Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts Read online

  This point is hardly novel in philosophical literature. Indeed, many leading philosophers have pointed out the ultimate futility of life within a naturalistic framework. For a particularly memorable instance of this consider the following passage from William James’s famous work The Varieties of Religious Experience:

  For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature’s portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.42

  So Why Not Take the Money and Run?

  Naturalism poses another glaring question that we cannot avoid. If ultimate reality is indeed matter, energy, and the like, then it is amoral. That is, it is morally indifferent since it is impersonal. Morality is a concern for persons and what is good for them, how they should live, and so on. If ultimate reality is impersonal, then morality is not a part of it. That is why Wilson, cited above, believes morality is a human creation and, as such, is open to our revision.

  If naturalism is true, then it has great implications about what is worth valuing and what is of ultimate importance. If there is no life after death, if this life is the end, then it is not so clear why many traditional values are worth the cost. Think about self-sacrifice, for instance, an action that not only has great positive significance in traditional morality, but is also very highly valued in our story. For example, in the remarkable game of chess that Harry, Hermione, and Ron participate in while trying to get to the Stone, Ron is willing to sacrifice himself so Harry can get checkmate. When Harry and Hermione protest, Ron snaps at them, “You’ve got to make some sacrifices!” (SS, p. 283). And later, Dumbledore reveals to Harry the great significance of his mother’s sacrifice in dying to save him when Voldemort tried to kill him as an infant. Such powerful love marked him with a sort of protection that would always be with him (SS, p. 299).

  Dumbledore explains this more fully in Order of the Phoenix when he tells Harry why he arranged for him to be raised by his aunt and uncle.

  But I knew where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated—to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative. (OP, pp. 835-36)

  Consider the very real sacrifices made by people in our world, such as the young soldiers who have given their lives in wars. If there is no life after death, then they have forfeited the only happiness available. Many people admire such sacrifice, but we cannot avoid asking why we should have this attitude. Or think about other smaller sacrifices that are made for the sake of living a moral life, like the choice not to have sex outside of marriage. The question is inevitable: if there is no life after death, is there any compelling reason to accept traditional morality, to live by honor, even if it may cost one certain very appealing pleasures, or more drastically, life itself?

  A few years ago there was a beer commercial that summed up the issue very concisely, as beer commercials often do. It said, “you only go around once in life, so you’ve got to grab all the gusto you can.”

  If it really is true that we only go around once, then we die, we rot, and it’s all forgot, then this view makes a good deal of sense. It does not make sense, however, given traditional moral assumptions. In particular, one fundamental assumption of traditional morality is that our ultimate happiness and well being is served, not by being selfish and immoral, but rather by being moral. This assumption makes sense if there is life after death and we are accountable for our actions in such a way that our eternal happiness depends on our doing the right thing and choosing what is truly good. But if there is no life after death and no final accountability, then the only goods that exist are the goods of this life. And if this is so, then some traditional moral requirements are harder to justify.

  This is not to say that there is no reason to be moral if there is no life after death. Certainly naturalists have defended morality on their own principles and their arguments are not lightly to be dismissed. For instance, what is moral is often the smart thing to do, and serves our happiness and well being in the short run as well as the long run.

  While this is undeniable and would be agreed upon by naturalists as well as theists, there is more to the story. Sometimes what is moral is not only inconvenient, it is also extremely costly and demanding. The more difficult question is whether there is any really good reason to be moral when that is the case. Even more to the point, is there any obligation to do what is moral?

  Let us put the point in terms of a thought experiment. Suppose there is no life after death and one is given the choice of either 1) living a life of sacrifice to help others or 2) a life of wealth and pleasure, even if one has to cut a few moral corners. Which would be preferable? While some may choose the life of sacrifice because they would find it intrinsically satisfying, or they feel a duty to do so, is there really any convincing reason why one should not take the money and run if one is so inclined?

