Batman is often criticized—more by people in the real world than in the comics—for selfishly using most of his fortune to fund his activities as a costumed crimefighter, supporting him and his partners with gadgets, computers, vehicles, and grand hide‐outs. As Hush said when he fell down the stairs into the Batcave in a fight with Batman, “Bruce, you bastard! This is magnificent! … I wonder what Thomas and Martha would think of the self‐indulgent way you’re squandering their fortune. All this to salve a spoiled brat’s broken heart.”1 (Hush sure knows how to hurt a guy.)
This final chapter of our discussion of Batman’s mission abstracts from his individual actions and asks various questions about whether Batman serves the purpose that Bruce Wayne intends for him. Should Wayne be using his incredible resources—not just his wealth, but also his intellect, influence, and determination—in different ways than dressing up as a bat and prowling the night? Has being Batman made a difference in Gotham—and does he believe he has? And finally, does being Batman make Batman happy, and does it give his life meaning—despite the futility of the mission itself?
The argument usually goes like this: If Bruce Wayne truly wants to help the people of Gotham City, there are better ways for him to do it than put on a costume and punch bad guys. All of the money he spends on the equipment in the Batcave (and his other stashes throughout the world), his various Bat‐vehicles, and all of his wonderful toys—in addition to his time, attention, and intellect—could do more good for others if used in more direct, positive charitable efforts. By devoting so much of his wealth and time to being Batman, then, he is actually compromising the mission he swore to pursue, hiding from the world under a cape and cowl rather than engaging with it openly and freely.
Batman himself has criticized others for the same thing. Once, he met a hermit named Haven living in the woods, who explained that he was a man who “despaired of civilization … and who has tried in his way to find peace … So I left the world behind me … journeyed out into these woods … and built a new world with my bare hands.” Batman challenged him, asking, “Isn’t that a cop‐out? Running away and hiding from the world rather than trying to change it?”2 Some would say Batman has done the same thing, running around in a disguise, helping the people of Gotham avoid undue pain from crime but not doing enough to lift them up in a more positive way.
This is fair question to ask of anyone who claims to try to help the world: Are you doing it as much as you can or in the best way you can? As we saw earlier, the effective altruism movement focuses on this, asking us to not merely do (some) good but do the most good we can do, specifically for the people who need it the most. We have already seen, however, that Bruce Wayne decidedly does not do this: As he tells Robin, “My life is sworn to fighting crime … and protecting the people from its ravages, not ‘saving the world.’”3 As we know, his mission is deliberately narrower than general utilitarianism: to save lives, primarily by fighting crime, and mainly in Gotham City. If we accept this restricted and negative mission as a valid goal, then the choice to be a masked vigilante doesn’t seem so strange—well, in the context of superhero comics, at least—especially given his skepticism regarding the effectiveness of those usually tasked with this goal. (We’ll have more to say about Batman’s relationship to the police in the second part of the book.)
Even if we doubt the contribution of his nighttime self to his mission, or question his mission itself as too limited, we should acknowledge that Bruce Wayne does much more than just cast a wicked shadow under a Gotham City streetlight. Although he obviously does devote considerable resources to fighting crime, he also dedicates much of his money—and some of his time, when he is awake at all during the daylight hours—to helping Gotham City and its citizens in other ways.
He didn’t start out this way, to be sure. As he trained to fight crime, before that intrepid bat flew through his window, young Bruce Wayne planned to devote all of his time and wealth to his mission against crime. While in Paris, he met Lucius Fox for the first time, who proposed they partner up to help Gotham and the world: “My expertise is in finance—and with your family fortune, we could really do something extraordinary,” to which Bruce responded, “No, that money—like me—has already been committed elsewhere.” As he reflected later, “Lucius wouldn’t have understood. No one could. I made a promise. To honor my parents. Someday to rid Gotham of the crime that took their lives.”4
Later, however, he had a change of heart. After one of his gravesite confessionals, Bruce returned home to the manor and Alfred, and told his trusted butler, “I want to use more of my parents’ money, Alfred, to build a better foundation.” Alfred assumed he meant Batman, and said as much, but Bruce corrected him: “No, Alfred, my father’s charitable foundation—for the victims of crime … and for the victims of the poverty that spawns crime … its work redoubled and rededicated … in my parents’ memory.”5 The Wayne Foundation would go on to become the primary means through which Bruce engages in philanthropy. Years later, when the Wayne Foundation was taken over and the Wayne fortune appropriated to pay off its debts, Batman reflected on his newfound poverty and revealed the extent of his largess:
Never thought about my money very much—it was always there. And now that it’s gone, I can’t quite decide how I feel. Most of it’s always gone toward charitable ends … and as for the rest of it, aside from the upkeep of the manor, it has ironically been the Batman—rather than “playboy” Bruce Wayne—who spends the most …6
It comes as no surprise that the Batman “operation” absorbs a lot of Wayne resources—and the Wayne lifestyle very little—but this statement suggests that the expense of crimefighting pales in comparison to his charitable efforts.
