Of Elephants and Toothaches

Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Krzysztof Kieslowski's 'Decalogue'

Eva Badowska, Francesca Parmeggiani, Eva Badowska, Francesca Parmeggiani

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780823269273, 9780823267101
• eBook ISBN: 9780823267118
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism

This collection is the first to offer a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to Krzysztof Kie?lowski's Decalogue, a ten-film cycle of modern tales that touch on the ethical dilemmas of the Ten Commandments. The cycle's deft handling of moral ambiguity and inventive technique established Kie?lowski as a major international director.Kie?lowski once said, "Both the deep believer and the habitual skeptic experience toothaches in exactly the same way." Of Elephants and Toothaches takes seriously the range of thought, from theological to skeptical, condensed in the cycle's quite human tales. Bringing together scholars of film, philosophy, literature, and several religions, the volume ranges from individual responsibility, to religion in modernity, to familial bonds, to human desire and material greed. It explores Kie?lowski's cycle as it relentlessly solicits an ethical response that stimulates both inner disquiet and interpersonal dialogue.

CHAPTER 1

Rules and Virtues: The Moral Insight of The Decalogue

William Jaworski

The Ten Commandments are often taken to represent a prototypical rule-based approach to ethics. What the Commandments are supposed to provide, on this interpretation, is a set of rules for evaluating the status of actions as right or wrong. They are thus taken to be similar in their goals to modern moral theories such as Kantian ethics or utilitarianism. I will call this the “moralizing interpretation” of the Commandments, which goes hand in hand with a single-discipline conception of moral inquiry. According to this conception, serious moral inquiry is the task of philosophy alone. Other disciplines may be able to feed information into the philosopher’s calculations, but the task of rendering that information morally relevant in the form of precise, universally applicable moral principles is the philosopher’s special charge.

There are nevertheless philosophical reasons for rejecting the moralizing interpretation of the Commandments in favor of a more holistic alternative. That alternative is illustrated by the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue. The ten episodes display how the Commandments are best understood not as rules along the lines of those proposed by modern moral theories, but as descriptions of patterns of thought, feeling, and action that can influence human well-being for better or for worse. The focus of the Commandments, on this interpretation, is not on discrete actions that ought or ought not to be done, but on human life as a whole, and how various patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting can enable us to live well or prevent us from doing so.

The philosophical reasons that motivate the holistic interpretation of the Commandments also motivate a multidisciplinary conception of moral inquiry, for if the Commandments concern not abstract rules, as the moralizing interpretation would have it, but the rich tapestry of human life as a whole, then nonphilosophical disciplines do more than simply feed information into the philosopher’s moral calculus; their input becomes essential to the very process of creating moral understanding. In line with this conception of moral inquiry, the films of The Decalogue show us vividly how the Commandments are woven into the tapestry of human life in ways that often escape our notice. Given their focus on attitudes and patterns of behavior—as opposed to discrete actions extracted and isolated from the lives in which they can only exist as parts—attempts to identify concrete, datable occurrences that either violate or conform to a rule often fail. By contrast, abandoning those attempts in favor of the holistic alternative often leaves us wondering whether the various strands of human life could consist of anything but the Commandments.

Perhaps above all the films movingly highlight two aspects of human life. First, they highlight the pervasive character of human failure and frailty, the way we can all strive for love, freedom, security, fulfillment, esteem, and yet fail in our best attempts to achieve them. Second, the films highlight the enduring character of human hope—hope in the possibility that our ultimate fate will not be determined by our past failures, hope that we might rediscover love and freedom even in the midst of tragedy and loss.

Rule-Based Ethics and the Moralizing Interpretation of the Commandments

Modern ethical theories are typically concerned with articulating a principle or principles for evaluating the moral status of actions. The job of ethics, as they conceive of it, is to formulate abstract principles, rules, or guidelines that can be applied to the concrete actions of concrete individuals in order to determine whether those actions are good or bad, right or wrong. The application of these principles typically takes the form of a calculus or decision procedure. Kantian ethics and utilitarianism are the most popular representatives of rule-based ethical thinking.¹

Utilitarians take the rightness or wrongness of an action to be determined by its consequences, whereas Kantians take it to be determined by the principle on which the agent acts. Even though they differ on what constitutes the rightness or wrongness of an action, utilitarians and Kantians share a commitment to three ideas. First, they both claim that ethical theorizing aims at articulating rules or principles that can be applied to particular actions (or in some cases principles) in order to determine their rightness or wrongness. Second, they both take moral evaluation to consist in an abstract cognitive procedure: trying to conceive the universal application of the agent’s principle in the Kantian case, and calculating the net gain or loss of pleasure that results from an action in the utilitarian case. Finally, both take the ultimate focus of ethical theorizing to be discrete actions—even forms of rule utilitarianism, which look to evaluate moral principles, take the latter to be right or wrong in proportion to their tendency to result in right or wrong actions.

