24 Heather Booth, Evi Goldfield, and Sue Munaker, “Toward a Radical Movement,” in Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, edited by Barbara A. Crow (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 60.
25 This notion of achieving effects without striving, through “nonaction,” is reminiscent of the Taoist concept of wu-wei.
26 Order of the Phoenix, p. 816.
27 Ibid., p. 842.
28 Ibid., p. 844.
29 Half-Blood Prince, p. 509.
30 Deathly Hallows, p. 741.
31 Ibid., p. 741; the ellipses are Rowling’s.
32 Terri Doughty, “Locating Harry Potter in the ‘Boys’ Book’ Market,” in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, edited by Lana Whited (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), p. 253.
33 Ibid., pp. 253-254.
PART THREE
POTTERWATCH: FREEDOM AND POLITICS
7
PATRIOTISM, HOUSE LOYALTY, AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF BELONGING
Andrew P. Mills
When you enter Hogwarts in your first year, the Sorting Hat assigns you to one of four “Houses”: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw. Each House has its own colors, mascots, and traditions, and the Houses form the social structure of the school. House members live together, eat together, take classes together, and compete together—on and off the Quidditch field—to win honor and glory for their Houses.
Being in a House at Hogwarts affects the way you treat other people. After all, we think that as a good Gryffindor, Hermione Granger should support the Gryffindor Quidditch team, help Gryffindor earn points toward the House Cup by doing well in class (and by helping Ron Weasley and Harry with their homework), and in other ways give preferential treatment to the other Gryffindors. Indeed, if Hermione were not to care about the welfare of her fellow Gryffindors, or if she weren’t upset when she cost the House points, we’d count that as a moral failing of hers. And worse, if she were to help Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle—members of Slytherin—with their homework or were to sabotage Harry’s Nimbus 2000 so that Hufflepuff would win that week’s Quidditch match, Hermione would rightly be accused of betraying her House and of being a disloyal and unpatriotic Gryffindor. One of the many things we admire about Hermione, Ron, and especially Harry is that they are loyal and dedicated to one another and to their friends. That they are “patriotic Gryffindors” is one of their virtues.
But is patriotism of this sort really a virtue? Many of us think that it is. What else would explain why we demand that our political leaders be patriotic, why we raise our children to love their homeland, and why we admire soldiers who risk their lives in service to their country? Yet in spite of this, there are some powerful arguments that claim that patriotism is a vice—that if we’re in favor of patriotism, we’re similar in important ways to Voldemort and the Death Eaters. So, which is it? Is patriotism a virtue? A vice? Or does it depend on the circumstances?
The Dangers of Patriotism
Those who consider patriotism a virtue may be thinking that to lack patriotism is to be selfish. Patriotism, as the U.S. politician and presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) once wrote, “means putting country before self.”1 A patriot might risk her life to defend her country and thus sacrifice her personal interests so that her nation might prosper. That a patriot should put her country’s interests ahead of her own is admirable, but what should her attitude be toward the interests of other countries? Here, too, it seems the patriot should give preference to her own country’s interests. Being a patriotic Gryffindor means that Hermione should sacrifice some of her free time to help Ron and Harry with their homework (so that the House won’t lose any more points!), but it also means that Hermione should put the interests of Gryffindor ahead of the interests of the other Houses. Similarly, being a patriotic American means preferring America’s well-being over the well-being of all other countries—thus, the injunction to “buy American” and so support the U.S. economy. But it’s just this aspect of giving preference to our own country over all others that causes the problems and makes patriotism look like a vice.
The Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) called patriotism “the desire for the exclusive good of one’s own nation” and thought it was this very desire that produced war.2 Emma Goldman (1869-1940), a Lithuanian-born social activist who spent much of her life working and writing in America, felt similarly. She wrote,[C]onceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.3
Patriotism thus seems to involve, if Tolstoy and Goldman are right, a Voldemort-like sense of superiority: our nation is the best, the citizens of our nation are better than the citizens of other nations, and those other nations must serve our interests by giving us resources we need or behaving in the ways we want them to behave—and if they won’t do it voluntarily, we’ll force them to do so at the tip of a wand. Or at the barrel of a gun.
Death Eaters and Discrimination
We can appreciate this criticism of patriotism even more by thinking about the Death Eaters. Those in league with Voldemort believe that some wizards—“purebloods,” they call them—are morally more worthy than other wizards (whom they derisively call “Mudbloods”), and that Muggles barely register on the moral radar. But any such view, which counts some subset of the population as morally superior to the rest, runs counter to a long tradition in ethics according to which acting morally means treating everyone—man or woman, black or white, Christian or Muslim, Muggle or wizard—as having equal moral worth.
