The only step he takes that seems selfless is his attempt to save Obi-Wan on Geonosis, but his actions are ill-conceived and rash, an ill-advised attempt to make up for abandoning his post earlier. His duty was clearly to protect his charge, yet he allows Padmé to convince him to do what he himself wants to do. Once there, he has to be reminded to keep to his mission when Padmé falls out of their gunship, and he rushes into combat with Count Dooku so carelessly that he ends up causing unnecessary injuries both to Obi-Wan and to himself. Most of these actions are thoughtless rather than intentionally immoral, so we may be inclined to see them as well-intentioned, if mistaken. Even so, their sheer stupidity makes them morally defective.
The problem is not that he acts on his emotions. Emotions play an important role in our moral evaluations. The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume even argues, “Morality . . . is more properly felt than judg’d of.”45 Yet even Hume thinks that reason plays an important role in morality. We need to use our reason to assess the facts properly and to keep our priorities straight. To act coherently, much less morally, we can’t lose our heads; we have to be able to reflect on what we are doing. When people disregard the moral judgments that emerge from reflection, we rightly view them as morally flawed. And when they willfully refuse to engage in reflection at all, when they rush to action without any use of their reason, we should judge them similarly. So when Anakin tells Padmé, “You are asking me to be rational. That is something I know I cannot do,” he is admitting to a great moral failing. If we willfully ignore what reason tells us, we become controlled by every whim of our emotions, and we lose our capacity to make moral decisions. Anakin’s recklessness is, then, a vice.
Yet all Anakin’s reckless actions pale in comparison to what he does to the Sand People who’ve captured his mother. Even from Naboo, Anakin feels his mother’s pain, and he rushes to Tattooine to help her. But when she dies in his arms, he destroys an entire village, the innocent and the guilty alike, out of revenge. It’s an act of unspeakable cruelty.
Oddly, the horror of this act is downplayed in the movie. Padmé only seems to feel sorry for Anakin, reacting little to the depths of the horror. She consoles him and rather lamely insists that “to be angry is to be human.” Anakin himself seems to feel sorry for what he has done, but even this apparent regret seems to be more about failing his ideal of a Jedi than about the act itself. Indeed, he seems much more upset that he couldn’t save his mother, and so vows to be “all-powerful” so that he can “learn to stop people from dying.”
We could try to argue that the killings, though horrendous, are at least somewhat morally ambiguous. We can distinguish between dispositions and character traits that lie behind an action and the consequences of the action itself. As Mill puts it, “the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much to do with the worth of the agent.”46 We can then argue that Anakin, by acting out of love for his mother, is acting from a good disposition. A world in which people love their parents and their children so much that they are willing to go to great lengths to save them is a morally better world than one in which people lack such feelings. People are more likely to develop a strong moral character, and to have richer lives in general, when they are capable of such great and unconditional love for others. The development of such attachments is thus a great moral good. The hatred Anakin feels towards the Sand People, we could then argue, is a natural outcome of having such a great love. They have slowly and painfully tortured Shmi, and Anakin reacts passionately and violently to their brutality.47 So, although destroying the Sand People was wrong, we could argue that Anakin’s reaction is a byproduct of a character trait that is generally virtuous. We could then still think of Anakin as a good person.
What Anakin does, however, can bear no such justification. First, to massacre many for the sake of one is egregiously disproportionate. Indeed, to kill any innocent person just to save a family member is morally dubious. We should always “act so that we treat humanity . . . always as an end in itself and never as a means only,” as the great Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant puts it.48 By sacrificing innocent people to save our loved one, we are using them merely as tools for our own purposes. We do not respect them as full human beings with their own goals and values, but as something expendable whenever they get in our way. Moreover, to do so when those actions will not even help our loved one treats the Sand People in just the way Anakin thinks of them: “They’re like animals and I slaughtered them like animals.” Anakin’s capacity to treat people as mere beasts is such a fundamental moral flaw that his capacity for love can’t redeem his character.
Second, and more importantly, for all the good it creates, the love of family is not always a good moral motive. Certainly, love is a powerful motive, and it can be difficult to control. In addition, the capacity to love is itself intrinsically good, and it thereby creates a great good in people’s lives. Besides being good in its own right, it can also help to generate other goods. It teaches us to look at the world from the point of view of others and to take into account the interests of those outside us.
Yet despite its great potential, love can also be morally selfish. Han, remember, is a better person because he loves, but his moral perspective is still limited. When we focus our attention exclusively on those we love, we can become blind to the anguish of others. They can cease to exist for us morally. Indeed, too often, we fail to think of outsiders as human at all. The exclusive love of our own families and our own groups is the root cause of the intolerance that leads to too many of the great crimes committed by humanity. So Anakin’s love makes his anger understandable, but what he does with that anger is no less horrible because love lies behind it.
