Vindauga

I should be writing something else, an attempt at a psychology paper actually. But I’d rather talk about Superman and whether or not he is virtuous.I’m not really saying anything new here. That is, I am not inventing the any of the ideas that I am about to talk about. Instead, I am simply using concepts already in existence in relation to this particular character. Susan Wolf wrote an article called “Moral Saints” [The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 8 (Aug., 1982), pp.419-439] in which she discusses whether any one would really want to be friends with a moral saint.

I am going to tweak this slightly. I have claimed that Superman is a moral paragon, which I think is close enough for consideration as a moral saint. - I am suddenly struck by a profound sense of deja vu. So strong was this feeling that I just went through all my old posts to make sure that I haven’t written this already. Weird. - Anyway, I am going to combine this with a discussion of what it means to be virtuous in a decidely Aristotelian sense.

First, lets assume that Superman is morally virtuous in a very strong sense. That is, lets just go with my previous claim (one that Dr. Wagner supports, see his discussion in the earlier post) that Superman would do no wrong. Would you want to hang out with him? I’m certain that comics have cracked on this over the years but I want to take it seriously for a minute. Superman would never lie, never cheat, never steal, he would never break a promise. That sounds great when you first hear it. But it could lead to him being either very boring or very much a goody-two-shoes.

Now, there might be some question as to which kind of ethics Superman would be a paragon of. It might seem that he is a kind of utilitarian, always striving for the greater good but Superman would not be Benthamite. That is, he would not use the hedonic calculus, that would mean that he would sacrfice one to save many. Superman has never been down with that. I think it more likely that Superman would be Kantian; “act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” He is striving for the Kingdom of Ends. He tries to treat everyone not merely as a means but also always as an end. Superman being a Kantian means that he is going to be held to a very high standard.

So, Superman is going to do everything in his power to treat everyone with respect and he will never break a moral maxim. This is exactly the kind of world which Kant is suggesting when he presents his moral theory. It is the goal. But it is a very real question whether or not anyone would actually want to live in a world in which no one every acted against ethics.

Davidson college has a code of conduct. Any breach of it will get you expelled. If you witness a breach of the code of conduct and do not turn in that person, you have failed the code of conduct. It makes for a really nice place to hang out but consider this. The school considered for a period whether to add underage drinking to the code of conduct. That would mean that every student who drank when they were underage would potentially be thrown out of school AND every student that witnessed them drinking would potentially be thrown out as well. Now imagine every moral rule being treated this same way. That is how Superman would have to behave.

Superman would have to have super-tolerance of others but that would require him to ignore those obligations he has to stop wrongs. That is, Superman wouldn’t be allowed to let those around him do wrong. This should not be mistaken for how we might tend to interact with priests or others of morally high fiber. Priests can forgive us our wrongdoing, Superman would have a moral obligation to actually stop us from behaving immorally.

Okay, lets all think about that a while. I’ll come back to the possibility of Superman actually being virtuous later.