I have argued that there exists a dialectical opposition between what might be called Woody Allen’s more pessimistic films and his more optimistic films, a conflict between despair and a hope based on some sort of faith. Allen seems to have a love-hate relationship with God in which his intellectual tendency toward atheism combats his spiritual yearning for some form of salvation. I have also argued that throughout his career Allen has been, and continues to be, one of film’s most forceful advocates for an awareness of moral values, and that an essential theme which permeates all of his films is his contention that contemporary American society is rapidly descending into barbarism precisely because of our failure to maintain a sense of individual moral responsibility.
Yet Allen has frequently been accused of advocating moral relativism. Those who make such accusations wonder why Allen finds it necessary to introduce so many characters who argue, sometimes quite persuasively, for positivistic or hedonistic ethical views. These critics ask why Allen allows characters such as Rob (Annie Hall), Yale (Manhattan), Leopold (A Midsummer’s Night Sex Comedy), Tina (Broadway Danny Rose), Frederick (Hannah and Her Sisters), Lloyd (September), Judah, and Aunt May (Crimes and Misdemeanors ) to present their arguments in settings that often seem to validate their views. If, as I have suggested, Allen believes these views to be morally repulsive, then why does he privilege them through repetition?
Furthermore, if Allen favors a return to more traditional values, then why doesn’t he present more forceful arguments for grounding these values objectively? Indeed, why does Allen return again and again to these issues as though they have yet to be resolved? If Allen were a true advocate of traditional moral positions, wouldn’t he wish to convince us that this debate has been unequivocally resolved in favor of those positions?
While these arguments have been made by a number of critics, they are perhaps most elegantly, and concisely, stated by my colleague Mark Roche of the Ohio State University in a letter to me comparing our differing interpretations of Crimes and Misdemeanors:
On the level of Allen’s intentions I share your reading, but I think the philosophy you want the film to privilege is ultimately weak. You adopt the position of faith over hedonism and power positivism, but I think the film shows—perhaps against Allen’s intentions—that all three of these positions are ultimately decisionistic: they amount to the same thing formally, simply with different content. In other words, though you select the position of Judah’s father, you have no serious arguments to persuade Judah of its validity. We both argue that Judah suffers, but whereas I can refer to his transgression of an objective order, you cannot; therefore, the skeptic might suggest to you that Judah in fact suffers only because he is not yet a free-thinker, not yet beyond bourgeois guilt. I see that as a fundamental philosophical weakness in the existential position. I don’t see Aunt May as advocating reason as much as skepticism and power. By the way, her position seems to correlate also to a dominant position of contemporary theory—the reduction of all truth claims to power. In contrast, I would argue for a transcendental ground to ethics (along the lines of Kant or Apel): to deny certain basic concepts and categories, it is also necessary to presuppose them; thus their negation is self-contradictory and self-canceling. I think that reason can give us some unassailable grounds for ethics, even as it fails to analyze every issue exhaustively.
While Roche agrees with me that Allen intends to support an existential moral position such as that represented in Levy’s closing monologue, he argues that Allen undermines all ethical positions so thoroughly that the film could well be “read as an unwitting endorsement of stagnant nihilism.”
I believe that Allen’s presentation of these issues stems from his notions of honesty and integrity. Yes, it would be easier and more optimistic to operate as though there existed an objective ground for moral values, one so unshakable as to invalidate all opposing claims. If such a ground did exist, then Allen would have no need for his underlying pessimism, and the villains in his films would be much easier to identify. However, as I read Allen’s work, to assume such a metaphysical foundation in the absence of any evidence would be an inexcusable form of bad faith; one would be pretending to oneself that such a basis exists while simultaneously battling despair derived from an awareness that no persuasive arguments support its existence.
Allen feels an obligation to reveal the true nature of our collective ethical dilemma in spite of his passionate desire to believe that answers exist for the most profound metaphysical questions. This is why Allen himself is so critical of the films in which he allows his burning desire for a happy ending to overcome his honest realization of our ontological position, and it explains his own analysis of both Stardust Memories (perhaps his most pessimistic film) and Hannah and Her Sisters (certainly one of his most optimistic). As was noted earlier, Allen told Tom Shales in 1987 that “the best film I ever did, really was Stardust Memories. It was my least popular film. That may automatically mean it was my best film. It was the closest that I came to achieving what I set out to achieve” (Shales, 1987, p. 90). On the other hand, in another interview that same year, Allen criticized Hannah, stating that it was “more ‘up’ and optimistic than I had intended, and consequently was very popular. It’s only optimistic in the sections I failed” (Yacowar, 1991, p. 252).
