Star Wars and Philosophy

by Kevin S. Decker

On the other hand, if the Emperor was himself once turned by another—imagine that he too was once some venerable Sith Lord’s apprentice—we might want to know who turned the Emperor’s master. Surely not every evil person could have been turned by another. There must be an end to the chain of evil persons that culminates in at least one first seducer, some servant of the Dark Side who either is evil by his very nature (as the Manichees think of the evil God) or else was once good but turned himself to evil.

  Augustine rejects the Manichean explanation of evil because he believes that the supremely good God creates all beings in the universe and so no creature is inherently evil. Instead, since rational creatures such as the Emperor, Darth Maul, and Darth Vader have free will, each one of them is ultimately responsible for their own turn to the Dark Side. Obi-Wan hints at this when he says: “Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.” For we typically think that every seduction requires two willing participants: the seducer and the one seduced.

  Let’s assume that Anakin Skywalker is responsible in this way for his turn to the Dark Side. Factors external to Anakin may still have an influence on his choice: the Emperor’s temptations, Anakin’s desires for Padmé, his mother’s death at the hands of the Sand People, and his conflicted relationship with Obi-Wan certainly all go some distance towards making sense of his fall. But Anakin did not have to turn to the Dark Side as a result of these events. Anakin made choices in all of these contexts that he knew were evil; he didn’t have to make such choices. As Anakin confesses to Padmé after slaughtering a tribe of Sand People, “I’m a Jedi. I know I’m better than this.”

  But why do otherwise good people do bad things in the first place? Augustine is particularly perplexed by this question. If God is the perfectly good and all-powerful creator of the universe, how could one of God’s good creatures turn to evil? According to Christian tradition, the original sin is pride: wanting to find oneself in a place of honor higher than one deserves. Indeed, pride appears to be Anakin’s original sin too. He thinks he doesn’t need Obi-Wan as a master, when it’s obvious that Obi-Wan has much to teach the young padawan. Anakin chooses to begin thinking of himself as better than Obi-Wan, even though in some way he knows he isn’t. In a moment of unguarded anger, Anakin says to Padmé: “It’s all Obi-Wan’s fault. He’s jealous. He’s holding me back!”

  The question of the origin of evil is no problem for the Manichees since for them evil has always existed in the form of the evil God. But this Manichean view—as Augustine began to see as a young man—has the problematic consequence that people aren’t really responsible for their actions. Why does Anakin turn to the Dark Side? The Manichean answer: “The Emperor made him do it!” But Augustine wants to maintain that we’re free and morally responsible for our actions. Anakin is ultimately responsible for his turn to the Dark Side. The origin of moral evil in Anakin is Anakin himself and his own pride. Much the same could be said of the Emperor, Darth Maul, and Jabba the Hutt. A creature that freely wills to do evil is the first cause of moral evil in that creature. Therefore, there are as many causes of moral evil in the universe as there are persons who have freely willed to do evil.

  The Fate of Evil after the Overthrow of the Empire

  Does the following plot-line for a Hollywood movie sound familiar? Hero emerges. Hero shows promise in battling evil, but suffers some temporary setback because of a lack of knowledge and experience. Finally, hero blossoms in a way that surpasses all hopes, and everyone—except the villain, of course—lives happily ever after. And at least for a while, we as movie-goers are lost in the possibility that we too might one day live happily ever after. That evil can be roundly defeated is an assumption driving almost every Hollywood movie (not to mention some great works of literature).

  The Star Wars saga has its Hollywood ending too. We’re left with the distinct impression at the end of Return of the Jedi that the Dark Side has been vanquished by the Jedi once and for all. Not only is the Emperor overthrown, but Luke has refused to do what his father and so many others had done before him: give in to the temptation to use the Force to serve the darker side of our nature. He’s done what others could (or would) not do. The film ends with nothing less than Anakin Skywalker’s own redemption, largely inspired by Luke’s filial love and devotion. Although three of the six Star Wars films end with a victory celebration, there’s something different about the party on Endor. After all, consider who shows up: Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin, complete in their other-worldly, luminescent attire.55 Without explicitly saying so, Return of the Jedi leaves the viewer with the distinct impression that “everyone lived happily ever after.”

  Perhaps films that intend to entertain must have their Hollywood endings. An epic like Star Wars would seem incomplete without it. But maybe there is some deeper significance in the universal human desire—codified in the stories we choose to tell ourselves—that everything will turn out alright in the end. Although the young and selfish Han Solo can’t quite believe it, perhaps there is some “all-powerful Force controlling everything.”

  Will we always be at the mercy of evil and its effects? If evil is a necessary part of reality—the “flipside” of goodness, so to speak—then the answer to this question must be “yes.” Evil will always be with us, at least as a very real possibility. The Emperor may be dead and all may seem well, but somewhere out there another Emperor-like figure is already scheming and angling for power. And there will always be plenty of Anakin Skywalkers in the world—persons of great talent and potential who could, at any moment, fall from grace and give in to the Dark Side’s temptation to believe that power is more important than moral purity. If evil has the nature envisioned by Plato and the Manichees, then the most that we can reasonably hope for are longer periods of time when the Dark Side lies dormant.

