Don Adams
The central story of the Star Wars saga, from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi, is the story of Anakin Skywalker. We first see him as a gifted child and slave who is granted his freedom, but at the cost of leaving his mother – his only family. We see him develop into a powerful young man, a warrior of great distinction feared by his enemies. However, his power makes him arrogant and he feels that he's unjustly being held back, that he's not being treated by Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council as he deserves. When he discovers that his mother has died violently at the hands of Tusken Raiders, his anger is transmuted into blind, hate-filled rage and he goes on a killing spree in revenge. Fear for his wife Padmé is the last straw; he allies with the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, becomes Darth Vader, and slaughters the Jedi, even the younglings. The last vestiges of his humanity appear all but obliterated when “a new hope” arises in the form of his children, Luke and Leia. The dark side was unable to completely extinguish the father's love, and it is this love that overpowers Darth Vader, allowing Anakin to reemerge at the end of the epic saga and finally feel the connection to family that he had lost so long before.
Achilles, the greatest hero of the ancient Greek epic poem The Iliad, has a similar story. Although he was never a slave, he was a gifted young man separated from his family by a great war between the Greeks and the Trojans. “Wrath”1 is the very first word of the poem, and we see Achilles consumed increasingly by its dark power as the poem develops. His prowess makes him arrogant, and he feels that the Greek commander-in-chief isn't treating him as he deserves. Like Anakin, his anger is turned into blind, hate-filled rage when the person he loves most, his closest friend Patroclus, is killed by Hector, prince of the Trojans. In revenge, Achilles goes on a savage killing spree, slaughtering dozens of enemy soldiers until he finally kills Hector. But blood can't save Achilles from what he has become; in anguish, he drags Hector's body behind his chariot around and around Troy in an apparently endless cycle of rage, revenge, and despair. As with Anakin, only one thing is powerful enough to break this cycle: a father's love for his son. King Priam, Hector's father, begs Achilles to let him give Hector's body an honorable funeral. Priam weeps for his son, and when Achilles looks into Priam's eyes, he can't help but think of his own father and how he would weep upon learning of Achilles's death. This love of father for son reawakens Achilles's humanity, and he allows Priam to take Hector's body. Like Anakin, Achilles barely managed to reemerge from the greatest danger – and the greatest temptation – he ever faced: nihilism.
Moral nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is famous for defending moral nihilism:
You know my demand upon the philosopher: that he take his stand beyond good and evil and leave the illusion of moral judgment beneath himself. This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to formulate, that there are no moral facts. Moral judgment has in common with religious judgment that it believes in realities that are not real. Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena – more precisely, a misinterpretation.2
To see what Nietzsche means, consider the invasion of the planet Naboo by the Trade Federation in The Phantom Menace. Federation Senator Lott Dodd asks the Galactic Senate to send a neutral commission to ascertain the truth of Queen Amidala's “outrageous” claim. Such a commission might be able to come to an impartial judgment based on solid evidence that the Trade Federation had indeed unlawfully invaded Naboo. But, according to Nietzsche's nihilistic view of morality, no commission could ever come to an impartial judgment of Senator Palpatine's counsel to Queen Amidala: “Our best choice would be to push for the election of a stronger Supreme Chancellor. One who will take control of the bureaucrats, enforce the laws, and give us justice.” While the existence of the invasion is an objective fact that can be established by a commission, in Nietzsche's view, the injustice of the invasion is merely one possible interpretation of the facts. Is justice in the eyes of the beholder?
Anakin gets his first lesson in nihilism from Chancellor Palpatine at the Opera House in Revenge of the Sith.
| ANAKIN: | The Jedi use their power for good. |
| PALPATINE: | Good is a point of view, Anakin. The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power. |
| ANAKIN: | The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves. |
| PALPATINE: | And the Jedi don't? |
| ANAKIN: | The Jedi are selfless. They only care about others. |
Is the difference between good and evil all just a matter of perspective, a matter of interpretation? While battling on Mustafar, Anakin and Obi-Wan confront each other with their rival moral viewpoints:
| ANAKIN: | I should've known the Jedi were plotting to take over. |
| OBI-WAN: | Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil. |
| ANAKIN: | From my point of view the Jedi are evil. |
| OBI-WAN: | Well then you are lost! |
Anakin hasn't quite learned Palpatine's nihilist lesson yet, for he's still employing a moral concept – “evil” – in reference to the Jedi. If Anakin follows the Sith Lord's teachings, then, like Nietzsche's “philosopher,” he would venture “beyond good and evil.” He would no longer think in terms of right and wrong, good and evil, but rather see those quaint notions as a sad devotion to an ancient, hokey religion. Good and evil are interpretations; they aren't facts – at least according to nihilism and Palpatine. If you still see the world in these terms, then perhaps you're merely accepting what you were trained to believe rather than clearly seeing reality for what it actually is.
