Frankenstein and Philosophy

by Michaud, Nicolas

(Philosophical) Jury Instructions: How Can We Know Whether the Monster Is Free?

  But just what do we mean when we say that someone is free? Roughly, we mean that they act of their own volition and are therefore responsible for what they do. And when we say that someone can be held responsible, we usually mean that they can be praised or blamed and rewarded or punished for what they do.

  We don’t want to say that about everyone—we don’t want to say it, for example, about young children or people who are coerced by others to act a certain way. We wouldn’t say that someone who is held at gunpoint and forced to give up their wallet gave it up freely. Neither would we say that a young child who commits a crime is responsible for what they have done. This is recognized by our legal system (which tries children as adults when we do think that they should be held responsible) and by many religious traditions (as in the doctrine of an “age of accountability”). So we need to get clear on the principles that allow us to determine who is free and responsible and who isn’t. Fortunately for us, this is a problem that philosophers have been working on for quite a long time.

  Some philosophers are libertarians about freewill and responsibility. They think that in order for an action to be free (and therefore responsible), a person must have another option available right at the moment of choice. We can apply this to our own case: Shelley’s monster. For the monster to be free and responsible in committing the murders he eventually does, it must be the case that, at the moment he acts, he could have decided to refrain. If he could have refrained, he is free and responsible for his actions and Shelley has her allegory. Most of us will find this position to be common sense: in our daily lives, we often feel as though we have all kinds of options open to us at any given time.

  But there are some problems with libertarianism. For one thing, it’s at odds with another important philosophical thesis: determinism. We can sum up determinism like this: everything that happens in the world is caused by the way things were before. In other words, the past causes the present. The way that the world is, say, today, is a direct result of the way it was yesterday. And if we changed something about the past, that would change the future. For example, if Victor had not created the monster his family would not have died at the monster’s hands (perhaps from some other cause but not that cause). So if the past causes the present, then suppose someone knew everything about the way the world was yesterday. If determinism is true, that person could perfectly predict everything that happened today. Of course, no one (except perhaps God) could actually know enough to make such a prediction. But the example still shows something important: according to determinism, given the way things were yesterday, things had to go the way they did today.

  Contemporary physics tells us that determinism is probably true, at least at the level relevant to human action. Our world (people included) is made up of tiny atoms, and atoms follow physical laws. As contemporary philosopher Ted Honderich points out, determinism is also confirmed by everyday experience.1 We see the strict cause-and-effect relationships implied by determinism all the time. We strike a match, says Honderich, and the match lights. We drop a dinner plate, and the plate breaks. This seems very hard to deny. And if determinism turns out to be true, it potentially has a lot to say about freewill. Applied to our case, the result would be that the monster had to act in the bad ways he did. Things couldn’t have gone any other way. Then we might ask: if he had to act as he did, how could he possibly be free? And if he can’t be free, then Shelley can’t make her point about science.

  Enter compatibilism, another theory about freewill and responsibility. The name of this position gives it away: it says that freewill and determinism are compatible. Compatibilists think that even if determinism is true, we can still have freewill and thus be held responsible for what we do. There are many forms of compatibilism—too many to discuss here. But the most promising one accounts for freewill in terms of the ability to respond to reasons. According to this school of thought, what matters for freedom isn’t the ability to do otherwise than we actually do. Instead, what matters is that we deliberate about what to do, weighing our options in a rational way. What matters is that we think our actions through, and the ability to do that is completely compatible with determinism. If this is right, then what matters for the monster’s responsibility is that he acts rationally and with a clear head. If the monster just needs to be free in this sense, perhaps Shelley’s allegory about science can succeed after all.

  Lunch Break: There’s No Such Thing as a Freewill?

  But another group of philosophers thinks that we simply might not have freewill after all. The members of this group go by a variety of labels—skeptics, deniers, impossibilists, and others—depending on the specifics of their point of view. The last group, impossibilists, make a very strong claim: they say not only that we lack freewill, but that freewill properly defined turns out to be impossible.

  One famous impossibilist still doing work today is Galen Strawson. He says that what we do depends on how we are as people.2 People who get angry often do so because they have a temper. People who are always kind to others do so because they have a good heart. If this is right, then in order to be responsible for what we do, we must be responsible for how we are. As Kant says in the quote I opened with, we can only be responsible if our character is of our own making. So far, so good; that all seems true enough.

  But this is where Strawson thinks that things get interesting. If we agree with what he’s said so far, then we must also agree that in order to be responsible for how we are now, we have to be responsible for how we were in the past. Since it was the actions of our earlier selves that made us who we are today, we can only be responsible for who we currently are if we are also responsible for how we were then.

