Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts
Page 28
Weasley, Fred
Weasley, George
Weasley, Ginny
Weasley, Molly (Mrs.)
Weasley, Ron
and Harry, as friends
West, Cornel
Western philosophy, and women
William of Ockham
Wilson, E.O.
Winky
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Wollstonecraft, Mary
Wood, Oliver
Wormtail
1
Harald Thorsrud’s chapter in this volume explores this theme of friendship in Rowling’s books.
2
Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 105.
3
David Nyberg, The Varnished Truth: Truth Telling and Deceiving in Ordinary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 81, 83-84.
4
Ibid., pp. 88, 94.
5
Robert Solomon, “What a Tangled Web: Deception and Self-Deception in Philosophy,” in Michael Lewis and Carolyn Saarni, eds., Lying and Deception in Everyday Life (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), p. 42.
6
See Shelley Taylor and Jonathon Brown, “Illusion and Well-Being: A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health,” Psychological Bulletin 103, 2 (1988); Shelley Taylor, Positive Illusions (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
7
Nyberg, p. 100.
8
Ibid., p. 81.
9
Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 243.
10
Ibid., p. 251.
11
Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1991), p. 270.
12
Nyberg, pp. 82-84.
13
Taylor and Brown, “Illusion and Well-Being,” p. 194; Taylor, Positive Illusions, p. 126.
14
Taylor, Positive Illusions, p. 123.
15
Taylor and Brown, “Illusion and Well-Being,” p. 195.
16
See Randall Colvin and Jack Block, “Do Positive Illusions Foster Mental Health? An Examination of the Taylor and Brown Formulation,” Psychological Bulletin 116, 1 (1996).
17
Ibid., p. 9.
18
Leonard Peikoff, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” audiotape (Gaylordsville: Second Renaissance, 1976).
19
This essay is written in memory of Bob Zinser—a friend, a fellow fan of Harry Potter, and a man passionately committed to the truth.
20
See Michael Pakaluk, Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Books VIII and IX (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
21
Nicomachean Ethics (VIII. 2. 155b19).
22
Nicomachean Ethics (VIII. 3. 1156b9-12, IX. 4. 1166a4).
23
Nicomachean Ethics (VIII. 3.1156a7-8).
24
Nicomachean Ethics (VIII. 3. 1156a11-19, VIII. 4. 1157b2-4).
25
Michael Pakaluk (see note 1 above) makes this point in his insightful commentary, p. 75.
26
Julia Annas develops this interpretation in “Self-Love in Aristotle,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 27 (1988, supp.), pp. 1-18.
27
Nicomachean Ethics (IX. 4. 1166a32, cf. IX. 9. 1169b7).
28
Aristotle remarks that among good friends we find the conviction that one’s friend would never (willingly) do wrong (Nicomachean Ethics VIII. 4. 1157a23-24).
29
This issue of self-deception is further explored in Chapter 2 of this volume.
30
See John Cooper’s essay, “Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship,” Review of Metaphysics 30 (1977), pp. 619-648.
31
This chapter was significantly improved thanks to the help of my good friends Dr. Swamproot, Ralph Anske, my wife Laura, who doesn’t really have an enchanted car, and my son Alex, who really does have a great sense of humor.
32
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and On the Subjection of Women (Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1996), p. 117.
33
Linda Richards, “January Profile: J.K. Rowling,” (January, 2003), p. 5. http://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/jkrowling.html.
34
Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex (New York: Summit, 1981), p. 31.
35
Mary Wollstonecraft, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997), p. 126.
36
Roger Howe, “Hermione Granger’s Solution,” Mathematics Teacher 95, 2 (February 2002), pp. 86-89. In this article, Howe, who teaches mathematics at Yale University, works out Hermione’s reasoning, which is not explained in the novel.
37
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge, 1960), p. 77.
38
For more on the plight of the house-elves, see Chapter 8 in this volume.
39
Elizabeth Bobrick, “Arrested Development,” Women’s Review of Books 20, p. 7 (8th April, 2003).
40
This is the number of the anti-Christ in the Bible. See Revelation 13:18.
41
Edward O. Wilson, “The Biological Basis for Morality,” Atlantic Monthly (April 1998), p. 70.
42
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 1994), p. 159.
43
J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 115.
44
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, translated by B. Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), pp. 21-22.
45
Ibid.
46
George Mavrodes, “Religion and the Queerness of Morality” in Louis Pojman, Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings, second edition (New York: Wadsworth, 1995), p. 585.
47
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), p. 151.
48
See for example Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:14; I Peter 1:18-19. The strong reaction—both pro and con—to the Mel Gibson film on the passion of Christ is very suggestive in this regard.
49
To see a further developed version of some of the arguments of this chapter, see Jerry L. Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 161-200. I am thankful to Shawn Klein, Tracy Cooper, Tom Morris, and Phil Tallon for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay. I am especially grateful to David Baggett for numerous helpful suggestions.
50
In so doing, we are following up on a fruitful suggestion by Alan Jacobs. His review of the first three Potter books in First Things (January, 2000, pp. 35-38) started us thinking about this topic. We owe to Joshua Hochschild the suggestion to follow up on Jacobs in this way.
51
The Mirror of Erised is dealt with extensively in Chapter 7 of this volume.
52
See, for instance, Richard Rorty’s remarks in his essay, “Orwell and Cruelty,” in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
53
Or perhaps it would be better to say that certain magical locations are inaccessible to Muggles unaccompanied by a wizard, since we know Hermione’s parents have entered certain magical locations with her. Chapter 14 of this volume explores the metaphysical issues involving time and space in the Potter books.
54
The following discussion has been informed by the late John Hostetler’s excellent work on Amish society.
