Superhero Thought Experiments: Comic Book Philosophy
224
Superhero Thought Experiments: Comic Book Philosophy
224eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609386566 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Iowa Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
the Big Bang to Action Comics No. 1 and comics editor of Shenandoah.
Nathaniel Goldberg is professor of philosophy at Washington and Lee University. He is author of Kantian Conceptual Geography.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SUPERCONSEQUENCES VS. DARK DUTIES
Comic book scholars offer a range of attributes for defining the superhero character type, including alter egos, code names, and costumes. But the two most central traits are variations on superpowers and goodness. Whether physical strength, intelligence, or some other amazing ability, superheroes must have greater power than the rest of us. And, as Stan Lee first phrased it, with great power there must also come — great responsibility! We discussed in the introduction that, as Peter Coogan put it, superheroes have a "pro-social mission" (30). They must act morally.
But what does "moral" mean? What if different superheroes define the word differently?
Whatever else it means, morality has to do with right and wrong, and ultimately codes of conduct. It concerns how people ought to behave toward one another and the world around them. Morality is therefore normative. Rather than describing how people do act, it prescribes how they should act. Because they possess goodness — that is, moral goodness — superheroes do act how they should. Without being moral, a superhero wouldn't be a hero at all. She would merely be a superhuman and perhaps even a supervillain.
Because morality is a defining trait of the character type, the focus of our first chapter is ethics, or the study of morality. Philosophers who study ethics examine and evaluate different moral codes and whether particular actions or intentions are morally right or wrong. While the superhero character type acts morally, are individual characters motivated by the same moral code? And what can we say about those codes?
While first-year philosophy students learn about morality in their introductory courses, we turn to first-year superheroes for our first thought experiments. Though superhero comics have evolved vastly since their introduction, two heroes first defined the genre: Superman and Batman. Some might argue that Superman and Batman continue to define the genre, but we would have to ask, which Superman and which Batman? Like their genre, these characters have undergone major revisions over the decades, with the involvement of hundreds if not thousands of authors in the pages of comic books and novels, in episodes of radio and television shows, in video games, and on the big screen. Though DC has maintained some control through its editorial staff (which itself has been evolving), neither character presents a single, consistent superhero thought experiment or comic book philosophy. Neither presents a single, consistent "What if?"
We therefore limit this first chapter to Superman's and Batman's founding stories, roughly the first year of each comic. For Superman, that's Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Action Comics #1 (June 1938) to Superman #1 (July 1939). For Batman, it's Bill Finger, Gardner Fox, and Bob Kane's Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) to Batman #1 (Spring 1940). These year-one incarnations sometimes differ dramatically from how later authors developed them. Superman and Batman are both, for example, surprisingly lethal. Regardless, these early episodes establish the starting points not only for each character but also for comic book superheroes as a genre — so they're an apt starting point for this book.
What if we read these two sets of authors as philosophers and their comics as philosophical treatises? What morality does each advocate through the stories they tell about their heroes? As we're about to see, Superman's and Batman's philosophies have been at odds since their earliest adventures. We take Superman's initial moral code to center around consequences and Batman's initial one around duties. Though they may often act similarly, their core commitments always differ.
Consequences and duties aren't the only such possible commitments in ethics. There is, for example, a third moral code centered around virtue. We put this aside because it's not a central view of either of these founding characters. Yet we don't limit ourselves to Superman and Batman either. Because their moral codes influenced decades of subsequent superheroes, we close by considering a major later case, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's acclaimed Watchmen (1986–87), examining how Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach inherit and alter their predecessors' philosophies.
Superman's Consequences
What if Superman's first year of adventures is read as a thought experiment illustrating one philosophical approach to morality? Superman decided from an early age that "he must turn his titanic strength into channels that would benefit mankind" (Siegel and Shuster, Superman Chronicles 1:4). This is a future-focused mission. For Superman, the right thing to do is to benefit people, or bring good to them. That makes him an ethical consequentialist, the most famous in comics.
The most famous real-world consequentialist is nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill, who believed that an action is morally right if and only if it brings about the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Mill explains in his 1864 Utilitarianism:
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. (7)
Mill means happiness or unhappiness overall. An action is morally right if and only if it brings about the greatest amount of pleasure, and the least amount of pain, for the greatest number of people. Because Mill calls this idea the "greatest happiness principle" or "utility," his kind of consequentialism — which aims at the consequence of overall happiness — is known as "utilitarianism."
Some utilitarians think that when we act we should always appeal directly to the greatest happiness principle. They're called "act" utilitarians. Others think that we can appeal instead to intermediate rules — like don't lie, cheat, or steal — that, over the long run, satisfy the greatest happiness principle. They're called "rule" utilitarians. At times Mill sounds like a rule utilitarian. But because at other times he sounds like an act utilitarian, it's unclear which kind he is. It's likewise unclear which kind Superman is. Is he always thinking about how to make the most people the happiest overall? Or is he following intermediate rules, with the understanding that they lead to the same place? There are plenty of examples in the first year of Action Comics of Superman breaking rules — he lies to Lois about his secret identity, he cheats at football by impersonating a star player to upset a rigged game, he steals profits from a crooked stocks company — but only if he achieves a greater good in the process. But he also follows rules at times. Because we can't tell for sure in Mill's or Superman's case, we treat them both as utilitarians generally.
