Harsh Morality - Combined answers

pippin_999 foxmoth at qnet.com
Tue Jan 4 17:28:48 UTC 2005


No: HPFGUIDX 121115


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at y...> wrote:
> 
> Del replies:
> 
> huge snip.
> 
> That's precisely the crux of my problem. DD can and does do 
wrong, and yet the only Good thing to do is to believe him and 
follow him without hesitation. Whoever doesn't do that is wrong. 
Bummer.
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I still think it is consistent with Platonic-cristian morality as
we  discussed earlier.
> 
> Dumbledore carries many roles in the books. As human being 
he is  indeed imperfect, BUT as personification of the Principle of 
GOOD, he  is just form and therefore indeed PERFECT, 
therefore indeed the only  good thing is to follow himas 
PRINCIPLE of GOOD without hesitation,  but we can question 
his decisions as human being. Am I making sense?
> 

Pippin:
You know, some  people ::waves at Nora:: are going to spill their 
coffee when they read this, but I think this  Platonic morality 
business is needlessly complex. I think Dumbledore is good 
according to the old-fashioned Golden Rule. "Do unto others..."

Now of course that leaves us having to explain why he tolerates 
the behavior of Snape and the Dursleys and so on. Again, the 
standard  answer: "He believes in free will." 

The trouble is, most of us don't. A belief in a deterministic 
universe in which our behavior is wholly governed  by physics, 
heredity and behavioral conditioning doesn't seem to leave 
much room for it. Obviously people can make us do 
things--we're constantly bombarded by messages, including 
those from JKR herself, trying to influence our behavior.  Surely 
Dumbledore with all the magic at his disposal can do as much.

But on the metaphysical level, we can argue that we haven't 
made people moral just because we've made them behave.

In Dumbledore's world, IMO, this is how free will operates.  No 
one can make people be good. It's metaphysically  impossible, 
like bringing back the dead. He *knows* he can't. Forced 
goodness is a guaranteed imitation. 

On the other hand, and this is where the Potterverse 
understanding of free will diverges from the classical definition, it 
*is* possible to make people be bad.   Dumbledore knows that 
too. So he uses force very gingerly, only as a last resort and only 
in direct defense of the innocent. He doesn't use force at all  
except under very specific conditions: when only he can help, 
and when he believes permanent damage will occur if he 
doesn't. 

Other people in the Potterverse haven't reached Dumbledore's 
stage of enlightenment, and think they *can* make people be 
good and even that it is their moral duty to do so. Hence 
Hermione tries to manipulate the House Elves into seeking 
freedom and tries to curse people into being loyal to the DA. 
Crouch Sr. and Snape also enforce Draconian penalties (okay, 
maybe we can't make people be good, but we can sure as hell 
make 'em sorry) and Sirius tries to force Kreacher to be loyal to 
the Order. All of them fail. 

 
Dumbledore is goodness, that is, IMO, he makes all his 
decisons according to the Golden Rule, limited by his concept of 
free will. 

He is also limited by his occasional inability to imagine himself 
completely in someone else's reality. In OOP, he failed because 
he assumed that Harry had his  patience, and Snape  had his 
resilience. 

Dumbledore's limitations make him imperfect, but he is still 
good, as far as he is able. Even when he is wrong, he is making 
his choices, as someone said up thread,  according to good 
principles, for sincere reasons and with an expectation of good 
consequences. That is the most one could expect of a human 
being. 

It's funny how we ask the same questions about Dumbledore as 
we do about God. Why does he let evil exist? Does he have a 
plan? If he knows so much, and he's so powerful, why does he 
let bad things happen? But Dumbledore is not God and is not 
responsible for everything that happens, even at Hogwarts.

Del, I don't think  the narrator is the voice of goodness. The 
narrator speaks from Harry's point of view and from Harry's 
stage of moral development, which is normal for his age. People 
are either on his side,  in which case they're good, or they're not, 
in which case they're at the very least part of the problem.  But I 
don't think that's the way JKR or Dumbledore see things. Harry is 
still learning to recognize his own limitations; he isn't ready to 
accept that other people, especially those he is meant to 
respect, have limitations just as he does. 


I think the images of breakage which recur in OOP are a 
metaphor for how, if goodness is innate, people can still turn to 
evil. Human goodness is held within a fragile vessel, like a 
potion bottle or a prophecy orb or a bowl of essence of murtlap. If 
the vessel is damaged, the essence can vanish or drain away. 

When Harry was destroying Dumbledore's possessions, what 
he really wanted to break was himself. He wanted to get rid of 
his inner goodness, because that is what made him feel pain 
when bad things happened to others. From Dumbledore's/JKR's 
point of view, anyone  who is still capable of feeling that pain and 
responding to it  is not wholly evil. But it is possible, in the 
Potterverse, to destroy that capacity or to utterly deny it. That 
denial, I think, was Voldemort's last act as a human being.

Pippin










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