As stark a distinction as Batman often draws between the lives in and out of the mask, his philanthropy and his nightlife are two sides of the same coin, whether that coin represents his more focused mission to fight crime or his more general one to save the residents of Gotham City. As his comment to Alfred above suggests, he is well aware that poverty “spawns crime.” As he boarded socialite Camille Baden‐Smythe’s yacht—leading to the episode with Orca recounted in the last chapter—she told him she was surprised to see him there, to which he replied, “You’ve never hosted a benefit for the Gotham Orphanage before, Camille.” They debated the merits of helping the less fortunate, with Bruce at one point paraphrasing Charles Dickens from A Christmas Carol: “our work is mankind.” When Baden‐Smythe accused him of wanting to support “drug addicts, winos, bag ladies and the mentally ill,” Wayne answered, “I’m not a proponent of supporting the dysfunctional … but that money could build and support a youth center in the inner city. It could save a lot of kids from a life of crime,” showing that he acknowledges the role that deprivation plays in the development of the criminal (even though he believes that it doesn’t absolve criminals of responsibility for their actions). When she hit back with “I don’t see you turning Wayne Manor into a halfway house!” Bruce simply said, “I do my bit in other ways.”7
As suggested by this exchange, Bruce Wayne is particularly concerned with housing and the plight of children in Gotham City, areas in which he focuses much of his philanthropic energy. After a night of unsuccessfully tracking a criminal, Batman told Alfred,
I’ve checked every flophouse and fleabag this guy’s visited—and the only crime in each is that people have to live in them! God, it’s enough to turn my stomach—and make me double my efforts to help rebuild those areas with Wayne Foundation funds!8
Another time, Bruce Wayne sympathized with a homeless veteran complaining about high‐priced real‐estate development in Gotham, and told a nearby police officer, “The city would have earned itself less money, but a lot more good will, if they’d sold the land for low‐rent housing.”9 Among the wide variety of the Wayne Foundation’s charitable efforts following the Cataclysm earthquake and its aftershocks was the provision of shelter and food to the displaced, while they also coordinated with FEMA and other federal aid agencies to help people rebuild their homes or relocate.10
Given his own history, it’s natural that Batman would have a soft spot in his heart for the well‐being of children. In one case, he searched for the family of a young girl in foster care whom Leslie Thompkins was treating in her clinic; when he found her home, he discovered half a dozen more children sleeping on the floor, in a clear case of foster abuse. “Makes my stomach turn,” he thought to himself. “Kids. Abandoned. Neglected. Abused. Orphaned … treated like this. The Wayne Foundation will try to get these kids moved to a decent home. But … it doesn’t seem like it’s enough.”11 And he doesn’t only help through his family’s foundation—he also gets personally involved. One night during patrol, Batman and Robin happened across a couple of college kids breaking into grocery store. “I know those boys,” Batman said. “Bruce Wayne sponsors their schooling through the [I Have a Dream] program. I’d like to do a little checking on them.” And check in on them he does—as Bruce Wayne, which may have been only a little less scary than if he had arrived as Batman—and offered them research jobs on the weekends with the Wayne Foundation.12
In line with his belief that poverty breeds crime, Bruce Wayne is also extremely vested in the Gotham City economy. During a mayoral election in which both candidates focused on the failing police department and the threat of vigilantism—no idea who they were worried about there—Batman worried that neither will “address the real issues—urban decay, a shrinking tax base, and industrial stagnation … And all of us in Gotham are the poorer because of it.”13 As we saw earlier, he dedicated not only the Wayne Foundation but also Wayne Enterprises to helping the city rebuild after the Cataclysm, going so far as to tell his chief accountant, “Until this city is back on its feet, job performance will be judged by criteria other than profits … By the swift improvement of everyday life in Gotham …”14 He also pleaded with his fellow business leaders to keep their headquarters and operations in Gotham after the quake (and before the city was quarantined in the No Man’s Land), arguing that “Gotham is my city. Its people are my people. They’re your people, too! They’re already reeling from the quake. If your companies leave, you’ll be dealing them a blow they might never recover from!” When another businessman objects that Wayne doesn’t understand business, Wayne responded, “And you don’t seem to realize a city is a living, breathing entity! Cut off its oxygen—the means by which its people earn a living—and you’ll effectively starve the city to death!”15
Wayne isn’t successful in that attempt, but continued to steer his enterprises toward philanthropy as well as business enterprises that help the Gotham economy as well as employees and stockholders. We see this when he returned to Wayne Enterprises after being framed for murder and jumped back in with both feet, steering corporate charity, donating new bulletproof vests to the Blüdhaven Police Department (where Dick Grayson happens to work), and giving a high school student working in the mailroom a scholarship to college.16 In a more recent story, Batman discovered that Athena, the head of the criminal cartel known as the Network, was actually Celia Kazantkakis, CEO of Wayne Enterprises. When Oracle discovered that the Network was planning to steal two billion dollars from Wayne’s company during an engineered blackout, he thought, “If Athena manages to walk away with the two billion, not only will Wayne Enterprises collapse … thousands of people will lose their jobs, and the Gotham economy will suffer a staggering downturn.”17
There are many instances, as we’ve seen, in which Bruce Wayne is the true hero of Gotham City (or at least tries to be). After all, it was Bruce Wayne, not Batman, who tried to convince other business leaders to stay in Gotham after the Cataclysm, and who testified in front of Congress to argue for Gotham’s future and try to prevent No Man’s Land—both unsuccessfully, as it turns out, but he surely stood a better chance in a suit and tie than a cape and cowl.18 As Batman (in his cape and cowl) told Nightwing at that time, “Maybe Bruce Wayne can do more to help Gotham than Batman can. Wayne’s money, properties. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but his place in the community. They might mean more right now than any good a vigilante can do.”19 Even in better times, there are things Bruce Wayne can do that Batman cannot. When Wayne was framed for murder, Batman visited Leslie Thompkins at her clinic, telling her, “If you need my help—” which Leslie cut off, saying,
I really don’t. No help that Batman can provide, at least. I’m short‐staffed, short on supplies, and short on equipment … Batman can do nothing about those things. On the other hand, Bruce Wayne, well … he was a very rich man. In more ways than he recognized, I think.20
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Batman doesn’t have a role to play—as we’ll see very soon—but simply that Bruce Wayne is important to Gotham City as well, a role that, despite Leslie’s insinuations, he hardly neglects.
And it isn’t just Gotham City that benefits from Bruce Wayne’s philanthropy. As he does with his crimefighting skills, Bruce Wayne also extends his charitable efforts around the globe. After a case on an Native American Indian reservation that reflected centuries of injustice, Batman called into the Wayne Foundation and asked (in his Bruce Wayne voice) for “a dozen suggestions as to how we can help the Native Americans.”21 When he traveled to Calcutta, he compared it to Gotham, a city down on its luck but with strength and spirit, and sorely in need of help. After Batman and the assassin Shiva beat some thugs, Batman took a ring off one of them and gave it to a merchant to feed a boy who helped him. When Shiva said, “Calcutta is home to eleven million people, most of them hungry. You can’t feed them all,” Batman replied, “I don’t know them all, Shiva, but sometimes … it takes just one to make a difference.”22 This recognition of the futility of helping everybody mirrors the futility of his mission to eliminate crime, and in both cases, even Bruce Wayne can only do what he can, and every bit helps, even if only a bit. We see this again when he traveled to Ethiopia with Jason Todd, was saddened by the conditions, and resolved that “When I return to Gotham, I’ll send out another check to help the effort and try to forget what I’ve seen here. I’m no different from anyone else.” Wayne follows this with an open admission of futility: “There’s only so much even Bruce Wayne—or Batman—can do.”23
We should not forget the global initiative of Batman Incorporated, which Batman initiated after his “return from the dead.” Not only was this an expansion of his crimefighting activity and reach, to make sure “Batman will be everywhere it’s dark,” but also an extension of Wayne’s philanthropy. As he told Lucius Fox, “I’m authorizing a massive cash injection, Lucius. We’re investing in bleeding edge technology and working prototypes to support Batman’s war on crime.”24 Although Wayne obviously spent a good deal of his own fortune on his crimefighting activities, this was possibly the first time he used his corporate and foundation resources explicitly to do the same. When a journalist asked Bruce Wayne if this put him, his employees, and shareholders in danger—physical as well as financial, we can assume—Wayne was forthright, saying “it’s the responsibility of people in my position to more actively support the fight for a better, safer world.”25 In this effort, Bruce Wayne’s sense of civic responsibility to Gotham City and the world dovetails with his work as Batman, while not neglecting his other philanthropic duties.
Even though Batman’s mission may be limited to fighting crime and saving people from its effects, Bruce Wayne works toward a broader utilitarian purpose of helping all—even if, to some extent, his activities as Batman compromise the amount of good he can do in that context. Batman may not be out to save the world, but Bruce Wayne is trying to do just that. We can criticize him for the specific approach to helping people that he adopted as Batman, saying he should take a broader approach to charity and giving like he does as Bruce Wayne—and perhaps spend more or all of his money and time in the latter way. But it’s not fair to accuse him of neglecting more positive ways of increasing utility; it’s just not his only focus.