In answer to a question I posed to him (see Appendix), Allen continues this pessimism by asserting that successful romantic relationships are the result of “pure luck,” that faith may be more of a “blind spot or a flaw” than a “gift,” and that Judah “feels no guilt.”
All this does not imply, however, that Allen’s critics are right when they accuse him of nihilism. If Allen were truly a nihilist, then he would accept the claims of the many positivists and hedonists he portrays, rather than fighting against them as vigorously as he does. The source of the dialectical opposition in his films, and indeed, the source of much of his greatness as a film artist, lies in his unwillingness to give in to his despair, his need to continue to fight for his values. Allen has not given up his search for answers; nor does he accept the claim that in the absence of persuasive proof, all ethical theories are equally valid. Like a Kierkegaard or a Sartre, Allen commits himself to a specific framework of metaphysical values (e.g., “acceptance, forgiveness, and love”) despite his admitted inability to prove their validity.
This brings us to an additional question. If Allen concedes that he has yet to prove the validity of his views, then what justifies his rejection of bad faith? In other words, what exactly is bad about “bad” faith? A Sartrean answer to this question begins by pointing out that anyone who chooses to act in bad faith holds a position that is inherently inconsistent. Once I realize my true condition as a free being, I cannot deny the responsibility that freedom entails without falling into bad faith. I cannot simultaneously accept my freedom and deny it without being in bad faith. Thus, the condition of being in bad faith directly implies inconsistency. In fact, bad faith could be defined simply as a condition of inconsistency in which one both recognizes and at the same time denies one’s own freedom and corresponding responsibility.
Therefore, bad faith is “bad” only because it implies inconsistency. And, as consistency is one of the major conditions for rationality, one can further say that when a person is in bad faith, he is not being rational. Now, Sartre does not claim that anyone has an obligation to be rational. Sartre is a noncognitivist; he does not believe that any objective moral norms exist. However, Sartre does claim that if one wishes to be rational, then one must avoid falling into bad faith, which means that one must accept one’s human condition as a free and responsible activity. In his lecture Existentialism and Humanism, Sartre himself put it this way:
One can judge, first—and perhaps this is not a judgment of value, but it is a logical judgment—that in certain cases choice is founded upon an error, and in others upon the truth. One can judge a man by saying that he deceives himself. Since we have defined the situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and without help, any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver. One may object: “But why should he not choose to deceive himself?” I reply that it is not for me to judge him morally, but I define his self-deception as an error. Here one cannot avoid pronouncing a judgment of truth. The self-deception is evidently a falsehood, because it is a dissimulation of man’s complete liberty of commitment. Upon the same level, I say that it is also a self-deception if I choose to declare that certain values are incumbent upon me; I am in contradiction with myself if I will these values and at the same time say that they impose themselves upon me. If anyone says to me, “And what if I wish to deceive myself?” I answer, “There is no reason why you should not, but I declare that you are doing so, and that the attitude of strict consistency itself is that of good faith” [1948, pp. 50–51].
Thus Sartre is simply pointing out the logical implications of any individual’s claim to be acting rationally.
Sartre does not claim that one individual could never criticize another for being in bad faith on moral grounds. Nor would Sartre deny himself or anyone else the possibility of morally criticizing others on many other grounds. However, when Sartre criticizes someone on moral grounds, he does so on the basis of his own freely chosen moral values, whose validity springs only from their status as having been freely chosen by Sartre, and not from any objective basis. In other words, if I choose to criticize someone as being morally “wrong” because that person is in bad faith, that judgment will have no objective validity in and of itself, but will be valid relative only to the set of moral values I have created for myself as a free and responsible individual. Yet, regardless of whether I personally choose to view bad faith as morally wrong, I cannot rationally deny the objective validity of the assertion that if one chooses to be rational, one cannot choose simultaneously to be in bad faith.
This fact does not in any way affect one’s ability to make moral judgments on the basis of one’s own freely chosen moral values. Even though there is an absence of objectively valid moral standards, I can still choose to judge others and myself on the basis of those moral values I have freely created for myself.
In a Sartrean ethics, the individual, as moral agent, does not simply express his personal preferences when he commits himself to a moral judgment. Indeed, in a Sartrean ethics, a distinction must be made between personal preference and moral judgment. It is here that the principle of universalization assumes primary significance: it plays a central role in the grounding of this distinction.