Nietzsche developed his view by studying ancient Greek literature, especially Homer's Iliad. It's not hard to see why. The wrath of Achilles is first aroused by a dispute over the distribution of war booty. No one disputes that it is right for the better to rule the worse, or for the better to have the lion's share of the booty.3 But just who is better? On the one hand, Homer portrays it as an undisputed, objective fact that Agamemnon was king over more warriors than any other Greek. But, on the other hand, he also portrays it as an equally undisputed, objective fact that Achilles is the single mightiest warrior.4 Obviously, Agamemnon thinks that the one who brought the largest contingent of warriors is the “best of the Greeks,” and Achilles thinks that the greatest fighter is the best.5 But these are clear instances of self-serving bias; both are equally subjective. Better and worse, right and wrong, seem to be matters of interpretation, depending upon one's point of view.
What happens next doesn't seem to be determined by right or wrong, but by force and violence. Because he commands superior numbers, Agamemnon sends a delegation and simply takes Achilles's war prize. Because he's the superior warrior, Achilles plans to settle the dispute by running his sword through Agamemnon or by manipulating the situation until Agamemnon is forced to pay him back threefold, regardless of how many Greeks die as a result.6 Morality drops entirely out of the equation: what matters is not good or evil – these warriors are beyond all that. What matters is one thing and one thing only: power.
Nihilism can feel like an attractive view at first, but it soon reveals its flaws. When Hector faces Achilles to fight to the death, he proposes that they fight honorably and swear that whoever wins will not defile the body of the defeated. Achilles refuses, saying that “between lions and men there are no trustworthy oaths, nor are there hearts of concord between wolves and sheep.”7 He means it: after killing Hector, Achilles insults his corpse, calling him a dog and shouting, “I wish that my rage and fury would free me to carve into your flesh and eat you raw!” There is a sort of intoxicating liberation that comes with allowing rage to take over; it can release us from the constraints we normally feel. But is this freedom, or is it voluntarily sinking into a pit from which we may be unable to return?
Achilles tries to defile Hector's corpse, but the gods Apollo and Aphrodite protect it day and night. Achilles's willpower is not infinite; there are real powers in the cosmos that are not subject to his choice, and he ignores them at his own peril. Apollo points out to the rest of the gods that, in his grief over Patroclus, Achilles has become deranged to the point that he no longer feels either compassion or respect. Achilles has made a stone of his heart so that he has become “like a savage lion, who with his great force and arrogant heart takes the sheep of men for his feast.”8 Achilles has become like the Tusken Raiders who, according to Cliegg Lars, “walk like men, but they're vicious, mindless monsters.”
Apollo's simile is important because it makes clear that he is not merely expressing his own feelings. He's identifying an objective fact: human beings are not lions. It's perfectly appropriate for a lion to devour the uncooked flesh of sheep, but it would be truly monstrous for Achilles to carve into Hector's flesh and literally eat him raw. Compassion and respect are appropriate for us because we are people; we are not savage beasts. Here we have an objective basis for morality, a basis that could be confirmed by a neutral and impartial committee on a fact-finding mission. This “moral realism” is the rejection of nihilism: there are moral facts because there are facts about what kinds of relationships are appropriate for us. Compassion and respect for others save us from the poverty of selfishness. When we love someone, we open ourselves to being hurt by them, or being plunged into sorrow if something bad happens to them; but we do not make our lives better by turning our hearts into stone in order to protect ourselves from the pain of loss. Without compassion and respect, life is a bitter struggle to kill or be killed, as Darth Sidious heartlessly murdered his master Darth Plagueis. While that sort of life is suitable for lions and gazelles, people simply aren't designed to thrive that way.
After Hector's death, his father risks everything to beg Achilles for Hector's body so that he can give it a proper burial. With tears in his eyes, he pleads, “Respect the gods, and have compassion on me.”9 Priam's tears make Achilles think of his own father, and his heart melts. He weeps with Priam and grants an extraordinary claim on him from a mortal enemy. The common bond of humanity, whether with friend or foe, still makes legitimate claims on us.
