Dexter and Philosophy

by Greene, Richard; Reisch, George A. ; Robison, Rachel

  What makes this theory a utilitarian theory is its justification for the rules—that following them would maximize total happiness. Contrast the rule-utilitarian view with a justification of the moral rules that appealed to God’s will. Both the rule-utilitarian and the divine command theorist think that killing the unwilling donor violates a moral rule. They might even agree on which rules are morally valid, but they offer very different justifications for why the valid rules are valid.

  What justifies the rules that make up Harry’s Code? Are they valid because Harry, a sort of god-like figure, says they are? Or are they valid because Dexter’s following them will have better overall consequences than his following any other rules? Consider the rule of certainty: Be sure. Dexter must be sure not only that his potential victim is not innocent, but also that he will kill again. Without the second part, Dexter might appear to be merely doling out justice to those who have escaped it. In fact, though, he kills not to balance the books, so to speak, but to prevent the killing from causing more harm—just the sort of reasoning that a utilitarian embraces. However, the purpose behind the rules is far more clearly understood by Harry than it is by Dexter, who in Season 2 struggles with the rules, their meaning, and the real nature of their creator while he attempts to be “in recovery.”

  Dexter confronts himself and his actions in the therapy of Narcotics Anonymous, and realizes for the first time that murdering other killers can be construed as good, even as a utilitarian public service, rather than simply as a permissible outlet for his personal urges. And we come to understand that Harry made his “rules” as a frustrated police officer who does want killers to come to justice when they are lost in the system. During this time, Dexter discovers, and struggles with, Harry’s hidden side (a liar, and someone who had an affair with Dexter’s mother and police informant Laura Moser) and wonders why he is following rules made by someone who did not follow a clear moral code himself.

  Working with the devilish Lila in his recovery program, Dexter re-thinks his moral code. He sees means and ends up close through his own personal lens. Lila lies, cheats and steals, and does so for reasons she suggests are good ones. For Lila, the end of art is so important that stealing is a morally acceptable means to accomplish it. The pleasure of eating at a fine restaurant justifies lying. Dexter slowly realizes that Harry’s utilitarian commitments resulted in his mother’s brutal death.

  For Dexter, the broader end of justice can never completely justify the unwanted consequence of the murder of Laura Moser and the further consequences for himself and his brother. He enjoys being “The Dark Defender” with its utilitarian overtones, but ultimately, he kills killers because it is right in itself, that is, because it matches Harry’s Code (now modified and divorced from Harry himself), and not because of the good results such vigilantism may or may not have. He kills because, as Dexter tells us in Season 5, “Some people don’t deserve to live.” He would kill even if he were not “The Dark Defender,” because Harry’s Code is more important to him than serving society.

  Dexter’s Dark Deontology

  As we’ve said earlier, deontological ethics claims that certain actions are right (or wrong) in themselves, without regard to their consequences. Right actions are right because they accord with a correct moral rule.

  A classic deontological theorist is Immanuel Kant, who argued that moral laws derive from the way human minds are hardwired: our rational faculties are structured in such a way that we understand morality only according to certain principles and within certain boundaries. He called these principles and boundaries the conditions for the possibility of morality. We cannot experience something as moral without it being universalizable.

  So, for Kant, good actions are those that are universalizable, and evil actions are those that somehow contradict a rule that is necessary for everyone to follow. For example, Kant tells us that lying is wrong, not because it has bad consequences, but because if everyone lied, then the liar herself would not be able to communicate a lie. In other words, liars succeed in lying only because they assume that everyone else tells the truth; they take advantage of the universal rule of truth-telling and make themselves the exception. Hypocrisy, for Kant, is a perfect example of true evil. Ultimately, what we understand to be moral are laws that apply to everyone, without exception.

  So we know immediately that Dexter is not a perfect Kantian deontologist, because he must lie and mislead everyone around him in order to succeed in his task. However, this does not mean that he is not a deontologist at all. Dexter follows a set of rules that have much in common with Kant’s system: Harry’s Code.

  Don’t kill innocents (that would be mere murder; instead, always kill for a good purpose)

  Be Sure (that they have killed, and that they are likely to kill again)

  Don’t get caught

  Be careful in the act and in the cleanup

  Never make things personal

  Blend in (fake emotion to appear normal)

  You Control Your Urges—They Do Not Control You

  Kant would easily agree with universalizing the rule to not kill innocent people. Indeed, Kant suggests both that we must protect the innocent and that we ought to execute those who have killed others; he is one of the traditional champions of the rightness of capital punishment. Kant reasoned that if someone decides that he can kill another person and does so, then he has chosen to create a rule that can be universalized, that is, a rule that can be applied to him. So a man who murders must consent to being murdered himself, because he has made murder a possibility that applies to everyone, including himself. Therefore, we’re obligated to murder the murderers, out of respect for their rationality. Murderers assert that anyone can be killed, therefore they themselves can be killed.