  Imagine that the fall of good and the rise of evil is something inevitable—that evil is really a necessary feature of the universe. If this is the case, one might well wonder, what’s the point of fighting evil at all, if it can’t be completely defeated? Can we really be expected to fight evil without any hope of victory in the end? What’s so good (for me) about being good? Providing satisfactory answers to these questions is at least one reason philosophers such as Augustine think it’s important to defend the notion that God exists and is omnipotent. Human beings have a need to believe that everything will turn out alright in the end. Augustine’s defense of the existence of a perfectly good and all-powerful Creator is one important and influential philosophical attempt to show that the human desire for closure in the saga that is our universe is a well-founded one.

  7

  “Be Mindful of the Living Force”: Environmental Ethics in Star Wars

  ELIZABETH F. COOKE

  A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, good and evil looked remarkably similar to the good and evil we see in our world today. Of course, most of the species, planetary systems, and technological gadgets are foreign to us living in the twenty-first century, but the basic values of democracy, equality, and justice are the same. And the epic hero, the Jedi Knight, shares the same characteristics of the warrior hero in Western culture since the Homeric Age. He’s a brave and skilled fighter devoted to a just cause, and, above all, a master over his mind and body. These common values at play in Star Wars allow the story to speak to us, despite such an unfamiliar backdrop.

  But something else comes to light when the backdrop involves intergalactic travel, the power of the Force, Death Stars, the Dagobah System, Wookiees, Ewoks, and Gungans. We find that the Star Wars galaxy reveals a rich approach to environmental ethics—one quite relevant for issues in our own world. Environmental ethics is a branch of philosophy which uses ethical theories to solve very practical matters concerning animals, plants, and the environment as a whole. Now the environmental ethic at work in Star Wars is probably not readily apparent. After all, the Rebel Alliance concerns itself with only the humanist values of democracy and freedom. And the Jedi Knights, guardians of peace and
justice, exemplars of all that is good, don’t seem all that concerned for animals or the environment. What set of values then can account for restoring balance to the Force which somehow includes all the different creatures, cultures, and planets? This issue requires our attention to the fact that the Force is indeed a living Force. And here, as Yoda would say, the answer to our question, we will find.

  Wookiees and Mynocks and Hutts, Oh My!

  Environmental ethics is concerned with the proper relationship between humans and their environment. Generally it asks what our responsibilities are beyond the human community and whether we owe ethical treatment to nonhuman animals, plants, and ecosystems. A central issue then is just what kind of value animals, plants, and ecosystems have: intrinsic value (as goods in themselves) or mere instrumental value (insofar as they’re useful for something else). Some environmental ethicists argue that the environment has instrumental value only. While humans may have intrinsic value, we give value to other nonhuman things by virtue of our valuing them. So everything from cell phones to lightsabers to the Mona Lisa has value only because humans deem it to. These environmental ethicists urge us to see that the environment offers us tremendous goods (food, oxygen, aesthetic enjoyment, and more) which are instrumental in pursuing our goals, but not in infinite supply. Thus, to protect our long-term interests and those of future generations, we should work to preserve the environment.

  Other philosophers argue that this “resource management” approach misses the point of an environmental ethic. It’s criticized for being yet another “anthropocentric ethic,” which unjustly places humans at the center of what is to be valued.56 One such critic is the contemporary philosopher Peter Singer, who agrees with the view that value depends on a conscious being (a valuer), who gives value to things, but disagrees that humans are the only beings who count as conscious valuers. For Singer, ethics is concerned with protecting the interests of others, which essentially requires working to increase others’ pleasure and alleviate their suffering. And he holds that “consciousness, or the capacity for subjective experience, is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for having an interest.”57 This means that to have an interest, one must be capable of feeling (being consciously aware of) pleasure and pain. But of course many nonhuman animals have this ability. Animals too are conscious valuers and have interests—at the very least the interest to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Humans thus owe animals decent and humane treatment, just as we do other humans.58 Singer argues that we have no good reason to extend ethical treatment solely to humans—a bias he calls “speciesism.” Speciesism parallels the injustice of racism by arbitrarily giving special status to the interests of individual humans (over and above the interests of other animals) just because they’re members of our same species. Singer’s point is that consciousness is what’s morally relevant, not membership in a certain species. And while there may not be an absolutely clear line of demarcation between animals which have consciousness and animals which don’t, according to Singer, all mammals and birds should clearly be included because they can feel pain. But then what are we to think of Luke Skywalker, who shoots womprats in his T-16 and even brags about it to his friend Wedge? Presumably womprats can feel pain, yet this is of no concern to our otherwise moral young hero.

  The question of the ethical treatment of animals in Star Wars proves difficult, since the distinction between human and animal simply doesn’t hold—or at least not in the same way. After all, Yoda clearly isn’t human, but we couldn’t call him a “mere” animal either. And other nonhuman creatures like Watto the Toydarian junk dealer and Jabba the Hutt raise similar problems. At the same time, some creatures certainly behave like animals—for example, mynocks and wampas. So perhaps our question should be rephrased: Are “animal-like” creatures treated ethically by the “human-like” creatures?