This argument also shows that utilitarianism, in its simplest and more direct form, is a uniquely perfectionist system of ethics. Utilitarians are expected to act only in those ways that are likely to maximize total well‐being. Increasing it by a certain amount, no matter how large, is not enough if it could be increased by even more. But this is unreasonable, and not even effective altruists such Peter Singer advocate absolute self‐sacrifice and the quest for perfection. They merely recommend that we give more than we already do and put effort into making sure our giving is directed to where it can do the most good. Not only does this relax the pressure to “maximize total utility,” but it allows individual utilitarians some leeway in crafting how they will act to improve the world. Each of us has certain talents, abilities, and motivations that steer our altruistic efforts in one direction or another: some toward animal rights, others toward environmentalism, and yet others to help refugees of war. None of these are guaranteed to be the best way that person could help the world in general, but as long as each person helps in a way they can that also engages them, their effort is undeniably good.
Perhaps Bruce Wayne could do even more good if he devoted some of his crimefighting resources to more directly charitable activities. But we should also acknowledge that he already does a tremendous amount of good, both in his philanthropy as Bruce Wayne and his fight against crime as Batman, and this leaves him little obligation to change his behavior to do even more good.
We’ve been avoiding one crucial question in our discussion about the good that Batman does as a crimefighter and as Bruce Wayne, billionaire philanthropist: in general, how much good does Batman do? (We could ask the same about Wayne’s charitable giving, but that would be less fun.) Regarding Batman’s career choice, there are some—this time, more in his world than in ours—who doubt his value to Gotham City. As we’ll see, Batman questions this as much as anyone, often wondering if being Batman is worth his effort and dedication, especially given the personal sacrifices he makes himself for the mission (including his own happiness).
Let’s start with the most focused criticism: that rather than lessening the scourge of crime in Gotham City, Batman actually worsens it through attracting and perhaps even creating many of the more colorful villains he fights. We see this sense of responsibility in Batman’s “confession” to Gordon after his first run‐in with the Joker, that he “created” him during his encounter with the Red Hood and bears some responsibility for his later actions.26 Anarky had the same opinion as he watched Batman in action:
The evil of Gotham City is all Batman’s fault! He’s set himself up as a vigilante elite—a costumed hero who issues a challenge to all: “Gotham is my city—take it if you can!” And the maniacs have accepted! … They only exist as an answer to his challenge! Batman creates his own villains. He is the city’s true enemy!27
This is echoed by Gotham City police detective Sarah Essen when she yelled at Batman when her husband Jim Gordon was in danger:
While you’re flitting around in a Halloween costume, he’s doing his job as police commissioner. And he’s better than you—because he does it the right way! You take down the weird ones, the freaks who wouldn’t even be here if not for you! You attract them—while he deals with the “normal” crime—the simple atrocities committed with guns and knives and baseball bats—all the dirty work that’s beneath you!28
Essen interestingly connects Batman’s battles against his costumed foes to the police’s burden of handling the street crime. Certainly, you might think common thieves, muggers, and even organized crime figures are deterred from operating in Gotham by Batman’s relentless efforts to thwart them. But to the extent he’s often preoccupied by clowns, penguins, and poisoned ivy, ordinary criminals may enjoy even more freedom to operate, contributing to Gotham’s reputation as a crime‐ridden cesspool.
The latter point can be easily dismissed, especially considering the Gotham City Police Department’s responsibility to tackle ordinary crime. Granted, the GCPD is in a strange position, operating in a city with costumed vigilantes and outlandish themed villains, as the 2002–2006 series Gotham Central showed well. But this doesn’t dismiss their traditional role as enforcers of the law and protectors of the citizens of Gotham from garden‐variety crime. Gotham was a criminal haven long before Batman arrived, and even if he were somehow to blame for the rise in “super” villains since his arrival, he can’t be blamed for ordinary crime or for the police department’s difficulties in dealing with it (many of them due to the GCPD’s historical corruption).
The theory that Batman “created” the Scarecrow, Killer Croc, and the rest is more interesting, especially given the widely held understanding that the Batman and the Joker are “necessary opposites,” neither capable of existing without the other.29 This is what detective Henri Ducard was thinking as he assessed the Dark Knight:
… he functions as a lightning rod for a certain breed of psychotic. They specialize in absurdly grandiose schemes, and whatever the ostensible rationale—greed, revenge, the seizure of power … their true agenda is always the same: to cast Batman in the role of nemesis … He always triumphs. If he failed, they’d be bereft. The pas de deux would have no point … Thus “good” conquers “evil.” True evil seldom announces itself so loudly.30
In Ducard’s opinion, the costumed villains’ evil is a less serious variety, more focused on toying with Batman and seeking the attention of a disapproving “parent,” rather than pursuing evil for its own sake (or even for more mundane material ends). This theory links Batman to the emergence of his costumed foes, but also minimizes their impact on the citizens of Gotham City, which as we know all too well is significant and often tragic.
If anyone is going to blame Batman for the costumed villains that plague Gotham, it would be Commissioner Jim Gordon. He suggested this when visiting Arkham Asylum with Batman, saying, “So many are here. Nearly double from when you first appeared. Not that there is a direct correlation, but … do you give it any thought?” Batman said no while thinking to himself, “I know what Gordon is implying. That my … presence … somehow attracts these men and women to my city,” and went on to recognize that although the police do the best they can with limited resources, “Gotham City needs Batman to protect her” from the more serious threats.31 (Note that he didn’t refute Gordon’s implication, though.) But we must remember Gordon’s response to Batman after defeating the Joker for the first time: “Did you put the hood on his head and the gun in his hand? No, you didn’t.”32 Later, Jim assured his friend again: when Batman claimed that “I made the monsters,” Gordon told him, “No, you didn’t. You want to go down the road of cause and effect, we’ll just end up at some caveman hitting another on the head for the hell of it. This is a sick world sometimes. That isn’t your fault.”33 Batman set out to protect the citizens of Gotham from the scourge of crime before there were costumed villains vying for his attention. He cannot be held responsible if, as Ducard and Anarky believe, some criminals chose to challenge him—to fight the toughest kid on the playground and make their bones, so to speak.