  Magical Moral Obligations

  This notion of moral obligation is key, and it is worthwhile to direct attention to it for a moment. It’s not the only concern of ethics, but it’s an important part. Do you think that Harry was morally obligated to risk himself in saving Dudley at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix? Despite Dudley’s obvious character flaws, Harry probably was. If so, then we might wonder how moral obligations derive their binding power. Moral duties don’t derive their force from serving self-interest, for sometimes they tell us to sacrifice self-interest. So where does their force come from? This is an ethical question that raises the deeper question of what kind of world we live in. If there really are moral obligations that tell us on occasion to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others, the natural question to ask is what sort of world would make best sense of this? It is exactly because moral obligations, if they existed, demand sacrifice of self-interest and feature other odd characteristics, that atheist J.L. Mackie was convinced that they wouldn’t exist without an all-powerful God to create them.43 Genuine moral duties that always trump other competing desires and concerns would be utterly odd entities in a purely natural world. Indeed, they would be practically magical! As an atheist, Mackie thus denied that there are any such obligations after all.

  Mackie is not alone among atheists in recognizing that the denial of God’s existence has serious moral repercussions. Another notable example is the atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the best-known philosophers of the twentieth century, who clearly saw that moral philosophy is profoundly affected if there is no God. He took strong issue with secular ethicists who confidently imagined that we can easily dispense with God while keeping morality pretty much the same as it has always been. He described their agenda as follows:

  Toward 1880, when the French professors endeavored to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously… . It must be considered obligatory … to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other words … nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we sh
all rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself.44

  Sartre remained unconvinced. He found it “extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven… . It is nowhere written that ‘the good’ exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men.”45 In contrast, he took as his starting point Dostoevsky’s claim that if God does not exist and this life is all there is, everything is permitted. Mackie and Sartre, although atheists, agreed that if God exists, this has enormous implications for morality.

  This basic point was also recognized by theistic philosopher Immanuel Kant, who maintained that God’s existence is essential for morality. He is well known for arguing that the moral enterprise needs the postulate of a God who can, and will, make happiness correspond to virtue. As George Mavrodes writes, “I suspect that what we have in Kant is the recognition that there cannot be, in any ‘reasonable’ way, a moral demand upon me, unless reality itself is committed to morality in some deep way.”46 Again, then, we’re reminded that the way world is, the ultimate truth of the matter, has far-reaching implications for morality.

  So let’s raise the question again, is there any convincing reason why one shouldn’t take the money and run if one is so inclined?

  Some Damned Good Reasons

  Let us return to Dumbledore’s remarks cited above. Recall his claim that “to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” Does the great wizard believe in life after death after all? If so, his warning is not directed against desiring immortality itself, but rather against seeking to prolong this life indefinitely, no matter what we have to do to accomplish it.

  But perhaps it is not up to us to prolong our lives at any cost. Perhaps immortality is a gift, but a gift to be received only under certain conditions. In this case, to the well-ordered mind, death could indeed be the next great adventure.

  Just what this adventure is in Rowling’s books remains unclear, at least through Order of the Phoenix. This is apparent in a conversation Harry has with Nearly Headless Nick the ghost after he lost Sirius. It is Harry’s hope that Sirius will come back as a ghost so he can see him again. According to Nick, however, only wizards can come back, but most of them choose not to do so. Sirius, he says, will have “gone on.” Harry presses the question: “Gone on where? Listen—what happens when you die, anyway? Where do you go? Why doesn’t everyone come back?” Nick answers that he was afraid of death and that is why he himself remained behind. “I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead” (OP, p. 861).

  The life of a ghost, then, is “neither here nor there” as Nick puts it, and Harry is left with no answer to his urgent questions. The mystery of what happens when we die, unlike the Chamber of Secrets, remains closed.

  By contrast, theism in general, and Christianity in particular, offer a more definite answer to Harry’s questions. So let us briefly consider the Christian account of metaphysical reality and how it relates to morality and life after death. According to Christianity, ultimate reality is not matter, energy, and laws of nature. Rather, these are all things created by the ultimate reality, namely, God. The distinctively Christian view of God is striking indeed. According to it, the one God exists eternally as three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is an admittedly mysterious idea, but what I want to emphasize is that it is the foundation for the well-known idea that God is love. C.S. Lewis, the noted Christian writer, pointed this out as follows.

  All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.47

  What this means is that the nature of ultimate reality, the fundamental metaphysical truth, is loving relationship. God from all eternity has existed as a loving relationship among three persons. Moreover, God loves all His creatures so deeply that He was willing to sacrifice himself to show how much He loves them and wants them to love Him in return. This is what is involved in the Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God who willingly died for us on the cross to save us from our sins.