For the ethical cognitivist, the distinction between personal preference and moral judgment is made on the basis of the objective status of the position in question. Thus, for the cognitivist (or naturalist), the decision to prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate is viewed as the expression of a mere personal preference because no objectively valid basis exists for making such a choice. However, the cognitivist would probably state that the decision to view murder as wrong is the result of a moral judgment because, according to the cognitivist, there does exist an objectively valid moral basis for holding such a position.
On the other hand, the ethical noncognitivist, such as Allen or Sartre, can have no such explanation of the difference between personal preference and moral judgment, because the ethical noncognitivist does not admit the existence of any objectively valid moral norms. Thus, for the noncognitivist, the distinction between personal preference and moral judgment must be predicated upon the different ways in which each is formulated and used rather than upon their supposed claims to objective moral validity.
Moral judgments, for a Sartrean, differ from personal preferences in that they are the result of specific creative acts on the part of the individual, acts to which that individual is willing to commit himself wholly. Such acts of personal invention cannot be reduced to expressions of emotion because emotional attitudes are themselves, for Sartre, the result of choice. A necessary consequence of making such a judgment is that one commits oneself, to the extent that one wishes to be rational, to a moral stand that one must be willing to universalize to cover all cases identical to one’s own in their morally relevant aspects.
A personal preference differs from a moral judgment in that such preferences are not open to universalization. When I decide that I prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate, this decision in no way commits me to a belief that all persons ought to do the same. On the other hand, if I decide that it would be morally wrong for me to steal, then I am committing myself to the belief that it would be equally wrong for anyone else to steal. It is important to emphasize that the normative content of one’s judgment does not determine whether that judgment is a moral one. It is the way in which the judgment is made that creates its moral character.
It would be possible for me to formulate my preference for vanilla ice cream in a way that turns it into a moral judgment. Say, for example, that the workers who make the chocolate flavoring for ice cream decided to call for a national boycott of chocolate ice cream in order to pressure their employers to change what they considered to be unfair working conditions. Now, further suppose that I decide, in the absence of any objectively valid moral norms, to create my moral values in a way that commits me to supporting the workers and their boycott. In such a situation, I would be committed, for as long as I hold my position, to avoiding chocolate ice cream on moral grounds. Furthermore, I would also be committed to the belief that everyone ought to avoid chocolate ice cream.
Moral judgments, therefore, are distinguishable from personal preferences in that the former are open to universalization while the latter are not. This does not mean, of course, that all judgments open to universalization are moral judgments, for most descriptive judgments are also open to universalization. What distinguishes moral judgments from descriptive judgments is the latter’s added prescriptive character, i.e., the fact that they commend what they also describe.
While I have no definite evidence that Allen accepts this interpretation of his own ethical position, I would contend that it is certainly compatible with the positions presented in his films and that its use can be helpful in clarifying Allen’s views and resolving areas of apparent contradiction.
Allen’s critics are quite correct, therefore, when they argue that the existentialist cannot justify his ultimate moral principles (which are few in number and from which all his other moral claims are rationally derived) in any objective fashion. Allen cannot prove that his ultimate moral claims are correct to those who do not also choose to accept them. These claims are created individually in the exercise of one’s ontological freedom and are indeed, in principle, unjustifiable.
This is why, in discussing the appropriate response to a neo–Nazi march in Manhattan, Isaac is quick to reject the claim that “a biting satirical piece is always preferable to physical force.” “No,” he answers, “physical force is always better with Nazis. It’s hard to satirize a guy with shiny boots.” Rational disputation is possible in metaphysical areas only when some common assumptions exist on which to base the debate.
The essential difference in Allen’s position from those of the cognitivists (such as Roche) is that Allen acknowledges that his ultimate moral principles are unjustifiable, yet he still finds them capable of forming the basis of an intelligible and workable system. The cognitivist, on the other hand, holds to the notion that the very enterprise of ethics is impossible unless there exists a knowable objective ground for such principles—although, from a perspective such as Allen’s, it is not discernible how such a grounding might occur.
