Locating Dexter on the Scale
And so the range of character types extends down from virtuous individuals who embody integrity and measure in their relationship to properly human pleasures, through the persons who are sufficiently strong to exhibit virtue (despite lapses), the weak persons who try but cannot resist excessive pleasure, the self-indulgent persons who openly choose excess, and the beasts whose desires are so in-human that weakness or strength does not apply. Where does Dexter fit? Because he’s a serial killer, it’s tempting to toss Dexter in with the beasts and be done with it. But, of course, if he were the type to sit down for a meal of roasted Cody and Astor, I suspect that ratings would plummet. It’s not that simple.
Before getting to the hard cases, let’s eliminate some of the relatively easy ones. Dexter is clearly not a saint, nor is he temperate as Aristotle understands it. From an early age, Dexter has had a Dark Passenger who makes him need to kill. He also clearly takes pleasure in killing, as shown by the ecstatic look of relief that comes across him as he kills. (For the sake of argument, let’s assume that serial murder is not part of the excellent, virtuous life.)
We should also eliminate the possibility that Dexter is a self-indulgent person. This may seem odd, given that he is a serial killer, but “self-indulgent,” as we have defined it, means that Dexter lacks both discipline and an interest in virtue and pursues unfettered pleasure. He does not take pleasure in many human pursuits, such as sociability and intimacy (though that is changing). In fact, with the one notable exception, Dexter is an ascetic. And even in the exceptional case of murder, he abides by a rigorous Code. For that reason, we may also say that he is not a morally weak person. His Code seems to have a sense of the ideal, but he does not give in to temptation as a matter of habit. He may kill, but he does not give in to base desires generally.
So that leaves only two possibilities. He’s either a morally strong person who is tempted to do wrong but disciplines himself in the name of a rationally revealed moral ideal, or he is an exceedingly unusual beast. And there are good arguments on either side. Like Aristotle’s savage cannibals, Dexter craves death and butchers bodies. Like the moderate person, he disciplines his dark desires.
Fine, I’m a Sociopath, but Do I Have to Feel Bad About it?
Both gods and beasts lack a conscience, but for different reasons. To have a conscience, we must feel conflicted. We want something base, but our “higher nature” tells us is would be wrong to indulge it. The philosopher Immanuel Kant imagines conscience as a judge determining guilt. We propose rules for behavior and the tribunal of Reason either approves or condemns. But if we are god-like, then we do not have base desires. If we are beasts, we do not judge them.
For the moment, let’s assume that neither of us is a god or a beast. That means we are people who want to live excellently and succeed or fail in varying degrees. We are capable of regret, even if we’re morally weak people who never live up to the ideals we hold. Let’s also assume that we are intrigued by Dexter not simply out of perverse fascination or a vicarious desire to do horrible things to horrible people. We follow him because, in some way, we relate to his struggles. We know what it is like to have dark desires, to fake social interactions, to worry about what we would be like were we to become parents, and so on. (Perhaps I am projecting, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that since you’re reading a book with the words “Dexter” and “Philosophy” in the title, you probably think too much and had a hard time in high school.) And we worry about such things because we have a conscience. A perfect person would see Dexter as pathetic and disgusting and wouldn’t watch. A beast would be off killing, raping, and otherwise sating its inhuman desires by watching The Hills and Dancing with the Stars.
But is Dexter really like us? Does he have a conscience? Ultimately, this is linked to whether or not Dexter is a sociopath, as he claims. In popular understanding, the defining quality of the sociopath is the absence of conscience. And it is conscience and discipline that separate the morally strong person from the self-indulgent and the beastly. Therefore, if we are to understand whether Dexter is morally strong or beastly, then we must address whether he has a conscience, that is, whether he feels the tension between the moral ideal and his desires.
