Does Tony’s Moral Compass Point to the Greater Good?

In “Armor Wars,” Tony examines the confiscated equipment of the villain Force (Clay Wilson) and discovers that it contains technology stolen from his own lab. Tony realizes, of course, that if Force had access to his technology, then so did other criminals. His suspicions are confirmed when he breaks into Justin Hammer’s computer and obtains a list of criminals to whom this technology was sold. As we might expect, Tony feels personally responsible for the chaos and destruction created by those who used the technology he created, and he sets out to recover his technology from villains who would use it to harm innocent people. Similarly, in “Extremis,” Tony Stark remains remorseful of his weapons-designing past and continues to struggle to be a “good” person. Even though the technology has evolved over time, the moral issues facing Tony Stark are unchanged.

Clearly, Tony has a moral compass. But what kind? Perhaps he is a utilitarian. Utilitarianism is concerned with the outcomes of actions, rather than with the actions themselves or the people taking the actions. More specifically, the classical utilitarians, such as Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), believed that all people naturally seek happiness and that happiness is gained by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. So, the principle of utility is to seek the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.²

At its core, utilitarianism is really about equality, or the idea that no one person is more important than any other. In other words, if the greater good is achieved by sacrificing the happiness of your child, this is understandably tragic, but you cannot protest that it is unfair on the grounds that your child is more important than other people (he or she would simply be more important to you). Furthermore, you have to calculate the happiness of all of the individuals affected by an action and determine how happy or unhappy it will make each person and how long that happiness or unhappiness will last. You also have to be realistic about whether the planned action will successfully achieve the projected ends. It might seem that many questionable actions, such as those that sacrifice the (legitimate) happiness of the few to increase the happiness of the many, could be justified according to this theory, and in its simple form this is true. But if you account for all of the complexities involved in utilitarian decision making, it ends up being a more cautious and judicious system than it first seems.³

Tony exhibits some elements of utilitarian thinking—certainly, he is concerned about the greater good—but ultimately this is not the best theory to describe who he is as a moral agent. In “Armor Wars,” he finds the utilitarian mantra of the “greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people,” and the sacrifice of innocent people that this may allow, morally unacceptable. (Of course, he has less of a problem sacrificing criminals, so this is a bit murky.) In this story, Tony is intent on recapturing his stolen technology and is in turmoil about the possibility of even one innocent person dying in that process—a process that could potentially save many lives, and one that a true (but simplistic) utilitarian would approve of.

Consider that when he confronts the Controller at his base of operations, Tony discovers that the villain has cultivated a group of human zombies, one of whom is killed when he gets in between Iron Man and the Controller. Tony is outraged and says, “My whole reason for coming here was to keep anyone else from being harmed by my technology! And now, because of that technology, someone has . . . died!”⁴ Also, recall the series of events in which Iron Man is trying to save a military plane and its pilots from an attack by the Raiders. After Iron Man uses a negator pack on one Raider, another one threatens to shoot one of the pilots. Tony thinks, “My whole reason for being here is to save lives! I can ’t be responsible for the loss of one, even if it means failure!”⁵ He changes tactics in order to save the pilot’s life, even at the possible cost of not saving many lives in the future.

In the end, Tony accepts some aspects of the utilitarian perspective, but it is not the best theory to describe his approach to morality. Besides Tony’s unwillingness to sacrifice even one person for the “greater good,” utilitarianism poses a second major problem for him. When we say that traditional utilitarians focus on outcomes, this also means that the primary focus of the theory is not the motives of the individual agent. For example, when Tony saves the pilot’s life, the utilitarian concern would simply be whether the outcome is successful. If the life is saved, then it is irrelevant whether Tony did it because he wants to be a good person or because he wants to appear to be a good person or for some other reason. As we will see, however, Tony is obsessed both with doing good deeds and with being a good person, so we need another ethical theory to determine his moral compass.

Does Tony’s Moral Compass Point to Duty?