Nonetheless, from a generally utilitarian standpoint, responsibility is not the main concern—consequences are. If Batman has a net negative effect on Gotham by attracting more murderous and destructive crime to its streets, this has to be counted as a loss in the ledger. Against this we have to consider his constant battle against ordinary crime and all the lives he has saved and the suffering he has prevented. There is no way to quantify or even estimate this, of course. How much do the costumed villains detract from his routine patrols, and to what degree do they embolden the street criminals? Is the GCPD less or more burdened because of Batman? These are impossible questions to answer—especially given the scant evidence available from the comics “record.” It also serves, more broadly, as a critique of utilitarian judgment on the basis of insufficient information: although it may be impossible to judge the overall value of Batman to Gotham City, it is much easier to say that he generally serves the cause of right and justice, doing much good in individual actions day to day. And even if he is somehow responsible, causally if not morally, for “supercrime” in Gotham, that bell can’t be unrung, and the best he can do is fight it, proving Batman’s value going forward if not in retrospect. As Gordon told him when he was considering his responsibility for the “monsters” in Gotham, “the genie is out of the bottle and it turns out he’s only granting his wishes you don’t want. So even if you buy into that load of hogwash … that you created Gotham’s nightmares … they’re still out there.”34
A broader critique of Batman’s value to Gotham City has to do with his contribution to the cycle of violence, a critique that comes from someone very close to Batman’s heart. If Alfred Pennyworth easily slid into the role of father figure to Bruce Wayne after the death of his parents, then Leslie Thompkins certainly adopted the cause of foster mother. While Alfred snidely disapproves of Bruce’s chosen vocation but enables it at the same time, Leslie is more firm in her objection to the Batman’s behavior based on her dedication to pacifism. We’ll discuss Batman’s penchant for violence in the second part of this book; for now I want to focus on Leslie’s thoughts about the value of Batman given how he relies on violence and contributes to the cycle of violence in Gotham City.
When we first meet Leslie, Batman had saved her from several muggers near her home in Crime Alley who wanted the money she was collecting for neighborhood children. When he asked her why she continues to live there, she told him,
I once saw a hideous thing—a child who parents were murdered in front of his eyes! I’ve never forgotten the lad! I’ve devoted my life to doing what I can to prevent such tragedy! Forgive me … but I live for the time when you and your kind will be unnecessary!35
Leslie’s sentiment here casts her in profound opposition to Batman, both of them reacting to the same horrific tragedy in polar‐opposite ways that defined them for their lives—and set them at odds as well.
We learn much more about Leslie over the years, and with each retelling of her backstory she became more involved in Bruce’s upbringing, not just comforting him that fateful night but also helping Alfred raise him into a man.36 Most important, her pacifism became one of her defining character traits, alongside her life as a doctor tending to the poor, both in Gotham City and developing countries. In one of Batman’s early tales, Leslie and Bruce were witness to a group of “Bat‐men,” local vigilantes inspired by Batman who took the law into their own violent hands against local crime. In her ignorance of Bruce’s double life, she told him how glad she was that he didn’t turn out like the “bat‐men,” and that “I was wrong to be angry with them. They’re just a symptom … a symptom of the violence glorified by the Batman.”37 Her ignorance didn’t last long, as she discovered Batman’s true identity while treating him for gunshot wounds suffered at the hands of one of the bat‐men who wanted to kill a drug dealer he was questioning. Leslie was angry at first, but at the end of the tale, she told him she was sorry she failed him, that if only she had raised him better, he wouldn’t feel the need to risk his life to fight crime.38
Leslie would go on to emphasize Batman’s contribution to the cycle of violence in Gotham City many times. After the episode in which they delivered a baby by caesarian section only to lose the mother soon afterwards, Batman told Leslie he was leaving to find Mr. Freeze, who knew who was ultimately responsible for the turf battle that led to the young mother’s plight. “Are you joking?” she asked. “After all this you’re going to battle some ‘super villain’?” Even after Batman explained the connection between the woman and Freeze, she wasn’t satisfied, continuing:
My god, Bruce, don’t you see? You beat these madmen senseless, hand them over to the authorities, only to have them walking the streets again, now only angrier and more violent than before. And you respond in kind. When does it end?39
Leslie reached the end of her rope when she found herself in the middle of the “War Games,” a manmade catastrophe in which Gotham exploded in violence between the city’s rival gangs, the police, and Batman and his colleagues. After Catwoman brought a gunshot victim to the hospital, she and Leslie heard a news report of violence at Tim Drake’s high school and Leslie raged that Bruce was putting people she cared about at risk for “his damn mission.” When Catwoman said the war wasn’t his fault, Leslie argued,
And you think he and his people aren’t culpable in this? His tactics are almost as bad as those gangbangers, sometimes trying to lower the crime rate by terrifying people. It’s—it’s ludicrous. It just becomes part of the cycle of violence that gave birth to the Batman in the first place.40
Again, she blamed herself for what she saw as her own part in continuing the cycle: “How could I have failed that child so badly, that he would think violence ever accomplishes anything positive? I’m ashamed of myself, Selina …”41
Nonetheless, as much as she hates the way Batman does his job, she still loves the man beneath the mask and appreciates what he does for Gotham. During the episode with Zsasz during No Man’s Land—when Batman was angry she was planning to use the blood he brought her to save Zsasz’s life—she told him angrily, “I am grateful every day for what you do for this city, but I do not approve of the way you do it!” But later, after they reconciled and he was despondent, she told him, “You keep working toward peace in this city, and I’ll keep working toward peace in your heart.”42 After the caesarian and the mother’s death (but before leaving to find Mr. Freeze), Batman himself lost it, saying “People are dead, Leslie.” Here she played a similar role to Alfred’s, reminding him, “And more would be if not for you. Including me. Bruce, Gotham would be dead if not for you. But you are not responsible for everyone in this city.”43 After that episode was over, she told him again, “It’s no secret that I don’t always approve of what you … do. But your devotion to the sanctity of life is so beautiful … I see your father in you.”44
In an earlier scene with Leslie, Batman was again despondent about his mission and its futility, remembering his early days and telling her, “In those days, I really thought I could make a difference …” Leslie asked, “You don’t know?” and he answered, “Sometimes, no … Maybe you’re right, Leslie … maybe there’s no more need for me …” Leslie told him, “Bruce, wait—I don’t deny that I pray for the day when no one will die from crime or injustice … when you and your kind are unnecessary … but until then, there is a need for you—and I’m glad you’re here to fill it.”45 Despite her opposition to violence, she realizes that Gotham is a violent city, and even if she refuses to raise a hand in opposition to it, she’s glad that he does, even if it breaks her heart to watch (and stitch him up, often alongside Alfred, whenever he needs it).
As these episodes with Leslie show, no one has greater doubts about Batman’s value to Gotham than the man himself. Once, after Gordon told him that he should be satisfied that he did his job, Batman answered, cynically, “No doubt … I suppose I’ve justified my existence for one more night.”46 Not long into his work as the city’s Dark Knight, he said to Alfred, “It’s been over a year since I put on this mask, and yet all I’ve done is react, respond, retaliate. How can I expect to make a difference in this city when all I do is mop up the bloodstains …?”47 It doesn’t help, either, that the police—ostensibly his partners in the fight against crime—are often against him, telling him he’s more bother than he’s worth, with even the public occasionally joining in. After being framed for murder by Ra’s al Ghul, Batman became a fugitive from justice; as he overheard people debating whether Batman is a hero, he thought, “All the years I’ve spent watching over them—guarding the streets while they slept—and they turn on me in a minute—like I was Attila the Hun! Sometimes it can make you wonder if it’s all worth it!”48
In part, the malaise Batman suffers from is related to the futility of his mission, the fact that he will never eradicate crime in Gotham City, never save every life from being ended prematurely at the end of a gun, and never protect everyone from loss and suffering. He knows this full well, of course, but every life he fails to save means more than a hundred he does, and this prevents him from appreciating the full value of what he does and who he is. When Bruce Wayne returns after Dick Grayson’s first spell as Batman (following Jean‐Paul Valley’s time in the costume), Dick accused his mentor of never questioning or examining himself, but Bruce set him straight: “You don’t know how I question myself and everything I’ve become. The right of it. The wrong of it. Not allowing myself any reward for the good. Damning myself for every mistake.”49 As we’ve seen, Alfred often has to reassure Bruce that for every crime he fails to stop, he succeeds at stopping many more, and it’s when he’s doubting his purpose and value that he needs to remember this more than ever.
