Rowling and Philosophy

[Tom Wall]

No: HPFGUIDX 53628

Comments/replies to Psychodudeneo,
Caius Marcus, and dimercury7 in 
this post.


Psychodudeneo wrote:
<snip> With that in mind, I 
think it's unlikely that 
Voldemort is a representation 
of anything in mortal man, or 
how they would act.

Caius Marcus replied:
But Tom Riddle began as fully 
human - Being Lord Voldemort was a 
gradual but conscious process of 
renouncing his humanity, getting in 
touch with his inner Reptilian brain. 
So, yes, this is a representation of 
what mortal men undergo when they 
renounce goodness and avidly pursue 
the diabolic.

I reply:
Caius Marcus, I agree mostly with you here, although I'm not 
convinced that Voldemort intended to renounce his 'humanity' in all 
ways. Certainly I agree that he's trying to shed his mortality, but 
I'm not sure that 'mortality' and 'humanity' are synonymous.


dimercury7 wrote:
Here's the obvious next question... There are alot of powerful GOOD 
wizards out there... why hasn't the power corrupted them?

I reply:
I disagree to an extent with your analysis here – I think that quite 
a few of the wizards we have met could easily be described 
as `corrupted' to one degree or another. It depends, I guess, mostly 
on what you *personally* consider to be the appropriate standard for 
moral standing and superiority. I mean, these kinds of moral debates 
have been raging since, er, forever, so I'll venture my own devil's 
advocacy here and give some examples of what could be considered 
corruption, to varying degrees. 

And what the heck – I'll throw in some likeable characters just for 
fun. ;-)

Fudge is "blinded by the love of the office [he holds...]" (GoF, US 
hardcover, Ch.36, 708) His actions at the end of GoF *could* be 
selfishly motivated. They could be perceived, as Dumbledore alludes, 
as self-centered and could likely result in difficulties down the 
road for our heroes. 
In Fudge's defense, he's acting in what he might believe to be the 
best way for roughly half of the WW. Fudge sees things differently – 
a potentially insane Harry, an unprovable story from Dumbledore, and 
courses of action with which many people in the WW will disagree. 
Remember – just because *we* like Dumbledore doesn't mean his 
standing in the WW is as infallible.

Arthur Weasley is a hypocrite:
"Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote 
that law!" shouted Mrs. Weasley. "Just so you could carry on 
tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed!" (CoS, US 
paperback, Ch.3. 39)
In Arthur's defense, he appears to be a genuinely nice guy, who's 
open-minded and well-intentioned. Does that exonerate him from 
violating the spirit of his own law? Nope – that makes him a 
hypocrite, tantamount to US politicians who deliberately make 
campaign finance laws with loopholes so that the same corruption can 
continue under a different alias. Is that corrupt? Yep.

Hagrid uses magic illegally:
"I'm – er – not supposed ter do magic, strictly speakin'." (PS/SS, US 
paperback, Ch.4, 59) He knowingly violates the law, and uses magic 
because he likes to. You know what's worse? Hagrid actually intended 
to turn Dudley *into* a pig, not merely give him a tail. So in this 
case, Hagrid's *intent* is far worse than the result of his inept 
magical skills... luckily for Dudley.
In Hagrid's defense, he doesn't necessarily mean harm all of the 
time, although frankly, giving Dudley a tail is out of line... it's 
funny, since we're preprogrammed not to like Dudley, but it's still 
out of line.

Lupin is careless and dangerous:
"But I always managed to forget my guilty feelings every time we sat 
down to plan our next month's adventure. And I haven't changed..." 
(PoA, US paperback, Ch.18, 355-6) So not only was Lupin careless, not 
only *is* Lupin careless, the clincher is that he *knows* he is, and 
doesn't change his behavior. 
In Lupin's defense, it's gotta be rough being a werewolf. Does it 
excuse the placing of others in danger? Nope. But he's all around 
pretty nice, so he gets leeway from the readership.

I could go on – almost every major character has major shortcomings, 
well, except for maybe Dumbledore, who seems, IMO, fairly sacrosanct, 
truth be told.

The point is that these mistakes, this selfishness, is completely 
human. So human, I believe that it is these qualities that make these 
characters so believable and lovable.


dimercury7 wrote:
However, differnt people use power in a different way, each according 
to your own desires. If one desires good, then the power you posses 
will help you become even more good.

I reply:
That's so Kantian of you. Paraphrased, 'the only thing that is good 
in and of itself is a good will.' But Kant's mistake was that a good 
will can do horribly wrong things, while maintaining that it's 
position is correct.

