Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The

by White, Mark

  It appears illegitimate to deny androids the ability to love based simply on the fact that they are inorganic and artificially developed. In arguing for animal rights, contemporary philosopher Peter Singer argues that different forms of prejudice, such as sexism and racism, involve members valuing their own group based on an arbitrary characteristic that other groups lack. Speciesism, according to Singer, is a prejudice or attitude of bias against members of other species.20 A related prejudice may be at work in concluding that androids cannot love simply because they are artificial.

  Singer might point out that, like animals, androids suffer and have interests. Beyond that, they can even acknowledge that they are marginalized in society. Obviously the Vision is interested in fighting evil; otherwise he would not engage in superhero activities. He also regularly displays both emotional and physical suffering.21 Lastly, he acknowledges how, as an android, he is marginalized by others, remarking that “even among mutants, monsters, and man-gods, we artificial life-forms are still the least accepted.”22 Following Singer, then, we should refrain from organicism, the prejudice against synthetic creatures. Indeed, we should recognize that they have the same rights and privileges that we have, including the right to love and get married.

  Love: American Style

  While personhood may make androids morally “eligible” for love and loving, we still haven’t answered the question of whether they can love. To do that, we have to ask what love really is. For our purposes, it is enough to say that love is a concept.

  The American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) gave us the pragmatic maxim, which articulates a way to think of concepts and their meanings. Peirce instructs us as follows:

  Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.23

  So when we consider a concept such as love, its meaning is the possible effects it has in the world we live in. If an android such as the Vision loved a human such as the Scarlet Witch, then how would his conception of love have any meaning or significance? The possible practical effects would include his caring for her, treating her with kindness, being receptive to her words, attending to her needs and feelings, and having a degree of physical intimacy with her. Clearly the Vision does all these things.

  The pragmatic maxim isn’t just a way of thinking about concepts; it also aids in clarifying our concepts. For example, Baron Zemo might say he loves his pet dog Fritz. But if instead of providing and caring for him, Zemo neglects and abuses Fritz, then according to the pragmatic maxim, Zemo’s love for his dog is meaningless, regardless of Zemo’s vehement protests.

  What if an android is programmed to give the illusion or appearance of love? Is “faking it” good enough? A human can also give the illusion of love. When the script calls for it, actors are trained to “program” themselves to act and respond as if they are in love. Obviously this looks like love, but it is not real since the actor does not internally feel the love. Similarly, an android or a human might state that they feel that they are in love, which is itself another practical effect of love, but the only way to tell whether they are in love is by their actions, how they conduct themselves, and their own testimony about their feelings, which is observable and testable. In a way, the real test is whether love is felt by each party.

  So, despite the skepticism of some of the Avengers, an android and a human can love each other in a meaningful sense. The proof is not identifying what type of beings they are—whether an android is a person, for instance—but observing what their actions, feelings, conduct, and thoughts are.

  NOTES

  1. See Plato, Symposium, 199c–212b (in any reputable translation with the standard pagination), and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book VIII, chapters 1–8.

  2. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960).

  3. Ibid., 33.

  4. Ibid., 30.

  5. Ibid., 33.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid., 70.

  8. They first met in Avengers, vol. 1, #76 (May 1970), and reconciled their feelings for each other in #108 (February 1973), reprinted in Essential Avengers Vol. 4 (2005) and Vol. 5 (2006), respectively.

  9. Lewis, Four Loves, 96.

  10. Ibid., 99.

  11. Avengers, vol. 1, #109 (March, 1973), reprinted in Essential Avengers Vol. 5.

  12. Lewis, Four Loves, p. 131.

  13. Ibid., 133.

  14. Ibid., 135 (emphasis mine).

  15. Ibid., 91.

  16. Ibid., 137.

  17. Ibid., 177.

  18. Ibid., 178.

  19. Quicksilver in Avengers, vol. 1, #110 (April 1973), reprinted in Essential Avengers Vol. 5.

  20. See Peter Singer, “All Animals Are Equal,” in Applied Ethics, ed. Peter Singer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 215–228.