Whereas utilitarianism focuses on the consequences of actions, deontology focuses on the actions themselves and the motives behind them. The word deontology comes from the Greek and refers to binding obligations and duties. The leading deontologist, the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804), argued that if we used our reason correctly, we would all come up with the same basic moral rule, what Kant called the categorical imperative. In essence, this moral rule instructs us that it is our duty to perform actions that we could rationally will that everyone else could perform, and also that it is our duty never to treat people merely as means to our ends but always as ends in themselves.⁶

Kant’s theory is appealing insofar as it provides us with firm duties and obligations, but it also becomes indeterminate when confronted with two competing moral obligations or duties. A famous (some would say infamous) example concerns what you ought to do in a situation in which you must lie in order to save a life. Imagine the following situation: Iron Man is visiting you and the Crimson Dynamo comes to your door and asks whether Iron Man is there, in hopes of killing him. Is it ethical to lie in order to save Iron Man ’s life? Kant says no—the moral imperative is not to lie, even though a life is at stake.⁷ But more reasonable examples can certainly be imagined. What if Tony promises to help Happy Hogan move into a new apartment, but then he receives an emergency call for Iron Man to help the Avengers? Tony may certainly feel a duty to both, but he can help only one—what to do? A choice has to be made, but Kant provided little guidance in such situations.

In the end, Kant’s theory is too idealistic and rigid for Tony Stark. While Tony exhibits idealistic thinking at times, he is ultimately too pragmatic to subscribe to a moral theory that is so strictly rule driven. Tony, after all, is sometimes willing to bend rules to get the outcome he desires. For example, in “Armor Wars,” after Tony has discovered that his technology has been stolen, he tries to use legal means to retrieve it. But when he realizes how slow the process will be, he says, “I believe in the law, and in the system. But the people I’m up against don’t. Maybe it’s time for lives to mean more than rules. It’s a tough decision; perhaps the toughest of my life. But with the government’s support, or its hindrance . . . by the law, or against it . . . I’m going to get back what’s mine.”⁸ Although at times Tony subscribes to black-and-white moral thinking about right and wrong, and in this sense has some affinity for Kant’s ethics, he is no absolutist.

Tony’s decision is fueled by emotion, but Kant did not place much value on emotion. Rather, he believed that reason is what makes us most human; we are most truly engaged in moral reasoning when we are guided solely by reason and not by emotion. Tony Stark, of course, is not a man driven by reason alone. His emotional life is part and parcel of his vision of who he ought to be. “Armor Wars” and “Extremis” are replete with examples of Tony struggling with and being guided by his emotions. Indeed, Tony’s emotional turmoil is a common theme in the Iron Man series as a whole.

Finding Tony’s Moral Compass in Emotion

With Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) as our guide, we shift our focus from how we judge whether a person is moral to how a person becomes moral. Rather than discard emotions from the moral equation, Aristotle suggested training them and using them to form a virtuous character; hence, his moral system is known as a type of virtue ethics. In short, Aristotelian virtue ethics holds that a person of moral virtue is also a person of character; such a person exhibits moderation. She is able to hit the mean, the moderate balance point, between excess and deficiency. For example, in a situation in which a dear, trusted friend needs to borrow money for food, it would be moderate and generous to lend money. In a situation with a friend who has a known gambling problem, however, lending money would be foolish. A person of moral virtue knows the difference between the two situations.⁹

According to Aristotle, we learn moral virtue through habituation and practice. To do good, moral training must become so much a part of who we are that we barely have to think about it as we do it. In the first stages of becoming a good person, we observe and imitate those around us. In this sense, learning moral virtue is a little like learning a sport. If Happy and Pepper want to learn to play soccer, they have to study the rules of the game, train for endurance in running, and practice exercises that will teach them skills such as kicking and dribbling the ball. Only when they have mastered these skills will they be able to seamlessly employ them in a real-time game. In the same way that Happy and Pepper cannot play soccer well (or be good soccer players) unless they have so thoroughly absorbed the microlevel skills (so that they can focus on the game as a whole and not on how to properly kick the ball), so a person of character cannot act appropriately in different situations without the automatic skills that habituation has provided. Tony Stark, as Iron Man, has achieved this at a certain level, using his formidable intellect, together with his accumulated experience in many morally problematic situations, to develop habits that lead to sound moral character.¹⁰

The “Armor Wars” and “Extremis” story lines both demonstrate the degree to which Tony is preoccupied with the question of how to be a good person in the Aristotelian sense. For example, although his pragmatic side recognizes that the world is not a neat and tidy moral universe, he worries almost obsessively about being good. Tony wants to do good, but that is not enough for him—he also strives to be good. Aristotle’s views on moral virtue and habituation can help us to think through why this approach to ethics best suits Tony Stark.

