Star Wars and Philosophy

by Kevin S. Decker

  An Empire of Fear and Trembling

  The management of fear is the business of the Empire, and fear is the coinage of power that must make itself visibly terrible in order to rule.128 The Emperor, precisely because he is unequal in relation to his subjects, cannot exert his power at all times. Within such a system it’s the exceptional, the example or spectacle, which must circulate and demonstrate power. The decision to destroy the planet Alderaan, for instance, was made not because it constituted a threat, but because its visibility made it a useful show of force. “Dantooine,” Grand Moff Tarkin announces, “is too remote to make an effective demonstration.” True, the exercise of power is excessive, but it isn’t indiscriminate—its use is calculated to maximize fear and render unnecessary the actual deployment of force elsewhere: “Fear will keep the local systems in line, fear of this battle station.”

  Like all weapons of mass destruction, the Death Star’s military function cannot be easily separated from its political and policing functions—its purpose as a method of domestic control. Its objective power lies not in its actual use, but in the threat of its use, and herein lays the secret of its political function of justifying the exercise of power. “This station,” says one overly zealous commander, “is now the ultimate power in the universe, I suggest we use it.” The suggestion can be ignored, but not the implication. By its very existence, the Death Star invites use and seemingly justifies the extension of Imperial power to every corner of the galaxy. The power to destroy a planet is the power to render obedient entire populations. When wielded by the master, it shows who his enemies are, and in doing so it explains and justifies the master’s power by revealing its strength.

  The Death Star is the most spectacular display of a power that is not afraid of being seen as terrible; but it isn’t the only display of that power, nor the only way by which that power makes itself felt. The Emperor’s control over individuals, unlike that exercised over entire populations, must be managed with a degree of flexibility that corresponds with the interest he has in extracting ever more useful labor from them. In order to make those individuals useful and cooperative, the Emperor may replace the specific dread of a well-defined threat like the Death Star with the more constant terror of the unknown. “The Emperor is coming here?” a surprised commander asks at the beginning of Return of the Jedi. “Yes,” Vader replies, “and he is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress.” The threat is undefined and left to play upon the commander’s imagination. Almost without hesitation he responds: “We shall double our efforts!” And then a second ill-defined threat is voiced and left to hang in the air: “I hope so, commander, for your sake. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.” Vader’s “forgiveness” is legendary, after all.

  In still other cases, the threat is defined but its meaning left unclear. In his confrontation with the Emperor, Luke’s fear of seeing the Rebellion fail, of becoming like his father, and of seeing his sister turned to the Dark Side all become real. But what would it mean to become like his father? Does the end of the Rebellion mean the end of all rebellion; what exactly does it signal? If the Rebel fleet is destroyed, are his friends necessarily killed? Can the Emperor find Leia and if so, what would it mean to turn her to the Dark Side? In no case is Luke confronted with a specific and implacable sign of what’s to come. Rather, a web of fear is spread by the Emperor’s taunting in order to elicit Luke’s anger and call forth that all-too-human power to override reason and give in to hate.

  If the mechanism of fear explains how it is the Emperor rules his Empire and primarily relates to his subjects, it is hatred that explains his relation to his closest advisors and minions—Darth Maul, Count Dooku, and most especially, Darth Vader. Neither equality nor recognition, but instead hatred ties each to the other, because hatred is the primary way by which each makes sense of themselves and the world. Each is driven by his own hatred of life, of all things good, and (it is likely) of himself. Not surprisingly, then, each sees in the other a reflection of himself: something to resent and hate perhaps, but also something intelligible and understandable, a kind of common ground.

  Earlier we saw that the master seeks after equals with whom he can relate as a self-conscious being. If Hegel is right and the master can never be satisfied with himself and his life, then it’s not surprising that the Emperor should come to hate life and himself. In other words, it’s reasonable to think that hatred will become the primary way by which the master understands his experience of the world and himself. Consequently, that same hatred will constitute the sole means by which the master relates to others as self-conscious beings, that is, as relative equals. Naturally those relations will be seriously impoverished and deficient, as indeed they are. Even so, because those relations are formed around the principle focus by which each understands himself (in this case hatred), those relationships will be more personal, stronger, and more enduring than any other relation each might have. More than anything else, this explains the Emperor’s power over his minions and their respective allegiances to him. As Vader confides in Luke, “I must obey my master.”

  We might see this most clearly if we think carefully about the evolution of Darth Vader and his eventual betrayal of the Emperor. Vader starts off, in A New Hope, as a dark embodiment of everything evil. In his first cinematic act, he crushes a man’s neck while questioning him about the whereabouts of some stolen plans. From there, things only get worse: with the hindsight of the later films, we know he allows the death of his step-family, Owen and Beru Lars; interrogates and tortures his own daughter; kills his old friend and mentor, Obi-Wan; and nearly kills his son in the Death Star trench. In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader does no better—in a number of instances he simply kills those subordinates who fail him in a kind of idealized form of corporate downsizing. And so by the time we reach the last installment of the saga, Return of the Jedi, and are aware of Luke’s parentage, we’re given almost no reason to think that Luke is anything more than deluded in believing there is “still good in him.” On the contrary, the so-called struggle Luke senses in his father is buried so deeply that, up until the point where Luke lays prostrate before a murderous Emperor, we’re given no indication that Vader is anything more than a willing servant of evil. Then, and only then, does Vader act to save his son.

