Harry Potter and Philosophy
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Kreacher’s Lament: S.P.E.W. as a Parable on Discrimination, Indifference, and Social Justice
STEVEN W. PATTERSON
There’s an awful lot of discrimination in the Harry Potter series of novels. Nearly all of the time, the discrimination comes out in the behavior of characters who are unequivocally evil. Whether it is Draco Malfoy’s classist hatred of the Weasleys, Voldemort’s racist lust to destroy all “mudbloods,” Lucius Malfoy’s maltreatment of Dobby and other house-elves, or Dolores Umbridge’s xenophobic disdain for Hagrid, the message is clear: discrimination is something practiced by evil people. Nobody we would consider good discriminates. But is that so? The answer to this question, I think, turns on what we think discrimination is.
In this chapter we shall explore this question by taking a closer look at the moral impact of discrimination against house-elves, and the response to that discrimination launched by Hermione: the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, S.P.E.W. for short. In the picture it offers of how discrimination can survive “below the moral radar,” so to speak, of good people, the story of S.P.E.W. offers an invaluable lesson for pluralistic cultures such as our own, which yet bear the social burdens that are the legacy of discrimination. The main argument will have three parts. First, by way of general introduction, the concept of discrimination will be outlined. Having settled the question of what discrimination means, morally, we will investigate the moral basis for thinking that such discrimination is wrong. Next, we will consider the question of whether indifference to the plight of those who suffer discrimination is itself morally wrong. Finally, it will be argued that indifference to discrimination is not only a moral failing, but practically unwise as well.
Discrimination and Prejudice
Philosophers like to be careful with their words, so let us begin by noting something general about the word ‘discrimination’. ‘Discrimination’ has both a morally loaded and a morally neutral usage. It’s important to keep clear about the difference lest we fall into the error of equivocation—using a word with two different meanings without specifying which meaning we intend. (Equivocation is the blast-ended skrewt of philosophical mistakes. Just when things seem settled they turn up and incinerate even the most carefully crafted of arguments. The only remedy in both cases is to proceed with extreme care!)
‘Discrimination’ in the morally neutral sense just means, roughly, ‘the ability to tell things apart’. This usage is common enough. We say, for example, that gourmets are people with discriminating palates, meaning that their ability to detect subtle flavors and methods of preparation in food is highly tuned. Similarly, we might say that when it comes to practical jokes, there are no more discriminating judges than the Weasley twins. Discrimination, in this sense, morally is neither here nor there. It is a purely descriptive term, hence we shall call this the descriptive sense.
The sense of ‘discrimination’ in which we are interested here, by contrast, stands in stark contrast to the descriptive usage. This sense of ‘discrimination’, the moral sense, we shall define as ‘the treatment of moral equals as moral inferiors’. This sense, unlike the descriptive sense, isn’t morally neutral. We can see the difference quite easily. If we say that someone has a discriminating character, and we are using the word in the descriptive sense, then we have made no judgments about his character. By contrast, if we are using the word in the moral sense, then we have made a rather strong negative comment about his character. But what, exactly, will we have said?
What Is Wrong with Prejudice?
In order to answer the question just posed, we shall first need to answer another. What is wrong with prejudice, precisely? The most ready-to-hand account is that prejudice is wrong simply because no one deserves to be treated that way. In short, prejudice is wrong simply because everyone is deserving of basic moral respect, and basic moral respect is incompatible with any form of prejudice. This sort of argument is a popular one today, but its roots are very old, lying in the moral philosophy of that illustrious Enlightenment thinker, Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that all rational beings, Muggles or otherwise, are entitled to basic moral equality simply on the basis that they are rational and have a will of their own. He expressed this idea in a form he called the Categorical Imperative: One should always act so as to treat humanity, whether in one’s own person or in that of another, as an end in itself and never as a mere means.75 Now what Kant meant was that every rational being has a will of its own, and therefore the innate freedom to choose its own acts as well as its larger commitments in life. It is wrong to deprive persons of that freedom by forcing them to serve not their own interests, but the interests of someone else. In fact, Kant believed, it is not merely wrong, it’s irrational.
It is irrational to treat a person as a mere means and not as an end in themselves (as a fully rational and autonomous being with a full complement of moral rights) because the moral permissibility of an act depends upon its being the kind of act that one would allow anyone to do. Kant’s word for this kind of act is ‘universalizable’. If an act is universalizable, then it is permissible. As it turns out, acts which are impermissible are acts which are not universalizable without contradiction. All of this seems more complicated than it actually is. The following example should demonstrate how Kant’s moral philosophy works.
