(Continued from part 1, part 2, part 3)
This is a conclusion to my ongoing mini-series about Batman and the ethics of killing the Joker. We first look into one last popular justification for the famous "one rule", and then propose an altogether unsatisfactory way of making sense of all this mess.
Reason 3 for not killing- Unforeseen consequences
The final reason often provided in defense of Batman's one rule is nicely encapsulated in the above quote. This too has some basic intuitive force. As the popular pseudo-philosophical question goes- if you could go back in time to kill baby Hitler, would you do so? Many people quickly answer in the affirmative, but others advice caution- maybe killing baby Hitler would lead to an even worse situation. Perhaps an even worse fascist (and more successful) dictator would fill the historical vacuum. It's impossible to know precisely how the consequences of our actions would reverberate through the future. Batman seems to be reasoning along the same lines here.
But clearly there's something different between the Hitler case and the Joker. In the latter case, the situation is incredibly simple- you have one mass-murdering maniac responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of people in gruesome ways. There aren't many deep causal connections to parse here. As such, there's simply no plausibility to the suggestion that the Joker's demise would somehow be causally responsible for the birth of an even greater villain.
(Consider also: if we really kept off doing our duties based on paranoia over something or the other in the causal matrix of the future universe going wrong without any reason to believe so, would anyone really get anything done?)
Revisiting Batman and what he stands for
So in the discussion thus far, I've tried to demonstrate that despite being a symbol of ethical excellence, Batman has been flaunting his ethical duties all this time by refusing to kill the Joker. I've looked into different common counters to this claim, and found each of them wanting. This of course leads to the unsavory conclusion that Batman, like all great pieces of fiction, houses a giant plot hole that can't really be fixed.
Unless, of course, my fundamental premise of this discussion has been wrong.
Perhaps Batman is not meant to be a symbol of ethical excellence at all. After all, why would he need to set up this roundabout way of arbitrary line-drawing to commit himself to an ethical life? Let's explore this possibility a little more.
Batman is way too paranoid when it comes to breaking his one rule. I've argued there's no justification for holding on to this rule when it comes to the Joker, especially given how inconsistent it makes him out to be given his career as a vigilante crime fighter. So maybe Batman's paranoia isn't a pious fear of committing to a slippery slope, or moral horror at the prospect of killing, but simply symptomatic of his underlying neurosis. Batman, in short, is crazy- in a literal and fundamental way. That's the only thing that explains his adoption of this one rule. His superhuman endurance and willpower are parts of his character, but those didn't come to him cheap. Those came to him at the cost of irreparable damage being done to his soul. Those aren't reflective of the cognitive conditions of a supremely ethical symbol, but rather- they represent one side of a Faustian pact.
A deeper symptom of his insanity, other than the needless, inconsistent, arbitrary paranoia at the prospect of killing the Joker, is this. Maybe when Batman fears not being able to "come back" after killing once, or that one murder would, for him, necessarily lead to more, perhaps he's just being truthful. Perhaps his soul has been so profoundly compromised that like a madman, he's simply unable to control himself. He's unable to be mature in his ethical life, he's unable to judge each situation on a case-by-case basis and render appropriate verdict. Maybe his soul is way too fragile for that sort of exercise. Which is why, like a scared child holding on to her parents, Batman holds on to his 'one rule', even in the face of arbitrariness and inconsistency.
There's nothing but this one rigid rule that's stopping him from giving in to the proverbial dark side.
This is a conclusion to my ongoing mini-series about Batman and the ethics of killing the Joker. We first look into one last popular justification for the famous "one rule", and then propose an altogether unsatisfactory way of making sense of all this mess.
Reason 3 for not killing- Unforeseen consequences
The final reason often provided in defense of Batman's one rule is nicely encapsulated in the above quote. This too has some basic intuitive force. As the popular pseudo-philosophical question goes- if you could go back in time to kill baby Hitler, would you do so? Many people quickly answer in the affirmative, but others advice caution- maybe killing baby Hitler would lead to an even worse situation. Perhaps an even worse fascist (and more successful) dictator would fill the historical vacuum. It's impossible to know precisely how the consequences of our actions would reverberate through the future. Batman seems to be reasoning along the same lines here.
But clearly there's something different between the Hitler case and the Joker. In the latter case, the situation is incredibly simple- you have one mass-murdering maniac responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of people in gruesome ways. There aren't many deep causal connections to parse here. As such, there's simply no plausibility to the suggestion that the Joker's demise would somehow be causally responsible for the birth of an even greater villain.
(Consider also: if we really kept off doing our duties based on paranoia over something or the other in the causal matrix of the future universe going wrong without any reason to believe so, would anyone really get anything done?)
Revisiting Batman and what he stands for
So in the discussion thus far, I've tried to demonstrate that despite being a symbol of ethical excellence, Batman has been flaunting his ethical duties all this time by refusing to kill the Joker. I've looked into different common counters to this claim, and found each of them wanting. This of course leads to the unsavory conclusion that Batman, like all great pieces of fiction, houses a giant plot hole that can't really be fixed.
Unless, of course, my fundamental premise of this discussion has been wrong.
Perhaps Batman is not meant to be a symbol of ethical excellence at all. After all, why would he need to set up this roundabout way of arbitrary line-drawing to commit himself to an ethical life? Let's explore this possibility a little more.
Batman is way too paranoid when it comes to breaking his one rule. I've argued there's no justification for holding on to this rule when it comes to the Joker, especially given how inconsistent it makes him out to be given his career as a vigilante crime fighter. So maybe Batman's paranoia isn't a pious fear of committing to a slippery slope, or moral horror at the prospect of killing, but simply symptomatic of his underlying neurosis. Batman, in short, is crazy- in a literal and fundamental way. That's the only thing that explains his adoption of this one rule. His superhuman endurance and willpower are parts of his character, but those didn't come to him cheap. Those came to him at the cost of irreparable damage being done to his soul. Those aren't reflective of the cognitive conditions of a supremely ethical symbol, but rather- they represent one side of a Faustian pact.
A deeper symptom of his insanity, other than the needless, inconsistent, arbitrary paranoia at the prospect of killing the Joker, is this. Maybe when Batman fears not being able to "come back" after killing once, or that one murder would, for him, necessarily lead to more, perhaps he's just being truthful. Perhaps his soul has been so profoundly compromised that like a madman, he's simply unable to control himself. He's unable to be mature in his ethical life, he's unable to judge each situation on a case-by-case basis and render appropriate verdict. Maybe his soul is way too fragile for that sort of exercise. Which is why, like a scared child holding on to her parents, Batman holds on to his 'one rule', even in the face of arbitrariness and inconsistency.
There's nothing but this one rigid rule that's stopping him from giving in to the proverbial dark side.