  So why does he do it? Or, better yet—how does Vader surmount the Emperor’s hold over him?

  There’s really only one possible answer: Vader overcomes the Emperor by overcoming his hate and achieving a new self-consciousness. Confronted with his son’s unshakeable belief in his goodness, Vader comes to realize the truth about himself—he isn’t a pawn of evil, but a man of inherent goodness and nobility.129 Vader turns on the Emperor when he becomes aware of himself as something other than a hate-filled man, something other than a slave. And, that awareness comes at precisely the moment when Vader comes face-to-face with the possibility of watching die the only person who saw goodness in him, his son Luke.

  Luke and Vader’s personal struggle with their own fears is at the heart of the larger story about struggle and conflict between the Rebels and the Empire. The resolution of that personal struggle represents a moment of self-discovery for both characters, a moment when each comes to understand, in virtue of their relation to one another, who they really were. And the same can be said for the larger struggles that are taking place within the saga. The Ewoks, for instance, prove who and what they are in their confrontation with the Empire. Similarly, the Naboo and the Trade Federations reveal something of themselves in their responses to the collapse of the Republic and the rise of the Sith. This, it seems, is what Hegel was trying to tell us—in the relation between masters and slaves, it is the slave, and not the master, who is in a position to reveal something about our possibilities as human beings. Fear may create and sustain relations of inequality, but the desire to know who and what we are will, in the end, likely triumph.

  14

  By Any Means Necessary: Tyranny, Democracy, R
epublic, and Empire

  KEVIN S. DECKER

  Palpatine—the weasel-like Senator from Naboo, the rapidly wrinkling Supreme Chancellor, and ultimately the cackling, loathsome Emperor—is reviled universally by fans as the epitome of evil. Still, you’ve got to give him credit for his political savvy. After all, Palpatine’s career is a textbook case in how the unceasing desire for power can change something like democracy, or rule by the many, into a tyrannical dictatorship. Using the constant threat posed by the Dark Side of the Force, the Sith—Palpatine and his protegé, Darth Vader—use the hyper-technological Imperial military to keep iron-fisted, monochromatic control over the galaxy. How different this vision is from the diverse and colorful, if conflicted, Old Republic of the prequel trilogy!

  This same kind of political one-hundred-eighty degree turn has occurred in human history, too. Politicians, political scientists and theorists over many centuries have grappled with how this could have happened, in most cases in order to prevent it from happening again. But the story of the road to tyranny isn’t just of historical interest, even though democracy and tyranny date back to ancient Greece. It also embroils us in heady debates of today about the source of political authority, whether the needed expertise of politicians is a good trade-off against the possibility of their corruption, and how much power can safely be concentrated in the hands of a few.

  These arguments often boil down to the question of who rules versus who should rule. This isn’t an easy question, because it presumes that we’ve settled on what kind of government is best—democracy, republic, aristocracy, or some other? Also, it presumes that we know whether rulers need some virtue or expertise in order to rule, or could everyone simply rule themselves? Political life in the Star Wars galaxy provides us a jumping off point in approaching these central questions of political philosophy.

  Galactic Politics for Dummies

  Despite their lukewarm reception by the fans, Episodes I-III in the Star Wars saga tell us the most about the political forces that fundamentally drive its episodic stories and overall narrative. With the blockbuster episodes made in the late 1970s and 1980s, there wasn’t much to say. The Cold War-style political message of Star Wars at that time was fairly simple: big, evil empires that rely on soulless technology and dominating control over their populations are bad, and rebellion against such empires is justified. By contrast, Episodes I-III deliver a more complex message about the human failings and weaknesses that help to undermine a huge, declining federation of civilizations.

  To answer the question of how a democratic form of government could slide into empire, we have to define a few terms and make a few guesses about the nature of the Republic. In our galaxy, the word “republic” originates from the Latin res publica, the realm of public life outside of private affairs. The term’s meaning is roughly equivalent to what we would call the “commonwealth” or “common good.” Palpatine’s government may be a republic in this simple sense alone: it recognizes and works for the common good. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin voices an idea of what a good republic ought to do. “We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree to what’s in the best interest of all the people, and then do it,” he says to Padmé.

  But some might argue that “republicanism” means more than just recognition of the common good. Government should be built on the idea that the freedom of its citizens is essential, they say, but their freedom depends on their taking part in government. Their participation includes protecting themselves from the arbitrary influence of others.130 Such protection can be secured in lots of different ways, perhaps most importantly through justifiable restrictions on the power of both government and certain collective interests like corporations and special-interest groups. However the republican tradition in political thought also stresses that citizens must be active participants in political life according to moral or civic duty. Rather than simply defining what republics have been historically, this way of thinking has moral importance—it makes a statement about how political life contributes to the good life, and what we ought to do to achieve it.

