Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy
Page 17
The most straightforward reason usually given as to why vampires cannot feel pleasure or pain is their bodies are dead, or no longer functioning. Since pleasure and pain are feelings requiring a functioning body to experience them, it makes sense that vampires cannot have these feelings. Yet, Dracula’s frustration in Van Helsing is a common theme among vampire personalities and their stories. So, it seems that vampires both do and do not have experiences of pleasure and pain. What accounts for this contradiction?
A way to clear up this problem might be to distinguish between two different senses of pleasure and pain, the way that the moral philosopher, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), does in his famous work Utilitarianism. There are those “lower” pleasures or pains that are most appropriately understood as feelings associated with a body. Examples of these pleasures and pains would be aches, pains, and “butterflies in the stomach” as well as euphoric surges and adrenaline rushes. Normally when we think of pleasure and pain, we think of them in this bodily way, associated with the neurophysiological processes of a living animal with an intact nervous system. Then there are “higher” pleasures and pains understood as qualitative experiences associated with a mind. Examples of these would include the pleasure of discovering the solution to a complex math problem, the pain of having made an immoral decision that cannot be undone, or the pleasure of knowing one is loved by a friend. Here, the pleasures and pains are less bodily and more mental, and have names like joy, contentment, satisfaction, regret, and sorrow.
Armed with this distinction between lower and higher pleasures and pains, we might be able to clear up some of the confusion concerning a vampire’s experience of pleasure and pain. We can make sense of the quotation at the beginning of this chapter by noting that the cursed soul or spirit or mind of the vampire, its immaterial, mental part, is expressing regret or sorrow (qualitative experiences associated with the mind) at being unable to be pleased by wind in its hair or the taste of fine wine (feelings associated with the body). The vampire is expressing a higher, mental pain about a lack of a lower, bodily pleasure.
Either Way, I’m Damned if I Do
Even though we hear vampires lament the fact that they cannot experience pleasure and pain, we have to question their sincerity. They seem to be in some kind of pain while lamenting and seem greatly to enjoy sucking blood from their victims. The distinction between higher and lower pleasures may help us out here. Vampires may be cursed with a higher, mental pain while lamenting their lack of feelings in their bodies. Similarly, they may gain a higher, mental pleasure from satisfying their need for blood. (By the way, it is a curious thing that vampires should need blood in the first place. What do they need it for? On most vampire accounts, their bodies are dead, so the blood does not act like a food product.) However, on several accounts, it appears that the vampire is deriving a kind of base, physical, bodily pleasure from its evil pursuits of blood-sucking, deception, and “turning.” Recall that the taste of blood is “sweet honey” and a “blessing” for the vampire in the opening quotation. And consider what Louis says about Lestat in Interview with the Vampire:Lestat killed two, sometimes three a night. A fresh young girl, that was his favorite for the first of the evening. For seconds, he preferred a gilded beautiful youth. But the snob in him loved to hunt in society, and the blood of the aristocrat thrilled him best of all. (p. 46)
If we put aside the obvious problem that a vampire’s body is dead, and we imagine that there is some connection between its bodily desires and its own cursed mental satisfaction, then there is another way in which we can make sense of the vampire’s plight. It may be that the vampire “can’t get no satisfaction” because of its inappropriate focus on the pursuit of “bodily” pleasure. One of the reasons why the vampire Lestat is so fascinating in the Anne Rice stories is that he is somewhat of a pleasure-seeker who continually searches for, but never really finds, satisfaction or contentment in his cursed life. His cursed, fictitious life reminds us of our own real lives. As we shall see, there are problems that arise from focusing either on pleasure itself, or the wrong pleasures in life.
Both vampires and mortals must confront the hedonistic paradox.83 The basic idea behind the hedonistic paradox is that whenever pleasure itself is the object sought, either it is not found or it is found. If pleasure is not found, the result is the pain associated with not finding the pleasure one seeks. In an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I watched recently, one of the vampire characters says to another vampire that he “hates not getting what he wants,” in reference to having to suck the blood from a less-than-desirable woman.
On the other hand, if pleasure is found, especially on a consistent basis, the result is still pain. The pain results from either finding pains that are mistaken for pleasures in the long or short term, or from the boredom of always getting the pleasures one wants. Think of the way that Louis fools Lestat into sucking the blood from the already dead twin girls in Interview with the Vampire, and how Lestat mistakes this painful experience for a great pleasure; albeit it was a mistake, in part, prompted by Louis’s deception. Or think of the vampires who are destroyed by Blade (presumably, a great pain) at the “rave” in the beginning of the movie Blade, and how they mistakenly think that they have come to a bloodfest featuring fresh young human meat (presumably, a great pleasure).84 Concerning the issue of boredom, consider Lestat’s complaint of virtually “seeing it all” and being bored in The Vampire Lestat, or a deluded man who thinks he’s a vampire in Katherine Ramsland’s Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today claiming that “it’s somewhat boring, living forever.”85
Either way, whether pleasure is found or not, the result paradoxically is still pain. The hedonistic paradox is “hedonistic” because of the focus on the pleasure being sought (hedon is Greek for pleasure). It is a paradox because one consistently finds the exact opposite (pain) of what one set out to find in the beginning (pleasure).
