Batman became one of the world’s most popular superheroes in large part because of the example he sets: a person who deals with personal tragedy by devoting his life, with almost superhuman dedication, resolve, and sacrifice, to preventing others from suffering as he did. Although he lacks superpowers, alien technology, or gifts from the gods, he made himself into a superhero by pushing himself to the limits of human perfection, not just physically but mentally.
But Batman is far from perfect—and perhaps this adds to his universal allure as well. He is hardly the “boy scout” his friend Superman is, nor the emissary for love and peace that Wonder Woman serves as. He is but a man, driving himself as hard as possible to do the best he can in a world that will never appreciate it, and sacrificing any semblance of happiness, joy, or love that he works so hard to make sure the residents of Gotham enjoy. And as “just” a human being, each of us can identify with his goal to help others and emulate it as much as we can, given our unique capabilities and resources—which most likely don’t match up to his, but we can each do our part nonetheless.
Although Batman’s general impulse to help others is admirable, the precise nature of his mission and the things he will or will not do to further it are more problematic. We can acknowledge his tremendous heroism, as shown by the incredible sacrifices he makes for the sake of others, at the same time that we criticize the moral choices he makes in the pursuit of his heroic mission.
It might be a good idea to summarize what we’ve discussed in the previous pages. This was hardly an exhaustive look at Batman’s ethics—that would take more books than there have been Batman films—but we did cover what I feel are the major aspects of what Batman tries to do and how he does it.
Mission: In dedicating his life to fighting crime and saving lives, Batman has set himself a generally utilitarian mission to improve the well‐being of the largest number of people. This mission is limited in a number of ways—chiefly his focus on Gotham City and his negative contribution through preventing harm rather than promoting happiness—which are understandable and defensible but also arbitrary and sentimental. As we discussed, these self‐imposed restrictions on his altruistic efforts are completely within his rights—he can certainly decide how he chooses to help others—but may nonetheless reflect an insincere devotion to the general thrust of utilitarianism, and point instead to personal reasons for his particular altruistic impulses, which can be interpreted as indulgent and contingent on his own pain.
Endangering children: Batman directly contradicts his mission to protect the innocent when he trains children to be his sidekicks. Even though they are often injured, beaten, or even killed, Batman continues to train new ones, after a mandatory period of remorse and repeated vows of “never again.” This egregious betrayal of his devotion to life and the safety of innocents is compounded by the fact that these are children, easily excitable but with diminished capacity to give consent, who make an ambiguous contribution to the mission. They are, however, helpful to him personally, which makes the “Robin program” ultimately selfish in nature.
Refusal to kill: Batman claims his mission is to protect and save lives, yet his one ironclad rule—to not kill—stands in clear opposition to this goal insofar as he lets murderous sociopaths live to kill again (as they inevitably do). It is quite reasonable to have deontological constraints on one’s pursuit of utilitarian goals, but this one stands out because of its direct contradiction of Batman’s claimed ends, as well as the personal agony he has endured because of his worst foes, such as the Joker. His refusal to kill seems to be based less on a dedication to the sanctity of life and more on his own self‐image and maintaining his moral virtue, which is a decidedly unvirtuous motivation, especially in light of its cost in human lives.
Willingness to use violence and torture: The hypocrisy of Batman’s refusal to kill is further highlighted by his easy comfort with extreme violence and torture in pursuit of his mission. Belief in the sanctity of human life is normally based on an appreciation of the inherent value or dignity of persons, which is violated by the use of brutal methods to reduce them to bloody tools in his war against crime. Batman acts like the people he beats and interrogates are not fully human, but instead mere means to his ends—and his only excuse is that they are “scum,” either known criminals or other residents of the shady underworld, whether or not they are actually wanted or suspected for a crime. He won’t kill anybody, even to save countless innocent lives, but he will beat them within an inch of their lives, or hang them off a tall building until they talk, even to help solve a minor crime—a comparable wrong for a much smaller benefit.