Although he agonizes over every crime he can’t prevent, the major events and catastrophes incite the deepest ruminations of the bat. The first was probably when Bane broke Batman’s back and Bruce appointed Valley, the brainwashed religious warrior Azrael, to be his successor, only to see the new Batman cross lines the original never dreamed of. After Bruce defeated Valley and reclaimed his mantle, Tim Drake found him in the cave, and Bruce opened up: “All of this has been due to my poor judgment. I left the city in unstable hands. Jean‐Paul was a disastrous choice.” When Tim said there wasn’t time, Bruce continued:
No excuse! There’s no margin for error here. I should have been prepared for any contingency! I should have had a successor in the wings. Until I found out about Jean‐Paul’s … indiscretions I was prepared to live the rest of my life as Bruce Wayne and nothing more. Now I’m back and it’s as if nothing has happened. I have to rethink it all, make some changes. I’m going to reappraise a lot of things about Bruce Wayne … and Batman.50
And reappraise things he did. As the narration read, referring to both his appointment of Valley as his successor and his physical return from having his back broken:
It is these two factors—mistake and recovery—that have spawned his current doubts and questions. Still haunted by the horror that gave him birth, he is reborn with a new but unfocused perspective. Shattered before he was formed, Bruce Wayne became nothing but a stitched‐together mask … but what if the Batman, too, is nothing but a mask? Who is he, really? What has he created? And is it worth being?51
After a night of reflection, he stopped a mugging, and then saw the light. The narration continues:
His doubts are settled: Even in the darkness of obsession, even at the risk of his sanity, this creature of the night is worth the shaping. This angel in the devil’s dark guise is worth being. Someone must haunt the shadows, scare the demons, slay the horror … save the victims. He knows it now, knows it again—just as he knew it when his eight‐year‐old soul was forever shattered. The eternal night of Gotham needs the Batman.52
There is much room for interpretation here, but as I read it, Bruce is questioning himself after facing trials and ordeals like none he’d ever faced before, and feeling that he’d failed at all of them. (Feel free to add Jason Todd’s death and Barbara Gordon’s shooting to the mix as well if you wish.) But it was a routine mugging—an example of ordinary street crime that nonetheless might have changed an innocent person’s life forever—that reminded Batman of his purpose, the meaning of his life, the mission that propels him through the occasional doubt. He swore to fight crime and protect the innocent, and Batman is the best way he knows to fulfill that oath and pursue the mission it set him on.
The adequacy of that “way” is never more challenged than during large‐scale disasters such as the Contagion and its return, the Cataclysm and its aftershocks, and the No Man’s Land period of Gotham City’s exile from the rest of the world. We’ve already seen Batman’s frustration—often expressed at his parents’ gravesite—at his inability to fight when there is no enemy, and to manage death on such a large scale when the deaths of only two human beings were enough to shatter him. Three hours after the Cataclysm struck, Batman surveyed the devastation it caused to his city. As the narration read:
Fighting crime—finding clues, solving riddles, uncovering motives—stopping thieves and killers and madmen—these are all things he knows. But his city in ruins … even in his worst nightmares, he never imagined this. With the power down, the stars above seem to shine unnaturally bright … as if the immensity of the cosmos is mocking him. He feels small and feeble. A tidal wave of helplessness and despair threatens to engulf him. What can he do? What can one man do for an entire city?53
All of this is enough to drive the bat from the city he loves. After unsuccessfully asking his fellow business leaders to stay in Gotham after the earthquake, and pleading with Washington to save Gotham City from being cut off from the rest of the country, Batman fled to Monaco and played at being Bruce Wayne for a while. After a week, he picked a fight with some local thugs and let them beat him to a pulp. Talia, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul and one of the women closest to Batman, found him in his hotel and tended to his wounds while shaming him: “All that magnificent ability … used to punish yourself. You are a disgrace—to yourself, to your teachers—and to your parents.” When she offered to accept him nonetheless as her betrothed, he declined, telling her that “I am for another.”54 After that realization, he returned to Gotham, snuck into the No Man’s Land, activated his secret batcaves hidden throughout the city, and hatched his plan to save his true love. As with the mugging above, it is usually one person crying out for his help—or a beautiful woman offering to love him—that snaps Batman out of his reflection and reminds him that he just has to save one person at a time, over and over again, even in the absence of crime per se, he can still save lives, even if he can’t save them all.55
If Batman were a more “holistic” utilitarian, concerned not only with saving the innocent citizens of Gotham City from the harmful effects of crime but also with happiness and well‐being in general, he would be forced to consider the well‐being of those very close to him. This includes his friends such as Jim Gordon, “co‐workers” such as his fellow superheroes, love interests such as Catwoman, and his “family,” including the Robins, Leslie, and Alfred. Of course, he clearly takes the well‐being of all these people into account, and is tortured when any of them is in danger, especially due to his own crimefighting efforts, but this is usually not the focus of his mission (especially, as we discussed, when it comes to the safety of the Robins).
But I’m not talking about them. I mean Batman or Bruce Wayne himself, whose well‐being counts just as much in a general utilitarian calculation as anyone else’s (which we discussed in the context of making choices in tragic dilemmas). In terms of common‐sense ethics, thinking of one’s own interests is often regarded as selfish, but most schools of moral philosophy stress the need to look out for yourself—provided you don’t look out for only yourself! It is indeed selfish to always put your own interests above everybody else’s, and this is why you don’t hear much about promoting your own happiness in discussions of ethics. You can usually count on people to look after themselves, but it usually takes a little prodding—either from their own consciences or role models such as parents, teachers, and religious leaders—to remind them to take other’s interests into account too.
It’s the nature of the hero, however, to ignore his or her own interests and sacrifice everything to help others. Firefighters run into burning buildings, doctors and journalists go into disaster areas, and soldiers face mortar fire, all to improve the lives of people they’ve never even met. As they do these things, they’re not thinking of themselves, whether by habit or by force of will; that’s the only way they can focus on helping others when their own lives are at risk. Remember when Batman leapt off the building to save two people, knowing he was risking his life as well, “but I have to turn off that part of my brain”—if he didn’t, he likely would have hesitated, and he wouldn’t have been able to save anybody.56
Throughout this book so far, I’ve recounted many instances of Batman risking his life to save others, including both innocent civilians and wicked criminals. But this is not the only thing he gives up for his mission: he also sacrifices his own happiness, which in some ways is just as important as his life.
