The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy

by Bruce Krajewski

  —TAGOMI

  In the crazy world of The Man in the High Castle, the one place of peace is usually Trade Minister Tagomi’s office. In that world, where East and West meet in the most macabre of circumstances, Tagomi offers us an interesting third alternative to our debate on free will. This is the stunning theory known as compatibilism, which claims that both determinism and libertarianism are right and that there is no conflict between the two. As Tagomi tries to make peace between dueling empires, so do compatibilist theories attempt to reconcile philosophical enemies.

  The idea of compatibilism is that the whole debate between determinists and libertarians is just one big misunderstanding. They both think that the word ‘freedom’ means “to act without a cause,” but this is just plain wrong. As philosopher W.T. Stace says, it doesn’t even take a whole lot of sophisticated philosophical trickery to show this. All we have to do is just look at how the word “freedom” is normally used and all our metaphysical problems will disappear.

  Take these two examples:

  1.Juliana gets on a bus to go to the Neutral Zone

  2.Frank gets naked in his prison cell

  Which of these are free acts? Well, it’s quite obvious that Juliana acted freely. Nobody forced her to get on that bus. Reasons aside, she believes that going to the Neutral Zone can accomplish something, so she got on the bus. What about Frank? Well, it’s also very clear that this was not a free act. The Kempeitai beat him and forced him to take his clothes off. He didn’t really have any choice here.

  Even though we say that Juliana’s is a free act and Frank’s isn’t, both of these acts have causes. Juliana says, “I got on that bus because I thought there was hope for the future.” Frank of course got naked because he was being beaten. Since both free and unfree acts are caused, then, Stace says, “The only reasonable view is that all human action, both those which are freely chosen and those which are not, are either wholly determined by causes, or at least as much determined as other events in nature.”

  What these simple examples show is that freedom has nothing to do with whether or not an event is caused! Remember, this is the crux of the determinist argument. They said that everything is just the result of causes, which means we aren’t actually free. But, as Stace shows with examples like the ones we just saw, even free acts such as Juliana’s are the result of causes!

  What then is the difference between a free act and an unfree act?

  Well, if we look at our examples again, the only difference has to do with the source of the cause in question. The cause behind Juliana getting on the bus is an internal or psychological cause. She got on the bus because of a belief she had. It is her belief, and not something imposed from the outside. On the other hand, the cause behind Frank’s undressing is external. He didn’t decide or believe that getting naked would make the prison cell more comfy. It was the Kempeitai who forced him to do it.

  What is freedom then? According to compatibilism, freedom is acting according to an internal or psychological cause. Since the world has both types of causation, since they can both exist together, and, since we’re regularly affected by both, compatibilists say that we’re both free and determined, and that there is no conflict in holding both ideas.

  Minister Tagomi is keenly aware of this. In a scene that might have seemed quite random until you, dear reader, realized that this debate is what The Man in the High Castle is about, Tagomi is told, “You’re such a good gardener! What’s the secret with flowers?” Knowing that we live in a world of causes, Tagomi says, “No secret. You plant them, they grow. Of course, you must water them.” Cause and effect. The determinists are right. And yet, so are the libertarians! When talking to Wegener about their plot to stop the war, Tagomi then says, “Fate is fluid, destiny is in the hands of men.”

  That is to say that Tagomi has recognized that the world will present us with all kinds of situations. Perhaps the science minister will bump into a friend and end up sitting somewhere other than planned. This was simply the fate Tagomi and Wegener had to deal with. This is the external causation of the world. But, like a poker player freely choosing how to play the cards he’s been dealt, it’s up to Wegener to decide whether or not to risk it and go ahead with his plot. That is now a matter of internal causation.

  We’re both free and determined, then, the compatibilists say, and there is no conflict in maintaining both theories at the same time. Everything has a cause. Deciding whether we are free at any given moment is then just a matter of understanding what kinds of causes are responsible for our actions.

  Okay, So Are We Free or Not?

  Do you believe in fate, Rudolf?

  —ADOLF HITLER

  Well, are we? Unfortunately, philosophy isn’t always great at providing definitive answers. Unlike science, philosophical theories don’t have the benefit of being proved by looking through a microscope. This is certainly the case with our debate on freedom. Whether or not you believe we’re free is now, ironically, completely up to you!

  And yet, there’s much we can learn about both ourselves and the world by thinking these things through. This is why philosophers are often fond of saying that questions are more important than answers. It’s also one of the many reasons we find The Man in the High Castle fascinating. Thinking about these situations, about what we might do or how we might act in such a world, gives us the opportunity to learn about ourselves, about what the possibilities of human action are, and about how we would like to judge our world.

  Maybe the most important consequence of this debate is how we then look at morality and punishment. If we decide the world is completely determined, then should we still hold criminals or Nazis responsible for their actions? Is punishment justified at all?

  What about if we’re free? Would your morality fit a compatibilist world?