  But now we’re in trouble: we can keep applying the same test over and over. And that means we’ll keep going farther and farther back in our lives until we get to our early childhoods, and no one thinks that we were responsible as young children. Back then, we were shaped by many influences over which we had no control: our families, our friends, our teachers, and so on. But if we weren’t responsible then, Strawson’s argument tells us that we can’t be responsible now either. So Strawson has an easy answer to the question of the monster’s responsibility: the monster isn’t responsible for what he does because no one is responsible for what they do!

  Is Strawson really right that no one can ever be free and responsible? That subject is best left for another time. Our question is whether the monster is free and responsible. And we don’t need to agree with Strawson that people are never free or responsible in order to recognize that people sometimes aren’t. Even if we think that most people are free and responsible most of the time, we can still say that there are cases where this isn’t true. What we need to ask is whether that monster’s tale as portrayed in Frankenstein is one of those cases. If it is, we can still say that Shelley’s argument doesn’t go through.

  Your Honor, the Monster Would Like to Say a Few Words . . .

  Let’s look at Frankenstein to try and answer this question. The monster starts out strongly inclined toward goodness. After stumbling across a troubled country family, the De Laceys, he quickly begins to care about them and refer to them as his friends without even having any direct contact with them. “I longed to discover the feelings and motives of these lovely creatures. . . . I thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people,” he tells us.3 He initially lives off of the family’s food supply, but upon realizing that they are quite poor and have little to spare, he forages for his own meals instead. In describing the young man Felix De Lacey’s reaction to the arrival of his beloved female companion, the monster says, “Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her . . . at that moment I thought him as beautiful as the stranger” (p. 120). The monster also speaks of language and reading as allowing him to enter “a wide field for wonder and delight” (p. 122). What we’re describ
ing here sounds like a wise and moral being, not a monster.

  The monster is unable to understand violence and the need for laws and governments, turning away with “disgust and loathing” when he hears detailed accounts of various human evils. He continues to empathize with the De Lacey family to the point of developing love for them and seeking their love in return, professing a powerful desire for virtue and an aversion to vice. The monster’s initial development shows his natural inclinations to be of a profoundly humanistic character. In fact, at this point in the story he’s a more committed humanist than most humans. Despite being contrary to the natural order, the existence of the monster is nonetheless a remarkably good and beautiful thing.

  The monster does of course eventually become monstrous in the moral sense of the word, enslaved by cruelty and a desire for revenge against his creator and others who have mistreated him. We’d be right to wonder whether this is really the fault of the monster himself, though.

  It seems as if the actions of others toward the monster are what ultimately drive him to such behavior. From his very beginnings, he is rejected by each and every person he encounters. His own creator turns from him in disgust, a fact that causes him considerable emotional pain. The village he flees to after being abandoned by Victor likewise rejects him, this time by violent means that leave him with injuries. He comes to view the De Lacey family as loving companions, but is “dashed . . . to the ground and struck . . . violently with a stick” by Felix upon attempting to make direct contact with them (p. 137). Psychologically shattered, the monster desires revenge but stifles these feelings, attempting to remain benevolent and humanistic. He saves the life of an unknown young girl from a swift river at great peril to himself, only to be shot and wounded by her companion, at which point he states, “Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind” (p. 143).

  Human violence against the monster twists and corrupts his original disposition of reason and benevolence. The physical and psychological pain he faces time and time again makes him a slave to his passions, overwhelming a character that was initially oriented toward goodness. This cycle of rejection culminates with the monster’s encounter with young William Frankenstein, whom he at first attempts to reason with when the boy cries out in fear at the monster’s grotesque appearance. It’s only when the boy ignites the monster’s despair once again by initiating verbal and physical violence against him that the monster finally reciprocates humanity’s mistreatment, and his description of the event—“I grasped his throat to silence him” (p. 144)—makes it ambiguous whether the monster intends to harm the boy or simply doesn’t know his own strength.

  Closing Arguments . . . and a Surprise Expert Witness?!

  Does this sound like someone who’s responsible for what he has done? Is this the case of a villain—a criminal? I certainly don’t think so, and I hope you agree. The monster was naive, innocent, pure—and the world corrupted him. He freely chose to be good, but circumstances beyond his control made him evil. It looks as if the monster isn’t responsible for doing bad things because he’s not responsible for his evil character. The fault lies instead with those who drove him to that character; it lies with those who made him into the evil being that he became. He had been so overpowered with negative emotions that he probably couldn’t have acted differently than he did. And his overwhelming desire for revenge makes it unlikely that he acted rationally or fully thought through what he was doing.

  Still, some might insist on asking whether the monster was free to remain good despite all the abuse he suffered. Couldn’t he have stayed virtuous even in the face of all that suffering? To say that he could have would be, I think, to deny many of the monster’s most significant influences. He was created from the brain and body parts of others. All of his physical and character traits were forced upon him. Of course, none of us has complete control over our genetics and brain chemistry and natural abilities, but we do have our entire lives to work on improving ourselves. The monster never had that chance; he awoke as a full-grown man.