Tony’s Moral Compass Found!

“Extremis” presents us with four interrelated examples of Tony’s Aristotelian desire to be good and not merely to do good, all of them linked with Tony’s past as a weapons designer and his uncertainty about the moral good done by Iron Man. Succinctly put, his concern is this: is Iron Man only another weapon, or does he represent the promise of a world without war? In “Extremis,” Tony decides in favor of the latter.

In the first example, when Tony’s personal secretary Mrs. Rennie calls him in his garage, where he has been a recluse for six weeks, Tony looks at himself in the mirror and says, “What are you looking at?” He examines his face and continues to say to the mirror, “I hate it when you look at me like that.”¹¹ This response to his own reflection is a clear indicator of an inner conflict, related to his history as a weapons designer.

The second example is found in the same issue when Tony is interviewed by the documentary filmmaker John Pillinger. Pillinger steers the interview in a negative direction that would indict Tony as a warlord who creates weapons that kill children, but Tony defends himself at every turn. At the end of the interview, Pillinger asks Tony why he would take an interview with him when he knows what his work is like (think of Pillinger as a kind of Michael Moore). Tony counters with a thought-provoking question that shows us once again the turmoil beneath the surface: “I wanted to meet you. You’ve been making your investigative films for what, twenty years now? I wanted to ask: Have you changed anything? You’ve been uncovering disturbing things all over the world for twenty years now. Have you changed anything? You’ve worked very hard. Most people have no idea of the kind of work you’ve done. Intellectuals, critics and activists follow your films closely, but culturally you’re almost invisible, Mr. Pillinger. Have you changed anything?” Pillinger responds honestly that he doesn’t know. Tony says back, “Me neither.” The interview and Tony’s question to Pillinger cut to the heart of Tony’s inner turmoil. Pillinger may appear to be a good person, but has he done any good? Tony appears to have done some good, but is he a good person? Tony would like to both be a good person and do good—but is this possible? Becoming Iron Man is his solution.

The third example is found after Maya Hansen, an old friend and colleague, has called Tony in distress. The Extremis virus that she helped create, which was funded by the army to produce superhuman warriors, has been stolen. Tony brings Maya to see their old friend and mentor Sal Kennedy. Before Sal becomes aware of the full import of the danger Extremis poses, he offers an unsolicited diagnosis of both Tony’s and Maya’s lives that once again underscores Tony’s inner turmoil. He says to Tony, “You can barely look at yourself in the mirror, can you, Tony? You’re rich now. Independent. I have a feeling you do good works, when you can. But it’s not enough. You have intellect and power, but it’s not enough. It ’s like there’s a dam across your life.”¹² Sal, in effect, says that even if Tony does good, Tony does not feel that he is good. Tony’s response is that Iron Man is somehow the solution to this dilemma.

The final example takes place after Maya has told Tony about the destruction that Extremis can cause. Tony springs into action and starts to don the Iron Man armor. As he makes his final preparations, he sees his reflection in a computer monitor and says, “Oh, now you can look at me?”¹³ Iron Man is clearly the key to solving Tony’s inner turmoil. Tony is torn about whether the good he does with Iron Man is good enough. Tony wants to be a good person, but it is Iron Man who does good deeds. The Extremis virus presents the solution, a way for Tony to be Iron Man in the truest sense. As Tony says to Maya, “Make me the Iron Man inside and out.”¹⁴ If Tony can be Iron Man, then he thinks that he can both be a good person and do good deeds. He won’t have to instruct the Iron Man armor to do what he thinks is best; he will be the Iron Man inside and out.¹⁵

Tony’s approach is Aristotelian because it joins the person with the deeds. In contrast to utilitarianism, Tony’s Aristotelian approach focuses on a moral agent, rather than on the deeds or the outcomes, and it does not necessarily condone the sacrifice of some for the many. In contrast to Kantian moral theory, Tony’s approach takes emotions into consideration and is not based in firm rules. Aristotle’s concern with both doing good and being a good person allows for making decisions tailored to the situation. This explains why Tony will not simply walk away from the weapons industry and feels compelled to retrieve his stolen technology. There is no hard and fast universal rule to guide him in this regard—it simply comes down to his own judgment, based on his character.

Can You Find Your Moral Compass?

