The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles

by William Irwin;Gregory Bassham

  9 Ibid., p. 709.

  10 Order of the Phoenix, pp. 65-66.

  11 Deathly Hallows, p. 116.

  12 Order of the Phoenix, p. 844.

  13 . Deathly Hallows, p. 103.

  14 Ibid., p. 345.

  15 Ibid., p. 104.

  16 Ibid., p. 744.

  17 See Melanie Klein’s books Love, Guilt and Reparation: And Other Works 1921-1945 (London: Hogarth Press, 1975) and Envy and Gratitude (London: Hogarth Press, 1975).

  18 Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

  19 Charles Taliaferro, Love, Love, Love (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Press, 2006). See especially the chapter “A Modest Defense of Magic.”

  20 Half-Blood Prince, pp. 614-615.

  21 I am very grateful to Elizabeth Clark for conversations about Harry Potter and remorse and her assistance in preparing this essay. Elsa Marty is also thanked for dialogue about the regeneration model.

  17

  BEYOND GODRIC’S HOLLOW

  Life after Death and the Search for Meaning

  Jonathan L. Walls and Jerry L. Walls

  After narrowly escaping death only because of his mother’s sacrifice, Harry is an orphan, left on the doorstep of his aunt and uncle. Voldemort, we later discover, wishes above all things to avoid death and has performed the most treacherous actions to ensure it. Almost every book in the series results in the death of a significant character, perhaps none more so than Albus Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince. It’s easy to hear the resounding echo of death all through the series, culminating in the near-death of Harry himself.

  Death and Philosophy

  Legend has it that there was a professional philosopher some years ago who decided to run for governor of his state. On the campaign trail, he was asked what the most important lesson was that we can teach our kids. He responded, “That they’re going to die.” He didn’t win the election.

  Philosophers deal in the great questions and ideas. Not surprisingly, therefore, many of them have been and are fascinated by death, the ultimate unknown. Because death is so unpleasant a prospect, however, some people try to avoid it, deny it, put it out of their minds. Young people are particularly prone to feeling invincible, as though death is something that happens only to others. They often lack what the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) called authenticity, which comes from accepting death and reflecting deeply on our mortality.

  Some philosophers, such as the Epicureans in ancient Greece, thought that we should be unconcerned about death, because when we die, we cease to exist. Death doesn’t exactly happen to us, it’s merely the end of us. We’re no longer around to experience it; the arrival of death corresponds with our departure, so why sweat it? Heidegger, in contrast, thought that authentic living requires a choice to face boldly what our death implies: that we will no longer be. As an atheist, he thought that at death we cease to exist, and living authentically is to live with a poignant recognition that death is ever close at hand. It’s not simply a far-off event; it could happen at any time, without warning or the chance to reflect about it, and its imminence should shape how we live and think right now. Our mortality confronts us with the task of defining ourselves, recognizing both our limitations and our opportunities, and not wasting any of our short time living half-asleep.

  More than two thousand years ago, Plato expressed similar thoughts. Indeed, he is famous for teaching that “true philosophers make dying their profession.”1 To pursue wisdom is to live in such a way that one is prepared to face death when it comes.

  Harry was confronted with death right from the start, so from an unusually young age he was aware of his mortality. While Harry leads an authentic life, Lord Voldemort lives a highly inauthentic one. To see why, let’s consider Harry’s climactic death march and what follows in Deathly Hallows.

  The Approaching Battle

  The matured and battle-hardened Harry somberly marches toward the Forbidden Forest for what he honestly believes will be the last time. He’s going there to meet his own doom with open eyes. He has just learned that the only way Voldemort can be finished off is for Harry to die, taking a piece of Voldemort’s soul down with him. As Harry walks, each step bringing him closer to the end, his thoughts come keenly into focus. In the shadow of his impending death, his senses become sharper. A great appreciation wells up within him for all of the things he has possessed (physical or otherwise) but failed to fully value. Yet he remains resolute in the task before him. Dumbledore knew that if faced with this choice, Harry would follow through, even if it meant his death: “And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would keep going to the end, even though it was his [Harry’s] end, because he had taken trouble to get to know him, hadn’t he? Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it.”2

  Harry had faced death before when he lost a number of loved ones. And despite Dumbledore’s assurance that death could be the next great adventure and despite Nearly Headless Nick’s wisdom on departed souls, Harry retained more than a few doubts about what death would bring. The fact that dead bodies decay and rot in the ground filled him with more than a little existential angst. Recall the scene in Deathly Hallows when Harry and Hermione Granger finally reach the grave of Harry’s parents in Godric’s Hollow, and Harry slowly reads the verse inscribed on the gravestone of his parents: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”3

  At first, Harry worries that this is a Death Eater idea, more in line with Voldemort’s quest to escape death than anything else, and he wonders why such an inscription is there. Hermione assures him, “It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry.... It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death.” But Harry’s parents weren’t living, Harry thought. “They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath the snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing.”4 If this is what death involves, then talk of death’s defeat seems a mockery, and death indeed means just this: moldering remains, decaying flesh, end of story.