  “The problem,” writes Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century, “is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.”131 Rousseau poses the thorny question of how to balance the group needs that we all share and that can’t be served without collective action with the dignity and autonomy (or self-rule) of the individual.

  The Republic also seems to have certain features of a democracy. Democracies need two ideals as essential ingredients of their laws and institutions: self-government and equality. Since every inhabitant of Naboo, Coruscant, Dantooine, Kashyyk and all the others can’t be expected to vote on every issue before the Senate, they interpret “self-government” the same way we do in America—in terms of a representative democracy. This is the preferred option for any large, heavily populated democracy for obvious reasons. There have been direct democracies, though, in which individual citizens do vote on everything. We can’t conclude that simply because the Republic seems to be a democracy, every planetary system within it is also ruled by the people. Naboo, for example, democratically elects its queen, but it’s implied in The Phantom Menace that the Gungans haven’t had a say in the larger political affairs of the planet for some time.

  So, is the Republic founded on the ideal of equality as well? By this we can’t suggest that in a democracy everyone is born equal in terms of their talents, capacities, social or economic status. Obviously the set of our natural endowments is virtually unique to each individual. Instead, equality in a democracy usually means equal rights, equal opportunity, and equal standing under the law. Civil rights laws, welfare systems, public education, and trial by a jury of one’s peers have all been used to promote this kind of equality. But in the Star Wars galaxy, it’s clear that this kind of equality isn’t treated as a universal standard. Certain societies, such as the Jedi Order, seem to function based on hierarchical, not democratic principles. There are planets like Tatooine where slavery is not only legal, but also the basis of the economy; but as Shmi Skywalker points out, Tatooine isn’t part of the Republic. And there’s also the controversial issue of whether droids are persons, have rights, and thus deserve to be treated equally with “organics.”132 These are all reminders that in reality democracy has both an ideal meaning and a real landscape, as the examples of the civil rights and women’s voting movements of the twentieth century show. In both cases, only moral arguments and public protests enlarged our conception of what equality meant, even as large numbers of citizens held that opportunities ought to be restricted to white men.

  Let’s assume that the Republic is a democratic republic in more than name only. How do we get from that to the tyranny of the Empire? Aristotle provides us with a suitable definition for tyranny: it’s the “arbitrary power of an individual which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will.”133 So the idea of a ruler who acts in blatant defiance of the laws, or perhaps in the absence of laws, is central to the definition of tyranny. Ancient Greek tyrants and Roman dictators were often voted into power by means of the laws they later defied, in order to respond to an external challenge to their state, like imminent invasion, or in some cases because of internal threats, such as civil war.

  In his own route to tyranny, Palpatine and his alter ego, Darth Sidious, have taken a path like the one expressed in the lyrics of an old German song: “against democrats, only soldiers help.” The Sith Lord’s alliance with the Trade Federation and his commissioning of the Kaminoan clone army through the Jedi Sifo-Dyas both paved the way for the Clone Wars ten years later. Lust for power, not high ideals, is Palpatine’s primary motivation. Palpatine wants to transform the Repub
lic to obtain power, and he realizes that the only way to establish power over such a large, diverse group of peoples is through the use of military might. One snag: the mainly pacifist Senate won’t allow such an army to be mustered, even when they find out that they have the Kamino clones at their disposal. Palpatine can’t let this stand in his way, but fortunately his long-term scheming has paved the way for a solution. In Revenge of the Sith, we finally see his plan revealed in its awful magnitude, and its keystone is the power of the clone army to destroy most of the Jedi, allow Palpatine to dissolve the Senate, and suppress any opposition to his declaring himself Emperor. Why did the Senate vote in favor of giving Palpatine dictatorial authority, thus allowing him to harness the power he would eventually use to crush them? The answer is a familiar and simple one: fear.

  Fear as an Ally

  “Fear is my ally,” hisses Darth Maul in the exciting ad campaign that led up to the much-anticipated release of The Phantom Menace. Maul’s sentiment is echoed by Grand Moff Tarkin, who in A New Hope says that the finished Death Star will have a deterrent effect against rebellion, since “fear will keep the local systems in line.” Both agree about the political value of fear with Palpatine, who is positively Machiavellian in his scheming toward the Empire, in the way he later controls his domain, and even while he taunts Luke to use his fear and anger as a means to bring him over to the Dark Side. In this, he is the paradigm of “the Prince,” the unscrupulous ruler envisioned by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), a Renaissance political thinker who advised Italy’s Borgia and Medici families. Machiavelli famously declared that if a prince has the choice between being loved and being feared by his subjects, he ought to choose fear. Ever the realist, Machiavelli held that this is because “love is held by a chain of obligation which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.”134