  21. The Vision experienced overwhelming emotions and cried when he was welcomed into the Avengers in Avengers, vol. 1, #58 (November 1968), reprinted in Essential Avengers Vol. 3 (2001). He also experienced painful incapacitating seizures in Marvel Team-Up, vol. 1, #5 (November 1972), reprinted in Essential Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1 (2002).

  22. He stated this to Machine Man, another artificial life form, in Marvel Super-Hero Contest of Champions #1 (June 1982), reprinted in Avengers: The Contest (2010).

  23. Charles S. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 1, 1867–1892, ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 124–141, at 132.

  Chapter 16

  THE WAY OF THE ARROW: HAWKEYE MEETS THE TAOIST MASTERS

  Mark D. White

  Though he has gone by several other names throughout his superhero career, such as Goliath and Ronin, Clint Barton will always be best known as Hawkeye, the Avenging Archer. Orphaned at a young age, Clint joined a traveling carnival with his older brother Barney and was trained in archery by Trick Shot, a member of the troupe and a part-time criminal to boot. After being shown up by Iron Man, Clint sought glory as the masked adventurer Hawkeye, only to be confused for a criminal himself. Soon he met Natasha Romanova, the Russian spy known as the Black Widow who was bent on destroying Tony Stark (before becoming a hero herself). Clint fell for her and embraced her life of crime. After the Russian government retaliated against the Widow for trying to defect, however, Clint vowed to make amends for his past, starting with applying for membership in the Avengers.1 Along with the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, who had also found themselves on the wrong side of the law early in their careers, Clint completed the second lineup of the Avengers that would forever be known as “Cap’s Kooky Quartet.”2

  The rest is comics history, albeit a fairly convoluted history involving several deaths and resurrections, as well as joining the Avengers, the Defenders, the West Coast Avengers, the Great Lakes Avengers(!), the Thunderbolts, the New Avengers, and the Secret Avengers. And of course there were relationships with many women, including Black Widow and Mockingbird (Bobbi Morse), the latter of whom he married after their first case together.3 His fellow Avengers think of Clint as brash and cocky, but his demeanor masks profound self-doubt, stemming from his unlucky childhood, his early mistakes in the costume, and comparisons with the noblest (Captain America), strongest (Thor), and smartest (Iron Man, Hank Pym) heroes in the Marvel Universe. Clint’s perpetual underdog status, whether deserved or not, brings to mind the Eastern philosophy of Taoism, several elements of which we’ll explore in this chapter.

  Don’t Try So Hard, Clint

  The most famous work in Taoist (pronounced “dow-ist”) philosophy is the Tao Te Ching, which is often translated as “The Way of Life.” Said to have been written by Lao Tzu (pronounced “loud-suh”) around 500 BCE—give or take a century—it prescribes a way of living for ordinary people as well as tips for sound governance by those in positions of authority.4 But
if good living is understood to involve self-governance, the entire Tao Te Ching can be read as a guide to aligning oneself with the ways of nature rather than fighting them.

  One of the clearest—yet most paradoxical—examples of this respect for the ways of nature is the concept of wei wu wei (pronounced “way woo way”), or action through inaction: “do nondoing, strive for nonstriving.”5 Rather than implying passivity or laziness, wei wu wei recommends aligning yourself with the natural harmony of the universe and acknowledging your limited ability to alter it (as well as the folly in trying to). Effort should not be wasted on things that cannot be changed, but preserved for things that can, and wisdom lies in knowing which is which. In this sense, wei wu wei is very similar in spirit to the serenity prayer of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), the most popular phrasing of which is, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can change; and wisdom to know the difference.”6

  To be sure, no one would confuse Trick Shot for a Taoist sage or wise man—he is a drunken, loutish, two-bit thief—but he does know his archery, and he gives Hawkeye a run for his money many times throughout his career. When Trick Shot trains a young Clint Barton, he tells him, “You must learn to use your bow gently, naturally, instinctively! Such is the way of the arrow!”7 To use a bow and arrow is to harness nature at its most basic, and the successful archer must work with the bow, not against it. As Hawkeye thinks to himself at one point, to make a successful shot you must “be in the now,” one with the bow, your surroundings, and yourself—in short, one with nature.8

