Philosophy of Dumbledore (was:Moody's death...)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 179599

Mus wrote:
> 
> But that's not really, I think, the point that Betsy Hp is making -
it's certainly not the problem that I have with the nature of good and
evil in the books.  Whenever you read a book set in another world, one
does, as a reader, have to work out what the "rules" are - what the
morality is, in other words.  <snip>
> The problem I have, and the problem that Betsy Hp referred to, is
that the *author* doesn't seem to have decided what the moral rules of
her universe are.  What exactly about Dark Magic makes it bad?  Snape
in HBP gives us a sort of a description of its nature: " 'The Dark Arts
> are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal.  Fighting them is like
> fighting a many-headed monster, <snip> unfixed, mutating,
indestructible' " [HBP UKhb: 169] 
> But that, in seven books, is as close as we get to a definition, and
it's not a definition at all.  It's a description, and nothing in it
would allow you to examine a given spell and determine whether it was
Dark or not.  <snip>
> 
> Sectumsempra is depicted as a pretty nasty device, one that we'd be
tempted to regard as Dark.  But it's hard to distinguish it from a
spell which permanently disfigures someone without warning, combined
with the application of a memory charm which renders the scarred
person incapable of remembering what had caused the scar.  <snip> 

Carol responds:
I agree, and probably even the most ardent fan of the series would
agree, that JKR does not define the Dark Arts (though I do like
Snape's poetic description for what it says about him). And the
business of having the good guys use Unforgiveable Curses in the last
book is at best confusing, at worst disturbing. Nevertheless, I'll
make a stab at defining evil in the HP books. The Dementors, which
suck out happiness and destroy souls, are irredeemably evil, having no
soul of their own. We know that, while killing can be justified (Snape
and DD; Molly and Bellatrix), wilfull murder cannot, particularly when
the murder is used for the unnatural purpose of destroying your own
soul and trying to make yourself immortal. Torturing people seems evil
even when Harry attempts it on Bellatrix and (unsuccessfully) on Snape
until we're shown Harry torturing Carrow merely for spitting on
McGonagall. Possibly we're supposed to think of his motive as
righteous anger, but then he echoes Bellatrix's words about having to
mean the Unforgiveables. Morality seems to be turned upside down. What
happened to magic that the good wizards are too noble to use, to
paraphrase McGonagall's words in SS/PS? Still, torturing people into
insanity is clearly evil. Killing a Unicorn, the epitome of purity, is
evil. Forcing people to commit murder or torture against their will is
evil. So killing people, causing them pain, and controlling their
minds are evil not in themselves but when they do not contribute to
"the greater good" or the welfare of the WW (the justification for
modifying Muggle memories). I don't see any moral absolutes; the end
seems to justify the means, but only when the good to be accomplished
can't be obtained in any other way. Killing the innocent (whether
people or unicorns) is evidently always evil. Violating nature by
trying to make yourself immortal is also evil. But those two things
seem to be exceptions to the rule. Violating a grave for evil ends,
which LV does twice, is evil, but would taking the Elder Wand from
Dead!DD have been justified if *Harry* had done it to keep it from LV?
DD, at least, seems to think so.


Mus:
> The ritual that restores Voldemort to full size and strength in the
graveyard reeks of Black Magic - "blood of the enemy forcibly taken,
bone of the father unwillingly given", all that.  But there's another
spell in canon that falls under the traditional classification of
Black Magic, the one which uses a body part of another person, the one
that is essentially identity theft: the Polyjuice Potion.  What makes
one good and one bad?  Polyjuice isn't bad because Our Heroes use it.
 Voldemort's ritual is bad because he does it. <snip>