At first blush, this seems easy to answer. If we know anything about Dexter, it is that he has a Code. Handed down by Harry, the Code tells Dexter what to do if he is to be good. But there is a deep tension running down the middle of it. The Code has two vital parts: 1. Kill only those who deserve it, and 2. Don’t get caught. On the one hand, the Code tells him how to be moral. On the other, it tells him how to be prudent.
Philosophers make a lot out of the distinction between morality and prudence. The first tells is what we must do no matter what. The second tells us what to do if we are to get what we want. If someone doesn’t murder the innocent because they know it do be wrong and they find fulfillment in doing what is right, we admire them. If we learn, however, that they really want to murder the innocent but they are afraid that the risk to their life, liberty, and loved ones is too great, then we usually don’t. So whether Dexter is morally strong, and therefore whether we should admire him, comes down to whether he recognizes that we shouldn’t kill the innocent is a good rule in and of itself, and not simply because it allows him to attain other things he wants.69 When he does good, is it because he recognizes its goodness, or is it that doing good allows him to survive? Is he moral or merely prudent? This is the central ethical ambiguity in the series.
Let’s sift through some of the evidence that Dexter is merely prudent. Even as a child, he resisted the impulse to kill because he “thought [Harry] and Mom wouldn’t like it” (“Dexter,” Season 1). Why shouldn’t he be a bully? Because it’s wrong, but also because people, like cops, notice bullies (“Let’s Give the Boy a Hand,” Season 1). Hearing of the Code, his sociopathic brother Brian asks, “Like an absurd avenger?” and Dexter replies “That’s not why I kill” but it is left unsaid why he does (“Born Free,” Season 1). Reflecting on his victims, he asks “How many bodies would there be had I not stopped those killers? I didn’t do it to save lives, but save lives I did” (“An Inconvenient Lie,” Season 2). When he confronts the Cutter at the end of Season 3, Dexter disabuses the Cutter of the notion that they kill for some higher purpose (“I Had a Dream”). These and countless other examples undercut our hope that we are rooting for a morally clean protagonist. Just as we start to see him as just like us, the writers remind us that he may not be the person we want him to be.
But there is evidence on the other side as well. For example, Dexter believes that there is a moral difference between himself and other serial killers. Dexter’s self-perceived superiority is not because he desires the highest human good. He clearly enjoys killing. But he also prides himself that he is better than those who kill kids, telling his first televised victim “I have standards” and that the world will be “neater” and “better” place without him (“Dexter,” Season 1). He tells himself “Without the Code of Harry I’m sure I would have committed a senseless murder in my youth just to watch the blood flow” and refers to his killing as “taking out the garbage” (“Popping Cherry,” Season 1). His killing “brings order to the chaos, builds civic pride” (“It’s Alive,” Season 2). And he sees himself as picking up the slack when society fails to enforce the social contract (“Our Father,” Season 3). Lastly, he considers himself better than Rita’s ex-husband because Dexter does not harm the innocent and says “I am not like you” as he is strangling a pedophile (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” Season 3).
Dexter believes that some good other than the pleasure of killing is being served, such as protecting children. When he accidentally kills an innocent man in Season 4, it “eats at him” and makes him “uncomfortable.” When he judges the act, he catches himself and says “I don’t do ‘should haves,’ that’s not me.” But Dexter does judge himself. Remorse, the Trinity Killer explains, is what “separates
us from the animals. Your conscience is eating away at you.” Dexter is left to ask himself, “If erring is human then remorse must be too. Wait, does that make me human?” (“Road Kill,” Season 4).
That ambiguity between prudence and morality was brought to center stage when Dexter had to consider killing Sergeant James Mother-F##king Doakes, an innocent man who had come to learn Dexter’s true nature and would surely punish him for it. Dexter comes close to turning himself in, making arrangements with Deb and taking Rita and the kids out for one last day together. But, when Doakes is killed by the Lila ex Machina and Dexter is spared being punished for his crimes, he is deliriously happy and relieved, bouncing along handing out donuts to a department full of inexplicably sad officers.
But Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
Perhaps the greatest bit of evidence that Dexter is more than merely prudent is that he seems to value some people in themselves, instead as merely a means to keeping him safe. Over the course of the entire show, Dexter extends his sympathies further and further. A sociopath incapable of empathy, and therefore of conscience, couldn’t pull that off. Let’s catalogue the evidence again.
Dexter certainly claims to have no feelings, saying he is “a very neat monster” and like a donut box, “empty inside” (“Dexter.” Season 1). He reiterates this supposed emptiness again and again: “I see their pain. On some level I even understand their pain. I just can’t feel their pain” (“Crocodile,” Season 1); “If I had a heart it might be breaking right now” (“Popping Cherry,” Season 1); “That must be what love looks like. The inability to feel has its advantages. Sometimes” (“Love American Style,” Season 1); Deb is “bighearted, kind, nothing like me” (“Return to Sender,” Season 1); and, when told that something is human nature, he replies, “I’m not human” (“Waiting to Exhale,” Season 2). (Phantom Brian replies, “No, just f##ked up.”)
Because of this supposed lack of empathy, Dexter claims to be incapable of genuine relationships and must fake all human interactions. The obvious case is Rita. He begins dating her because having a girlfriend is “normal” and, therefore, good cover. She had the added advantage of being emotionally scarred and incapable of intimacy. He claims that he can’t have intimate relationships because he is eventually unable to hack it and the other person leaves. “Every time I sleep with a woman she sees me for what I really am—empty—and then she’s gone” (“Shrink Wrap,” Season 1). Dexter’s lack of understanding is often funny, as when he doesn’t get Doakes’s joke and says “I didn’t know you were Jewish” or when he doesn’t know how to comfort Rita when she is feeling insecure and, when she is crying from watching Terms of Endearment, tries to offer her oral sex. (Season 1, “Crocodile”).
But Dexter can’t be trusted when he claims to have no feelings. Like Doakes when he heard the claim, we can ask “Who’s lying now?” (“There’s Something About Harry,” Season 2). Dexter seems to care about some people. He clearly wants to please Harry. When he concludes that his practice of killing was the cause of Harry’s death, Dexter is devastated. He cares for his sister: “I don’t have feelings about anything, but if I could have feelings at all, I’d have them for Deb” (“Dexter,” Season 1). When given the chance to embrace sociopathy by killing Deb and joining his brother, he replies, “I can’t. Not Deb. I’m very . . . fond of her” (“Born Free,” Season 1). He grows to care for Rita and the children and modifies the Code to include killing those who threaten his family. Referring to friends and family, he says: “They’re not just disguises anymore. I need them, even if they make me vulnerable” (Season 2, “The British Invasion,” Season 2).
Dexter has a Code, but at times he wants to be free of it. After realizing Harry committed suicide over him: “I’m flying without a Code here. I can unleash the beast anytime I want. . . . It would feel f##king great” (“Left Turn Ahead,” Season 2). In every season, we find Dexter wanting to establish genuine human relationships, whether with a brother (Brian), a girlfriend (Lila or Rita), a friend (Miguel Prado), or a son (the fittingly named Harrison). Brian, Lila, and Miguel each offered him the chance to be purely self-interested and to pursue his base desires. Each would allow him to be a pure and accepted monster. His brother Brian, lacking the presence of a father to instill a Code, is unconflicted and true to himself. In an ironic twist on Heidegger’s idea of authenticity as Being-towardsdeath, Brian tells Dexter that he never has to apologize for what he does or who he is, that he could be his “real, genuine self” if he kills Deb. “You could be yourself around me” (“Born Free,” Season 1).
But, each time, he chooses to be conflicted, caught between his desires and the Good. What does this tell us? Dexter likes being conflicted. He feels the Code’s weight, but carries it anyway. Granted, he realizes that he must modify Harry’s Code as he internalizes it—something familiar to all people as they separate themselves from their parents—but that is further evidence of what Dexter aspires to be. He doesn’t want merely to be accepted for what he is, but for what he wants to be.