The same kind of moral realism in Homer's poetry is displayed in Star Wars. Compare the Jedi and the Sith visually. The Sith Lord sits alone in his office, occasionally giving orders to his apprentice, following Darth Bane's “Rule of Two” established after the defeat of the Sith Order at the Seventh Battle of Ruusan: “Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it.” Nietzsche is quite correct that many things are matters of interpretation, but with the Sith there's only one interpretation: that of the master. In stark contrast, the Jedi High Council consists of twelve Jedi Masters who sit in a semi-circle to examine issues from all sides. Each listens to the others respectfully and gives their opinions due consideration. They may have different opinions, perspectives, or interpretations – particularly on crucial issues such as how to understand the prophecy of the “Chosen One” – but no one tries to win, as if discussion were simply a battle with words instead of lightsabers. Rather, the group works together to discover the truth and discern the best way to proceed; they also tolerate the contrary views of sometimes defiant Jedi Masters, such as Qui-Gon Jinn. Even the venerable Grand Master Yoda yields to the Council's collective will when they decide to allow Obi-Wan to train Anakin against his better judgment. We could say that they never lose sight of their “humanity,” but since they're not all members of the human species perhaps we should say that they respect each other's “personhood.”
Although Sith are similarly capable of living their lives respecting each other's personhood, they choose instead to act like animals without the capacity for prudent council: they try to overpower each other. When Darth Sidious had learned all he could from Darth Plagueis, he simply killed him in his sleep, without respect or compassion, the way a snake might slither into a bird's nest and swallow an egg. Similarly, when Darth Tyranus/Count Dooku's usefulness has come to an end and he kneels defeated at Anakin's saber point, Sidious actually smiles and casually instructs Anakin, “Kill him. Kill him now.”
What Nietzsche and Palpatine fail fully to grasp is that morality is no more or less a matter of interpretation than other forms of perception. We see what we expect to see, and it can appear fully real to us even if it's a total illusion. Padmé relies on this fact when she devises her plan to retake Naboo. She understands that if the Gungans attack the droid army in force, Nute Gunray will mistakenly interpret this as the final battle for Naboo he's been expecting: he will send out his forces, allowing her to sneak into Theed Palace and capture him. Padmé has seen through the superficial appearance of power to the central weakness of Gunray's position.
All perception may be a matter of interpretation, but some interpretations are better than others. This is, roughly, the lesson learned by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804):
Coincidental observations made without any previously thought-out plan can never connect up to form a necessary law, which reason seeks and needs. If reason is to be instructed by nature, then it must approach nature with its principles in one hand (since it is only by agreeing with principles that appearances can count as laws) and with its experiments (thought-out in accordance with those principles) in the other hand. Reason must not behave like a student who simply repeats what his teacher says; it must rather approach nature like an appointed judge who requires the witness to answer the questions put to him.10
The famous “problem of induction” asks, how can we be sure that the future will resemble the past? Kant solves this problem by expecting that we act not on our own “coincidental observations,” but on principle, that we ask the hard questions and see if we can figure out how our subjective interpretations of events can connect to form a universal law. For example, ask ten witnesses to Obi-Wan's disarming (literally!) of Zam Wessel in a Coruscant nightclub what they saw, and you may get ten different stories. It takes an intelligent investigator to sift through the coincidental observations to find the objective truth that lies beyond all these subjective truths. But Kant's crucial insight is more than this. He titled his magnum opus the Critique of Pure Reason because he discovered that it isn't enough for reason to critique or judge the evidence of our senses. Reason must also be self-critical: we must question even our own point of view.
How are we to do that? Scientists answer this question (in part) with the concept of “reproducibility.” Scientists present their findings to the scientific community so that others can try to reproduce their results. If the results you report turn out to be irreproducible, then those results will be dismissed as purely subjective and probably a result of some mistake (or deliberate attempt at deception) on your part. We've already seen this sort of approach in The Phantom Menace. The Jedi High Council includes twelve wise Masters who discuss and respectfully debate each other's viewpoints. Similarly, Padmé reveals her plan to capture Gunray to Captain Panaka, Boss Nass, and Qui-Gon in order to confirm that it is a good plan. Critical and self-critical inquiry is successful when we transcend our own limited perspective by treating one another with compassion and respect. In short, we have a greater chance of discovering the deeper principles of nature if we treat alternative points of view with the sort of respectful consideration they deserve.