Willingness to break the law: Batman usually claims to be working with the police and helping them to apprehend, prosecute, and punish criminals. But he does this in a way that promotes lawlessness and the violation of civil rights, such as bragging that he can do what the law cannot, which denies the value of legal protections for those suspected of crimes. Furthermore, his example inspires others to break the law, even though he opposes this and wants the exclusive right to “bend” the law when he sees fit and to authorize others to do so (such as his partners in crimefighting). In the worst case scenario, those he inspires but does not authorize often do not share his refusal to kill or his keen detective skills, making them a positive danger to the community at large. And this does not even account for the extent to which his extralegal activities compromise official investigations and prosecutions or make the everyday work of the police force more difficult.
In summary, his utilitarianism is limited in the scope of its reach and his activity within it; it is limited by only one principle, which happens to be the one which would contribute to the mission the most if it were relaxed; and he breaks a number of other important deontological constraints to pursue his mission, even those that are parallel to the one he won’t break in their defiance of the sanctity of life and the protection of innocents.
As we detailed throughout the book, Batman does have justifications for these anomalies in his moral code. None of them are done out of malice or capriciousness, and only his training of Robins can be held to be truly selfish—a rare indulgence that might be forgivable, were it not for the effect on the Robins themselves. But taken as a whole, they reflect, at best, a complex and imperfect rational code and, at worst, a person who lacks a certain level of integrity to his moral character.
A lack of integrity is what we could consider a “second‐level” moral failing. It doesn’t mean that a person without moral integrity does bad things—far from it. We see that, for the most part, Batman does good things for good reasons. He is a hero who has saved or helped countless people in Gotham City and beyond. But his lack of moral integrity reflects poorly on him, showing that the various elements of his moral character are not in harmony with each other. For example, he protects life, but refuses to take one life to protect hundreds of others; he will ignore the humanity of those he needs information from by torturing them; and he will endanger the well‐being of a child with little justification based on his mission. Furthermore, he fights crime, yet breaks the law himself with impunity—although he does it for the “right reason” (and, to be fair, often with the tacit agreement of the authorities). Someone with a more consistent moral code would find it harder to sanction these inconsistencies.
Batman’s lack of moral integrity is rare among superheroes, who are often shown to have much more straightforward and simplistic moral compasses. This does not exempt them from moral dilemmas, and they still have to use their judgment to find acceptable solutions, but the ethical “material” they’re working with is much simpler.1 But Batman, with his essential moral conflict, echoes people in the real world just as does his lack of superpowers. Few of us—moral philosophers included!—have perfect integrity within our ethical codes. Most of us are morally inconsistent, acting altruistically one moment and selfishly the next, behaving honestly or courageously in one instance and deceitfully or cowardly the next. If you traced out any of our lives in terms of our moral actions or statements, such as we’ve done for Batman in this book, do you think we’d fare any better? For most of us, it’s highly doubtful—again, this doesn’t make us bad people, but it does suggest we could do more to make sure our moral characters hold together better.
Why is moral consistency or integrity important? Our moral characters make up an important part of who we are, and character is both expressed and reinforced by our choices, so everything we do is a reflection of who we are as moral agents. Philosopher Christine Korsgaard calls this the process of self‐constitution, in the sense that “to be a person is to be constantly engaged in making yourself into that person.”2 Korsgaard sometimes frames the problem of self‐integration in terms of roles. For example, each of us plays a number of roles in our lives: parent, child, spouse or partner, mentor, teacher, student, worker, boss, coach, and so forth. Each of these roles comes with its own duties and responsibilities, and sometimes the responsibilities associated with one role conflict with those of another. If we don’t reconcile this conflict, we may start to feel we are several different people, and this will be true insofar as our actions in one role appear much different than others. People may wonder, “he’s such a great guy at home with his wife and kids, so why is he such a jerk with his employees?” or “how come my sister is so great with her coworkers but not her friends?” They may even say that “it’s like they’re two different people.”
As Korsgaard writes:
The task of self‐constitution involves finding some roles and fulfilling them with integrity and dedication. It also involves integrating those roles into a single identity, into a coherent life. People are more or less successful at constituting their identities as unified agents, and a good action is one that does this well. It is one that both achieves and springs from the integrity of the person who performs it.3
We are complete and consistent persons to the extent that we can integrate the various roles we play—or the aspects of our moral character. Korsgaard points out that in our common language, you “pull yourself together” and “make up your mind,” reflecting the common experience of having to reconcile conflicting and competing parts of our nature.4 And “in the course of this process, of falling apart and pulling yourself back together, you create something new, you constitute something new: yourself.”5 This is done through the choices we make, which not only reflect our characters but also reinforce them, crafting them over time like a sculptor molds a hunk of clay.
Batman often claims he and Bruce Wayne are two different people, and struggles with the question of “which is the real me?” from time to time, but actually he normally integrates these two roles extremely well. His problems with inconsistency lie mainly within his role as Gotham’s sworn protector and, as we’ve seen, these problems reflect a failure to integrate the various aspects of his moral character. It isn’t that he can’t find a stable way to balance his utilitarian and deontological commitments—this is the regularly occurring and never‐ending ethical dilemma that each of us faces in our lives. It is never easy to decide when doing what’s right has to take precedence over doing what’s good, and we can hardly hold Batman to account for struggling with this as well.
The problem is that Batman reconciles these ethical conflicts in ways that cast doubt on his grasp of his basic utilitarian and deontological principles themselves, much less how to make judgments between them. It seems that he is unclear about just how much his utilitarian mission to protect and save innocent people demands. Even though he sacrifices all of his personal life and a great deal of wealth toward this cause, he makes other decisions, such as limiting his activities to Gotham City and to fighting crime, that reflect his sentimentality and the psychological legacy of his parents’ deaths. In terms of his deontology, his refusal to kill is supposedly based on his belief in the sanctity of life, but this principle is betrayed by his embrace, often with glee, of extreme violence and torture—again, all in service of his mission, even though his single rule against killing represents the greatest barrier to success in that mission.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Batman is a hero and a good person. But he could be better, both as a hero and as a person, if he worked harder to make sure the various actions he takes in expression of his moral character and in pursuit of his mission were more consistent with each other and with his character as a whole. And this is the greatest lesson we can take from the Dark Knight: We don’t need to achieve moral perfection, but we do need to strive for moral improvement, especially regarding the integration of our various moral principles and goals. We can try to do what’s right and what’s good, and many times we can do both at the same time—but even when we can’t, we need to make sure we form judgments to settle this contrast in ways that make sense and are consistent over time.
Take lying, for instance. Most of us avoid lying most of the time, only doing it when the stakes seem too negligible to matter (as in little white lies) or too large to ignore (“I hated to do it but I had no choice”). This approach represents a reasonable compromise of a deontological rule against lying and consequentialist considerations that may overwhelm that rule in certain situations. If we look at our records of lying over our lives, ideally we would find some consistency: most of our lies were told in the circumstances mentioned above, and few of them otherwise. But if we find that there was no rhyme or reason to when we chose to lie, that it seemed random with no consideration of right and wrong or good and bad, then we are either psychopaths with no regard whatsoever for morality—let’s hope this isn’t the case!—or else we are thinking of the ethics of our actions but making wildly inconsistent choices that reflect a lack of integration of our moral characters.