Becoming a Real Boy
When Aristotle said that beasts and gods are no part of a state, he meant more than they are excluded from voting, holding political office, and other signs of citizenship. For the ancient Greeks, there was no line between politics and morality. It was the very purpose of the government to care for the moral character of its citizens. Likewise, it was not possible to imagine a moral person outside the city-state. Beasts and gods live outside the walls of the city not only because it is dangerous out there, but because they are not part of our moral community. They are either strangely perfect or profoundly corrupt. Humans have to live among other humans.
Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy’s resident smart-ass, pointed out a third possibility in his Twilight of the Idols: “To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both—a philosopher.” But the question of whether Dexter is a philosopher is put off for another day.
Dexter is quite aware that he is not part of humanity, but he is desperately clawing at the walls of the city. Acknowledging his need to fake grief at a funeral, he reflects: “The willful taking of life represents the ultimate disconnect from humanity. It leaves you an outsider forever looking in, searching for company to keep” (“Popping Cherry,” Season 1). Dexter also learns the burdens of community once he gets married, has a son, and moves to the suburbs.
The over-arching issue is whether Dexter is a morally strong person or a immoral beast—that is, whether he’s the sort of person who rationally knows the Good and, for the most part, disciplines his base desires and does the Good or whether he is a monster who has no conception of the Good and, on the occasion that he does it, it is only out of self-preservation. The creators of the show clearly want to keep this question open, since it keeps bringing us back on Sunday nights. We could leave it at that, but what fun would that be? Rather, let’s take the hard case and assume that Dexter really is what he claims to be: a sociopath who wants to be human.
The fact that Dexter is capable of caring for the happiness of others may prevent him from being a strict sociopath, but it does not necessarily mean that he is capable of knowing the moral ideal or aspiring to human excellence. He’s still a murderer fueled by a horrible desire. At the same time, he is not simply a beast who has no inkling of the human good. It would appear that Dexter has outdone Aristotle in his understanding of moral weakness and the types of moral character. It may be that there is a type of person that falls into both categories, both man and beast. He is a morally strong beast.
How does he pull that off? By faking it. Recall the conversation Dexter had with the budding sociopath in the first season. He tells the teenager that he shares a young killer’s lack of feeling, feeling nothing except when killing. How does he deal with it? “I’m empty, but I found a way to make it feel less bottomless. . . . Pretend. You pretend the feelings are there-for the world, for the people around you. Who knows? One day they will be” (�
�Circle of Friends,” Season 1). Or recall his conversation with the Trinity Killer. Trinity asks Dexter whether thinks he is morally superior. Dexter replies, “No, but I want to be” (“The Getaway,” Season 4). By acting like a good person, Dexter hopes to become one.
Morally strong persons know and appreciates the nature of human excellence and because of it, they discipline themselves. Their Code has been internalized. The beast simply acts without Code or judgment. As a sociopath, Dexter really does not appreciate the inherent value of innocent lives. But he really wishes he did. And, by pretending he does, he hopes that his actions will become habitual, part of his true nature.
For Aristotle, humans fall between god and beast. Dexter locates himself between beast and human. Is there room for a moral being in that gap? Is an internal sense of the Good necessary for goodness, or is it enough to act in accordance with the Good on the hope that some day it will be your own? Dexter abides with that hope. He believes that there’s a chance, if he only tries hard enough, he will turn into a real boy.
Maybe so, but I wouldn’t let my sister date him.
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Dexter SPQR
JAMES F. PONTUSO
Dexter is a contemptible television show. It’s debatable whether moral people should watch it, never mind write books about it. The lead character, Dexter Morgan, is an amoral sociopath who gets away with murder. Indeed, Dexter gleefully slays his immobilized victims. After taking them to a secure location, he stabs them–their blood oozing into their clear plastic restraints—and then carves up the bodies (thankfully off camera) for disposal. Dexter is all the more disturbing because it is so entertaining.
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