Thus, when Allen’s characters claim to have an obligation to be honest in their dealings with others, they recognize that they cannot ultimately ground that claim in a knowledge of any natural purpose (as an Aristotle would), or indubitable rational intuition (as Kant and Roche do). No, for Allen, these duties are solely grounded in his free creation of them and his willingness to generalize his choice into a theory of universal human morality. Because he chooses to value certain notions of integrity and honor, he constitutes this valuing in a prescriptive manner from which he generates his own claims for the similar obligations of others. In doing so, he acknowledges that his choice to believe in the value of morality is ultimately an unjustifiable Kierkegaardian leap of faith. As Allen stated in his interview with me, the “conflict between despair and hope can only be resolved on an individual basis, not in any general theoretical way. Faith can’t be come to by reason—it’s a gift, perhaps even a blind spot or flaw, but helpful, like [a] denial mechanism. Reason goes so far and I admire it. Intuition is just reason but accomplished in the leap rather than taking all the steps.”
Allen’s fundamental criteria for a moral life are accepted on a faith that is incapable of incontestable demonstration. Reason can go only so far; it can provide insights into the implications of our acts on the basis of our underlying moral principles, but it cannot objectively ground those principles. It seems odd that some of Allen’s critics, who might be perfectly willing to accept the premise that their belief in God must be ultimately grounded in religious faith rather than on indisputable proofs, are apparently not able to accept the same restrictions on their beliefs in the natural origins of our duties and obligations.
On the other hand, I do recognize that there is a serious, though unstated, thrust to their criticisms of Allen. They obviously believe that the universe would be a more hospitable place in which to operate ethically if there existed one incontrovertible method of ethical reasoning, a method that could conclusively demonstrate that in any conflict of values or ethical principles, one and only one solution is correct.
Allen would agree that our lack of certain knowledge in the ethical realm renders the universe much more frightening. He also would prefer to believe that rationality can solve all such disputes. Unfortunately, however, he has been unable to discover convincing evidence that this is so. For this reason, he believes that it would be bad faith to pretend to ourselves that such a method is grounded objectively when we are aware that it cannot be. The existentialist’s disappointment, anguish, and awareness of responsibility are, for Allen, more authentic responses to the failure of the human attempt to ground ethics than are the arguments of those who continue, against all apparent evidence, to claim that we have succeeded.
Thus, returning to Roche’s comments concerning Crimes and Misdemeanors, it is true that Allen presents us with no compelling arguments to persuade us of the validity of Ben and Sol’s position over that of Jack and Judah. The reason for this, I have argued, is that Allen believes it would be a violation of his integrity as an artist if he were to suggest that an objective ground for ethics exists when he has himself been unable to discover such a ground.
And yet, Allen’s conscience requires him to argue for adherence to some form of moral structure. Admittedly, the moral code he proposes in his films is open to many criticisms. Allen makes it quite clear that those who choose the path of morality are by no means assured of a happier or a more successful life than those who choose the path of hedonism. Again and again in his films, he shows us characters who choose morality over self-interest only to end up worse off than those who strive solely for material success. To an Aunt May, Isaac Davis, Danny Rose, and Cliff Stern would all appear to be losers; yet, Allen clearly believes, by adhering to standards of personal honor and integrity, they are living much more meaningful lives than those who, like Yale, Lester, and Judah, have traded their souls for material gain and the satisfaction of their senses.
Allen cannot prove that we ought to act morally. Indeed, his despair derives from his recognition that all empirical evidence seems to confirm Lloyd’s claim in September that the universe is “haphazard and unimaginably violent.” And yet, like Soloveitchik’s Adam the second, Allen cannot resist the spiritual impulses within himself. On those occasions when he allows himself the indulgence of faith, he chooses to believe in a moral structure that justifies and rewards its attendant sacrifices by instilling a sense of righteousness, which is much more precious than material success. Allen allows Sol to acknowledge that even if he knew with certainty that his faith was false—that the universe was truly hollow—he would still choose to believe rather than betray the only values upon which a meaningful life may be constructed.
There is no way to predict where Allen’s internal struggle will finally lead him. Perhaps the character who best symbolizes this struggle is Louis Levy, the philosopher whose faith and strength of will were strong enough to survive the Holocaust and to create an optimistic postwar philosophy. Levy may have been driven by despair to commit suicide midway through Crimes and Misdemeanors; yet, at the film’s conclusion, he is miraculously resurrected as the spokesperson for a bittersweet moral optimism, which is able to proclaim that “most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy, from simple things like the family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.” Perhaps someday Allen will be able to celebrate Levy’s faith without also feeling the obligation to share in his despair.