Utilitarians such as the English philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) have some basic disagreements with the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) concerning the nature of ethics. Both camps, however, agree that a fundamental principle of morality is that all people are of equal moral worth. Utilitarians hold that actions are to be judged according to their effects on the sentient creatures (creatures who can feel pleasure and pain) who are affected by them. And all such creatures count equally. “Each to count for one, and none for more than one,” as Bentham famously put it. The Minister of Magic’s pain or pleasure is no more important than that felt by the lowliest house-elf or the ugliest Blast-Ended Skrewt.
Although Kant disagreed with the utilitarians over what it takes for a being to count morally (mere sentience wasn’t enough for him), he did agree that everyone who matters morally matters equally. To act morally, you must, Kant said, “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”4 All people must be treated as beings whose life projects—their “ends”—are equally valuable, and no one should be used merely to serve the ends of someone else. Harry’s allies know this: in the dark days described in Deathly Hallows, the hosts of the underground radio program Potterwatch remind their listeners to save their Muggle neighbors from Death Eater attacks, on the grounds that “[e]very human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”5 Hermione goes even further, extending this principle to nonhumans, as part of her tireless and thankless effort to liberate the Hogwarts house-elves. Recall her horror when she realizes that the meals at Hogwarts are prepared by house-elves or, as she puts it, “slave labor.” To do something about the situation, she starts S.P.E.W., the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.
This principle of equality, however expressed, explains what’s wrong with racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and all other forms of discrimination. Each of these views violates the idea that everyone deserves equal moral consideration. White racists think the suffering of black people is
of less importance than the suffering of white people. Male sexists think that it’s all right for women to be subservient to men, and so on. But, as Goldman and Tolstoy see it, patriotism is no different. After all, how is giving preferential treatment to your countrymen—which is what patriotism seems to require—any different from giving preferential treatment to those who share your ancestry or skin color or gender? Doesn’t the idea that we should treat all people as having equal moral worth conflict with the idea that some people are to be given preferential treatment because of some characteristic (such as race, gender, or ancestry) they had no control over? It’s justifiable to morally discriminate against someone because of something he or she has done (like using one of the Unforgivable Curses), but it seems unjustifiable to base moral worth on something he or she can’t control, such as whether either of the person’s parents is a Muggle or which country the parent was born in.
The Sorting Hat Speaks: Division and Divisiveness
So far, then, it looks like we must view patriotism as a vice—as the moral equivalent of racism or sexism—and that we must view the loyalty that Gryffindors show to their House not as something admirable, but as a position morally equivalent to the Death Eaters’ view that only pureblood wizards are morally worthy, and that wizards of mixed parentage and Muggles are morally inferior. But there’s another problem with patriotism, one that even the Sorting Hat could see: patriotism divides us when we should be united. Solving global crises requires international cooperation, but such cooperation is difficult when we see other countries as our rivals. The Sorting Hat recognizes the problem with, well, sorting Hogwarts students at the beginning of Harry’s fifth year:Though condemned I am to split you
Still I worry that it’s wrong,
Though I must fulfill my duty
And must quarter every year
Still I wonder whether sorting
May not bring the end I fear.
Oh, know the perils, read the signs,
The warning history shows,
For our Hogwarts is in danger
From external, deadly foes
And we must unite inside her
Or we’ll crumble from within.6
With division comes divisiveness, and what may have started out as harmless sorting for noble ends will end up as the basis for opposition and hatred.
Think, too, of the Triwizard Tournament. As Albus Dumbledore describes it, the tournament is “a friendly competition” and is “a most excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities.”7 But after it gets underway, Ron is unable to see Hermione’s friendship with Viktor Krum, the champion from the foreign Durmstrang school, as anything other than disloyal behavior. Because Hermione is friendly with Krum, Ron accuses her of helping Krum solve his egg, part of the second task of the tournament:“I’d never help him work out that egg!” said Hermione, looking outraged. “Never. How could you say something like that—I want Harry to win the tournament. Harry knows that, don’t you, Harry?”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” sneered Ron.
“This whole tournament’s supposed to be about getting to know foreign wizards and making friends with them!” said Hermione hotly.
“No it isn’t!” shouted Ron. “It’s about winning!”8
With views like Ron’s, it’s no wonder that Dumbledore has to remind everyone of the point of the tournament—and that winning isn’t it. “The Triwizard Tournament’s aim was to further and promote magical understanding. In light of... Lord Voldemort’s return, such ties are more important than ever before,” Dumbledore says. Indeed, Dumbledore sees that it is this very division that Voldemort banks on: “[W]e are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust.”9 Dumbledore could just as easily be talking about the environmental threat posed by global warming or the wars that grow out of many nations’ thirst for more oil. Strong bonds of international friendship and trust are just as necessary in the fight against global crises as they are in the fight against Tom Riddle. The formation of Dumbledore’s Army—which includes students from all of the Houses except Slytherin—shows that House (or national) divisions matter little when everyone is affected equally by an external threat, and that unifying in the face of that threat can be an effective response to it.