Batman’s biggest lie is, of course, his secret identity. The justifications for it are well known: when Ra’s al Ghul, who knows Batman’s true identity, sent all of Batman’s enemies after his loved ones, Batman said to Jason Todd that he needs to protect his secret because “my greatest vulnerability” is “the people closest to me.”6 When Batman suspected that Silver St. Cloud, Bruce Wayne’s love interest at the time, had figured out his double life, he reflected on why it’s important to him, thinking about Silver’s safety as well as the “safe retreat” that his civilian identity provides him.7 But Batman knows that, in the end, his secret identity is only of value insofar as it helps protect his loved ones and promote the mission. After the Cataclysmic earthquake, when it seemed he would need to expose the cave and Wayne Manor to save people trapped in a collapsed subway tunnel, he told Tim, “The loss of Bruce Wayne’s secret won’t ‘kill’ anything, Robin. The Batman will go on.”8
Although Batman has come to live with this lie, letting his fellow heroes in on his secret when it’s useful but keeping others in the dark—even such close friends as Jim Gordon—he regrets having to lie even when circumstances justify it. When Batman faked Bruce Wayne’s death before pursuing Ra’s al Ghul—to prevent his identity from being exposed in the battle—and had to discuss the “news” directly with Gordon, Batman thought afterwards, “I hated to lie! It was necessary, though!”9 When Jason Todd discovered that Two‐Face likely killed his father and he lashed out at Batman for keeping it a secret, Batman admitted to him, “I was wrong. But I was trying to protect you,” keeping an already rash young man from succumbing to blind vengeance.10 After Jason was killed, Bruce attended his funeral while thinking to himself, “The world doesn’t know that the new Robin is dead. That’s the way it has to remain, if I want to maintain a secret identity. Yeah, I know that’s cold but that’s how it’s going to be,” which mirrors his willingness to let the world believe that the original Robin was dead to protect Dick Grayson after a nearly fatal incident.11
Batman will never be an unscrupulously honest person, but his general reluctance to lie without sufficient justification is reasonable. Even if you disagree with his reasoning, though, we can say that his behavior with respect to honesty has consistency regarding the circumstances in which he lies and his reasons for it. How a person expresses his or her moral character doesn’t have to be black and white, completely honest or dishonest, but can lie somewhere in between. In fact, his history with dishonesty may be the most consistent of his morally questionable acts (but also the one with the least impact on other people’s lives and well‐being).
Neither does consistency or integrity mean that one’s character and behavior can never change. For example, over the years, Batman has become more paranoid, especially regarding his fellow superheroes in the Justice League of America, most of whom are many times more powerful than he is—even if none are as smart, cunning, or determined. In one adventure, Ra’s al Ghul attacked each member in very specific ways tailored to each one’s weakness. In time, the rest of the team discovered that Batman had made detailed plans to take each one out should he have to (in case they were mind‐controlled, they became possessed by demons … or he was just bored), plans that Talia stole for her father to use against them.12 Batman’s fellow Leaguers naturally felt betrayed, more for his secretiveness than for the fact that he had developed the plans—after all, Superman gave him a kryptonite ring to use on exactly such an occasion.13
In a later story, Batman was surprised to find his teammates lobotomizing the villain Doctor Light after he raped Sue Dibny, wife of the Elongated Man. Fearing his reaction, the rest of the team voted to have the magician Zatanna wipe Batman’s memories of that event.14 Batman’s eventual realization of this, years later, drove him to develop the Brother Eye satellite to keep tabs on his fellow heroes without their knowledge. When Batman confronted the League about their actions, Aquaman brought up the secret plans stolen by Talia, to which Batman responded, “events have proven their necessity time and again,” citing the power present in only a small grouping of the League.15 This gradual increase in his paranoia and trust issues was the organic result of new events, just as we all change and (ideally) grow over the years—until, that is, Bruce took a year‐long vacation to Nanda Parbat with Dick and Tim to get his head straight and “rebuild Batman.”16
There is much to admire in Batman, but we must be cautious about putting him on a pedestal (or a gargoyle, as the case may be). His dedication to the people of Gotham City and his selfless pursuit of justice inspire awe and aspiration, but we should not emulate his fractured, inconsistent ethical behavior, which reflects a lack of integration of the different aspects of his moral code. We’ve seen how these various components conflict and work against each other, which causes unnecessary turmoil for him and usually compromises the pursuit of his mission. This may add to the romantic sense of Batman as a tragic hero, giving all he can to help people while torturing himself because he can’t do it all. Although this may make for great stories, it’s no example to live up to—rather, it should be a cautionary tale. By all means, enjoy the comics, movies, and TV shows, and marvel at his attempts to do everything he can do to save the innocent people of Gotham City from the scourge of crime, but at the same time learn from his mistakes. It can be thrilling to read (or watch) the dramatic push and pull of his various moral impulses, but again, we should also see the mistakes he makes, and the inner turmoil he experiences from them, and use them in our own lives to make ourselves better.
Few of us can be Batman. But all of us, in a way, can be better than Batman, specifically by trying to do what he does, but doing it in a more consistent way that will better promote our goals and make us more integrated people. This may not result in as dramatic and exciting adventures as Batman has, but it will lead to more satisfied and successful lives in which we do more good—and maybe even be happy.