  10

  Defying Fate

  BENJAMIN EVANS

  “You ever think how different life could be if you changed just one thing?” This is the question Juliana Crain asks Joe Blake towards the end of the third episode of The Man in the High Castle. At the time, she was thinking about how different things might have been if her father hadn’t died during the war. Yet in a way, Juliana is also asking one of the big questions posed to us by the entire show: How different would things be today if only one detail of the past were altered? Not only that, but could things have been different?

  It isn’t too hard to imagine: If it had been a bit windier on February 15th, 1933, the bullet fired by Giuseppe Zangara might well have been blown just an inch to the right, where, instead of killing Chicago mayor Anton Cermak as it actually did, it would have killed Franklin D. Roosevelt. If that had happened, Roosevelt would never have been president, and perhaps the Americans wouldn’t have had the leadership necessary to successfully enter the war when they did. Perhaps as a result they wouldn’t have been so quick to develop the atomic bomb, leaving the Nazis to acquire such technology first. And if that had happened, it isn’t too hard to imagine them bombing Washington to oblivion and then conquering the United States. An entirely different world would have resulted, and all because a bullet went an inch to the left instead of to the right.

  Some of us are quite happy to nod our heads to comforting platitudes like “Well, if it was meant to be, it was meant to be.” When we say things like this, it is as though we believe in the existence of “fate,” some mysterious force of nature or God that directs the universe to unfold as it’s supposed to. The Man in the High Castle plays with this common enough idea by presenting us with the troubling thought that perhaps the world as we know it is not in fact inevitable, that our fate could have been otherwise. The strange films which form the basis of so much of the action reveal glimpses into different potential realities, suggesting to many of the characters that life could have been (and one day again might be) quite different.

  This theme of fate has a rich history in Western philosophy. Theologians have wondered if god’s omniscience means that ou
r actions are therefore predestined, and modern secular philosophers have worried that a purely mechanical understanding of the universe might lead to the conclusion that there is no free will.

  So, if there’s such a thing as fate, what is it and how should we react to it? And if there’s no such thing as fate, what role can the mere belief in fate play in shaping our behavior and influencing the future?

  Fate in the Greater Nazi Reich

  The Man in the High Castle gives us several answers to the first question. While it does present an alternative universe (suggesting that fate is flexible and could have created a very different world), it also sometimes presents fate as totally inescapable, or at least beyond the ability of the characters to influence.

  Some, like Frank Frink, seem to be blown around by forces way outside their control. He starts off the story as a relatively contented guy with a decent job, but then the discovery of the first film quickly turns his life upside down, leading him to prison and eventually a firing squad. Then, seemingly through sheer coincidence, he is suddenly pardoned just as he’s about to be executed.

  Later on, the assassination attempt on the Crown Prince by the German agent coincidentally thwarts Frank’s own assassination plan. Later still, just as he is about to flee forever, his friend Ed happens to drops the murder weapon at work, gets arrested, and ends up falsely confessing to the Kempeitai. It seems that no matter what Frank does, fate has other plans for him, as he keeps on narrowly escaping death through “coincidences” unrelated to his own actions.

  Other characters actively attempt to fight against fate. Juliana begins the story just like Frank, relatively content to make the most of life under Japanese rule. Like the aikido she practices, her attitude is one of non-aggression, and she seeks harmony with the world around her. Again, the arrival of the film throws her life into upheaval, but she seems to be somehow more in control of what happens to her than Frank is in control of what happens to him. The film gives her a glimpse of another possible world, and as a result she says to Joe, “Maybe things don’t have to be this way. Maybe the world can change.”

  The chance arrival of the film is out of her control, but how she decides to react to it is not, and she’s soon launched from her complacent life and onto the wild and dangerous path we watch her follow. Yet later on, fate gets more complicated for her. For much of the second season, she’s attempting to prevent the destruction of San Francisco depicted in another of the films. This involves tracking down George Dixon in New York to warn him of his possible involvement, but it turns out that her actions threaten to bring about the very thing she’s been struggling to avoid. In one of the films she saw a man lying in an alley, killed by gunfire, and this is exactly what takes place later on in New York. Yet it wouldn’t have taken place if it hadn’t been for her own interference, which leads to the very situation she hoped to prevent.

  An even plainer case of fate’s inescapability is that of Trade Minister Tagomi. More than anyone else, Tagomi is interested in the question of fate, as throughout the show he continually consults the I Ching (an ancient book of Chinese divination) for guidance as to what might happen in the future. Yet his attitude towards fate is complicated—while he takes the I Ching seriously and thereby must believe that the future is at least somewhat decided, he also tells Rudolph Wegener in the very first episode “Fate is fluid. Destiny lies in the hands of men.” With this attitude, he teams up with Wegener to try to prevent the catastrophic destruction that would result from a war between the Nazis and the Japanese. Together they slip secret documents about hydrogen bomb technology to the Japanese science ministry, thus hoping to ensure that both sides are on an even playing field and can maintain their nuclear détente.