As readers, we are led to ask reflective questions of ourselves by the dilemmas that Tony faces. For example, are you concerned about being a good person and doing good deeds, or is simply doing good deeds enough? Or, perhaps, would you be satisfied with merely appearing to be good?

“Armor Wars” and “Extremis” demonstrate that Tony is not concerned with whether he appears good, but rather with being good. He would never have risked his company and alienated his friends, including Captain America and the Avengers, if this weren’t the case. Aristotle said that in contrast to the person of character, anyone “can experience fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity, and generally any kind of pleasure and pain either too much or too little, and in either case not properly.” But the person of character, because he has aligned who he is with what he does, has a different experience. As Aristotle continued, “But to experience all this at the right time, toward the right objects, toward the right people, for the right reason, and in the right manner—that is the median and the best course, the course that is a mark of virtue.”¹⁶ Only the actions of a person of character or virtue seamlessly display who that person truly is, regardless of the situation.

Tony would add that the mark of virtue also involves not being overly influenced by the opinions of others with respect to what he thinks is the right thing to do. This can be a lonely path. As Tony himself says in “Armor Wars” about his mission to destroy all of his stolen technology, “So far, the quest has been costly: I had to fire myself, as Iron Man from Stark Enterprises . . . my personal life is a shambles . . . and I’ve lost one of my oldest friends [Captain America].”¹⁷ It can be alienating to align one ’s actions with one’s beliefs, especially when one’s concept of virtue conflicts with society’s. Despite this challenge, Tony perseveres because he wants to be a good person and not merely appear to be so to those around him. Would you make a similar sacrifice for your moral beliefs? We can all hope we never have to face that question, but it’s worth thinking about all the same.

NOTES

1 “Armor Wars” appeared in Iron Man, vol. 1, #225-232 (1987-1988), and “Extremis ” in Iron Man, vol. 4, #1-6 (2005-2006); both have since been collected in trade paperback.

2 This is commonly referred to today as hedonic utilitarianism; some modern utilitarians deemphasize happiness and prefer to orient their ethical decision making around well-being or preference-satisfaction. For more on the varieties of utilitarianism (or consequentialism in general), see Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Consequentialism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism, particularly section 3.

3 For more on the practical complexities of utilitarianism, see J. Robert Loftis, “Means, Ends, and the Critique of Pure Superheroes,” in Mark D. White, ed., Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), pp. 47-60.

4 Iron Man, vol. 1, #225 (December 1987). Note that although Tony is concerned about the innocent man who died, he is not worried about whether the Controller survived the scuffle, which shows the ambiguity of his feelings toward utilitarianism and the meaning of the equality behind it.

5 Ibid., vol. 1, #226 ( January 1988).

6 Ideally, these two formulations of the categorical imperative are equivalent, because they both rely on the equal dignity and worth of all rational beings (like us). For the basic treatment, see Kant’s 1785 book Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (we recommend the translation by James W. Ellington, 3rd ed. [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, (1785) 1993]).

7 The original example from Kant, on which this example is based, comes from his “On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns,” which can be found in the edition of the Grounding cited in the previous note (pp. 63-67).

8 Iron Man, vol. 1, #225 (December 1987).

9 In this chapter we limit our discussion to Tony and moral virtue; for a discussion of Tony Stark and the other virtues, see the chapters in this volume by Carsten Fogh Nielsen (“Flawed Heroes and Courageous Villains: Plato, Aristotle, and Iron Man on the Unity of the Virtues ”) and by Stephanie and Brett Patterson ( “‘I Have a Good Life ’: Iron Man and the Avenger School of Virtue ”).

10 Again, see the chapters by Nielsen and the Pattersons for different perspectives on Tony’s virtue.

11 Iron Man, vol. 4, #1 ( January 2005).

12 Ibid., vol. 4, #2 (February 2005).

13 Ibid., vol. 4, #3 (March 2005).

14 Ibid., vol. 4, #4 (October 2005).

15 Of course, this view becomes problematic in the following story line, “Execute Program ” (Iron Man, vol. 4, #7 -12, 2006; 2007 trade paperback), when Iron Man ’s mind—and therefore Iron Man’s system itself—is hacked and controlled by a killer.

16 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1962), p. 43 (1106b 18-24, by the marginal notation that is standard in any respectable edition of the text, including this one).

17 Iron Man, vol. 1, #229 (April 1988).