Suppose Malfoy wants to sabotage Neville’s cauldron in potions class, so that Snape will throw Neville out of class in a frustrated rage. Kant would say that Malfoy’s plan embodies the following policy: It is morally permissible to sabotage the cauldrons of people I don’t like for my own amusement. Kant would next consider whether this is the sort of act that one would be willing to allow anyone to do whenever they wanted—whether it is universalizable. So, to do the test we imagine what things would be like if the act were always allowed. We begin by rewriting the policy in Malfoy’s act of cauldron sabotage to reflect this: It is morally permissible for anyone to sabotage the cauldrons of people they don’t like for their own amusement. Now, we ask ourselves, what would the world be like if this were the policy for everyone? There would be a lot of failed potions, no doubt, but the consequences aren’t the issue. The issue, Kant would tell us, is that if we agree to this policy, then we are agreeing, in theory, to others’ acts of sabotage of our cauldrons for their personal amusement. In other words, we would be agreeing to be treated as a mere means (not as a fully rational being but as an instrument) to the end of others’ amusement! Clearly we wouldn’t allow this in our own case, since the categorical imperative requires us never to treat humanity, be it in our own persons or that of others, as a mere means. The result is that we cannot affirm Malfoy’s cauldron sabotage rule without committing ourselves to a contradiction.
Malfoy’s likely response would demonstrate this nicely. If we told him everything we now know about Kant’s ethics he would very likely say, “That’s not what I want!! I want to upset Neville’s cauldron! And no one had better upset mine!” In effect, then, Malfoy would be agreeing to a rule which allows people to be treated as mere means, while at the same time claiming an exception for himself. What he would fail to see is that rules that apply to humanity as a whole are all-or-nothing proposals. Someone who tries to make an exception of his own case is thus guilty of a contradiction. He affirms that the rule does not apply to himself, but that it does apply to everyone else, but since he is as human as everyone else, he ends up believing both that the rule applies and does not apply. Hence he winds up in a contradiction, and as any sensible person knows, it is clearly irrational to believe a contradiction.
If Kant is right, then, we have two good reasons to think that prejudice is wrong. It is wrong in the first place because it violates the humanity of those who suffer it. Secondly, it is wrong because no one could rationally agree to a rule that allowed prejudiced behavior. For such rules violate the categorical imperative, and as Malfoy’s mistake shows, this leads to a contradiction. Hence prejudice isn’t just immoral, it is irrat
ional. It’s plain bad business all the way ‘round. So now that we may know why prejudice is wrong, we should be able to take up the question of whether indifference to prejudice is wrong. The case of Hermione’s attempt to rescue Dobby and the other house-elves from servitude will help show that it is.
Why S.P.E.W. Doesn’t Work
We first become acquainted with the house-elves in Chamber of Secrets, when Lucius Malfoy’s house-elf, Dobby, comes to warn Harry of coming dangers at Hogwarts. Dobby appears wearing a ripped pillowcase for clothing (house-elves in bondage are not permitted to wear real clothing), alternating between delivering his warning and attempting to punish himself for delivering it against what he knows to be the wishes of his master (CS, pp. 12-20). It is one year after Dobby receives his freedom as a result of a clever trick on Harry’s part that we see the emergence of Hermione’s “Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare” (hereinafter, S.P.E.W.) in Goblet of Fire. S.P.E.W.’s stated aims include “to secure house-elves fair wages and working conditions” as well as, in the long run, to change “the law about non-wand use, and trying to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures” (GF, p. 224). These sound like noble goals, but strangely, they don’t catch on. Ron’s first reaction to them is instructive: “Hermione,” he says, “open your ears. They. Like. It. They like being enslaved” (GF, p. 224). We learn not too much later that this sentiment is widespread, hampering S.P.E.W.’s efforts to gain momentum among the student body of Hogwarts.
Although they are fictitious, house-elves, it would seem, exhibit all the signs of having a will of their own. Dobby visits Harry to deliver his warning against the wishes of his master, knowing that doing so can bring him death. Dobby’s sister Winky suffers banishment from her house in order to protect her master, and eschews wages out of a sense of pride while working at Hogwarts (GF, p. 376). The other house-elves shun Dobby after his independence (GF, p. 378). Even the pathetic Kreacher, servant of the household of Sirius Black, shows free will in his attempts to resist Sirius’s efforts to rid his mother’s house of the artifacts of her allegiance with the Death Eaters (OP, pp. 109-110). Thus we can say that house-elves “count” as the sort of rational, autonomous beings that matter in Kant’s ethics. If house-elves were real, then we would owe to them every moral protection that we would owe to other human beings, because like us, they have the ability to reason. Once we see this, it becomes clear that from a moral point of view, the enslavement of such beings is morally wrong.
What then do we say about the indifference to the plight of the house-elves shown by Ron, and to a lesser extent, by Harry and the rest of Hogwarts (with the very notable exception of Dumbledore)? Are Harry and Ron prejudiced too? If so, then it would seem to suggest that even people who are otherwise good can be prejudiced (without, it seems, even being aware that they are). This would (and probably should) create a certain amount of tension. We are led to believe that only evil people like the Malfoys, Voldemort, and Umbridge are prejudiced. Ron and Harry, by contrast, are supposed to be good, and if they end up being prejudiced too, then we will either have to recognize a certain moral tarnish on our heroes or we shall have to revise our image of discrimination as something practiced only by evil people. The tension can be resolved if the following question can be answered: If the enslavement of house-elves is immoral, is it also immoral for others to sit idly by and do nothing to end their servitude? If we can answer this question negatively, then Ron and Harry will have a defense. If not, we shall have to revise our idea of prejudice slightly.