At this point we have to note that there are many types of happiness that philosophers talk about.57 One is the deep satisfaction that comes from having purpose and meaning in your life: the ancient Greeks called this eudaimonia, which we today typically translate as “flourishing.” As frustrated as Batman often becomes with the futility of his mission, he also realizes that it is that mission that gives his life value and meaning. In the real world, this is the kind of happiness that we most often fail to achieve, as shown by the countless books, articles, and websites devoted to helping people find meaning in their lives, whether in work, play, or love. Even though it may not seem like it, Batman has that kind of happiness locked down, and that is no small thing.
We’ll come back to the meaning of Batman’s life in the next section. For now, I want to focus on another type of happiness, one that is more familiar: the joy or pleasure felt in the moment rather than over the span of a life. This is the kind of happiness that makes you smile with glee, even if only for a short time, and may come easier for many of us than the deeper kind that only comes with finding one’s purpose in it. But most of the time, this type of happiness is not for the Dark Knight. Despite his wealth, position, and movie‐star looks—how many superheroes can say they look like George Clooney and Ben Affleck?—Batman’s life was launched in tragedy, and every waking minute of it has been spent fulfilling a promise to prevent that tragedy for others (not to mention the endless nights spent reliving that single evening). He could easily give it all up and devote his life to flights of hedonism few of us could imagine, but that isn’t the life he chose (and the few times he has tried to indulge it, such as the beginning of No Man’s Land, it bored him). He made a choice, early on, to sacrifice the temporary, day‐to‐day happiness many of us take for granted in favor of a hard life filled with purpose and meaning, achieving the deeper satisfaction many of us crave in vain, but at the cost of the simpler pleasures. “It means that some of my heart’s desires may go unfulfilled,” he thinks. “But many more are satisfied … It is a good choice.”58
It is clear from the comics that Batman disregards the need for this simpler kind of happiness. In a dream induced by Ra’s al Ghul’s potion in which Bruce spoke with his parents, Thomas told him, “We wanted what every parent wants for their child, Bruce. We wanted you to live a long, healthy, and happy life. So far, well … you seem healthy enough, I suppose,” to which Bruce replied, in his defense, “The cost is one I’ve always been willing to pay … For your memory, and the memory of my loss.”59 Whether or not Bruce is happy is a topic that also comes up often with his “adopted” mother, Dr. Leslie Thompkins. In the story in which she first learned of his double life, after she apologized for not doing a better job raising him, he told her: “I don’t know if I’m happy … but I’m content,” suggesting that he’s satisfied with his life of purpose and meaning, but not happy in the moment, a subtle yet important distinction.60
Soon thereafter, in his second year of fighting crime in Gotham, Bruce showed Leslie the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic that he set up for her in Crime Alley, and told her, “I only hope it makes you happy, Leslie.” When she asked him, “What about you, Bruce? Are you happy?” he answered, simply, “It doesn’t matter.”61 In a follow‐up story, Bruce Wayne asked Rachel Caspian, who joined a convent after learning her father was a murderer, “Are you happy?” to which she answered, “Perhaps we can never have exactly what we want, Bruce. I’ve learned to live with that. I’m content. That’s more than many people have.” At the end of the story, Rachel asked Batman, “Tell me … do you know Bruce Wayne?” Even though Batman said that he didn’t know Wayne well, she asked him, “Is he happy?” Batman answered, “He’s content, Miss Caspian. That’s more than many people have.”62 Not only did he echo her previous words to Bruce Wayne, he also reaffirmed that he is content with the life he has chosen, even if he is not happy in the here and now.
This isn’t to say that Batman never enjoys any true happiness. A year and a half after first donning the cape and cowl, Bruce meditated in the cave and reflects.
I’ve avoided a basic fact about my secret life. For mother … for father … for all the good reasons, all the right choices … a part of me still scampers over rooftops in the dark for the sheer pleasure of it. I’m mortified to admit just how much I love being Batman.63
It wasn’t until he was captured, repeatedly electrocuted and beaten, and nearly died in agony—agony that carries his mind back to the night his parents were shot—that he thought of his tormentor as “relentlessly mocking a time only days past when, heaven help me—I’d actually begun to consider my career as Batman fun.” As he struggled to fight back, he thought, “If pain is all that is left behind—then it must be pain that—sustains me.”64 But Batman is human, after all, and sometimes even he pines for the carefree life of simple pleasures that he works so hard to make sure others can enjoy. In one moment of particular (albeit chemically induced) frustration, he cries out, “I’ve always responded to those in need, without an instant’s hesitation—but what about my needs? What about me?”65 These are merely occasional lapses in what is usually a steadfast, silent devotion to sacrifice and … contentment.
There is one source of happiness that has been denied Batman—or perhaps that Batman has denied himself—and that is romantic love. Bruce Wayne has had a number of pivotal love interests in his life, including Julie Madison (from his earliest stories), Vicki Vale, Silver St. Cloud, Talia al Ghul, Vesper Fairchild, Sasha Bordeaux, and of course Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman. Whether they knew his secret life or not—and most did, whether he told them or they figured it out—they all represented the possibility of true happiness for a tortured soul, but also one more person to protect (and to fail to protect).
Most important to him, though, was that love represented a distraction from the mission that he felt he could not afford. Batman learned this lesson mere days into his crimefighting career, when he repeatedly had to cancel plans with a socialite named Viveca Beausoleil. After they finally enjoyed an evening together, he returned home to hear that criminals he left tied up for the police before leaving for his date managed to escape and got into a firefight with the police, resulting in the deaths of two criminals, one police officer, and a nine‐year‐old girl watching from her window above. After solemn reflection, he calls Ms. Beausoleil, telling her “I hate like hell to do this, but I don’t have any choice … Yes, you’re right, baby … there is someone else” … his true love, Gotham.66
You’ll remember that Bruce said something very similar to Talia when she found him beaten in Monaco as No Man’s Land began. Chosen by her father Ra’s al Ghul to be his successor, and regarded by her as “my beloved,” Batman was drawn to Talia from their first meeting.67 Nonetheless, when they were married by her father, Batman told her, “if I were anyone else, I’d cherish you for the rest of my life! But I can’t consider our marriage real! I have a mission—and you’d keep me from doing what I must!”68 He reaffirmed this soon thereafter when she helped him heal from a laser wound: She offered herself to him again, but he demurred, telling her that “you tempt me … but there’s too much to do. And frankly, I don’t want another relationship now. The last few have been too … painful. And I can’t permit more pain to cloud my judgment. Not now.”69 Later, when tempted to revisit the topic of their marriage, he told her “there’s never been any room in my life for a woman … that is what I told myself, after every liaison I’ve ever known shattered.”70 Talia would forever be in his life—the last episode described here, in which he failed to resist her, resulted in their son Damian—but they would be rarely be as close again as she become more like her father and battled Batman for control of their son.