  We do see some humane relationships between human-like and animal-like creatures. Han Solo and Chewbacca have a kind of friendship, albeit not one of equals—a point parodied in the film Spaceballs. Chewie is like a pet dog—loyal, dependable, and even well-trained, but not completely so (apparently Wookiees just aren’t good losers, or so Han warns C-3PO while R2-D2 plots to defeat Chewie at a board game). But overall, Chewbacca is treated almost like one of us. And on the other side, ethical corruption in Star Wars is often illustrated through the inhumane treatment of animals by characters such as Jabba the Hutt and Count Dooku. Creatures like the reek, the nexu, and the acklay are unleashed on Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Anakin in the Geonosian arena as a spectator sport (like the lions of the ancient Roman coliseum). And Jabba casts a slave-dancer down to a dungeon pit to be eaten by the wild rancor. In addition to the potential harm to the human-like characters in these cases, there’s the questionable presence of exotic animals, far from their natural habitats, in circus-like roles serving humans (or the human-like) for entertainment as well as other purposes. These animals are “owned” and their natural functions (like eating meat) are put on display. As we’ll see, this is completely out-of-sync with the Jedi way.

  Although there’s no mention of “rights” for animal-like creatures by the “good guys” in Star Wars, they can’t be guilty of simple speciesism. Surely something like inter-species rights is at work in the Galactic Senate. Members of different species work together, co-operatively for the most part, toward the same political and ethical goals. Their different appearances are so irrelevant for the purposes of democratic participation that different species intermingle as if they’re merely different cultures or ethnic groups. We see inter-species co-operation in the Jedi Order and the Rebel Alliance as well. What brings these creatures together is capability, rather than species. In particular, self-consciousness is important here. The abilities to self-reflect and rationally deliberate are the very conditions for participation in democracy, which has at its center equality, rights, and justice based on the intrinsic value of every human being or human-like creature. Here we see the very strong humanist element in Star Wars—with a reminder that “human” need not apply only to Luke, Han, and the like.

  But many environmental ethicists would argue that the inter-species relations we see in Star Wars fall short of an animal ethic, since equal treatment and respect extends only to those creatures who are “human-like,” while there’s no mention of ethical treatment for the animal-like creatures. Star Wars seems to employ an anthropocentric ethic in that only human-like traits are valued—and only because they’re human-like. In the end, critics argue that an ethic which excludes nonhuman animals allows for their use or destruction in the name of human interests.

  Value in Nature

  Beyond animal ethics, the philosopher Holmes Rolston, III argues for the intrinsic value of both animal and non-animal life. If something is said to have intrinsic value, it usually implies that it should be respected and not used or destroyed. For example, the intrinsic value of each human being means that we owe respect to every individual, and are not permitted under any circumstances to practice slavery or use humans as test subjects without their knowledge and consent. In the same sense, Rolston argues that we’re obligated to respect nature due to its intrinsic value, rather than its instrumental value for humans. Humans don’t put value in the environment; it’s already there. All of nature is a productive and creative process and “there is value wherever there is positive creativity.”59 Rolston reminds us that when we’re walking in the woods, far from other humans, something “tells us” that although no other human may walk this path again to see the beautiful flowers, we still ought not to pick them. Each flower struggles to survive, to defend its life, and we should not interrupt this process needlessly. The organism seeks its own good or telos, the natural goal of an organism, which requires different actions depending on its species—a plant photosynthesizes, while a wampa seeks and eats meat. And this process is itself intrinsically creative. If a plant’s stem is cut off, it will repair itself; it will work to recover in a way that a blaster or an AT-AT Wa
lker won’t. Although plants and (some) animals are not conscious of this process, it’s the creative process, not the awareness of it, that has value.

  By itself, this view would appear to be an environmental individualism, the view that we have ethical obligations to distinct individuals (in this case, each living organism) and not necessarily to species or the environment as a whole. But Rolston argues that ultimately each individual organism shouldn’t be seen apart from its relationships with other organisms, or from those processes which produced it—in other words, their ecosystem. The sea monsters in the waters of Naboo, for example, must be seen as part of their larger ecosystem, including the water, the caves, and the other organisms in the food chain to which they’ve had to adapt. An ecosystem isn’t simply a collection of interacting individuals, but a system of processes and relationships between different organisms; this system creates and sustains life.60 Natural processes don’t just create organisms; they create diversity within species. And this ends up being good for the overall ecosystem. In this sense, ecosystems seek their own good and for this reason the ecosystem should be valued as well. So, while intrinsic value is typically considered independent of all else, Rolston insists that it be considered within a whole system. In other words, each organism has intrinsic value, but intrinsic value isn’t absolute value (as is normally believed).61 He says:The dialectic of instrumental and intrinsic values, embedded in systemic value, is communitarian without subtracting anything organismic because it integrates organic parts in a community whole. Earthworms are of value because they aerate the soil for grasses and supply food for catbirds, but also because they have an inherent good of their own. Neither their instrumental value to grasses and catbirds or to the system, nor their intrinsic value in themselves—no single thing alone but the fusion of all contributes to integrity, stability, and beauty in the community.62