The moralizing interpretation takes the Commandments to be in the same business as modern moral theories. It claims that the Commandments represent a premodern attempt to do more or less the same thing that Kantians and utilitarians are doing. The Commandments articulate principles to which discrete actions must conform if they are to count as morally permissible, and moral evaluation consists in determining whether particular actions violate any of the principles.

Understood in this way, however, the Commandments are problematic for well-rehearsed philosophical reasons. I will mention just three.

1. The problem of generality versus specificity: Rule-based ethical theories must articulate moral principles that balance the demand for generality (the demand that they apply to all people in all circumstances) with the demand for specificity (the demand that they be applicable to specific agents in specific circumstances). Many attempts to formulate universal ethical principles fail to satisfy one requirement or the other. The Commandments, in particular, fail to satisfy the specificity requirement, for they are so general that they do not tell us what to do (or to think or feel), but only what not to do. As a result, they lack content specific enough to tell us how to live.

2. The problem of justification: Every rule-based ethical theory must provide some justification or grounds for why its particular set of principles is the set according to which we should live. Why, for instance, must we avoid killing? Why should we not covet our neighbor’s goods? Why not steal? Answering these questions can often be very difficult without invoking contentious metaethical and metaphysical theses.

3. The problem of accounting for rule-following or rule-breaking: Rule-based ethical theories must provide a general account of the costs and benefits for human life of following or breaking the rules they endorse. Suppose, for instance, that someone is unable to follow the principles—the way an alcoholic might be incapable of following the principle “Do not drink to excess.” A rule-based ethical theory must give an account of the significance of this type of case. Moreover, what in general are the implications for human life of following or breaking a moral rule? The fifth commandment says, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” But what if I do? We are all aware that killing might have legal or social implications, ones that could be dodged with sufficient ingenuity. But are there any implications for my life that cannot be dodged? Perhaps I will become an immoral person, one that constantly breaks moral rules. But why should I care about that? If being moral amounts simply to obeying certain principles, why should I care about being moral? Why should I think that being moral is a good thing? Any rule-based ethical theory has to be able to answer questions of this sort. It must situate its principles within a broader account of rule-following and rule-breaking and their significance for human life. Again, this is a difficult task to accomplish without invoking contentious metaethical and metaphysical assumptions.

Human Striving for the Good Life and the Antimoralist Challenge

The third of the aforementioned problems with rule-based ethical theories is especially important for our discussion. It raises the question of whether human behavior is capable of conforming to abstract principles and what implications this might have for human well-being. Concrete human life is gritty and imperfect, unpredictable and indeterminate. It does not lend itself easily to the imposition of strict principles. One reason for this is that human nature is inherently limited in so many ways. Even if I judge that following a certain moral principle is for the best, I might still be unable to follow that principle in practice. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is inevitably weak. A more important reason to doubt the possibility of human life conforming to abstract principles derives from an account of human striving.

Human life is fundamentally driven by desire. Part of being human is precisely the desire for certain goods: for life, love, pleasure, joy, freedom, security, power, health, wealth, status, and esteem. We are constantly striving to live well, to get as much out of life as we can. Our day-to-day existence is an exercise in trying to achieve such goods—strategizing about how to secure them and negotiating obstacles to their realization. Seen against the backdrop of human striving, the Commandments can look like a system of principles that inhibit our natural inclination to achieve these goods. They can appear as a force of alienation, something that arises not from human nature but rather against it as an impediment to human fulfillment. The upshot is that a life based on the Commandments or an analogous set of principles could only be one that ends up crushing rather than liberating the human spirit. An antimoralist view of this sort has often motivated various diagnoses of traditional moral theories in terms of class struggle, or power, or some other form of social control. Since the imposition of abstract principles on human striving could only inhibit human well-being, antimoralists argue, traditional morality could only be an instrument used by some to dominate and oppress others.

The founding assumption of this type of antimoralist view is that abstract ethical rules are at best orthogonal to human flourishing and are at worst impediments to it. There are at least three ways of responding to this worry. Naïve antimoralists jettison traditional morality without exploring the possibility of alternative ways of understanding its content. Naïve moralists, on the other hand, endorse the content of traditional morality without attempting to respond to the charges of antimoralists. A third option is to articulate an understanding of traditional morality that clarifies how its content fits into a more general account of human flourishing. This option endorses the content of traditional morality while yet responding to the charges of antimoralists. This is the view, I want to suggest, that is represented by Kieślowski’s Decalogue. Its depiction of people and the circumstances in which they find themselves shares the antimoralist’s skepticism that human life can conform to abstract principles, and yet it also shares the moralist’s conviction that traditional morality is deeply important to human well-being. In what follows, I will develop this idea by appealing to an ethical theory based not on rules but on the creative exercise of human abilities.