Is there any way out of the hedonistic paradox for a vampire who wants to continue pursuing pleasure for the sake of pleasure itself? Vampires may not fall victim to the hedonistic paradox for a couple of reasons. One of the problems with pursuing pleasure is the boredom associated with always getting what one wants. A central question that needs to be answered is whether there could be innumerable pleasures to be had at one’s disposal. Put another way, given the number of possible activities imaginable, and the pleasures associated with those activities, is it possible to exhaust all of those activities, gain the pleasures, and become bored with the pleasures attained? If there could be innumerable pleasures out there to be had, then it seems as though it would not be possible, even for a vampire with many lifetimes at its disposal, to achieve all of them—in which case, boredom would never ensue.
Now it would seem that a vampire, who has the capacity to live several lifetimes, surely would become bored after a certain amount of time. But this would depend upon whether that vampire had experienced each and every possible pleasure to be experienced. If one is inclined to think that the amount and range of possible pleasurable experiences are limited or finite, then it is more likely that boredom would result for a vampire who lives several lifetimes. On the other hand, if one is inclined to think that the amount and rage of possible pleasurable experiences are unlimited or infinite, then it is more likely that boredom would not result. Again, the primary question that needs to be answered is whether there could be innumerable pleasures to be had at one’s disposal. If the answer to this question is yes, and one never gets bored or experiences pain, it would seem that one horn of the paradox can be avoided. If the answer is no, and one does get bored or experience pain, it would seem that it cannot.
Further, the distinction between lower bodily pleasures and higher mental pleasures may help us out once again. Within the bodily realm, there seem to be a variety of different pleasures associated with a variety of different bodily activities. In fact, any pleasure or pain is only a pleasure or pain as it is associated w
ith some form of bodily or mental activity for a human. There are no lower or higher pleasures or pains without bodily or mental activities. This being the case, pleasures are aligned with activities that run the gamut from hurting us in the short term and hurting us in the long term to helping us in the short term and helping us in the long term. For example, there’s a difference between the pleasures to be had from smoking crack and from pursuing a variety of extreme sports. All things considered, the likelihood of the crack harming you regardless of the precautions you take is much higher than the likelihood of being harmed while consciously and cautiously pursuing an extreme sport.
Is it possible to pursue pleasure and avoid the paradox? It’s easy to see how a life of pursuing lower, bodily pleasures leads one into the pains of not finding what one seeks, mistaking pain for pleasure, or even boredom. This becomes all the more obvious in the case of a vampire that can live several lifetimes. But could one fall victim to the hedonistic paradox in the pursuit of higher, mental pleasures? Consider the distinction between pleasures that result from ongoing activities and pleasures that result from the knowledge of being in certain completed states. Recall the earlier examples of solving a math problem and being loved by a friend. These are not ongoing activities, but completed states of being, where one has knowledge of these states. The knowledge of these states brings with it a sustaining, almost satiating, form of mental pleasure.
Aristotle has something like this in mind when he investigates various forms of pleasure in Book Ten of his Nicomachean Ethics. It may be that bodily pleasures are more the result of ongoing activities, while mental pleasures are more the result of being in a certain state. With this distinction in mind, we may be able better to understand how hardcore mathematicians or true friends achieve satisfaction, contentment, or joy associated with these states. If math equations don’t do it for you, think of some tough project, assignment, or task that you completed and are happy about having completed. Or, think of the runner who trained all of her life for and actually finished the big marathon, the father of three who finally got his Masters in Business Administration through night school, or the hero who saved the child from drowning. Now think of these folks reflecting upon their accomplishments with joy. Such joys would seem to be of the kind that, when reflected upon, last a lifetime. A stronger case might be made for one falling victim to the hedonistic paradox in the pursuit of either the solution to a math equation, a lasting friendship, a marathon race, or an MBA prior to achieving a completed state, in that one may never find what one seeks. However, once in a certain completed state it would seem that the pleasure is continuous with the knowledge of the completed state.
Good Guy Vampires?