  In this way, Dexter, as the serial killer who only kills serial killers, is very like a Kantian Deontologist. He is dedicated to being anything but a mere murderer: he researches his victims, he is sure that they are guilty, he strives to make it right when he does kill an innocent, and he avoids at all costs being like those who prey on the innocent. As Dexter tells the child murderer in the very first episode, he has standards.

  Indeed the only reason that Dexter lies is because he follows the rule “Don’t get caught.” This rule in turn entails the rules of carefulness, of not making his kills personal (that might affect his judgment), and blending in and faking emotion. In other words, Dexter only misleads others as much as he has to in order to achieve his first imperative, to always kill for a good purpose. Not getting caught is a condition for the possibility of continuing to murder only other murderers, which is Dexter’s reason for all his actions.

  Another important aspect of Deontology is the notion that a truly moral person acts out of respect for the moral law, and not merely in accord with the law. That is, moral people do good things because they want to be moral, and not simply because they enjoy them, or it suits them. A truly moral person will tell the truth out of a feeling of duty and respect for goodness, and not because the truth suits her or pleases her. Dexter fits very well with this important Deontological tenet. He does enjoy killing, but he does not always enjoy it. He was very sad to kill his brother, and also sad to euthanize Camilla at her request.

  Likewise, he does not always kill out of a compulsion or need to kill—it is a choice for him at all times, as illustrated in Season 2 (Episode 6, “Dex, Lies, and Videotape”), when he does not need to kill the man who is posing as the “Bay Harbor Butcher” but simply does it out of respect for Harry’s principles. The clincher here is that while Dexter has urges to kill, he channels them according to Harry’s Code, and out of duty toward that Code.

  Indeed, such control over our urges is the condition for the possibility of all of morality, for all of us. In order for there to be moral rules, we must have urges that are somehow destructive, evil, or immoral. These urges cause us to develop a moral system to follow. The urges that we need to channel or control are conditions for the pos
sibility of morality. As moral beings, we don’t ask “Shall we act?” but rather “How shall we act?”

  If we desire to act at all, we need a Moral Code to act by. It is this desire that is the condition for the possibility of the Moral Code. Without dark desires, there would be no deontology to light our way. Dexter does often think “I really need to kill somebody” (Season 2, “It’s Alive”). But we all need to do something; action is a necessary component of human existence. And those needs are the origin, the purpose, of the moral rules.

  14

  Best of Luck, Dexter!

  DANIEL P. MALLOY

  Lucky. I am lucky. What do I know about abuse? Without the Code of Harry, I’m sure I would have committed a senseless murder in my youth. Just to watch the blood flow.

  —DEXTER (“Popping Cherry,” Season 1)

  Any fan of Dexter has to admit that the show depends a great deal on lucky chances to get its protagonist out of some of sticky situations. Instances are numerous—such as Dexter’s forgetting where he left a body, or having a body that’s been disposed turn up. But that seems forgivable because the show’s very premise depends on a lucky chance—Dexter was fortunate enough to be adopted by a cop who, instead of getting him psychiatric care, taught him how to kill without getting caught.

  Luck is a tricky prospect for philosophers. It raises a variety of difficult questions, most of them having to do with probabilities and inductive logic. However, there is a philosophical problem raised by luck that does not require any abstract equations: the problem of moral luck.

  First introduced by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel in a pair of essays in the late 1970s, the problem of moral luck is a new formulation of a problem that philosophers have been struggling with since Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.). The problem asks, Is a person responsible for things in his or her life that are the result of good or bad luck? There are several different aspects of this problem played out in Dexter.

  Dexter never chose to be a psychopath. He never chose to be adopted by Harry Morgan. Arguably, he didn’t choose to learn the Code of Harry. All of these things played important roles in making Dexter the “neat monster” that fans of the show love. So, given that Dexter didn’t choose these influences, they were imparted to him by luck. This is constitutive luck—are we responsible for the types of people we are, given that we didn’t choose the influences that made us the way we are?

  A further problem connected to luck and morality is about the kinds of choices we’re asked to make. Most of us have never had to choose between an adopted sister and a blood brother—much less a situation where the choice between the two will mean the death of one or the other (“Born Free,” Season 1). But Dexter has. Is he responsible for the outcome? This is the problem of situational luck—we don’t know what we would do in a particular situation until that situation presents itself. If the opportunity to make the choice between a morally wrong and a morally right action never presents itself, then a person can lead a life of perfect virtue without being especially good.

  Finally, and perhaps most centrally, there is the problem of resultant luck. This is what first raised the issue in Bernard Williams’s “Moral Luck.” When we act, we cannot be sure of the outcome of our actions. That’s simply a fact of life. So, given that fact, can we be held responsible for those outcomes? When Dexter teaches Harry’s Code to Miguel, he has no way of knowing that his friend will use it to settle a personal vendetta. So, is he responsible in any way for the subsequent murder of Ellen Wolf? 49

  While the problem of moral luck is indeed a problem, its consequences are not as radical as some have claimed. Moral luck does not eliminate moral responsibility. Dexter’s bouts of good and bad fortune throughout the series may mitigate his responsibility for his actions and their consequences, but they cannot eliminate it. In the end, Dexter is answerable for his crimes.

