A Sense of Betrayal / Unforgiveables

[Matt]

No: HPFGUIDX 173864

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, CJ.  I think some of our difference
boils down to differing readings of the term "unforgivable" as applied
to those three curses.  So, for instance, you reject my analogy to
self-defense as a justification for intentional homicide --

> Since no one has ever described killing as "unforgivable" 
> (I think we all recognize it is not), I think the better 
> analogy would be murder, rather than killing.

-- but I still think the analogy was apt.  All we were originally told
about the unforgivable curses was that "[t]he use of any one of them
on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban."
 In other words, the descriptor "unforgivable" was a legal term,
treating the curses as quasi-capital offenses, not a moral one.  And
law, like morality, recognizes exceptions even to the rules that seem
the clearest.  Murder can be justified (self-defense) or excused
(necessity).  

For that reason, I don't think it's fair to say, as you do, that 

> There ARE a few absolutes. Not all killing is wrong; 
> but all murder is....

The act of murder (i.e., intentional homicide), if done in
self-defense, is viewed as justifiable and therefore not a crime (nor,
in many people's view, immoral).  More generally, to try to make a
rule absolute by including within its statement all of the
"exceptions" is an artificial exercise that ignores the moral content
of the exceptions.  The point of a defense by way of justification is
to assert that the circumstances rendered the proscribed act morally
or legally acceptable.  If there were any absolute principle,
exceptions would not depend on circumstances.

In that spirit, I agree with you that 

> [E]ven wars have rules, and it IS possible for soldiers 
> to commit murder during the performance of their duties. 
> Just because war necessitates killing does not mean all 
> killing in wartime is justified. 

But by the same dint, the circumstances that make killing a war crime
are not defined in terms of absolutes, but in terms of competing
principles and surrounding circumstances.  Is there any weapon of war
in the real world that is viewed as immoral because of its efficiency
in killing a single enemy combatant?  And while you say that torture
is never excusable, that is not true at least in a legal sense
(necessity would be a defense), and some would admit of exceptions in
the moral sphere as well.  

I think you are admitting something of the same when you treat Harry's
attempted use of the Avada Kedavra curse, in his heat-of-the-moment
assault on Snape at the end of book 6, on different terms than Snape's
"[c]old, calculated, premeditated" use of the curse on Dumbledore. 
Whether we call what Harry did "understandable" (your words) or
"excusable" (my mischaracterization), I understand you to be putting
his action on a different moral plane from Snape's.  In doing so, you
must agree that circumstances and intention make a moral difference. 
And my point was that Rowling was recognizing the same sort of
difference in her rehabilitation of Snape.  (That is, whether or not
one views euthanasia as acceptable, the sort of distinction being made
is similar.)

And here is where you get to the part that I really do not understand:

> You are correct in your assumption that there is no room 
> for euthanasia in my moral system. However, even making 
> allowance for that, there was any number of ways Snape 
> could have finished Dumbledore off. But he chose the AK. 
> Even assuming your moral code permits euthanasia, euthanasia 
> hardly justifies an Unforgivable Curse. 

Why should the means of death make any moral difference?  I don't
think Rowling ever meant to be saying that one way of murdering
someone is more or less acceptable than another, so why should the
form of mercy killing matter?  (I am not trying to address, here, the
distinction between active and passive euthanasia, because what I
understand you to be saying is that it was worse for Snape to use the
killing curse than it would have been to have actively killed
Dumbledore in some other way.)  

I think that in distinguishing based on the form of curse used you are
putting more weight on the term "unforgivable" than Rowling ever did.
 And in doing so you are doing exactly what you originally accused
Rowling of doing, namely, losing sight of the underlying moral reasons
for treating the curses as unforgivable.  Is there some reason that
the use of Avada Kedavra is unforgivable above and beyond the
immorality of ending another person's life?  If so, I can't divine it
from the books.  

Aside from the different types of moral distinctions we are making, I
don't think we disagree terribly much.  I concede that the use of the
unforgivable curses in the Ravenclaw common room scene cannot be
explained other than as a way of showing how war desensitizes people
to brutality.  And I am troubled, as you are, by the characters' (esp.
Harry's) failure to reflect upon and agonize over their use of such
methods.  When I pointed out that the books were about war, it was not
only to hint that the circumstances of war might justify, e.g.,
killing, but also in recognition that people frequently do terrible
and unjustified things in the name of war.  Rowling clearly has one
authorial eye on that fact throughout this book -- I think, for
instance that the fiendfyre is intended to allude among other things
to the use of incendiaries in Vietnam -- and just because one of the
good characters does something does *not* mean that it is intended to
be OK.

-- Matt