Of all the women in his life, none has meant more to Batman than his feline counterpart, Catwoman. Similar to Talia, Nocturna, and Poison Ivy, Selina Kyle has a darker side that for some reason appeals to the Dark Knight, but that also dooms their love. As Nocturna put it, “you love me because I’m dark and dangerous … yet if I do something dark and dangerous—you can’t love me.”71 But as we know, Batman has managed to reconcile his feelings for Catwoman with her occasional criminal activities, in what has been his longest‐running (albeit intermittent) relationship, and by all accounts his one true love. Alfred sees the way she lights him up and lightens his heart, and he encouraged Bruce and Selina’s early relationship before either knew about the other’s double life.72 Even after they were mutually aware, Alfred appreciated what she did for him in whatever their “relationship” was. During Batman’s initial encounter with Hush, after he brought Catwoman to the cave for the first time so Alfred could patch him up, Alfred told her, “you began this evening asking what you could do to help. You are doing it, Miss Kyle. And please continue to do so.”73
Speaking of Hush, when he later wanted to strike at Batman where it would hurt the most, he went after Selina, and as they fought he told her that, compared to the other women, Bruce has “always had a softer spot for you. The dance with the forbidden partner, I suppose. Were he to take that one step over his own moral line and truly embrace everything you are, he would crumble.”74 After he subdued her, Hush used his surgical skills to remove her heart and delivered her to the local hospital for Batman to find. Batman asked several Justice Society members, Dr. Mid‐Nite (an actual medical doctor) and Mr. Terrific (a scientific and technological genius), to examine her, and after he left to find Hush, Mid‐Nite tells Terrific, “if you ever doubted Batman had a human side, this is proof. I don’t think there’s ever been another woman who has gotten so close to him. Whether he allowed her to or not.”75 After Batman defeated Hush and Selina began to recover, Batman confessed his love for her, but the relationship continues its on‐and‐off path. Perhaps Hush was right when he said Batman finds it difficult to ever fully embrace Catwoman because, as with the other “dark and dangerous” women he’s attracted to, they remain forever out of reach of a man dedicated to a mission that condemns them.76
Despite his reluctance to embrace romantic love or any other sources of worldly pleasure, Batman nonetheless does occasionally enjoy glimpses of joy, which are all the better when combined with the deeper satisfaction that comes from a life with purpose. While swinging around Gotham City at 6:12 a.m., he thought to himself,
There’s a moment—right before my grapple cable goes taut … when it’s just me and the ground hovering somewhere far below … a moment of freefall … a moment of total calm. I will never tell anyone how much I enjoy that moment. Or how good it feels on some mornings to see the sun rising over my city … after a full night’s work. In the light of a new day, it almost feels like Gotham is lifting itself out of the mire … Feels like all my work, all my sacrifice, is worthwhile. Seeing the sun gleaming off those skyscrapers—gives me something I need to go on each night. Helps me carry on my mission.77
Batman doesn’t need success or happiness to persist in his mission; the mission is enough.78 But once again, he is human, and taking some little bit of joy and happiness in what we do is sometimes necessary to help carry us through when our goals, purpose, or source of meaning—our missions, if you will—weigh on us and the futility raises its ugly head and mocks us. It is to Batman’s credit that he presses on, day after day, year after year, fighting crime and protecting the citizens of Gotham. It may not be good for him, but it is good for Gotham, and it is very admirable of Bruce Wayne, man and Batman.
Even if he’s not often happy in the sense of immediate pleasure and joy, we have acknowledged that Batman may be happier in the deeper sense of satisfaction and meaningfulness that many of us covet these days. This is an intriguing thought, especially considering that his mission, by his own admission, is an impossible and futile one that Batman will never stop pursuing. After the episode at the convenience store described earlier, when Batman failed to thwart a deadly robbery because he was busy subduing Killer Croc, he was beating himself up (as expected). When Alfred reminded him that he did some good, the Dark Knight yelled back, “It’s not enough!” Although it probably landed on deaf ears, Alfred asked, “Will it ever be enough, Master Bruce?”79 Similarly, when Leslie Thompkins asked him on another occasion, “You have such a good heart, Bruce. When are you going to give all this up?” Batman predictably answered, “When I’m finished.”80 Of course, he’ll never be finished, and he knows that all too well.
But … does he really want to be finished? At one level, he does, of course: He would like nothing more than for crime to be a distant memory for the residents of Gotham City, for no person to suffer again as he and his parents did that night so long ago. As the Dynamic Duo listened to a blowhard argue against costumed heroes, Robin said, “It’s enough to make a guy wanna hang up his cape and stay home!” to which Batman responded, “You should look forward to that.” When Robin raised the issue of Batman’s dedication to his mission, the older hero said, “The day I can ‘hang up my cape and stay home’ is the day I'm working toward.”81 On another level, though, Batman’s mission has become his raison d’être, his reason for being. As we saw earlier, “Batman knows full well the meaning of his life—a never‐ending quest for justice. A never‐ending war against evil.”82 This means that eliminating crime is not simply an end to be achieved (ideally) or pursued (more realistically), but the thing that gives his life purpose.
The concept of the meaning of one’s life crosses two distinct areas of philosophy, one of which is the central focus of this book, and the other which takes us a bit outside it. The meaning of one’s life is a topic of ethics insofar as it contributes to eudaimonia, the version of happiness mentioned earlier which is roughly translated as fulfillment or flourishing (or what modern psychologists tend to call “life satisfaction” to distinguish it from temporary, fleeting pleasures). We don’t have to be utilitarians to acknowledge that happiness is of significant moral value to a good life, even if other considerations are more important in certain situations. Normal day‐to‐day happiness eludes the Batman, but as we’ve seen, he “happily” gives it up for the deeper satisfaction of pursuing a mission that is meaningful to him and gives his life purpose.
We see signs of this in several interesting episodes in which Batman has an opportunity to give up his mission, seeing the scourge of crime ended in Gotham City, but also threatening to rob him of his life’s purpose and meaning. In one, an immortal killer named Matatoa, who takes on the characteristics and goals of those he kills, made Batman an offer it seemed he couldn’t refuse: If Batman lets Matatoa kill him, as Matatoa explains, “I could protect your city for all eternity.”83 In the end, Batman refused, and Nightwing called him on it: “I mean, that is what you want, isn’t it? To know that Gotham will be protected forever?”84 Batman told his former protégé that Matatoa’s magic was corrupted and perverted, stolen from a Maori medicine man who would have used it for healing, not killing. But the real reason for his refusal may have been more selfish: it isn’t only protecting Gotham that matters to Batman, but also that he be the one to do it.