  This was the fate of Harry’s parents, and Harry, in that dark hour, senses it is the fate of everyone. Now, as Harry voluntarily marches to his own death, he realizes something: “And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them [his departed loved ones] back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.”5 He can’t bring his parents back, but he can, and will, die and thus join them.

  Heidegger didn’t advise that we should morbidly reflect about death until we’re depressed, but, rather, that we come to terms with death and the limitations it implies, so that we can move into our remaining future, however fleeting, boldly, taking advantage of what opportunities we have. Think not only of Harry in our scenario here, but also of Colin Creevey, the underage wizard who sneaks back into Hogwarts to fight in the battle and loses his life. Harry’s and Colin’s actions, regardless of their beliefs about life beyond death, are great examples of authentic Heidegerrian living: recognizing limitations, seizing opportunities, and accepting one’s own mortality.

  King’s Cross Station

  When Harry receives the apparent death blow from Voldemort, he awakens to find himself possessed of unexpected powers and in a place that resembles King’s Cross Station—a sort of ethereal realm, where time and space function differently. This scene is one of the strangest in the Potter books, but J. K. Rowling has made it clear that it is vital.

  Waiting for Harry in this mysterious place is none other than Dumbledore. This brings up another connection with Heidegger, who held that we should look into our past to uncover new possibilities for understanding life. One of his most important suggestions is that we need to choose our hero from the past, an exemplar we can use to guide us and help us make sense of our experiences. Heidegger proposes
that we have a dialogue with this departed hero, thereby gaining insights that were won from his or her own experiences.

  So, who better for Harry to meet at this critical juncture than the beloved Dumbledore, who himself suffered death not long before and who’d devoted so much of his life to the fight against Voldemort? Not to mention that Dumbledore was, as Harry often says, the greatest wizard of all time.

  Such a powerful wizard, one would assume, would be like a king in this place, but it is not so. He is simply kind, witty, patient Dumbledore. Dumbledore had once desired power and glory, until he realized, to his chagrin and shame, how dangerous these pursuits are, especially for himself. The Dumbledore we now see is the wise, gentle headmaster whom we all know and love, who, by his own admission, is the better Dumbledore.

  This mysterious way-station, King’s Cross, evokes the image of Purgatory, the place of postmortem penitence, penal retribution, and spiritual growth in Catholic doctrine. As Dumbledore patiently catches Harry up on everything that was involved in Dumbledore’s battle plan against Voldemort, we see more than simply answers to riddles; we see repentance and atonement. “For the first time since Harry had met Dumbledore, he looked less than an old man, much less. He looked fleetingly like a small boy caught in wrongdoing.”6 We also witness a full-fledged apology and confession from Dumbledore, tears and all. It is not that Dumbledore himself was wicked or that he is now being caught in some great lie or misdeed. But Dumbledore had been imperfect, and his mistakes, mainly those of his youth, had caused great harm. Now, in death, Dumbledore has come to terms with his past misdeeds and has grown wiser and merrier as a result.

  In stark contrast to Dumbledore in the King’s Cross scene is the hideous Voldemort creature. One can only assume that the revolting, deformed atrocity present in the train station is the image of the vanquished bit of Voldemort’s soul. It seems that the decisions made by Voldemort have rendered his soul quite beyond repair, as Dumbledore points out in the following exchange.

  Harry glanced over his shoulder to where the small, maimed creature trembled under the chair.

  “What is that, Professor?”

  “Something that is beyond either of our help,” said Dumbledore. 7

  Dumbledore puts it into even plainer words as he and Harry discuss whether Harry will return to the living to finish his work or simply go on to the mysterious beyond. “ ‘I think,’ said Dumbledore, ‘that if you choose to return, there is a chance that he [Voldemort] may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But I know this, Harry, that you have a lot less to fear from returning here than he does.’ ”8

  Ironically, it is Voldemort’s misguided fear of death that has driven him to the unspeakable acts that have obliterated any trace of goodness within him, but it is because of these choices that Voldemort now actually has reason to fear death.

  It’s worth noting that J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which ranks with Potter as one of the most popular fantasy epics of all time, echoes this quest-for-immortality motif. As Tolkien noted in his Letters, the real theme of The Lord of the Rings is not power or heroic resistance to evil, but “Death and the desire for deathlessness.”9 Sauron, the Dark Lord, pours a good part of his life-force into the One Ring, tying his own incarnate existence irreversibly to the Ring. This ring is the catalyst for much evil and eventually must be destroyed. Let’s see what this motif represents and what insight it may have for our own lives.

  Reap a Destiny

  It’s said that the great American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) once wrote in the margin of a copy of his Psychology: Briefer Course the following lines: “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.” The idea is that it starts small and ends big; our thoughts lead to actions, which upon becoming habit yield a character and ultimately a destiny. Voldemort’s destiny, as revealed in the King’s Cross scene, is the result of a lifetime of choices that put him on a fatal trajectory to destruction.