Patriotism and Global Conflict
Let’s consider one more possible problem with patriotism before we look for a way to make sense of it. Many people think being patriotic simply requires you to “love your country.” That’s good as far as it goes, but what does someone who loves her country do? Here’s one possible answer. If you love your country, doesn’t that mean wanting your countrymen to live well and to have all of the trappings of the good life? Yet living the typical American middle-class life (with a large house in the suburbs, cars, vacations, large TVs, high-calorie meals, and so forth) costs a lot of money and consumes a significant amount of the world’s scarce resources. It looks like the only way to maintain this “good life” for us and our countrymen is either to exploit the people of other countries—they have to work cheaply, so that we can afford the goods they make, and they have to go without cars and large houses, so that the price of oil and other essential resources stays low for us—or for us to use more than our fair share of the world’s resources, thus denying them to others. Either way, it might be thought that our well-being depends on other people living much less well than we do. (Think again of the house-elves at Hogwarts: how much does the well-being of the students depend on the horrid working conditions of the enslaved elves?) If this line of thought is right, and if we agree that everyone counts equally, it seems to follow that we will have to significantly curtail our lifestyles and dial down our high standards of living so that others can climb out of backbreaking poverty. So, then, if “loving your country” means endorsing the high standard of living that your countrymen enjoy, this will mean taking steps to exploit the citizens of other countries, and that is tantamount—isn’t it?—to thinking that the well-being of your fellow Americans is more important than the well-being of other people. And that sounds pretty close to the idea that the people of your country are morally superior to the people of other countries.
Of course, there are a number of “ifs” in this line of reasoning and quite a few possible objections. You might think that raising the standard of living in other countries actually serves to benefit our economy—the more money that people in other countries have, the more stuff of ours they can buy, and the less foreign aid from us they will need. But even so, the issue of scarce resources helps us see the possible conflict between patriotism and the moral point of view that gives equal moral standing to all persons. Accordingly, if we wish to maintain the view that patriotism is a virtue, we have to figure out a way to understand patriotism so that it doesn’t conflict with the powerfully attractive view that all people—of whatever nationality—are of equal moral worth. Let’s now look at how we can do that.
Patriotism Restored
We’ve seen some major dangers of patriotism: it promotes an unjustified sense that we are morally better than them, it may lead to economic imperialism, and it may prevent united action in situations where working across national boundaries is crucial to solving shared problems. But let’s not write off patriotism just yet; maybe we just haven’t understood it properly. Martha Nussbaum, a leading contemporary American philosopher, tries to find room for national bonds and loyalties in what she calls a “cosmopolitan” worldview: one in which we see ourselves as citizens of the world and recognize our obligations to all people, not only to our neighbors and countrymen. Because Nussbaum’s cosmopolitanism embraces the equal moral worth of all people in different clothing, she might offer us a way to be patriotic but not join the Dark Lord.
To see how Nussbaum finds room for patriotism within a moral view th
at says all people are of equal moral worth, let’s think back to the Hogwarts Houses again. Imagine that we think that all Hogwarts students are equally deserving of an education, and we need to figure out the most effective way to provide them with the best education we can. We want all of them to be properly housed and fed, to learn their subjects, and to grow into responsible, educated wizards. The education of each student is as important as that of every other student. Yet this very desire—rooted, as it is, in the equal moral worth of all students—might lead us to endorse sorting the students into Houses. Small Houses, with their more intimate common rooms and dormitories, may be the best way to keep an eye on everyone, administer Hogwarts, and foster the friendship and mutual support that are necessary for students to succeed at school. The competition for the House Cup will motivate students to do well in their classes: because they will want their House to win, they will study hard so that they can answer their teachers’ questions correctly and earn their House points toward the Cup. In other words, we might reasonably think that as in a family, fostering a sense of House loyalty, pride, and patriotism will be the most effective way to meet our goal of providing a quality education for all students. The reason, in other words, that Hermione should give special preference to the other Gryffindors is not because Gryffindor students are somehow morally superior to the students of other Houses—of course, they aren’t—but rather because if every student gives this sort of preferential treatment to the members of his or her own House, then all students will succeed and receive the education they deserve. Nussbaum makes the point in terms of parents caring for their children:To give one’s own sphere special care is justifiable in universalist terms, and I think this is its most compelling justification. To take one example, we do not really think our own children are morally more important than other people’s children, even though almost all of us who have children would give our own children far more love and care than we give others’. It is good for children, on the whole, that things work this way, and that is why our special care is good, rather than selfish.10
The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles Page 11