I'm not sure that the argument concerning `power' or 'desire' is 
necessarily accurate. We know canonically from McGonagall, Sirius 
Black, and Voldemort, that Pettigrew is a shabby wizard at best – yet 
he would seem to have corrupted fairly easily. As I mentioned above, 
we know that Hagrid intended to do much worse to Dudley than give him 
a tail.

Arguably, Pettigrew's one of the most vile villains we have in the 
series, IMHO. Thus far, we don't know that Riddle betrayed any 
friends. Sure, he's a killer, but has he actually pulled a Judas or a 
Lucifer? Uh, not of which we know. Remember, Dante placed Judas 
Isacariot, Brutus and Cassius in Lucifer's three mouths at the center 
of the ninth circle of the inferno, which contained the traitors. 
Treason, the betrayal of a trust, is a pretty hefty crime. 

But we don't have Voldemort on it yet.

What JKR has talked about repeatedly is the power and significance of 
choice, and I like that. I like it a lot. In our modern world, it 
seems to me to be so easy to blame everything else for our 
problems. "It's McDonalds' fault I'm fat," "it's my parents' fault 
I'm not succeeding in life," "it's 911's (the phone number's) fault 
that four idiotic teenagers took a tiny rowboat into the Long Island 
Sound and drowned."

No, no, no. That's what we never see. It's your fault you're fat, 
it's your fault you haven't succeeded yet, and it's the kids' fault 
for breaking the law and being stupid by taking a rowboat illegally 
into a frigid, fast-flowing body of water at midnight without safety 
precautions.

I don't want to hear you blame your therapist, big tobacco, alcohol, 
drugs, your gland problem, your parents, your siblings, your friends 
and peers, pornography, *society* or whatever else for your actions. 
It doesn't matter what you're exposed or subjected to - you still 
have the capacity of choice.

What I really like that she's doing by talking about choice is that 
she's returning responsibility for our actions to us, the makers of 
the choices. Arthur deserves the fifty galleon fine for breaking the 
law, Lupin deserves to have to leave Hogwarts for endangering 
students a *second* time. And others break the law and aren't caught, 
ala Hagrid. But just 'cause they don't get caught doesn't mean they 
didn't do wrong.

Some of us get away with it, and some don't. Getting away with it is 
not the point. The point is that you might be lucky and evade 
punishment – but if you don't get away with it, you're still 
ultimately responsible, and it's not anyone else fault, i.e. it's not 
*Malfoy's* fault that HHR are caught out of bed in PS/SS, costing 
their house all of those points. They deserve it - thoroughly. We 
don't hear that other Gryffindors break rules like that. And so what 
if we think the Weasley twins do - they don't get caught.

So, on Voldemort, has he made some bad choices? Yep. Does he deserve 
to pay for them? Yep.

But is he the only one who has been corrupted by selfishness, greed, 
or power? No way - almost all of the characters have been corrupted 
to one degree or another.


dimercury7 wrote:
To get back to the topic at hand - V's desires are what allowed the 
power to corrupt him. He started off just as mortal as the rest of 
us, however, he desired more than what was good. Thus, over time, he 
became the evil snake-creature we see today.

I reply:
Well, desires aren't the be-all and end-all, after all. Heh-heh. It's 
not just what you desire – it's what you *choose* to do that counts. 

For example, it's an untenable argument that all of the Durmstrang 
students are evil just because they're practicing and learning the 
Dark Arts. In other words, you can't blame the Dark Arts for a person 
becoming evil. What is tenable is an argument that focuses on the 
choices these students make when deciding how and when to use them, 
and for what purposes.

Voldemort's done some pretty heinous stuff, but he *chose* his path. 
The power didn't corrupt him. The Dark Arts didn't corrupt him. His 
desires were not in the way - his goal is to achieve immortality. 
What got in the way were obstacles, and he made some horrific choices 
when dealing with those obstacles. He did it all by himself.

And I think that that's very significant, because what we see in the 
Potterverse is way more interesting than a black and white world. 
What we see is a world in which everyone, even the good guys, are 
totally fallible. And not only that, but they actually *do* fail, 
too, instead of just *having* weaknesses and overcoming them 
heroically as in so many corny adventure stories.

These people make mistakes - and that's a big clue, I think. We're 
gonna see a lot of bad and selfish decisions in the novels to come, 
and from more characters than just the Death Eaters – we're going to 
see JKR demonstrate that in some ways, the best of us can be corrupt 
and evil too. Heck, we can be corrupt and evil and even have good 
intentions. But it's not our power or our intentions that matter 
most - it's the *choices* we make that count the most.

-Tom