55
Consider the connection, in Amish thought and practice, between technological restraint and a commitment to nonviolence, even when this commitment means martyr
dom.
56
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (New York: Dover, 1999), p. 2.
57
This makes Descartes merely a methodological skeptic rather than a substantive skeptic, who really thinks there is nothing to know or that we are incapable of knowing it.
58
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), p. 14.
59
Ibid.
60
Aristotle, On Dreams, 462a.
61
Descartes, Meditations, p. 18.
62
See David Kelley, The Evidence of the Senses (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986); Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (New York: Meridian, 1990); and John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), Book IV, Chapter XI for arguments critical of Descartes’s account of sense-perception, dreams, and knowledge.
63
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 43.
64
Ibid., p. 42.
65
Star Trek’s Holodeck is kind of Experience Machine that provides entertainment and training opportunities for crews on long space voyages.
66
See William Irwin, ed., The Matrix and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2002). In particular, “Skepticism, Morality, and The Matrix” by Gerald J. Erion and Barry Smith.
67
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Episode 69, “Hollow Pursuits.”
68
William James, The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 924.
69
Robert Nozick, Invariances (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University 01), p. 299.
70
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 43.
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid.
73
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Book 10, Chapter 6.
74
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 45.
75
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), p. 36.
76
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover, 1994), p. 2.
77
Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage, 1993), p. 98.
78
For the general character of the reply to this argument I am relying on a portion of Simon Blackburn’s very lucid reply to a similar objection in his Being Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 48-49.
79
The analogy permeates Plato’s Republic, but receives its most focused treatment in Book IX. It’s worth noting that the philosophical life of the analogy between persons and societies outlasted Plato by quite some time. Thinkers as late as Hobbes and Hegel make explicit use of it as well.
80
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter 4, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard D. McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941).
81
Tom Morris’s opening chapter in this book explores this issue of Harry’s courage.
82
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapter 7.
83
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter 6.
84
The Confessions, Book 7, especially xii and xiii. René Descartes explicitly makes use of this same distinction in his Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation 4, and Thomas Aquinas also uses this distinction as the basis for his analysis of evil (see De Malo (On Evil), I, 3: “If some lack is natural to a thing, it cannot be said to be evil for it”).
85
Many philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, argue that the soul is what gives a thing life. If they are correct, then the soul-less life described by Lupin is technically impossible: a soul-less thing is a dead thing (or an inanimate thing). In the imaginary world of Harry Potter, however, this literary device effectively conveys the horribleness of the dementors and serves as a vivid metaphor for the destructiveness of evil.
86
For more on what makes friendships possible, see Chapter 3 in this volume.
87
Friedrich Nietzsche praises “genuine philosophers” (as Voldemort praises genuine leaders) for rejecting objective moral principles and instead “creating” and “legislating” morality. There is no truth to be discovered, despite our desire for truth; so, we should pursue instead our “will to power” (Beyond Good and Evil, VI, 211). Only those who are “limited” in intellect and ability cling to the illusion of moral principles and fearfully resist the “free” thinking and action of those less limited (Ibid., VII, 219).
88
This formulation follows Augustine (cf. Confessions, Book VII, iii, vii, and xvi). Augustine and Thomas Aquinas differ slightly in their precise explanations of the origin of moral evil (compare Augustine’s explanation in City of God, Book 12, vi and viii with Thomas’s in De Malo I, 3); however, their theories are more similar than different and their emphasis on free will in moral evil is clearly echoed in the Potter books.
89
The self-destructive nature of evil is not an exclusively Christian idea. One can find similar observations about evil in the writings of Aristotle and Rabbi Moses Maimonides, for example.
90
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 1969), translated by Victor Watts, Book I, Chapter 4. This text also includes a brief biography of Boethius by Victor Watts.
91
St. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will (New York: Macmillan, 1964), translated by Anna S. Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff, Book 2, Chapter XIX.
92
Boethius, Book IV, Chapter 2.
93
This view of human nature is not unique to Boethius; it is shared by Aristotle, Maimonides, and St. Thomas Aquinas, among others.
94
Boethius, Book IV, Chapter 2.
95
Ibid.
96
Ibid., Book IV, Chapter 3.
97
Augustine, Book 3, Chapter XVIII.
98
For more on the morality of self-deception, see Chapter 2 in this volume.
99
Those who don’t have such a take on New Age and Wiccan theology should insist that an argument be provided here. Though they are right to insist on such an argument, giving that argument would take us too far afield for present purposes. Such a critique, were it to be provided, might focus on such theology’s instances of unprincipled syncretism, the way it attempts to put together pieces of theological systems that are composed of mutually exclusive truth claims.
100
Richard Abanes, Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick (Camp Hill: Horizon, 2001), p. 96. Abanes designs his spelling of “magick” here to distinguish occult magick from sleight-of-hand magic.
101
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, traditionally defined as true, justified beliefs, although the right account of knowledge is a difficult question. Shawn Klein’s chapter in this book elaborates on the challenge of securing knowledge in a world of appearances.
102
Abanes, p. 136.
103
Ibid., p. 88.
104
Ibid., p. 244.
105
Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 612.
106
Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
107
Tom Morris, If Aristotle Ran General Motors (New York: Holt, 1997), p. 148.
See “The Will to Believe” in William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979). For an insightful analysis of Jamesian “liveness” and religious belief, see Hunter Brown, William James on Radical Empiricism and Religion (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
109
See Craig Callender and Ralph Edney, Introducing Time (New York: Totem Books, 2001) for an ideal historical and philosophical overview of time.
110
Augustine, Confessions (New York: Penguin, 1961), p. 253.
111
Callender and Edney, pp. 33-38.
112
A.P. French, ed., “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein: A Centenary Volume (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979), 281.