  This scene raises a possibility that would be quite foreign to Heidegger. After being raised a Catholic and seriously considering the priesthood, Heidegger embraced atheism, abandoning belief in the afterlife. He once described his philosophy as a “waiting for God,” a phrase that inspired Samuel Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot. But far from thinking that atheism empties life of meaning or significance, Heidegger thought that our mortality made choosing how we live this life all-important. As he saw it, death represents both the ultimate individuating event and the culmination of the process by which each of us forms our essence through our choices, because each of us must go through death’s door alone.

  Rowling’s view is both similar and different. The Voldemort creature at the station is saddled with an unchanging destiny. It represents the culmination of his development of character, a process that is complete. Voldemort no longer merely did evil; he had become evil. He is, as Dumbledore says, beyond help. He’s chosen his fate, and it’s ugly. As James would have put it, Voldemort’s thoughts led to actions, then habits, then a character, and finally a destiny. Aristotle noted how our actions put us on a trajectory, turning us gradually into particular kinds of people, each choice incrementally shaping our souls. Rowling’s portrayal of Voldemort’s terrifying fate represents the ultimate culmination of such a process, if, contrary to Heidegger’s view, we don’t cease to exist at death but instead must continue to live with the consequences of who we have become.

  To put it another way, we might say that in death we will fully become who we were in the process of becoming, and now we must live with our chosen selves forever. Dumbledore was imperfect, but he showed remorse for his mistakes and was freed from their harmful effects. In a similar way, the ghostly images of Harry’s loved ones who walk with him to the Forbidden Forest also reflect the good-natured, loving people they had been in life, something that is apparent in their appearance and conduct. Lily Potter is nurturing; James Potter and Remus Lupin are reassuring; Sirius Black is casual and even a bit flippant, just as we remember him.

  Voldemort, by contrast, obstinately refuses to turn from his self-imposed path to perdition, all the way to the very end. And it is not as if Voldemort didn’t have his chances. Right down to the waning minutes of his life, Voldemort willfully rejects the one thing that can save him: remorse. Facing a terrible, yet vulnerable, Voldemort, Harry tries to offer a path of redemption still: “But before you try to kill me, I’d advise you to think about what you’ve done.... Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle.... It’s your one last chance.... It’s all you’ve got left . . . I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise . . . Be a man . . . try . . . Try for some remorse.10

  Of course, remorse is not something Voldemort can muster, and this is his undoing. He may have retained his freedom to show remorse even at that last stage, but, undoubtedly, the pattern of behavior that had recurred so often made it exponentially harder for him to do so. For if Aristotle is right, repeated wrong behavior makes us yet more likely to continue in it and makes it harder for us to resist. Willful choices of evil in the end, then, detract from freedom, if Aristotle’s philosophy and Rowling’s fiction are right. If such a picture of the human condition and our moral development is accurate, our choices bring certain truths into being and forge our characters. James was a firm believer that we are free, an assumption Heidegger made as well. James stressed that this freedom, this liberation from a deterministic universe, is the most intimate picture each of us has of “truth in the making”:Our acts, our turning-places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves and grow, are the parts of the world to which we are closest, the parts of which our knowledge is the most intimate and complete. Why should we not take them at their face-value? Why may they not be the actual turning-places and growing-places which they seem to be, of the world—why not the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making?11

  Such freedom, if it exists, is truly one of life’s great my
steries, for it would enable us to make decisions on the basis of reasons that aren’t causes; we would be morally and metaphysically free agents whose decisions shape our destinies but whose choices aren’t written in stone. Such a view of human freedom need not require a denial that all events are caused, but it demands that some events are caused not by other events, such as the physical processes of our brains, but by us, by persons.

  According to this view, our actions don’t merely reflect who we are; they shape who we are becoming. To the last, Voldemort retains the capacity, however diminished, to show remorse, but he refuses and thereby seals his fate and grows literally beyond redemption. Plato said that evil is done only out of ignorance. But might some people actually prefer the darkness to light, because they’ve cultivated appetites that only vice can satisfy? Voldemort’s fate raises just such a question.

  How we live and what the significance of death is are connected in important ways to questions of whether, as Heidegger believed, death is indeed the end or, as Rowling’s fiction depicts, there’s life after death. Both Rowling and Heidegger highlight the Jamesian point that our choices here shape our destinies: either our completed human essence at the time of our deaths, in Heidegger’s case, or the part of ourselves that we take to the next life if death isn’t the end. The philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) suggested that the things that give us our most real identity are our memories and character. Locke’s view of personal identity as inextricably connected to our characters, together with the possibility that death may not be our end, ratchets up the importance of developing the right character to literally infinite significance. For this will be a character with which we might be stuck for more than three-score and ten, a character that is the result of our own contingent choices, rather than something inevitable or unavoidable.