  If this is true, the story about Harry Potter’s mother and the power of her blood is a reflection of one of the deepest truths about reality, namely, that all of us are loved by One who was willing to spill his blood and die for us.48 Furthermore, the love of Harry’s mother is a picture of the fact that love is a greater and more powerful thing than evil and death. It was her sacrificial love that protected Harry when Voldemort and Quirrell tried to kill him. In the Christian story, the resurrection of Jesus shows that love is stronger than death. Jesus offers to share his life with all who believe in him, and this life gives those who receive it the power to live forever. So understood, Christianity is a great love story and it is based on the belief that love is the deepest reality and evil cannot defeat it.

  As Dumbledore explains to Harry, the one thing Voldemort cannot understand is love (SS, p. 299). His way of life is the complete opposite of love. Rather than being willing to sacrifice himself for others, he is willing to sacrifice innocent beings for his own selfish purposes. This is shown in the fact that he was willing to perform the monstrous act of slaying a unicorn to keep himself alive. As Firenze, a Centaur, explains to Harry, the only sort of person who would do such a thing would be one “who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain.” But to keep oneself alive in this manner is to have only a half-life, a cursed life. Harry’s thought when he hears this is quite to the point: “If you’re going to be cursed forever, death’s better, isn’t it?” (SS, p. 258).

  It is because love is the deepest reality that it makes sense to do the right thing even if it requires sacrifice to do so. Since God is love, the irony is that when we show love to Him by doing the right thing, we are also acting in our own best self-interest, for He can be trusted to ensure our long-term well being. This is not the same as acting selfishly and it is very important to see the difference. To act selfishly is to promote one’s own interest at the unfair advantage of others or even to be willing to do horrible things, like Voldemort, to serve one’s own purposes.

  The notion that being moral can be at odds with our true self-interest has been a major problem for modern and post-modern moral philosophy. It is a dilemma indeed if one must choose between being moral and acting in one’s ultimate self-interest. And it is hard to see how one can reasonably be required to choose what is moral in such a case. And this dilemma arises easily for those with a naturalistic worldview. Prior to modern times, by contrast, moral philosophers generally agreed that there can be no conflict between being moral and our ultimate self-interest.

  For the Christian worldview, this conflict simply does not arise. While I do not wish to suggest that there are no other possible answers to this conflict, I do want to emphasize that Christianity offers powerful resources to resolve it. I especially have in mind its account of life after death, particularly its beliefs about heaven and hell. In view of these beliefs, it is impossible to harm one’s ultimate well being by doing what is right, even if doing what is right costs one’s life. For the person who acts self-sacrificially in obedience to God is acting in accord with ultimate reality, which is the very love of God Himself. He has the gift of eternal life, and he will continue to live with God in heaven after he dies. Death cannot destroy him just as Voldemort could not kill Harry.

  Likewise, it is impossible to advance our ultimate well being by doing evil. While our short-term interests may be promoted by doing what is wrong, we are acting against the ultimate grain of reality and we will eventually have to account for our choices. To act immorally is t
o act against love and to cut ourselves off from God, whose very nature is love. This is hell. This is the cursed life of one like Voldemort who is willing to embrace evil to promote his own purposes.

  The right metaphysical view of ultimate reality has huge implications for how we ought to live. On the Christian view, it is precisely because life is forever that there are powerfully good reasons to be moral and to choose the way of love rather than the way of getting as much money as we can for our own selfish purposes. Love is the deepest reality and, if we understand that, we can avoid the trap of choosing the very things that are worst for us. To understand the way of love is to have the sort of well-ordered mind that makes all of life, even death, a fabulous adventure!49

  6

  Magic, Science, and the Ethics of Technology

  BENJAMIN J. BRUXVOORT LIPSCOMB and W. CHRISTOPHER STEWART

  In this chapter, we take the grand, ready-made thought experiment of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and use it to try to get a better grip on a difficult, real-world issue: the ethics of technological adaptation.50 If, as we think, the use and abuse of magic in Rowling’s books is a close analogue for the use and abuse of applied science—technology—in our world, then the ethical judgments her heroes make concerning magic may have something to teach us about an appropriate ethics of applied science. In the first part of this chapter, we establish a connection between the magic of Harry’s world and the science of our own world. In the second part of the chapter, we outline Rowling’s ethics of magic and consider what it might be saying to us about the ethics of technological adaptation in the real world.