  Yet just like Juliana, it seems he might end up becoming responsible for the very thing he was trying to prevent. Instead of working for peace, the Japanese decide to make use of the technology he helped supply to develop an attack on the Nazis. At the end of the first season and well into the second, Tagomi reflects on his attempts to direct the course of history, and becomes increasingly pessimistic. No matter what action he takes, the web of human activities is just too complicated to see how any particular action will end up affecting the future. At one point he concedes that he is just a foolish old man, unable to make an impact on the fate of the world.

  Just Deal with It

  This idea of the inevitability of fate became a cornerstone of the philosophical school called Stoicism. Stoicism originated in the work of Zeno of Citium in the third century B.C.E., and then Stoic thought continued through the work of Greeks like Seneca and Epectitus, and Romans like Marcus Aurelius.

  The Stoics didn’t think that fate was some separate and mysterious supernatural force, but instead simply took “fate” to mean the system of unbending rules that governed the natural world. Since there was nothing anybody could do to change the fixed laws of the universe, it made no sense to waste time and energy trying. So much suffering and misery, they thought, was caused by the futile attempt to struggle against things that cannot be changed. We might be able to prepare for such things as disease and natural disasters, but there is nothing we can do to entirely eliminate them and so should just accept that they are part of the fate of being human.

  While the Stoics realized that they couldn’t do much to control the workings of nature, by contrast they believed that we can control our own minds. It might take some effort, but through a process of mental conditioning (what they called askesis) we can learn to direct our thoughts, control our emotions and shape our desires. In other words, we’re not in control of whether it will rain tomorrow, but we are in control of how we react to the rain if it appears. For a Stoic the trick is to learn to control our responses to life’s inevitable problems, to condition ourselves so as to be in harmony rather than opposition with the sometimes harsh world of nature. Only by attaining the necessary level of emotional control can we find peace of mind.

  Refrigerator Magnets and Philosophy

  Several characters in The Man in the High Castle illustrate Stoic ideas at different levels. Consider Ed McCarthy at the show’s start. His strategy for life under Axis rule seems to be to keep his head down, take care of those close to him, and not rock the boat. Ed’s attitude might be summed up by a slogan found on inspirational posters and refrigerator magnets all over the world: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Though often attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, this sentiment (sometimes called “the Serenity Prayer”) can be traced back all the way to the ancient Stoics.

  Throughout the show, Ed tends to sees the political order he has inherited as unchangeable, and the best thing anyone can do is to simply get on with living as decent a life as is possible in the circumstances. He is certainly willing to put his life on the line for those he cares about, but even in Season Two when he becomes more actively involved with the resistance, he remains cautious, and skeptical about how much he can really change things.

  Examples of Stoicism on the Nazi side, however, look quite different. Here the idea of emotional detachment in the face of a hostile world presents a very sinister picture. Consider the character of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. This real-life figure was so ghoulish even Hitler called him “the man with the iron heart.” For Heydrich and other members of the Nazi elite, the “natural order” so esteemed by the Stoics just meant the domination of the strong at the expense of the weak. Wolves eat sheep with no emotional interference, and clearly it is much better to be a wolf than a sheep.

  Pity, mercy, and empathy were taken to be signs of weakness and considered irrelevant to the smooth ordering of the natural way of things. Remember Hitler’s words to Wegener: “Your only sin is your weakness.” According to Hitler, Wegener’s problem is that he allowed his emotions to get in the way of progress. Even Obergruppenführer Smith eventually wrestles with this harsh attitude. Though able to
kill others with chilling detachment, he still cannot detach himself sufficiently to allow the rules against terminal illness to be applied to his own son. Instead, he contrives a plan to send him to South America, but again fate has other plans. Because he provided such an excellent model of loyalty and devotion to the Nazi cause, his son is ultimately inspired to turn himself in for almost certain execution.

  Stoic Sticking Points

  These examples highlight different problems with aspects of Stoicism. First of all, in the case of Ed, it’s all well and good for him to follow the serenity prayer and accept the things he cannot change, but his central problem is trying to decide what those things are! Without “the wisdom to know the difference” between what can and cannot be changed, the whole idea falls apart, and obtaining that wisdom is precisely the hard part.

  Can the Nazis be stopped? Is their power really like an unchangeable law of nature? Is there some way to realize an utterly different world? It might well be useless to struggle against things that cannot be changed, but unless we try we can’t easily find out what those things are. Consider all the things which humans once thought could never happen: manned flight, splitting the atom, or walking on the moon. Perhaps a Stoic would have assumed all of these things were in the “cannot be changed” category, and would never have made the effort of trying.

  We should ask whether the Stoic is correct in thinking that external “nature” cannot be changed, while internal “emotions” can be. Frank found it pretty easy to take care of the external, physical injuries he suffered from his beating by the Kempeitai, but much harder to switch off the powerful mixture of emotions he felt as a result of the death of his sister and her children. Even though the history of human advancement has involved the gradual increase in our ability to manipulate natural laws through increasingly sophisticated technological intervention, we don’t seem much better than our ancestors at controlling our emotions, at least not if numbers of people with clinical depression are anything to go by.