  Hawkeye’s effortless skill with the bow and arrow certainly illustrates wei wu wei, but it must be remembered that it took much hard work to develop his amazing skills. Unfortunately, he wields those skills with arrogance and brashness, a demeanor that doesn’t always sit well with his fellow Avengers—especially Captain America. As Lao Tzu wrote of sages, “Not congratulating themselves, they are therefore meritorious,” and “Those who glorify themselves have no merit, those who are proud of themselves do not last.”9 By bragging of his abilities and heroism, Hawkeye detracts from them; he calls attention to his deeds instead of letting them speak for themselves, which violates the spirit of wei wu wei.

  You’d think Clint would have learned this lesson given his origins, trying to one-up Iron Man and instead being mistaken for a criminal. Lao Tzu wrote that if people “do not dwell on success, then by this very nondwelling success will not leave.”10 In the beginning, Clint tried too hard to be famous. It backfired, and he risked becoming infamous instead. He needed to learn that the best way to achieve fame is to not seek it. After all, he was never more famous than he was as an Avenger, where he used his skills as an archer to fight crime and villainy rather than to win acclaim. Lao Tzu would hardly recommend a life chasing fame, but if Clint wants to do it, then wei wu wei can show him how—by not doing it.

  When Is a Butcher Like an Archer?

  Whereas Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching in the form of poetry or verse, Chuang Tzu, a Taoist scholar from the fourth century BCE who built upon Lao Tzu’s ideas, used prose to tell stories or parables that illustrated his Taoist ideas. It is appropriate that Clint Barton’s father was a butcher, a trade that demands skill and focus much like archery does—and happens to have been the subject of one of Chuang Tzu’s tales. In it, a king admires a butcher’s skill at carving an ox, and asks him how he does it so effortlessly yet so well:

  When I first began to cut up oxen, all I saw was an ox. . . . Now I meet it with spirit rather than look at it with my eyes. When sensory knowledge stops, then the spirit is ready to act. . . . The joints have spaces in between, whereas the edge of the cleaver blade has no thickness. When that which has no thickness is put into that which has no space, there is ample room for moving the blade. This is why the edge of my cleaver is still as sharp as if it had newly come from the whetstone.11

  After hearing this, the king says, “Excellent! Having heard the word of a butcher, I have found the way to nurture life.”12

  We can easily imagine someone being impressed in the same way by Hawkeye’s skill with a bow and arrow, especially how it respects the harmony of nature and the conservation of effort. Chuang Tzu’s parable can be considered a refinement of wei wu wei, emphasizing that the path of least resistance—the space between the joints, for instance—is the natural one to travel to ensure success in life. Hawkeye can make shots that seem impossible to us, and that amaze even his fellow Avengers, but he’s not going to seek out the most difficult shot in an emergency. He may do it in practice to test himself, or to show off at an exhibition (or to a woman), but in the midst of battle he is going to take the shot with the best chance of success, which even for an experienced archer will be the most straightforward one possible. In other words, there is a time to see how good you are by testing your limits, and a time to show how good you are by getting the job done, and for the most part Hawkeye finds that balance.13

  In an early Avengers tale, Hawkeye prepares to fire electromagnetic arrows to rein in the Black Panther’s runaway airship. When the Panther says, “Heaven help us if you miss,” Hawkeye replies, “Bite your tongue, mister! I never miss . . . Just settle back and relax, little buddies.” But when his bowstring breaks and the Vision has to save the day, Clint is devastated: “One crummy broken string . . . and I’m Mister Fifth Wheel! I’m not in you guys’ league.” After the Avengers find out that Black Widow is in trouble, they rush off without Clint, who is judged to be too personally involved. Clint agrees, but for a different reason, saying to himself, “They were right, blast ’em! A hothead like me might just foul up things . . . get the whole bunch of us killed!” So he decides to take Hank Pym’s growth serum and become the new Goliath to rescue Natasha. When the couple returns to Avengers Mansion, Clint confirms his intentions to leave his “weak” Hawkeye persona behind by snapping his bow in half.14