  We also can’t forget the influence that other people and society as a whole have on all of us, and the monster is certainly no exception here. We might not always recognize it, but the way we are depends a great deal on the culture we live in. We act courteously and kindly to others at least in part because that is what society expects of us. If everyone around us was rude and hurtful instead, is it really plausible to think that we would still be able to take the high road and be just as good to them as we are now? We follow the law because we think it is the right thing to do, and we see others around us setting a good example. But if we were taught that following the law really doesn’t matter and saw everyone around us disregarding it, would we really be the law-abiding citizens that most of us are now? We try to act morally and help those in need because we were taught right and wrong by our parents or religious communities. But if we were raised to believe instead that doing the right thing isn’t important, or never taught right from wrong at all, does it really make sense to think that would still be good?

  Perhaps there are people who could remain honorable even in the face of such adversity, but surely not everyone is like this. Many of us do the best we can under very favorable conditions and still fall quite often. Are we prepared to say that we could rise to such a seemingly impossible challenge as being a saint in a world of the worst possible sinners? At least in my own case, I’m not prepared to say that. And if I can’t say it about myself, I can’t say it about the monster either. I’ve had all kinds of advantages that the monster didn’t have: a loving family, responsible friends, and wise teachers. If I still make mistakes even with all of that on my side, who am I to condemn someone who lacked all those things?

  For most of the story, the monster’s creator Victor regrets the scientific investigation he conducted, calling his efforts to overcome death “unhallowed acts” (p. 189). Yet at the end of his life, he appears conflicted. By this time he’s fled all the way to the arctic in an attempt to escape the monster and been rescued from the cold by a ship on a polar expedition. Surprisingly, Victor encourages the crew of the ship to continue when they wish to turn back:

  You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; yours names adored, as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour, and the benefit of mankind. Oh! be men, or be more than men. Be steady to you purposes, and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable, and cannot withstand you, if you say that it shall not. (Frankenstein, p. 217)

  These purposes, like Victor’s own experiments, question the fundamental bounds of nature. These men are seeking discovery and achievement in the same way that he was seeking these things in creating the monster, and he encourages them to continue. So even Victor, the one who started all of the trouble described in the novel by creating the monster, isn’t sure that what he was trying to do was really a bad thing. It turned out badly, but he seems to think that it didn’t have to. And if that’s right, he’s disagreeing with Shelley that too much scientific progress is necessarily bad.

  The Defense Rests

  The monster is abandoned by his creator, rejected by all of society, and left to learn on his own. Yet he does strikingly well nonetheless, becoming a virtuous being with a strong sense of the value of humanity. The creation of such a being was surely a good thing. His subsequent fall cannot count against this fact. It was contrary to his very own nature and everything that he stood for. It was only the misunderstanding and mistreatment of those around him that brought about the disasters of the novel. Applied to the notion of the monster as a personification of scientific progress, this suggests that such progress in itself is a beneficial and wonderful thing even when it reaches beyond natural limits.

  So Frankenstein can’t be taken as a critique of the scientific enterprise. Instead, we should read it as a caution against releasing the fruits of science unguided upon people who are not qualified to su
fficiently understand or utilize them. Directed by Victor and prevented from arousing the fear of society at large, the monster could have blossomed even more than he did on his own. Victor, the one best equipped to guide the monster properly, failed to appreciate the value of his own creation. Frankenstein thus becomes a call to proper understanding and appreciation of science lest prejudice and fear turn its initially humanistic and benevolent nature toward undesirable ends.

  To argue against scientific knowledge and progress is to mistake the technology itself for the ways in which it is perceived and applied. As Frankenstein shows, science can surely be turned to destructive ends. But this is not a necessary feature of science, and indeed, is contrary to the humanistic goals professed by many who engage in it.

  So if Shelley wishes to speak against scientific progress, she isn’t on very firm footing. She has confused science with perversions of science brought on by human misunderstanding, and we can all agree that perversions of science are an awful and dangerous thing. Science done with care and concern for the well-being of humanity is a wonderful enterprise, and we can cite Frankenstein as an example of what happens when we fall short of that ideal.

  _________________

  1Ted Honderich, “Effects, Determinism, Neither Compatibilism nor Incompatibilism, Consciousness,” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, second edition, edited by Robert Kane (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 444.

  2Galen Strawson, “The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility,” Philosophical Studies, 75:1/2 (1994).

  3Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Penguin, 2003), p. 117.

  10

  How to Raise a Monster

  JANELLE PÖTZSCH

  I could think of less intimidating places to encounter my monster—like a noisy café or a crowded train station. Poor Victor has to meet his in the middle of the deserted Alps. More startling than the meeting itself is the way the monster behaves, for it entreats Victor: