Ultimate Lost and Philosophy by William Irwin & Kaye Sharon

Author:William Irwin & Kaye, Sharon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Final Solution

Were my fears realized? Yes and no. The war continues, silly, boring supernatural devices are indeed deployed. And just when the Others cease to be so “other,” another adversary, Team Widmore, reasserts itself. True, James and Juliet begin a love affair, overcoming their otherness. The survivors become assimilated into the Dharma Initiative. Even Ben becomes humanized, an object of understanding and sometimes sympathy. Of course, the show seems itself to become lost, stumbling through time, place, and various science fictions, abandoning the unities that had given the show focus. But at least the boundaries of otherness become blurred. For a time, even Widmore recedes into the background.

I began to worry, though, watching the episodes where the survivors are delivered from the repetitions of the island’s space-time continuum by embracing nuclear weapons. As I feared, violence and destruction showed themselves to be irrepressible in Lost. Just as war seems on the verge of ending, the survivors find their way to a temple where a dopey ancient contest lumbers on. At the very instant that Ben is accepted by Ilana and reincorporated into her community, the phallic periscope of Widmore’s submarine breaks the surface and casts its threatening, covetous gaze on the island.

When Smoke Monster Locke travels to Hydra Island to confront Widmore, he announces that war has come to the island. Yet this isn’t quite right. It’s not that war has finally reached the island. Rather, it’s simply that the island war has, like the smoke, taken on a new shape. Indeed, Smoke Monster Locke’s announcement signifies only that Widmore’s war against Ben for possession of the island has become incorporated into the higher-level war, the background war, the primordial war, the war to sustain all wars, the war that makes the ultimate division between the camp of friends and the camp of enemies. I mean, of course, the struggle between Jacob and the unnamed Man in Black.

In medieval philosophy, thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas (1225–1276) found the idea of an endless series of causes and effects, stretching back into time, absurd and unacceptable. Instead, they reasoned, the chain must come to an end. There must be a first cause. So, it seems, in Lost the series of wars with “others” can’t go on forever. As soon as the boundaries separating two groups break down, another “other” emerges, then another, and so on. But as for the medievals, so for Lost, the process must end somewhere. The series has, after all, reached its end, and it has done so in the divine.

One option for bringing the series of otherings to an end—the option for which I had hoped and for which modern, liberal political theory has aspired—is to overcome otherness and realize a peaceful common life through bonds of fellow-feeling, friendship, and love; through the recognition of common humanity; and through respect for universal human rights. In flying to the superhuman or divine, Lost does more than appeal to a cheap deus ex machina. It repudiates the modern liberal option and embraces not only the mouldering incense of religion but also the black smoke of death.

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