Virtue Ethics

The films of The Decalogue generally resist attempts to identify concrete datable occurrences as violations of a rule. They instead situate the actions of the characters within a broader fabric of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, dispositions, and personality and character traits. Consequently, the films suggest an interpretation of the Commandments different from the moralizing one. In what follows I will propose an interpretative strategy based on an ethics of virtue or virtue ethics.

The original philosophical architects of virtue ethics were Plato and Aristotle, but other representatives include Augustine and Aquinas, and more recently Elizabeth Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre, and, I would suggest, Krzysztof Kieślowski.² The Decalogue provides moral theorists with resources to develop a virtue-ethical interpretation of the Commandments, an interpretation it expresses in flesh-and-blood terms using the medium of film. From the standpoint of virtue ethics, meditating on the films of The Decalogue proves more useful for developing one’s moral understanding than attempting to formulate abstract principles of the sort that characterize the endeavor of modern moral philosophy.

An ethics of virtue takes its starting point from unremarkable observations about human life. We are animals who have evolved in response to a range of environmental pressures largely beyond our control. As a result, we have physiological, social, and spiritual needs, which we are constantly trying to satisfy. In general, we strive to live well, to achieve lives filled with as many good things as we can: love and security, pleasure and joy, health and freedom, wealth, power, status, and esteem. The central idea of virtue ethics is that we cannot achieve human goods, especially those distinctive of human life at its best, by following abstract rules, but only by carefully cultivating certain patterns of thought, feeling, and action. Living well involves the practiced balancing of a range of desires and demands that constitute the raw material of human life. It involves learning how to weave the various strands of human existence together into a well-proportioned whole. Those strands include making decisions about what to do and how to feel and act; managing hardship; dealing with other people; managing sensual pleasures; estimating and evaluating people’s abilities and knowledge; managing self-exertion, one’s attitudes and behavior toward truth; the relationship between time and tasks; anger, sadness, and other emotional states; humor, one’s physical appearance; managing conversation; managing trust placed in others and in oneself, one’s intellectual skills; managing failures and mistakes; managing sexuality and one’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

According to an ethics of virtue, there are better and worse ways of managing these aspects of human life. What makes the better ways better is that they enable us to flourish. They enable us to achieve the goods that we desire—the physiological, social, and spiritual needs we demand—in a way that does not disfigure life as a whole with imbalance and disproportion. Traditionally, these better patterns of thought, feeling, and action have been called “virtues.” Virtues are character traits or dispositions—patterns of thought, feeling, and action—that enable us to live well. Vices, on the other hand, are patterns of thought, feeling, and action that if cultivated will inevitably damage and disfigure human life. Consider some simple examples.

Eleanor wants to learn to play the piano. In order to achieve that end and its associated goods, she is going to have to work hard; she will have to practice. Practice involves hardship, and hence it requires the ability to exert oneself and channel one’s energies to accomplish the task despite hardship. If Eleanor manages hardship well, if she has discipline and fortitude, then she will be able to achieve the goal of playing the piano and thus secure the goods associated with it. If, on the other hand, she does not have fortitude—if, for instance, she is disposed to quit in the face of hardship and is unable to channel her energies in the face of it—then she will not be able to achieve what she wants. Musicianship and the goods associated with it will remain beyond her grasp. This is true not just of musicianship, but of many other things as well: dancing, mathematics, writing, speaking, and athletics, as well as the management of friendship, marriage, health, wealth, and countless other things. All of them involve dealing with hardship in one way or another. The fortitude that enables Eleanor to succeed in one area will enable her to succeed in others. Possessing the ability to channel her energies and stick to a difficult task despite its difficulty will help her achieve the goods associated with a range of activities. Conversely, lacking that ability will hinder her achievement in a range of activities.

Consider another example. Eleanor’s efforts will be greatly assisted if she is able to benefit from the advice and constructive criticism of others such as her piano teacher and fellow students. If Eleanor is able to take constructive cr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: “Within unrest, there is always a question”
• 1. Rules and Virtues: The Moral Insight of The Decalogue
• 2. Tablets of Stone, Tablets of Flesh: Synesthetic Appeal in The Decalogue
• 3. Decalogue One: Witnessing a Responsible Ethics of Response from a Jewish Perspective
• 4. Visual Reverberations: Decalogue Two and Decalogue Eight
• 5. Remember the Sabbath Day, to Keep It Holy: Decalogue Three
• 6. Decalogue Four: The Mother up in Smoke, or “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother”
• 7. Decalogue Five: A Short Film about Killing, Sin, and Community
• 8. States of Exception: Politics and Poetics in Decalogue Six
• 9. Decalogue Seven: A Tale of Love, Failing Words, and Moving Images
• 10. Decalogue Eight: Childhood, Emotion, and the Shoah
• 11. Divine Possession: Metaphysical Covetousness in Decalogue Nine
• 12. Laughter Makes Good Neighbors: Sociability and the Comic in Decalogue Ten
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Index