So all utilitarians are consequentialists, even though not all consequentialists are utilitarians. There might be other consequences besides happiness that a consequentialist moral code wants to increase. But Superman and Mill are happy to increase happiness. And they're happy to do it in the aggregate, which means they prioritize society. Mill claims that because people live in societies, the greatest happiness is best achieved if societies are just: "Justice remains the appropriate name for certain social utilities which are vastly more important, and therefore more absolute and imperative, than any others are as a class" (63). For Mill, the elements of justice include things such as security, equality, and fairness — because supporting them tends to promote the greatest happiness. This is where Mill sounds like a rule utilitarian.
Though Superman doesn't talk about utility or the greatest happiness principle, he aims for similar outcomes. And in cases where Superman aims for security, equality, and fairness directly — and so for overall happiness only indirectly — he acts like a rule utilitarian too. Regardless, like all consequentialists, Superman (at least in his first year) thinks that morality has everything to do with positive results. He wants to "champion the oppressed" (Siegel and Shuster, Superman Chronicles 1:4) to better their lives. As a consequentialist, he's focused not on punishing past wrongs but on helping as many people as he can.
When Superman faces criminals, he wants to prevent them from harming anyone else, making society more secure over all. He also prefers reformation, because that can lead to the greater good — for both victims and perpetrators. In his third adventure, Superman traps the owner of the Blakely Mine in a cave-in so that he's forced to endure the dangers of his employees' working conditions. Afterward the owner promises that "my mine will be the safest in the country, and my workers the best treated. My experience in the mine brought their problems closer to my understanding" (1:44). The owner sees that justice requires that he and his employees be equally secure. When Superman gives a munitions dealer a taste of military combat, the dealer declares: "When it's your own life that's at stake, your viewpoint changes!" (1:23). This sentiment is echoed by a mayor who was unconcerned with traffic accidents until Superman made him fear for his own life: "You've shown me a viewpoint I never saw before! I swear I'll do all in my power to see that traffic rules are rigidly enforced by the police!" (1:166). Provided that the rules are just — which they are, or Superman wouldn't support them — fairness requires that they be enforced for everyone's safety. In each case, Superman reforms the wrongdoer, which results in the wrongdoer's betterment as well as the betterment of those around him. Superman is motivated by concern for future well-being.
Overall happiness, however, sometimes results in individual unhappiness. As Mill and Superman both acknowledge, individual unhappiness even includes deaths. When wrongdoers can't be reformed, Superman achieves the greatest good by lethally stopping them. When a "camp is being mercilessly riddled by a blood-thirsty aviator" shouting "Die! — like crawling ants!" (1:28), Superman shatters the propeller, allowing the plane "to fall to its doom!" (1:28). Earlier, when Superman "drops toward the ground into the midst of a torturer's inquisition," he tells the torturer that he'll "give you the fate you deserve, you torturing devil!" and "tosses him away." In the next panel, the "torturer vanishes from view behind a grove of distant trees with a pitiful wail" (1:27). Superman doesn't go out of his way to cause criminals pain and suffering — as a utilitarian, he wouldn't — but sometimes causing it is the best way to get the greatest good for the greatest number overall.
Superman also devotes himself to aiding others even when it doesn't involve battling wrongdoers. He donates his services to a circus to prevent the owner from going bankrupt (1:88). He cleans out his own savings to purchase worthless stock from people who had been swindled (1:142). In a special New York World's Fair comic, Superman completes the "infantile paralysis exhibit," so the display will raise contributions for those children (1:172). Sometimes his actions are destructive, as when he knocks down a slum to prevent its "poor living conditions" from causing more juvenile delinquents (1:108), but the outcome is still positive. When destroying the cars of traffic violators, Superman does say: "I think I'm going to enjoy this little war!" (1:156). As we'll see in the next section, that sounds like Batman's "warring on all criminals," but Superman remains results-driven. His "little war" is only a means to the end of improving public safety. It's the consequences that count, however they're achieved.
The unimportance of "warring" for its own sake is also apparent in many of the battles Superman fights. Unlike Batman's, Superman's early conflicts are often anticlimactic because the criminals he faces are so easily defeated. His first adversary, a nightclub singer who framed another woman for murder, is unable to fire her gun before Superman grabs it from her and forces her to write her confession, saving the innocent woman from execution (1:199). Likewise, the wife beater he faces next faints before Superman can make good on his promise: "And now you're going to get a lesson you'll never forget!" (1:9). Though the criminal goes unpunished, the lesson is still learned. That positive outcome is all that matters to Superman. His promise to inflict the lesson doesn't.