By contrast, the Sith approach seems almost childish. Yes, they understand that in morality and other matters, subjectivity and interpretation shape our perceptions, but they lack the patience and humility – in short, the maturity – to engage in critical and self-critical inquiry. When a Sith faces obstacles or doesn't get what he wants, he throws a temper tantrum and uses the Force to get his way, or he sneaks behind everyone's back and manipulates the situation so that he gets what he wants. Sith behave just like Agamemnon and Achilles in Book 1 of Homer's Iliad: each one wants his way, and tries to overpower or manipulate others to do so.
The difference between Kant and Nietzsche on the subject of better and worse interpretations– between the patience and maturity of critical and self-critical inquiry on the one hand, and the impatience and immaturity of passionate subjectivity on the other hand – is evident in Attack of the Clones, just as the love between Anakin and Padmé is blossoming:
| ANAKIN: | I don't think the system works. |
| PADMÉ: | How would you have it work? |
| ANAKIN: | We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problems, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it. |
| PADMÉ: | That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree. |
| ANAKIN: | Then they should be made to. |
| PADMÉ: | By whom? Who's going to make them? |
| ANAKIN: | I don't know. Someone. |
| PADMÉ: | You? |
| ANAKIN: | Of course not me. |
| PADMÉ: | But someone. |
| ANAKIN: | Someone wise. |
| PADMÉ: | That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me. |
| ANAKIN: | Well, if it works.… |
Anakin is effectively recommending the rejection of compassion and respect; instead, the most powerful among politicians could force the rest to agree with his own limited point of view. This is the real danger with the Senate granting Chancellor Palpatine “emergency powers” to defend the Republic against the growing Separatist movement – all due to Palpatine's behind-the-scenes maneuvering and the gullibility of Gungan Representative Jar Jar Binks – leading ultimately to Palpatine's self-declaration as “Emperor” and eventually the complete dissolution of the Senate so that only Palpatine's point of view will determine the course of galactic events. How would you like to be forced to agree with someone else's point of view when your own experience tells you that there is more going on?
In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda agrees with Kant regarding looking for the deeper principles of nature binding on all of us in order to transcend our limited subjectivity:
My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere.
The Force is universal, like the force of gravity; it touches all of us (not just the lucky few born with a high midi-chlorian count). But this quest for universal principles that transcend the subjectivity of the individual raises one final question: if the worlds of The Iliad and Star Wars reject nihilism in favor of moral realism, and they both do so by making the intersubjectivity of compassion and respect fundamentally important in the discovery of cosmic principles, what moral universals are at work in these worlds?
Homer's Greek heroes obey what we might call the “Pagan Golden Rule”: help your friends and harm your enemies. This sounds harsh at first, but remember that an honorable warrior never loses compassion or respect for his enemies, “I have just learned that my enemy is to be hated only so much, since he may soon be my friend; and the friend I help, I will help only so much since he may not always remain my friend.”11 Friends can become enemies if you take them for granted – as Count Dooku and the other Separatist leaders learn the hard way from Darth Sidious – but if you treat your friends with respect and compassion, they will probably remain loyal to you. The same is true for your enemies. As Abraham Lincoln once asked, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
This is ultimately what Star Wars and The Iliad reveal to be the root of the nihilistic trap. There are real moral facts because there are universal moral principles that bind all people together, and which we ignore at our own peril. It isn't always easy to be a true friend to someone, since you need to be understanding and patient with them, and from time to time you have to make yourself vulnerable to them. The same is true with our enemies. Hostility isn't always a simple matter of winning and losing; often we need to take the time to understand our enemies, to see things through their eyes to find common ground. Immature people are impatient and unwilling to approach others with both compassion and respect; instead, like Anakin in the face of bureaucratic wrangling, they try to force the solution they want on others. After succumbing to the temptations of the dark side in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin attempts to persuade Padmé to his point of view, sounding even less mature now than the little boy Padmé first knew on Tatooine: “I have become more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him. And together you and I can rule the galaxy, make things the way we want them to be!”
Anakin and Achilles found that going down the dark path of nihilism can cost you dearly. Achilles was rescued from the monster he had become by seeing his own father in the tearful eyes of Priam. Anakin was saved by the devotion of his own son. Dying, he asks Luke to remove his helmet so that he can see his son with his own eyes rather than the eyes of Darth Vader, who could see only what his helmet allowed him to see. He had to make that direct connection with his son one last time. There wasn't much left of Anakin – he was “more machine now than man” – but it was enough. As Yoda almost said, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to … nihilism.” Like Achilles, Anakin barely makes it back from his journey into nihilism.