Batman faced a similar dilemma in an earlier tale in which Ra’s al Ghul made him an offer to realize Ra’s’ goal of making Batman his partner in ruling the world, heir to his wealth, and husband of his daughter Talia. After freeing most of Batman’s more extravagant foes from prison and Arkham Asylum, Ra’s gave Batman the following proposition:
Join me in reshaping the world, Detective, and I will help you recapture your foes … or, should you prefer, even eliminate them forever … Once they are eliminated, your obligation to Gotham would cease—freeing you to join me in the rest of the world. In the past, your sense of duty has preventing you from embracing me. Now I sweeten the temptation, by offering to release you from that duty.85
The choice is easier for Batman in this case: whereas Matatoa truly may have been transformed into a new savior for Gotham if the Dark Knight had accepted his offer, Ra’s al Ghul “may be the worst villain of them all,” as Batman told him. “I’d simply be trading a pack of demons for the devil himself.”86
But more important, once again we see that Batman’s duty, his mission, is not simply a goal but his goal, and one that he feels a special responsibility, derived from the promise he made his parents, to fulfill himself. Doctor Simon Hurt, a psychologically devious foe who claimed to be Thomas Wayne come back to life, explained to Batman that, as part of his plan, he “stemmed the tide of crime in Gotham City, undermining your reason to be” and thereby forcing his retirement.87 Doctor Hurt knew that Batman’s mission is essentially personal in nature—an aspect of his overall ethical code that, as we shall see throughout this book, drives him harder at the same time that it compromises the amount of good he can do by his own definition (such as preventing him from killing even his most murderous foes).88
Although it lies somewhat outside the scope of this book, the area of philosophy that focuses more directly on the meaning of life is existentialism. Existentialism is a loosely defined field of philosophy which explores the experience of living as a human being with purpose and meaning in a world with neither—a state of affairs that existentialists such as Søren Kierkegaard and Albert Camus quite accurately describe as absurd.89 The perspective of the existentialist can seem dismal, stressing that we are born, we live, and we die, all for no preordained reason and with no given purpose. Batman is no stranger to this particular brand of malaise; as the narration to one tale read, “Sometimes life is a series of lonely nights, spent peering into darkness,” suggesting existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous saying that “if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”90
The bright side to this “empty” view of existence, however, is that we are free—radically free, as the existentialists put it—to determine our own path and purpose for ourselves. As Cristina Llanero, an old friend with whom Bruce Wayne reconnects in Barcelona, advised him after he played the playboy act a bit too convincingly: “Write the story of your future. Chart a destiny for yourself, Bruce Wayne. Live a life of meaning.”91 In fact, existentialists maintain that self‐determination is our responsibility, under which we must live an authentic life steered by our own ideas of who we want to be, shunning the influence and pressure of others, whether individuals or society. Our circumstances, such as our genetic heritage and socioeconomic position, determine what we start out with in life, but it is up to us to determine what we make out of it and who we are going to be.92
Batman certainly knows the meaning of his life: fighting crime and protecting the citizens of Gotham City. He didn’t start this way, though. According to a bit of clever narration from the point of view of the inspirational bat who flew through the window of Wayne Manor that fateful night, Bruce Wayne “was bleeding to death, hopeless, with a bell in his hand. A lost knight without a standard. A soldier with a wounded heart. A warrior without a totem. A life without meaning.”93 Soon he would know his life’s purpose, but did he decide this for himself, or did he accept his mission as his “destiny”?
There are conflicting accounts of this. Much later, when the Joker apparently killed Batman, Bruce Wayne went into hiding and contemplated the possibility of pursuing a new life without the cape and cowl. After he faced the Joker once again, however, he thought to himself (rather confrontationally), “I didn’t ask for this. I— Listen to me! As if what I want even matters. This is what I do. This is who I am. This is what fate made of me. And I hate it.”94 This reflection suggests that Batman merely accepted his “fate” rather than determining his mission for himself. We heard a similar thing when he brought Jason Todd to Leslie Thompkins’ clinic after being shot. When she accused him of putting the young boy in danger, he told her, “I didn’t choose Jason for my work. He was chosen by it … as I was chosen … to do the work I was born to do …”95 Finally, in (yet another) speech delivered over his parents’ grave after a frustrating night of failure to eradicate crime completely from Gotham, he said:
The beginning of your long sleep was the start of my awakening. Your deaths cast my young mind into darkness … shadowed my soul … until the loss assumed almost supernatural power. And the power … the power of your deaths … created my new life.96
In these quotations, we see the recurring theme of his path in life being set by circumstances rather than determined by his own will, which is far from the existentialist ideal of embracing of one’s freedom and setting one’s own path and purpose in life.
There remains hope for the Dark Knight, however. Later in the same cemetery soliloquy quoted above, he leaned toward self‐determination, giving his own life meaning while he does the same for his parent’s deaths: “I hope to use my new life to give your deaths some greater purpose, some higher meaning … by preventing other senseless deaths … dark, empty holes in the fabric of life … losses without meaning.”97 This is even clearer later while investigating the mysterious deaths of people close to the superhero community, when Batman thought to himself,
People think it’s an obsession. A compulsion. As if there were an irresistible impulse to act. It’s never been like that. I chose this life. I know what I’m doing. And on any given day, I could stop doing it. Today, however, isn’t that day. And tomorrow won’t be either.98
Yet another time, reflecting on the end of a case, Bruce thought to himself, “I thought that I didn’t have a choice about being the Batman. That Gotham City chose me to protect her. That is wrong. Ever since the night my parents were taken from me, I made the choice.”99
When Leslie Thompkins first learned Bruce’s secret, she apologized for not raising him better, but he assured her, “what I am, I am of my own choice.”100 By making that choice, Batman decided for himself who he was to be and what he was to do, making the mission part of who he was—and this explains why he is so hesitant to give that up, even if it would mean satisfying the mission itself once and for all. This can also help us understand why he chose such a futile mission to begin with and continues to pursue it: if it’s impossible to achieve his goal, it will always be a part of who he is, and therefore his life will always have its purpose as he determined it the night he swore an oath to his parents.101
And as so often is the case, Alfred is the voice of reason in Batman’s pointy ear: sometimes a voice of ancient Greek wisdom, other times one of Eastern moderation, and yet other times one of existential insight, especially concerning the importance of self‐determination. As the narration to one tale reads, “Alfred Pennyworth knows you must invest life with your own meaning. You decide which ideals you’re going to serve, and then you never waver from that task.”102 In the wild and vivid dream caused by a potion that Ra’s al Ghul promised would enable Batman to talk to the dead, his parents accused him of throwing his life away and becoming so wrapped up in the mission that he forgot the grief that inspired it.103 When he awoke, he told Alfred of the dream but dismissed it as a figment of Ra’s’ alchemy. Alfred nonetheless asked him, if the vision had been real and his parents had asked him to give up his mission, whether he would have. When Bruce said yes, Alfred accused him of being disingenuous:
If your mother and father had begged you on bended knee to give up what you are, what you do … you would have refused them. You cast your life to a purpose, regardless of the catalyst, Bruce. Simply put, you are the Batman because it is who you are meant to be.104
Here, Alfred affirms that Bruce chose this life for himself, even if it was inspired by events he could not control. He made out of his life what he wanted to and what he felt he had to, and no one, not even the ghosts of his parents, could talk him out of it—unlike if he had simply accepted his mission from someone else. As one of Batman’s Eastern masters told him (albeit in yet other hallucination), “You have pursued the destiny you yourself have set,” and it remains his choice to follow through with it or not.105 I don’t think there’s much doubt that he will continue as long as he can (and perhaps even longer), or as he told Leslie Thompkins, he’ll be finished “when I’m finished.”
Are we finished? We’re only getting started! Before we move on to talk about several things Batman will or will not do in service of his broadly utilitarian mission, though, we’ll have a brief intermezzo to sum up where he stands in terms of that mission, taking into account what we’ve seen to this point.