinkers were mistaken, and they certainly thought it was a bad idea to try to control nature.

  According to Romantics, too much knowledge about nature’s inner workings is dangerous because we just aren’t capable of controlling nature completely. We think we can, but that makes things even worse. Thinking that we can control something that we really can’t gets us into trouble fast. We end up releasing forces that we can’t stop. The monster represents Enlightenment-style science taken to what Shelley thinks is its natural conclusion. When Victor Frankenstein creates the monster, he’s toying with the forces of life and death, something that only God has any business doing.

  We said before that Shelley needs more than a mere monster to convey this message; she needs a villain. A mere monster is just a mindless simpleton. Such a monster is bad only incidentally; it could have been good had we simply done a better job of getting it under control. A villain, on the other hand, is an autonomous agent that chooses to do bad things. A villain defies our attempts to make him or her behave. Even our very best efforts can’t guarantee that a villain will stop doing evil because a villain has freewill. Only something with freewill can help Shelley make her point. She wants to show not just that too much scientific progress can be bad, but that it is bad. She wants to show that it will always have bad consequences whether we try to use it for good or for evil.

  If Shelley can show this, it will be bad news for science and those of us who support it. But in order to show it, Shelley needs to establish that the monster really has freewill. If she can’t, her allegory won’t be convincing.