Anakin’s murder of the Sand People is, then, in no way morally ambiguous. It’s simply the first of Anakin’s many future acts of barbarity. We are supposed to see Anakin’s actions as a result of his all-too-human love for his mother and hatred for those who harm her, a flaw that will eventually lead him down the path to the Dark Side of the Force. In fact, however, he is far along that path the second he kills those innocent villagers. Only our (and Padmé’s) sympathy for Anakin as a character prevents us from seeing that he’s already an “agent of evil.”
If Anakin as a young man is not morally ambiguous, we could argue, with some justice, that once he becomes Darth Vader he’s more ambiguous than we might think. First, Vader’s motivations are not entirely bad. He asks Luke to join him so that they can destroy the Emperor and rule the galaxy together as father and son: “With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.” Vader seeks peace and order for the galaxy, ruled by the wise leadership of a single man or perhaps a single family. Here Vader expresses Anakin’s earlier sentiment that “we need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree what’s in the best interest of all the people, and then do it.” And if people don’t agree, he continues, “then they should be made to.” Even then, it doesn’t bother Anakin that such a system sounds like a dictatorship: “Well, if it works . . .” Anakin can be seduced by the Dark Side because although he wants the world to be a better place, he refuses to absorb the lessons of his wiser, if less talented, teacher. As a result, he doesn’t appreciate how naïve his view of the world is, and he can’t control himself when he confronts the traps—like the one on Tatooine—that Darth Sidious sets for him. His good motives are thus put to evil use.
Second, we could argue that Vader is morally ambiguous, because Luke does, after all, feel the good in him. Faced with the torture and the destruction of his own son, he destroys the Emperor instead. What goodness remains allows him to resist the absolute evil of the Emperor, but only when his own son is involved. His motivations in killing the Emperor are not that different from his earlier motivations in killing the Sand People: he acts out of love for a member of his family. But, as we have already seen, killing others for the sake of a family member is not always—or ev
en usually—morally praiseworthy. So his motivations don’t make his action here better. What does make it better is that this time at least, he kills only the guilty, and he does so when it’s the only way to save the innocent person who happens to be his son. The fact that in saving his son, he also kills the Emperor and helps to destroy the Empire that has tyrannized the galaxy is an important added bonus. It is, then, a morally good act—even if the motivations behind it are not entirely praiseworthy. So oddly, at the end of Return of the Jedi, Anakin finally does become a morally ambiguous figure. He does great good, even if the motivations are not entirely good, and even if they do not begin to atone for the great evils he has done in his life.
“You Know . . . What They’re Up Against”
Moral ambiguity can appear in a number of surprising places. It emerges when characters are basically good, but have to learn to get outside their egoistic tendencies, like Han. It can be found where evil characters pretend to be good to use the goodness of others against them, like Dooku. It appears not when people with whom we empathize, like Anakin, do horrific evil, but when good manages to eke its way out of an evil character, like Vader. Most importantly, it can appear when seemingly easy decisions, like Lando’s, are given their full due.
Most moral decisions we make in our lives are relatively easy. We help a friend with a project; we give up a concert to see our daughter’s recital; we give directions to a stranger. Few decisions require us to consider anyone outside a small circle of acquaintances or the strangers who present themselves to us. These decisions are so ordinary that we hardly think of them as moral decisions at all. But the ease with which we handle most moral situations can leave us ill-prepared to think about the difficult moral decisions which may confront us and which could prove to be the crucible of our moral characters.
A rare few of us may be blessed with a strong moral compass that invariably leads us to the right path, no matter how confusing the signs might be. The rest of us can only prepare ourselves by thinking about our possible reactions to many different situations so that we can know how we should handle ourselves when the time comes. Thinking about it is not enough, of course, but it’s a necessary first step to facing any challenge. In thinking about the moral ambiguity of the seemingly black-and-white universe of Star Wars, we can see how morally complex a simple world can be, and we can begin to prepare for the moral complexities of our own less-than-simple world.49
Part II
“Try Not—Do or Do Not”
Ethics in a Galaxy, Far, Far Away
5
The Aspiring Jedi’s Handbook of Virtue
JUDITH BARAD
So, you’d like to be a Jedi Knight? Surely a good part of the appeal is the adventure, the excitement, the glory of this undertaking. But wait a minute! When Obi-Wan Kenobi attempts to persuade Yoda to train Luke, the diminutive Jedi Master objects that Luke isn’t a good candidate for training because all his life he has craved adventure and excitement. In Yoda’s words, “A Jedi craves not these things.” The path to becoming a Jedi lies within.
Suppose you’re not deterred. You still want to be a Jedi Knight just as much as you wanted to the first time you saw Star Wars. As a would-be Jedi student, you’ll need to have a teacher. Yoda is probably your best bet, given his experience. For over eight hundred years, the small, green Master has trained Jedi Knights. But having identified a teacher doesn’t mean that the teacher will accept you as a student. Being someone’s student is a privilege, not an entitlement. Yoda will most likely examine your mental attitudes before he accepts or rejects you for training. He will insist that you must have “the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.” If you’re committed and serious, there is one more prerequisite that must be met before training can commence. You must have the patience to finish what you begin. The process of becoming a Jedi Knight is definitely not quick and easy.
