Introducing Philosophy Through Pop Culture by Johnson David Kyle Irwin William & David Kyle Johnson

Author:Johnson, David Kyle, Irwin, William & David Kyle Johnson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781444390988
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2011-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

“Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this.”

So Ozymandias is a tragic villain, a man whose overwhelming ego and failure to appreciate the dark nature of life led him to think the end can sometimes justify the means. That means Rorschach is the hero, right? Well, no. Rorschach is a foil for Veidt in every respect: the unkempt, taciturn, right-wing outsider against the slick, eloquent, left-wing celebrity. But just being a mirror to the villain doesn’t make you the hero.

As we saw earlier, Rorschach often uses deontology to rationalize his actions. We see this in his constant mantra “in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise,” which is an echo of the deontologists’ slogan: “Let justice be done, though heaven should fall.”7 Deontology goes beyond saying that the ends never justify the means. It actually says that at least in moral decisions, you shouldn’t think in terms of ends and means, or consequences, at all. Once you start thinking about means and ends, you’ve left the realm of morality altogether, because you’re only thinking about how to get something you want, either for yourself or someone else. According to deontologist Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), morality begins with the good will. Anything else you might value in life – intelligence, strength, even happiness itself – can be used for evil. The only thing good, really, is the will to do good, the mental act that says, “I am going to do the right thing.”

By the same token, if you are doing something solely to achieve some end, you are not doing it because it is the right thing to do. This applies not only to ends we think of as selfish, but even to those we think of as ethical. Think about a cruel and selfish act, like the Comedian shooting his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend at the end of the war. A deontologist would think that part of why this is wrong is because of the Comedian’s motivation. He’s not trying to do what is right; he’s merely trying to accomplish an end that is convenient for him, getting rid of a person as if she were extra baggage. Now think about an unselfish act, such as the redemptive moment at Bernard’s newsstand when so many passersby intervene to break up the fight between Joey and her girlfriend Aline. If one of them was jumping in simply to make himself look good or even to feel good for helping somebody, that would simply be acting for an end. But if someone helped because it was the right thing to do, even if that person had no desire to do so, that tells us that his or her act was moral (in a deontological sense). Interestingly, the people who intervene don’t talk about pity; they give more deontological explanations, such as, “It’s all that means anything.”8 They have to act because they’re moral people in a dark world that can only be lit by the good will. They’re doing the right thing because it’s the right thing.

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