  Ironically, it is during the massive intergalactic conflict known as the Kree-Skrull War that Clint realizes his true nature is to be an archer, not a chemically enhanced giant.15 Nearly out of Pym’s growth serum and finding himself on a Skrull warship on a destructive mission to Earth, he fashions a bow and arrow from materials he finds on the ship and uses them to destroy the ship, narrowly escaping with his life.16 Earlier, he thought he was failing his fellow Avengers with his archery skills, and tried to be a giant strongman instead (ironically, another carnival identity). But by denying his true nature and not making use of what he did best, he was not following the path of wei wu wei; instead, he was trying too hard to be something that he was not.

  Hawkeye, Humble?

  His brief time as Goliath shows that Clint feels a tremendous need to live up to the example of his peers and earn their acceptance as well as his own. In fact, he leaves the team altogether soon thereafter, saying that he’s “had my fill of being poor old Hawkeye, the stupid Avenger” (ironically, after having his archery prowess praised by none other than Thor).17 Clint Barton has many admirable qualities, including not just his tremendous skill with the bow and arrow and his fantastic athleticism but his heroic nature as well. However, he lacks one quality that is particularly emphasized by the Taoist masters: humility. He is often described as brash and cocky by friends and foes alike, but this behavior masks deep-rooted insecurities; as Natasha once noted, Clint is “so full of conceit and insecurity at the same time.”18 As his words show, he suffers from feelings of inadequacy compared with his mightier colleagues in the Avengers—none more than his friend, mentor, and sparring partner, Captain America.

  From the moment he joins the Avengers, Clint challenges Cap’s authority, accusing him of being a washed-up “square” and a World War II relic. Their conflict comes to a head in their fourth issue together, when Hawkeye sticks his finger in Cap’s face—an image reproduced time and again in future stories—accusing him of poor leadership and trying to “push your weight around all the time.”19 But as their relationship devel
ops, Clint gains tremendous respect for the Sentinel of Liberty, coming to admire his wise and measured leadership, especially when Clint heads his own team, the West Coast Avengers. Soon after he puts together the charter lineup, a stranger appears in their new headquarters, and Clint thinks to himself, “Should I let the others catch our intruder . . . or rush in and collar him myself? How would Cap handle this?”20 Soon afterward, Clint gets into a petty battle with Iron Man after discovering that the man wearing the armor wasn’t Tony Stark but his successor James Rhodes. Clint accuses him of being “an amateur Iron Man,” while Rhodey defends his short but successful tenure as the Armored Avenger. This leads Clint to recall his insolence with Cap in the early days of the Avengers and to “wonder how Cap put up with me?”21

  Consistent with his origins, Clint wants to be highly regarded by his peers, but he needs to learn the lessons of the Taoists—especially since Cap follows the same wisdom, particularly regarding humility and leadership. We’ve already mentioned Hawkeye’s glory seeking, which Cap doesn’t engage in; he shuns the spotlight as well as the praise that it brings. When leading the Avengers, Cap prefers to boost others rather than himself. As Lao Tzu wrote with respect to effective leadership, “When sages wish to rise above people, they lower themselves to them in their speech. When they want to precede people, they go after them in status.”22 Cap often finds himself giving pep speeches to his self-doubting teammate, early on telling him, “You have a lot of potential, Avenger. More than the rest. That’s why I’m pushing you. You could be the best we’ve ever had.”23 Much later, when Hawkeye marvels at Cap’s skill with his shield and asked how he does it, Cap simply says, “Practice and passion, Clint. Just like you.”24 When Hawkeye continues to challenge Cap’s leadership, even after decades together, Cap still deflects the criticism, offering Clint the spot if he thinks he can do it better, and reassuring his old friend, “You’re a good man, Clint.”25 Rather than take the chance to gloat about his own skills as a hero or leader, Cap chooses to praise Clint, raising him in status while giving him incentive to be even better: “You really are the best of us, but only when you want to be.”26