The Old Republic and the Older Republic
If you find these prerequisites within you, it’s important to keep the underlying purpose of being a Jedi firmly in mind. The ultimate aims of the Jedi are peace and justice. When Obi-Wan first presents Luke Skywalker with a lightsaber, he explains that the Jedi Knights “were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.” If we really want to know about the “Old Republic” we should turn to Plato’s seminal work entitled, oddly enough, The Republic. Plato suggests that an ideal society should train a group of virtuous warriors to preserve peace and justice in the commonwealth. It’s true that Plato’s Republic doesn’t have the galactic proportions we see depicted in Star Wars; but much of Plato’s teachings are reflected in the Star Wars galaxy. By comparing Plato’s notion of a warrior class to the Jedi Knights and his Republic’s Guardians to the Jedi Masters, we can acquire a richer understanding of the Jedi. With this understanding, we will be more successful in living our life to the full, just as a Jedi should.
Plato prescribes a long and rigorous period of training, which he thinks will yield knowledge of goodness and justice. Those who complete this training successfully, he insists, are fit to guard society for they will have developed the virtues associated with goodness and justice. A central feature of virtue ethics is the claim that an action is right if and only if it’s what a person with a virtuous character would do in the circumstances. Plato thus emphasizes the development of virtues. An initial step in the testing that Plato requires is hard physical training for the future Guardians. However, the purpose of this training is not simply muscular strength. Rather, it is undertaken to improve the soul, that is, the mind. Unless you train your body to obey your mental commands, Plato teaches, you won’t be able to have within yourself the necessary power to drive you forward on the road to even greater mental control over other things. Proper physical training produces the virtues of courage and endurance. But training to the exclusion of intellectual development may make a person may become hard and savage. Just glance at the wrestling shows on television, like WWE Smackdown!
Just as Plato requires a training program that combines physical and mental skills, so does Yoda. The training you’ll receive will probably be similar to the training young Luke Skywalker receives from Yoda, since you’re probably nearer his age than younger padawans. Throughout his training, Luke questions Yoda about good and evil, the Force, and other concepts important to a Jedi. Likewise, Plato’s Republic features a question-and-answer interplay between teacher and students as Socrates’s “padawans” question him about justice and injustice, the nature of the Good, and the ideal government.
The first step in the Jedi training Yoda imposes on Luke is intensely physical. Its point is not only to increase his endurance but to provide a crash course in Jedi virtues of discipline and persistence. By developing endurance, a Jedi padawan has the capacity to work his way through difficulties despite the frustration inherent in the task. One will learn to continue striving in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and defeat. Endurance, requiring self-control, provides a padawan with the ability to struggle over an extended time to achieve their goals. On Dagobah, the Jedi Master pushes his young student to the limit. Racing in and out of the heavy ground fog with Yoda on his back, Luke is winded as he climbs, flips through the air, and leaps over roots. Yet, he endures and continues striving.
A Balancing Act
The next step in Luke’s training is to learn physical balance. He stands on his head while Yoda perches on the soles of his feet. Like the other physical exercises, this one also has a predominantly mental objective. It requires such great concentration that nothing can distract him. By maintaining his balance, Luke is in control of himself and the circumstances around him.
Perhaps Plato’s padawan, Aristotle, can help us understand the importance of balance. To avoid being overcome by strong emotions, Aristotle recommends that we have the right balance of virtue—the “Golden Mean.” Here, all actions can be evaluated on a scale of excess to deficiency. Virtue is “the mean” or the intermediate between exce
ss and deficiency. It’s a balanced action responding to a particular situation at the right time, in relation to the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way. For instance, you can fear something either too much or too little. Fearing too much may lead to cowardice, as when Chewie ran from the Dianoga in A New Hope. Fearing too little, as was the case when Anakin rushed headlong to confront Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones, may lead to rashness, both undesirable traits. The balanced trait, that is, the virtue between fearing too much or too little, is virtue.
Suppose you face an ethical dilemma and fear making a decision because you have only incomplete information regarding the circumstances. You want to make the best decision possible and so try to collect as much information as you can. But, in reality, that’s often not possible. Saddled with incomplete information, you may fear making a decision that might end up being wrong. But perhaps it’s worse not to attempt to find a solution to the dilemma than to risk making a mistake, and so you rationally conclude that you shouldn’t fear making such a mistake. Reason can help remove excess fear about being wrong, as well as inspire a proper respect for the gravity of the situation. By balancing too much fear against too little fear, you can attain the virtue of courage.
Star Wars and Philosophy Page 7