Batman and Ethics

Mark D. White

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119038030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

Batman has been one of the world's most beloved superheroes since his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Clad in his dark cowl and cape, he has captured the imagination of millions with his single-minded mission to create a better world for the people of Gotham City by fighting crime, making use of expert detective skills, high-tech crime-fighting gadgets, and an extensive network of sidekicks and partners. But why has this self-made hero enjoyed such enduring popularity? And why are his choices so often the subject of intense debate among his fans and philosophers alike?

Batman and Ethics goes behind the mask to shed new light on the complexities and contradictions of the Dark Knight's moral code. From the logic behind his aversion to killing to the moral status of vigilantism and his use of torture in pursuit of justice (or perhaps revenge), Batman's ethical precepts are compelling but often inconsistent and controversial. Philosopher and pop culture expert Mark D. White uses the tools of moral philosophy to track Batman's most striking ethical dilemmas and decisions across his most prominent storylines from the early 1970s through the launch of the New 52, and suggests how understanding the mercurial moral character of the caped crusader might help us reconcile our own.

A thought-provoking and entertaining journey through four decades of Batman's struggles and triumphs in time for the franchise's 80 th anniversary, Batman and Ethics is a perfect gateway into the complex questions of moral philosophy through a focused character study of this most famous of fictional superheroes.

PART I
What Batman Tries to Do—and How He Might Do It Better

The story has been told many times, each as chilling as the last. After seeing a Zorro movie at the movie theater, Thomas and Martha Wayne and their young son Bruce walk down an alley, only to face a mugger who demands money and jewelry. Thomas resists, and the mugger shoots him and then his wife, leaving their son in shock as the killer runs into the night. As Bruce kneels sobbing over his parents’ bodies, he swears an oath to prevent this tragedy from happening to anybody else—and, in many ways, Batman was born that night.

Of course, Bruce was still a young boy then, and the cape and cowl, not to mention the cave and car, were years away. The Waynes’ loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth (with the help of Thomas’ friend and colleague Dr. Leslie Thompkins) raised Bruce to be the man his parents would have wanted him to be, while in solitude he began the intensive training that would prepare him for the role and the life he chose for himself that fateful night—in other words, “the mission.” It is this mission to which Batman dedicates his life, sacrificing his every waking moment, much of his fortune, and any prospect of an independent life with joy or love. It is this mission and Batman’s superhuman resolve to pursue it that inspire admiration among his fellow heroes in the DC Universe and his millions of fans in the real world—while at the same time they question his sanity for pursuing it with such single‐minded devotion. And it is this mission, along with the steps he refuses to take in pursuit of it, that together define who Batman is in ethical terms.

In this part of the book, we’ll explore the nature of that mission. We’ll discuss various aspects of it, both positive and negative, and what each one implies about the priorities Batman puts on different sides of his overall goal. We’ll also see how Batman’s mission can be described in terms of moral philosophy, specifically the school of ethics known as utilitarianism, which is focused on increasing and maximizing the amount of good in the world. We’ll explore how Batman’s mission falls short of the utilitarian ideal in important ways and try to explain why—and find out more about utilitarianism in the process. We’ll even see that certain aspects of his mission are self‐defeating, which shows how complicated ethical questions can be, even in the context of a very simple and straightforward goal. Most important, we’ll discuss how Batman struggles with ethical dilemmas that, other than the cave, car, and cape, resemble ones we face every day, and as much as we can be inspired by his successes, we can learn from his failures. Batman isn’t perfect, and neither are we—but we can all be better. Let’s see how.

1
Utilitarianism and the Mission

One reason Batman is such a popular superhero (and fictional character in general) is that he has incredible devotion to his life’s goal, or his mission. At the risk of seeming insensitive, given the tragic reason for his adopting that goal, many of us might be envious of Bruce Wayne’s single‐minded focus and belief in the purpose of his life. (I know I am!) What’s more, that mission is altruistic, oriented toward making other people’s lives better, and motivated by his own loss at a young age. We can of course argue that he goes too far in pursuing his mission, in that he sacrifices his own personal happiness and any chance at romantic love. Some would say that he doesn’t go far enough, in that there are certain steps, such as killing his enemies, that he will not take even to further his mission. Yet others say that, if he really wants to help people, dressing up as a giant bat and beating up bad guys isn’t the best way to go about it. Even though we may be critical of the mission itself or how he executes it—and we’ll talk about that in later chapters—many of us admire Batman’s devotion to it in general.