There are at least three arguments that indifference is permitted, despite the obvious immorality of house-elf enslavement. The first goes like this: As bad things go, the enslavement of the house-elves is not that bad. Some house-elves suffer terrible conditions, sure, but not all do. Some, perhaps many, are as well cared for as those under the kitchen of Hogwarts. It’s not as if they’re all going to die if nothing is done. Surely in a perfect world there would be no house-elf slavery, but this isn’t a perfect world and there are bigger fish to fry, so to speak, what with Death Eaters running loose and such. So we have to keep our moral priorities straight. House-elf slavery is nearer to the bottom of the list of wrongs to right.
Secondly, it’s true that the house-elf enslavement is a bad thing, but just because it is a bad thing doesn’t mean that others have a duty to prevent it. After all, it’s unreasonable to hold everyone to a duty to make the world a perfect place. People have to live their lives and can’t go around crusading all the time. We have no more of a moral duty to prevent house-elf slavery than we do a duty to see that no one ever dies of heat exhaustion, or gets the flu. We must face the fact that there are some unpleasant features of life that we have to live with. It is simply too much to ask of people to require such altruism as would be needed to remedy such pervasive unpleasantness.
Thirdly, there is Ron’s argument. House-elves seem to want to be enslaved. Winky, for example, is positively devastated by her freedom, ultimately turning to drink and becoming absolutely useless outside of the system of slavery. If house-elves want to be enslaved, then where do we get off freeing them? They have a will of their own and they could exercise it to live differently if they so chose. Certainly they would ask for their freedom if they wanted it, but they don’t want it. We know this because they never ask for their freedom. Since they have a will of their own and don’t want to be free, it is wrong of us to force them to be free against their will. Just because Dobby seems to enjoy his freedom doesn’t mean any other elf will, and it is just wrong to assume otherwise, no matter how good our intentions might be. We have a duty to respect their autonomy and not to interfere with their servitude.
Now it’s important to understand what each of these arguments claims. The first claims that although we have a duty to help the house-elves, that duty is weak and is outweighed by more pressing concerns. The second argument claims that we have no duty either way to help the house-elves, and the third claims that we have a duty not to “help” them. Any of these arguments, if successful, would give reason for thinking that indifference to the plight of the house-elves is morally permissible. As we shall see, however, each of these arguments fails. We shall begin with the last argument first.
Ron argues that house-elves do, in fact, want to be slaves. But given that they are rational creatures, how could that be? There is a phenomenon that could explain the apparent desire of the elves for slavery consistently with their rationality. This phenomenon has been observed to happen in the case of groups that suffer extended periods of prejudice. Over time, the self-image of these groups comes to resemble the image of them held by those that keep them in bondage, and the resulting lack of self-respect does more than any chain to maintain their state. This phenomenon has been noted among African Americans at least since W. E. B. DuBois’s watershed 1903 work, The Souls of Black Folk. The African American, DuBois says:
is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others… . One ever feels his two-ness …76
Commenting on what he takes to be its occurrence among African Americans in their struggle to outgrow the legacy of institutional prejudice of the early to mid-twentieth century, philosopher Cornel West echoes DuBois when he observes, “The uncritical acceptance of self-degrading ideals that call into question black intelligence, possibility, and beauty not only compounds black social misery but also paralyzes black middle class efforts”77 at reform. West’s point is that the efforts of black Americans to improve their lot is hampered by the task of overcoming the stereotypes not merely thrust on them by racists, but actually internalized over many decades of enslavement and second-class citizenship.
The observations of West and D
uBois help us understand why, as Ron observes, the house-elves don’t seem to want to be free. Judged only on the basis of appearances, Ron’s observation is right. His mistake is to infer from this that there is no duty to free them, let alone a duty not to free them. On the contrary, their resistance to their freedom is an indication not of the depths of their hearts’ desire, but of the depth of their bondage. So the first argument fails.
But perhaps the second argument holds. On this argument there is agreement that the house-elves’ enslavement is a bad thing, yet disagreement that it is bad enough to create a duty on our part to do anything about it. After all, so many bad things happen that we cannot seriously be expected to prevent them all. No sensible morality could require so much. The reply to this argument is twofold.78
First, we may note that while this reply might be sensible with respect to large-scale evils that cannot be prevented, there is something a little disingenuous about applying it to problems for which human beings are not only responsible but which are susceptible to correction. The house-elves, one could point out, were not always enslaved. The statue of the races in the Ministry of Magic is evidence that, nominally at least, house-elves were accorded equal status in the past (OP, p. 127). Thus it isn’t so easy for the wizarding world to wash its hands of the matter. Secondly, it must be emphasized that requiring that something be done about the enslavement of the house-elves is not the same thing as requiring that everyone become a moral saint. The claim that the house-elves are entitled to their freedom doesn’t require perfect altruism, it simply requires that house-elves be freed, and there’s plenty of room between the two. Certainly there is sufficient room for the claim that there is a duty to free the house-elves. Careful attention to the claim made on behalf of those suffering the effects of prejudice and slavery should defeat this argument.