  Picking Up the Dark Passenger

  The first problem we face in dealing with moral luck is the problem of origins. None of us chose to be here. We didn’t choose to be born into a particular family, nor did we choose to grow up a certain way. Given the amount of influence these and other factors beyond our control have on who we eventually become, it seems that we may not be responsible for the end result of that process. By this logic, Dexter is no more responsible for being the monster that he is than a rose is for the color of its petals.

  We can see the role of constitutive luck played out in the show in two ways. First, let’s examine what we might call Dexter’s bad constitutive luck. In the Season 1, it’s strongly implied that what made Dexter (and his brother, whom we’ll get to later) into an unfeeling psychopath was a particularly traumatic event in early childhood. Dexter and Brian witnessed the brutal murder of their mother. As Dexter puts it when reading the newspaper coverage of the slaying, “If I did have emotions, I’d have to feel this” (“Truth Be Told,” Season 1). No one could claim that Dexter was responsible for his mother’s death, or for having witnessed it, or for having been left with the dismembered corpses for two days. Nor could anyone blame Dexter for shutting down emotionally in response to those events. Shutting down was a survival tactic, pure and simple. So, Dexter is in no way responsible for becoming the psychopath that we all know and love (however much that disturbs us).

  On the other side of the coin, Dexter was lucky enough to have been found and adopted by Harry Morgan, super-cop. This is lucky for Dexter in two ways. First, the Morgans are a decent family and provide him with a good home life. This may seem trite, but its value can’t be overestimated. His relationship with his adoptive sister, though strained at times, is generally good. The Morgans take good care of young Dexter, as he himself is the first to admit. He says “Harry and Doris Morgan did a wonderful job raising me” (“Dexter,” Season 1). Remember also that Dexter fakes his way through all of his relationships—it would prove difficult to do that without the model provided by the Morgans.

  Dexter’s adoption is fortunate also because Harry soon recognizes what Dexter is. Being a super-cop, Harry knows killers. Realizing that his adopted son is a killer, Harry faces a choice. He can either get Dexter psychiatric help, which will probably mean having him committed to a facility for the better part of his life, or he can teach Dexter to survive and to channel his dark urges in socially useful directions. Harry, of course, chooses the second alternative—good thing for us fans! This is the origin of Harry’s Code. It keeps Dexter alive, out of prison, and focused on killing only those who deserve it—other killers.

  To get a clearer idea of just how lucky Dexter is in all of this, give a second’s thought to what might have become of Dexter without Harry’s influence. Not much imagination is needed to see where this would go: you only have to think of Dexter’s long lost brother, Brian Moser. Brian saw what Dexter saw. He reacted the same way Dexter reacted. He became what Dexter became. But he also became something worse. He became what Dexter later calls “an unchecked version of myself” (“I Had a Dream,” Season 3). Brian, the Ice Truck Killer, kills solely to satisfy his urges. And, of course, he winds up dead. He probably would have met that fate a bit sooner if Dexter hadn’t been so intrigued by him. I guess Dexter’s good fortune in being trained by Harry wound up being a lucky stroke for Brian as well. For a while at least Dexter’s curiosity led him to stall the investigation, thus leaving Brian free to keep killing.

  Parallel cases, like those of Dexter and Brian, are important to our thinking about moral luck. Beginning from the same place, Dexter and Brian go in widely diverging directions because of something neither of them can control: the benevolence of Harry Morgan. Dexter becomes a hero—of sorts—thanks to something he had no say in. Brian, on the other hand, becomes just another serial killer.

  These competing influences in Dexter’s development shape the kind of person he becomes. Harry’s benevolent influence is felt throughout the show—long after his death, Dexter still consults the memory of his adoptive father before every major decision. However, thi
s shows only how Dexter came to have the options he has. It does not remove his ability to make choices. That is, whatever events made Dexter a psychopathic expert in the art of human dissection, they did not make him kill. Dexter still had a choice. His urges, his Dark Passenger, give him an ever-present motive to kill, but only his choice creates the intention to kill. Dexter is not responsible for his urges, nor is he responsible for the Code of Harry, but he is responsible for each and every time he gives in to those urges, for each and every time he uses the Code of Harry to choose his victim, to stalk and ambush him or her, and to get rid of the body afterwards. Dexter could have chosen never to take a human life, to satisfy his urges by hunting, or to avoid killing altogether—but that would not have made for a compelling show.

  Better You than Me, Dex!

  But there’s more involved in Dexter’s decisions to kill than just his constitution—he also has to have the opportunity to kill. Put Dexter on an uninhabited desert island before he gets the chance to kill anyone and he might just live a life of perfect virtue. Miami, however, provides Dexter with plenty of opportunities—even with his commitment to follow the Code of Harry. This points us to situational luck: that we are not always responsible for the kinds of decisions we are asked to make. Suppose someone close to you has committed a crime and you find out about it. You now face a moral decision: do you turn this person in or not? The point is that you did not choose to be in this situation, but you will be held responsible for whatever you do in it, whether good or bad.