If a vampire engages in physical pleasure-seeking for its own sake, then we can see how such a lifestyle would lead to a kind of hollowed-out existence, not unlike that of a junkie. A junkie gets to the point where he or she physically must have the drug in order to survive, at least in the short term. Most junkies choose, at first, to use drugs and can change their ways. Maybe vampires should be pitied for their blood-sucking ways. After all, it seems that they are unlike junkies in that they are just built to suck blood. In fact, for most vampires, human blood is a necessary food source.
As Angie says to Joel, the serial killer who is becoming a vampire in the movie Addicted to Murder: “You can’t change your nature. You can’t contain it, you can’t shift it. You can only be what you are meant to be.”86 But even those members of our community who cannot control themselves, like pedophiles, must regulate their desires or have their desires and actions regulated for them. Vampires could ask members of the human community to donate enough blood to their cause so that they need not take it forcibly, and I am sure that there would be kind-hearted souls willing to oblige. In Barbara Hambly’s book Those Who Hunt the Night, we are told that vampires “can—and do, at need—live upon the blood of animals, or blood taken from the living without need of their death.”87
Starting in the 1960s with vampires like Barnabas Collins in the television series Dark Shadows and Forrest J. Ackerman’s comic book character Vampirella, and continuing through the 1980s and 1990s with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s vampire hero, St. Germain, and Nick Knight in the series Forever Knight, there have been “good guy vampires.” These vampires actually recognize that, although they must feed upon blood to survive, they can do so without either giving in to their basest needs or harming people in the process. Further, they have been able to generate moral codes, establish vampire cultures, create strong bonds with mortals, pursue “loftier” activities such as are found in academia and the arts, and find contentment in using their “dark” powers for the good of their own kind as well as humankind.8889 In other words, these vampires have been able to skirt the hedonistic paradox altogether either by pursuing higher mental pleasures or by engaging in activities for the sake of the activities themselves, rather than for the pleasure to be gained from the activities.
Vampires, like the humans who invented them, have varying degrees of desires for different kinds of things. Consequently, certain vampires will fall victim to the hedonistic paradox. If one’s focus is consistently the pursuit of bodily pleasure itself, then we can see how pain will result, especially if one is a vampire with the capacity to live several lifetimes. More banal vampires could live lives that are both blessed and cursed. They could be “blessed” in that they have the potential to live forever, indulge in their every physical desire, and do what they want irrespective of any moral code. Yet, these are the very things that ultimately become “cursed” for them. Living several lifetimes gets boring because they have “seen and done it all.” Indulging their physical desires becomes either painful or boring, and doing what they want makes them targets of evil and corruption to be hunted down and destroyed.
One need not be a vampire, nor live several lifetimes, to see that the pursuit of pleasure solely, especially bodily pleasure, offers few blessings. There is wisdom in the famous moral philosopher John Stuart Mill’s claim that happiness in life is attained by not making pleasure one’s focus: “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own pleasure. . . . Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way. . . . Ask yourself if you are happy, and you cease to be so.”
13
Deserving to Be a Vampire: The Ethical and Existential Elements of Vampirism
TED M. PRESTON
I was once paid an extraordinary compliment: “Ted, I can’t say this about many people, but I think you would make a great vampire.” I swelled with pride. Vampires are powerful, mysterious, immortal, and sexy (just review the vampire “headquarters” in the film, Underworld, if you have any doubts). I have sometimes found myself daydreaming about what it would be like to be a vampire. In my daydreams, it’s always good (though I’d have to teach only evening classes if I wanted to continue in my current profession). But (and here the “professional philosopher” bares his fangs), upon reflection, I have to wonder, would it truly be good to be a vampire? Morally good? Desirable?
If there’s something immoral about vampirism, and if being a good person is of some importance to me—shouldn’t that give me an overriding reason to reject vampirism (in the fantastic and fictional scenario in which it’s offered), no matter how super-naturally sexy I might become?
It’s often assumed that vampires are evil by their very nature. There’s a strong and immediate objection to vampirism from within a Christian perspective. If Jesus of Nazareth is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and the only legitimate source of eternal life, then any alternative route to immortality could easily be regarded as rebellion against God. Indeed, many of the stereotypical weaknesses of vampires depend upon this perception that they have somehow rebelled against God. Consider their aversion to crosses, their “allergy” to holy water, and so on. Indeed, in the film Dracula 2000, this notion of rebellion is expressed by making Dracula’s true identity none other than Judas I
scariot (the betrayer of Jesus) himself.
But not everyone agrees with the explicit and implicit claims and assumptions of Christianity. If our sole concern with respect to vampirism is that it’s “sinful,” then anyone who can’t appreciate or take seriously the notion of sin (or at least sin within that particular religious context) will already be alienated from our investigation. Accordingly, I will focus on the concerns potentially arising from vampirism in a way that doesn’t rely on any overt theological assumptions.