Carol responds:
I disagree. First, it's Wormtail who performs the ritual, not
Voldemort, and I think it would be Dark magic no matter who performed
it. There are key differences between taking body parts (hair or
fingernail clippings, which are in themselves already dead and cause
little or no pain to the person they're taken from--"Accio hair!"
might cause momentary discomfort) to make Polyjuice potion and
forcibly taking the bones of a dead man, the blood of an enemy, and
the flesh (the right hand!) of a servant. Voldemort, via Wormtail,
dishonors his father, injures Harry, and maims Wormtail, all for the
unnatural and wholly selfish end of making himself immortal. (Wormtail
has already used a combination of Nagini's venom and Unicorn blood to
create a horrible fetal form for LV which, IMO, foreshadows the form
his mangled soul will take in "King's Cross.") Surely, we don't need
JKR or Voldemort to tell us that this is Dark magic, the opposite in
every way of self-sacrificial love magic, dependent as it is in
harming others (living or dead--the fact that he murdered his own
father before using his bone to restore himself makes that act even
more abhorrent) for wholly selfish and unnatural ends. In contrast,
even stealing Mad-Eye Moody's hair and imprisoning him in his own
trunk in order to impersonate him is not (IMO) Dark magic, however
cruel and wrong and immoral it may be. Mad-eye still retains his own
identity and his life. Crouch Jr. has not taken his blood, flesh,
bone, or soul, only duplicated his body and taken advantage of the
real Moody's job as DADA teacher to manipulate Harry and send him to
Voldemort. Barty Jr. is evil and Demented, but he's not using Dark
magic in this instance to achieve his ends. (He does, however, use at
least two of the three Unforgiveables for evil ends--surely AKing his
father and Imperioing Krum to Crucio Cedric counts as both evil and
Dark.) 

Using Polyjuice to borrow (not steal) another's identity is not evil
in itself by the standards implied in the HP books if used for good or
neutral purposes (such as spying on Draco or visiting Godric's Hollow
or robbing Gringotts for "the greater good"). Even Crouch Jr. doesn't
actually "steal" Moody's identity (Moody in the trunk is still
himself) though he borrows it for a long period and for evil purposes,
meanwhile kidnapping and nearly starving Moody. Evil but not Dark,
IMO, and not evil because of the Polyjuice Potion per se but because
of the abuse of the man and the misuse of his identity. Polyjuice
Potion is not a form of Voodoo. (BTW, Ron's and Harry's treatment of
Crabbe and Goyle, knocking them out with a sleeping potion, locking
them in a cupboard and borrowing their shoes as well as their
identitities, all on Hermione's instructions, is not exactly exemplary
behavior and I don't think that the ends justified the means in this
instance, but at least it was short-term and for a neutral purpose, in
contrast with Crouch Jr.'s treatment of Moody. Are we supposed to
excuse HRH here or are we supposed to see their behavior in a
different light after GoF? I think the latter, but I'm not sure.)

Mus:
> My problem isn't that I have to figure out what is Good and what is
Evil, rather that there's no coherent answer to that question in the
books.  I have no objection to a universe with no answer to that
question, but in that case I think it's wise for the author not to
tell me there's Good and Evil.  It's contradictory.  So either JKR is
being astonishingly cynical, or she never thought the thing through to
begin with. <snip>

Carol:

IMO, and I have nothing to back up this statement because it's not an
argument, JKR just started writing the story that was in her head.
Devices like Polyjuice Potion occurred to her, and she figured out a
way to have the kids use them only to have them used by bad guys
later. (The reverse process may have occurred with the Unforgiveable
Curses.) She needed a way to hide her WW from Muggle eyes (her readers
are Muggles; they need an explanation for why they can't see Hogwarts
or Diagon Alley or dragons or giants) and came up with
Muggle-repelling Charms (no problem there except treating us as
members of an excluded underclass) and Obliviate, which she didn't
realize was just as obtrusive as the Imperius Curse. And she needed
Snape to kill Dumbledore by the easiest, least suspect, and least
painful method even though that same curse had been previously
established as Unforgiveable.

This is the same woman, after all, who can't count to two (Dobby is
out of work for a year and six months, not "two whole years," as Dobby
says in GoF). She tries but does not always succeed in keeping her
characters and the details of her plot consistent. But details like a
consistent number of students or the consistent behavior of wands or a
consistent morality seem to escape her. I really don't think she sat
down and thought about good and evil or Dark magic vs. whatever its
opposite is in the Potterverse. She wanted first and foremost to tell
Harry's story, the journey from adversity and obscurity to triumph,
heroism, and happiness, escaping even the burden of fame. Harry, the
flawed but essentially decent young hero triumphs over Voldemort, the
irredeemably mass murderer and mutilator of his own soul. And that,
for her, equates to the triumph of good over evil.

Carol, wondering if we've been misled by Rowling's ability to spin an
intriguing tale and create colorful characters into overestimating her
genius in other respects (expecting her to be a philosopher, for example)