But what exactly is his mission? As with most things in the world of Batman—save for his famous, oft‐quoted saying about criminals being a “cowardly and superstitious lot”—there is no definitive, canonical statement about his mission. However, there are several recurring elements of his mission which, although related and overlapping to some extent, reflect different aspects of it and shed light on its complexity as well as his devotion to it.

The most immediate one, which gets to the heart of what he does more than why he does it, is his never‐ending war against crime in Gotham City and elsewhere: as the narration to one story reads, “it’s what his life is about.”¹ As Batman once said, “I made a promise. To honor my parents. Someday to rid Gotham City of the crime that took their lives.”² Simply put, Batman is driven not only to fight crime but to end it, despite the futility of this goal, which he admits: as the narration to an overview of his early life and motivation reads, “he knows he’s set himself an impossible goal. No man can ever eliminate crime. All he can do is try.”³ And this he does, in full awareness of this impossibility. “I’ve dedicated my life to eradicating crime,” he thought to himself while combatting gangs in Gotham’s Chinatown. “At best a hopeless cause. Sometimes all we can do is maintain the balance of power.”⁴

Furthermore, Batman does not limit himself to major crimes or the antics of his colorfully costumed foes. On his way to catch Kite Man—yes, Kite Man—Batman heard a burglar alarm coming from a jewelry shop and considers driving by, but then thought, “a crime is a crime is a crime! It’s isn’t my job to judge them—just to stop them!”⁵ Even these crimes must be confronted, even though he knows he can never deal with them all, even on a night of “casual crimes and momentary madnesses … the same thousand sins of any normal night, anonymous evil I can never stop.”⁶ We’ll come to the way Batman sets priorities later, but for now the point is that, in theory, he doesn’t exclude any crime, no matter how small, from his mission—even if, in practice, he finds he must prioritize them somehow.

Although avenging the deaths of his parents played a clear and important role in driving his mission to eradicate crime—“turning a boy of bright hope into a man of dark vengeance,” which we’ll unpack later—Batman does not endure a constant battle against crime in Gotham City simply to make up for not saving his parents as a young boy.⁷ Neither is fighting crime an end in itself; there is deeper purpose behind it, namely to help, protect, and save people, especially the residents of Gotham. Inspired by his father’s devotion to medicine, Batman goes to extraordinary lengths to save innocent lives. As he dove off a cliff to catch a vial of deadly Ebola virus, the narration reads: “Millions of lives are at stake. Maybe all humanity. He doesn’t hesitate for an instant.”⁸ He famously lets criminals escape if he needs to save a life. After doing just that, a person he saved asked, “But why did you bother? I thought you only cared about catching criminals!” to which Batman replied, “You’re not alone in thinking that! I wish you were!”⁹ And it is not only the lives of the innocent that he tries to save, but all lives, even those of the most heinous and evil. We see this in the numerous times he saves the Joker, even at the expense of the countless people the Crown Prince of Crime will surely kill later—a central moral dilemma in the Batman canon that we will talk about often in this book.

Utilitarianism: Bentham, Mill, and … Wayne?

These two simple goals—fighting crime and saving lives—cover most all of Batman’s actions as the Dark Knight, but each is more complicated than it seems, in terms of how each must be implemented in itself as well as when they conflict with or contradict each other. We’ll discuss those nuances soon enough, but in general they both reflect Batman’s overall motivation to help people, which corresponds to a school of moral philosophy that grounds the first part of this book.

Whatever their method or motivation, most superheroes try to help people. When Superman diverts an asteroid hurtling toward th...