Batman's Duties
What if we read Batman's first year of adventures as another philosophical thought experiment illustrating an approach to a very different definition of morality? Batman decided to become a superhero at an even earlier age than Superman did. After witnessing his parents' murder, Bruce Wayne declares: "I swear by the spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals" (Finger, Fox, and Kane, Batman Chronicles 63). This is past-focused. For Batman, the right thing to do is to fulfill his duty and uphold that oath to his murdered parents. While Superman could swear an oath too, he would act on it only because of the good that it would bring about. Batman acts on his oath not because of its consequences but because he swore the oath in the first place. That makes Batman an ethical deontologist, the most famous in comics.
The most famous real-world deontologist is eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant. While Superman's consequentialism is close to Mill's, Batman's deontology isn't quite Kant's. Batman's is focused on revenge, while, as we'll see, Kant intends his to be focused on reason. We'll first consider what makes Kant a deontologist, so that we can then better appreciate Batman's deontological view.
In his 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant maintained: "It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be taken to be good without limitation, except a good will" (9). A good will imposes on the subject the duty to will, or intend, to do good things. Kant continued: "A good will is good not because of what it effects, or accomplishes, not because of its fitness to attain some intended end, but good just by its willing, i.e., in itself" (10). Accomplishments and their effects, the consequences so central to Mill, don't determine what's right or wrong. For Kant, being moral means having a good will, which means following our duty to will good things. Whether or not those good things come about is beside the point. Moral worth "does not depend on the actuality of the object of the action." It has nothing to do with whether what we're aiming at by acting is actually achieved. Instead, Kant explains, morality depends "merely on the principle of the willing according to which [...] the action is done" (15). It's the principle, or as Kant puts it elsewhere, the "maxim," behind our action that counts. What makes us good or bad is what we will ourselves to do, not any consequences that follow.
While Batman doesn't have Kant's notion of a good will, he does share Kant's belief that what we will — the maxim according to which we act — matters most, rather than its consequences. To understand Batman and Kant's shared view on this, consider how Kant would think about Batman and his trusty batarang. In his seventh adventure, Batman throws the batarang at the villainous Carl Kruger, but it's deflected by an invisible sheet of glass (Finger, Fox, and Kane, Batman Chronicles 67). Though this obviously isn't the result Batman had in mind, according to Kant, Batman is no less moral for failing to stop Kruger. He was just unlucky. In a later incident, Batman does have luck on his side. When fighting the Joker for the first time, "Batman side steps. The killer-clown stumbles forward into the building driving the knife into his own chest!" (189). Though the outcome makes society safer, according to Kant, Batman is no more moral for succeeding in stopping the Joker. He just happened to be lucky this time. The two scenes result in opposite outcomes, but in Kant's view Batman's morality is the same. Good luck, bad luck — these might affect consequences, but for the deontologist they don't affect morality. Kant explains:
Even if by some particular disfavor of fate, or by the scanty endowment of a stepmotherly nature, this will should entirely lack the capacity to carry through its purpose; if despite its greatest striving it should still accomplish nothing, and only the good will were to remain (not, of course, as a mere wish, but as the summoning of all means that are within our control); then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself. (10)
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Morality One. Superconsequences vs. Dark Duties Two. What Good Are Superheroes? Part II: Metaphysics Three. Evil Geniuses Four. Clobberin' Time Part III: Meaning Five. Referential Retcons vs. Descriptivist Reboots Six. Minding the Swamp Part IV: Medium Seven. Caped Communicators Eight. True Believers Conclusion. "Comico, ergo sum!" Works Cited IndexWhat People are Saying About This
“Truly amazing! In a titanic team-up, Gavaler and Goldberg provide a secret origin for superhero fans and philosophers of the future (who may be the same people). Superhero fans will find they’ve transformed, changed into philosophizers who understand something deeper about the world. And philosophers will look back on Superhero Thought Experiments and see the laboratory where they gained their mental powers.”—Peter M. Coogan, author, Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre
“Comics can teach you about philosophy, and philosophy will help you understand comics. What is right and wrong? What is the nature of the self? Is time really real? Superhero comics deal seriously with these classic philosophical issues.”—David Carrier, author, Aesthetics of the Margins/The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained
“From the earliest issues of the original Superman and Batman adventures, the writers of superhero comics have been doing philosophy. This great new book makes it clear how superheroes can help us think about some of the most important ideas we’ll ever confront. We adults ignore comics to our own intellectual peril. The artwork is amazing, but so are the thought experiments. So, put on your cape and take off! It’s time for Truth, Justice, and the Philosophical Way!”—Tom Morris, author,Superheroes and Philosophy: Truth, Justice, and the Socratic Way
“Superhero Thought Experiments presents a novel perspective on both comics and philosophy, arguing that superhero comics provide a rich source of philosophical thought experiments. Gavaler and Goldberg’s book should be required reading both for philosophers and for fans of comics interested in how philosophy is done.”—Roy T. Cook, author, The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach