A UD Education: The Road Goes Ever On

Ten days ago I sent the letter below to the University News at Dallas. I haven't seen it published yet; maybe they had a stack of better stuff coming in. In any event, I thought I'd share my sentiments here.


In May I will again visit the University of Dallas campus to attend graduation. It has been 11 years since that spring morning when I received my Bachelor of Arts degree, concluding an idyllic season of my life. With the passage of time the memories have lost some of their sharpness, and yet the insights, the vision, the thirst for recovering the great ideas of our civilization remain with me, making themselves apparent nearly every day. Far from fading into the darkness, my UD education continues to grow.

This may seem obvious to those currently steeped in the world of ideas that is the UD campus. It is far less obvious when you consider my present circumstances. Since graduating I have moved more times than I care to count, completed two additional degrees, married, settled into a career, started a family, published a book, and purchased a house. Much of my time is spent washing dishes, changing diapers, folding laundry, or drawing pink puppy dogs for the umpteenth time. But somehow, my UD education, time and again, worms its way back into my life.

One day last year my eye fell upon a copy of Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua­ on the shelf. (My wife had purchased it for a graduate class that never actually used it.) Although I wrote a paper on Newman for one of Dr. Norris's classes, I was too intimidated by Newman to actually read more than a couple pages. More than a decade later, I righted that shortcoming, and Newman did not disappoint: with every page his erudition and firmness of purpose show through, bathed in the light of eloquence, honesty, and joy.

Earlier this year a coworker mentioned that she was taking a class on the history of political thought and was writing on Aristotle's critiques of Plato. Excited conversation followed and the next day two large volumes came with me to the office, so I could read the Republic and Politics literally side by side. Just the other day a fellow dad mentioned Jean Leclercq's understanding of Benedictine education; that evening I pulled down my collection of essays in honor of the late Fr. Louis J. Lekai, O. Cist. and turned to Leclercq's contribution to that volume.

But these examples may be misleading: they suggest that a UD education is something contained in books and resting on a shelf, to be brought down as a curiosity. It is far more than this. To paraphrase Dr. Frank's introduction to my Phil & Eth class, a UD education is a sense of wonder, a quieting of the mind to focus on the things that matter most, and a relentless determination to seek the Truth, heedless of the cost.

Learning that I have a PhD, people often ask where I received it. Though I valued my doctoral studies, and am happy to share about them, I try to gently turn the conversation from that final degree to my UD education, the foundation that supports all my subsequent work. Whatever I have accomplished as a researcher, analyst, and writer comes from the skills I learned at UD. But even more important, UD nurtured within me the habits and virtues needed to be a citizen, a friend, a father, a husband, and a disciple. These are the things that matter most.

One cannot repay the kind of debt I owe to this school, just as one can never repay parents for their love. But I write to thank the amazing faculty, who taught me, and my fellow students, with whom I lived, studied, worked, and prayed, for four fantastic years. You are some of the most incredible people I have yet met. May God, who has so richly blessed us, continue to pour out his grace on this school and keep its spirit ever strong!

The Geometric Conception of Property

Two years ago, I wrote a post comparing Aristotle and Locke's views of property, the main idea of which was that the modern Lockean view of property created a view of property that was essentially acquisitive--the owner creates the property through his labor. Under the ancient Aristotelian view, on the other hand, the owner held his land in trust--he took care of what he already had so that he could then devote his free time to politics and pass on the land to his children. The modern view naturally tends to treat the land as a commodity for use in business, while the ancient view treats land as the source of leisure. As a result of this basic change in mentality, forms of land tenure changed so that it became more readily available in commerce. For instance, in America courts have long discouraged restraints on alienation and nearly all legislatures have abolished the fee tail. This not only has made the land easier to buy and sell, but also to mortgage, thus making large-scale borrowing possible for many people of relatively modest means. The longstanding tendency in modern America has been to make land as liquid an asset as possible.

Theoretical considerations, I argued, have radically changed our views of property, but the law of unintended consequences is always at work, as witness Thomas Jefferson's introduction of sections and ranges into land measurement (see Will Hoyt's article in Front Porch Republic). Jefferson hoped to encourage local liberty by distributing property as widely as possible among a class of yeoman farmers; the pre-modern nature of Jefferson's project becomes especially clear when one notices the archaic words he borrows from Anglo-Saxon law to describe his ideal republic. However, Jefferson tried to implement this goal with a thoroughly modern means, by parceling land in a huge grid using state-of-the-art surveying technology, which spread across the Midwest after passage of the Northwest Ordinance.

As Hoyt points out, partly as a result of Jefferson's efforts, land in America came to be viewed in abstract geometric terms, as a commodity, whose value could be easily calculated in dollars and cents for sale on the marketplace. Restraints on alienation disappeared as more and more settlers wanted to be able to move on at short notice, so that today the only forms of tenure that matter are the fee simple and the leasehold. Restrictive covenants and easements, while still allowed, are generally disfavored, except for utility and railroad easements which improve a parcel's access to the modern economy. Most importantly, legally there are strict limits on the kind of mutual obligations a land owner can impose on future generations, and if there is any doubt as to the donor's intent, courts will interpret a will or trust instrument in such a way as to impose as few obligations on the donor's descendants as possible.

A recent example of the disappearance of pre-modern land tenure appeared a few months ago in Ipswich, Massachusetts (see the March 2, 2012, Wall Street Journal). The original owner of the land dictated in his will that the land was never to be sold and that the rents were to be used for the maintenance of free schools. The donor's intent was clearly to enforce mutual obligations into perpetuity, in the hope of binding the community together in one of its most important institutions, the local public school. This arrangement continued for over 300 years until a controversy arose over the trustees' management of the rents from the property, and now a court has allowed a sale of the property despite the clear instructions in the will.

Given the development in American law, it is not much of a surprise that the property will be sold and converted to a fee simple. This is simply one of the most recent victories of the Lockean view of property over a corner of the world that had resisted long after the rest of America had changed.

Rejoicing Correctly

One of the oddities of Aristotle's Politics--at least for the modern reader--is that it ends with a somewhat lengthy discussion of music, which would have been even lengthier if the complete work had come down to us. But when we remember that Aristotle was a student of Plato, who taught that "the ways of poetry and music are not changed anywhere without change in the most important laws of the city," we will begin to see why Aristotle placed so much importance on the role of music in the polis.

Aristotle, like his teacher, recognizes that music has a profound power. But what is this power good for? Aristotle rejects the idea that music should be a mere amusement like "sleep and deep drinking" (Bk. VIII.iv.3;1339a17), or even that it should be an intellectual entertainment for the cultured (1339a25). Instead, he emphasizes its formative influence on the soul, and its ability to help the young develop virtue.

But, virtue sounds boring, and it also sounds like hard work--which Aristotle admits, when he calls education in virtue a "painful process" (μετὰ λύπης γὰρ ἡ μάθησις). So, why regulate music in what is bound to be a painful process for the young?

Aristotle's answer is simple, but profound: Music must be regulated so that the young can learn to "rejoice correctly" (χαίρειν ὀρθῶς). Good music helps the young to govern their emotions, and to attain happiness. In a later part of the discussion, Aristotle repeats this very same phrase phrase, and then adds two more emotions that need to be learned correctly: love and hatred (1340a15).

So, why should we pay attention to what kind of music we listen to? So that we can love, hate, and rejoice correctly.

The Danger of Leisure

In my last post about property and leisure, I praised Aristotle for incorporating leisure into his conception of property. Property, for Aristotle, is what assures a man leisure to pursue higher callings, especially politics. The idea was that once a man was assured of a living, he would not feel the need to amass wealth beyond measure.

That tells only one side of the story, though. Given the frailty of human nature, leisure not only opens the way for higher pursuits, but also for greed (pleonexia). To see why, we may as well begin exactly where we left off, with a passage from the Politics where Aristotle argues that the best type of democracy is a democracy composed primarily of small (yeoman) farmers. The reason for this is that

owing to their not having much property they are without leisure, so that they cannot often meet in the assembly, while owing to their having the necessities of life they pass their time attending to their farmwork and do not covet their neighbors' goods, but find more pleasure in working than in taking part in politics and holding office, where the profits to be made from the offices are not large; for the mass of mankind are more covetous of gain than of honor (Bk. VI.i.1; 1318b12-18).

This is obviously an attack on acquisitiveness (pleonexia), but it also is a frank acknowledgement that leisure (or at least too much leisure) is not good for everyone or necessarily for the political community as a whole.

A more detailed explanation of this conclusion comes in Bk. IV. There Aristotle discusses the problem that many people participate in politics to get hold of the public revenue for their own private ends. If the possibilities of the citizens to abuse the government in this way is limited, the result will be that "the laws govern" (1292b41). (For example, I have heard it said that Washington, D.C., was intentionally built in a swamp, so that legislators would not stay there too long and enact new laws all the time.)

Aristotle's critique of overly active citizens leads to an interesting conclusion: Being a citizen means having the leisure and the right to participate in the framing of the laws of one's country, but being a good citizen means actually letting those laws govern. Constantly enacting new laws is a cover for naked self-interest, and it is an excess of leisure that allows citizens the chance to enact too many laws, thereby destroying the authority of the laws.

How much leisure should a society enjoy, then?

Aristotle's solution, as far as I could tell from reading the Politics, seems to be to give most free men enough to live on, but keep them busy on their small farms, and allow leisure only for the few--the aristocrats--who are worthy of higher pursuits. Whether Aristotle's solution actually works is a question for another day. But, at least Aristotle can still inject into our political discussion today some awareness of the largely forgotten issue of leisure.

Property & Leisure: Aristotle vs. Locke

There have been moments in my education when I realize that even though I spent a lot of time on a subject, I really only scratched the surface of the subject. I recently had that experience, while reading Aristotle's Politics, with the subject of property.

Like every other law student in America, I struggled through a pretty complicated course on real property in my first year. After spending a semester learning the basic concepts of property law, such as the different types of estates and co-ownership, as well as restrictions on land use (e.g., zoning and real covenants), I figured that I had a pretty good grasp on the subject. Moreover, most of these concepts are not just taught to first-year law students, but really are essential concepts for many practicing lawyers today. These concepts for the most part fit with certain theories about the nature of property which are shared by most people today and which were announced at the beginning of the course. The theory that guided discussion in my class was John Locke's labor theory of property: "Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property" (Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 5, Section 27). Locke's basic idea is that property is something man creates through his labor; what each individual contributes to a thing is what makes it his property.

But, there were times during the course when more archaic, less "enlightened" views of property made an appearance. Those concepts also tended to be the hardest to understand. One such concept was a type of estate called the fee tail (now abolished in most jurisdictions), which placed severe restrictions on which heirs in future generations could inherit the property. The fee tail's purpose was to keep large estates intact and in the family, and was used mostly by the landed classes. (The fee tail was actually the cause of the Bennets' prospective penury in Pride and Prejudice.)

The second archaic doctrine was the rule against perpetuities, which was designed to counteract the dead hand controlling the fates of estates for generations into the future. Though these rules served opposite purposes--the fee tail preserved estates by restricting heirs' ability to sell the land or name his own heirs, while the rule against perpetuities prevented land owners from restricting their heirs' powers too much--they were both evidence of a very different understanding of property. According to this older understanding, property is much more stabile, it is something that pre-exists us, that needs to be preserved by the current generation and then passed onto the next generation--it is not something each man creates anew through his labor.

This older understanding of the nature of property is first attested to, in theoretical form, as far I know, by Aristotle. In a section of the Politics where he discusses the characteristics of a democracy made up mostly of yeoman farmers, Aristotle writes that "owing to [the farmers'] not having much property [οὐσία], they are without leisure [ἄσχολος]" (Bk. VI.2.1; 1318b11), and therefore do not have much time to engage in politics. What I find intriguing--and contrary to so much of what I learned in my course on property--is that Aristotle describes property here not in terms of its origin (as Locke does), but in terms of its purpose, its end [τέλος]. Property is what is capable of making a man self-sufficient thus giving him leisure to devote himself to more important pursuits, such as politics or philosophy.

Locke and Aristotle represent two very different views of property. The fundamental distinction between Locke and Aristotle can be summarized in the distinction between the words "creation" and "trust." In a Lockean world, where property depends on man's creative labor, if man is to have any property, man must be constantly striving to create property and value, which is usually done today through commerce. This encourages, I suspect, a certain restlessness in a man's relation to his property, and perhaps also a certain acquisitiveness. Even if a man is already rich from commerce, he needs to keep trading and manufacturing; he never has anything like a landed estate that he can fall back on. For Aristotle, on the other hand, acquisitiveness (πλεονεξία/pleonexia) is explicitly condemned as a vice. While it is certainly true that a man must cultivate his property in order to attain self-sufficiency, man's labor does not, strictly speaking, create the property's value. The property's value is more like that of a trust, which needs to be protected by a prudent steward. Once the steward (trustee) does this, he can then allow himself some ease and use his leisure to pursue other, more worthy objects.

Finally, just to complicate matters: While I certainly prefer leisure to acquisitiveness, and thus prefer Aristotle to Locke in this matter, that is not the only question to consider when examining different systems of land tenure. For instance, the older system, such as England had in the Middle Ages (with the fee tail and primogeniture), tended to create a class of sons who could not inherit property. In many cases, these sons either left their families to make a living for themselves, or else many chose to stay at home but remain unmarried. It must be acknowledged, then, that each system has its advantages and disadvantages.

Les Six éléments

The other day, while reading up on surrealism (as part of a quick study of Interwar culture), I happened upon this painting, Les Six éléments (The Six Elements), by Belgian surrealist René Magritte.

The work immediately reminded me of Martin Heidegger's "fourfold": earth, sky, divinities and mortals (see Building Dwelling Thinking). Magritte's work struck me as a sort of amalgamation of the ancient Greeks' four elements - usually earth, air, water and fire - with something like Heidegger's list. In the upper left is clearly fire, in the upper middle women (or perhaps humanity generally) and in the upper right earth (or vegetation). On the lower left we have a building (society?), in the lower center air, and on the lower right some thing I cannot identify, which looks like it might also be vegetative. This seems like an interesting list, though three problems came to mind:

(1) Where are the divinities?
(2) Is (wo)man's sexuality or primordial nature being distinguished from the human society represented by a modern building?
(3) Why two kinds of plants? Or just what is that in the lower right?

A quick search of the internet revealed no answers, only this odd little poem:

As of this
writing, there

are 137 Magritte
items available

on eBay. They are
mundanely pre-

sented—none of
the six elements

that Aristotle con-
sidered essential

for drama are
in the frame.

Cultivating the Comedic Palate

I was going to post this reflection yesterday, but did not want to impede the heroism of German Catholic Nazi fighters (correct me if I’m wrong, Aaron, but wasn’t Bavaria—heart of beer-swilling German Catholicism and Caritas in Veritate—one of the few regions in Germany that did not support Hitler during his election?).

One of the great loves in my life is Comedy. I love comedy both personally (as either performer or audience member) and professionally (Aristophanes, Chaucer, and Shakespeare are three of my favorite authors to teach). Comedy is like a fine bourbon; most anybody who drinks a draught will appreciate its quality. It takes a connoisseur, however, to isolate the particular qualities and flavors and explain exactly why the bourbon is a fine one. The comedic connoisseur will have to sample a wide range of comedy, and along the way gain some appreciation for even the more broad and mundane varieties, just as a bourbon taster may grow fond of Old Fitzgerald while recognizing its profound inferiority to an 18-year-old Elijah Craig.

The comedic connoisseur will also be able to express, however inadequately, the specific qualities in a given comedic work that produce its kathartic effect (Aristotle’s book on Comedy, the second book of The Poetics, has been tragically lost, a loss mourned by Eco in The Name of the Rose). Though I could go on for volumes on this topic, let me suggest three of the many qualities that are routinely found in comedy, and a brief clip from the highly underrated mid-1990’s cartoon The Critic that illustrates what I find to be a harmonious blend of the three.

1. Mockery of Vice and Ugliness. Comedy from Terrance to Chaucer to Rabelais to Shakespeare to Swift to Gilbert and Sullivan to the Simpsons has delighted in taking vice and ugliness as its subjects. Our ability to laugh at the wicked and ugly demonstrates comedy’s social function, as well as the source of its cruelty. (This quality of comedy, by the way, is why Satan is almost always a comedic character in Medieval drama; see C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama.)

2. Parodic Love. Comedy often functions by parody—presenting exaggerated forms of earnest works and characters. In order to parody something well, however, the parodist generally needs some kind of knowledge of and affection for the subject parodied. The worst parodies are those in which the parodist despises the subject (consider how often the political satire of “Mallard Filmore” or “Doonsbury” drifts into the insipid); the best ones, like Christopher Guest movies, preserve affection for that at which fun is poked. In order for Chaucer to have parodied metrical romance in his Rhyme of Sir Thopas, he had to have understood works like Guy of Warwick backwards and forwards; in order for Joyce to have parodied the literary styles of Malory, melodrama, and the Catechism in Ulysses, he had to have intimate knowledge of, and some affection for, their stylistic limitations.

3. Audience Participation. When the audience is respected enough to put the pieces together on their own, the best comedy is born. I think that this is why great comedic works (like the Simpsons, seasons 3-6 or Shakespeare’s As You Like It) often throw in jokes that they know will fly over the heads of the majority of the audience (there are plenty of jokes that all will get); they know that those audience members who do get the obscure jokes will laugh all the harder for the surprise.

So, with these qualities in mind, here is Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz), The Critic, showing his audience a clip from Disney’s The Cockroach King. The mockery of Howard Stern (a man worthy to be mocked) and the close parody of The Lion King’s cinematography should be clear. If you recognize the words used in the “African” chant, however, this clip will be all the funnier (and I know that The Guild Review’s Editor-in-Chief Aaron can enlighten us all on this matter).

Pi, etc.

We recently lost the internet at my house for several days. One realizes just how much it has become a part of everyday life when it is gone. Rather than listing all the things I could not do, suffice it to say I found something I could: watch movies. So I did.

Darren Aronofsky’s Pi is a story about the search for meaning in the universe. It tells the tale of Max Cohen, a mathematician obsessed with finding patterns to explain phenomena around him. More to the point, he is interested in finding the pattern which will explain, well, everything. In the course of the story we encounter Wall Street types who are interested in such patterns primarily for the ability to predict the stock market, but we also meet kabbalists who seek to decode the Torah and find the long-lost name of God which will help usher in the messianic age.



The film reminded me of Eric Foner’s Story of American Freedom, a text I had to teach this past semester. Foner’s objective seems simple enough: to explain the changing definition of freedom from the time of the American Founding to the present day. However, as I tried to point out to my students, implicit in his presentation was another message. To help them tease that out, I gave a (very, very, very!) quick-and-dirty history of western philosophy, since such courses are not required at A&M.

Plato argued that there were such things as forms, things in heaven which embody ideas. Or rather, more to the point, are ideas, which are imperfectly embodied in particular occurrences. There is the form of the Tree, in which all trees participate, and by that participation they have something in common. There is the form of the Cat as well, along with abstract – but no less real – concepts such as Justice, Truth and Freedom.

Aristotle, though he spoke of substance and accidents, rather than forms, broadly agreed with Plato that there are fundamental categories at work in the cosmos, categories which transcend physical characteristics and abide in the very fiber of a thing’s being. But in the Middle Ages a fellow named William of Ockham denied that there were categories at all. Yes, he said, we can point to this fuzzy thing with whiskers and that fuzzy thing with whiskers, and we can call them both cats, because that would be a very useful thing to say. But in the end, Ockham argued, each is a unique object without anything fundamentally in common with the other. We apply labels for our convenience, but they do not correspond to any deeper meaning in reality.

Some centuries later Immanuel Kant tried to steer a middle course between these two positions, contending that there may be categories to the cosmos, but we cannot know them. Thus, in practice, he was an Ockhamite, arguing that the labels we affix may be handy, but may not actually correspond to the fundamental being of things. Finally, the nihilists – most famous among them being Friedrich Nietzsche – contended that there is no meaning to the cosmos at all, categorical or otherwise, a far cry from the ancients.

How did all this connect to Eric Foner and American history? While charting the changing meanings of “freedom” over the years, I would submit that Foner assumes – and implicitly argues – that there is no meaning to the term “freedom”; it does not really exist. Yes, Foner is willing to talk about it as a label we place on things, even a very convenient label, but in the end, does it correspond to anything in reality? Is there a right answer to the question, “What is freedom?” Foner demurs and – I would argue – ultimately denies.

Returning then to Mr. Aronofsky’s film and the pressing question it asks: Is there meaning to the cosmos? And if there is, what is it, and what does that meaning demand of me?

Agnosticism, exceedingly vogue in the ivory tower of academia, seeks to avoid these questions. Perhaps the answers simply are unknowable, though I doubt most have ever truly sought them. And if the point of all our academic endeavors is to know the truth, what does it say about us that we have abdicated any responsibility for knowing the highest truths?

This post first appeared yesterday on True. Good. Beautiful., a forum about entertainment and the film industry.

Natural Authority: A Short Exercise in Etymology

One of the hallmarks of modern political thought is the denial of natural authority. Just think of the social contract theory. According to John Locke, authority is not something natural, but is rather created by individuals who freely give up their sovereignty. For Aristotle, on the other hand, political communities are originally made up not of sovereign individuals but of family units, organized as households. The head of the household already has some kind of authority without having to enter into any supposed social contract with his children. Where, then, does his authority come from? A look at the very word “authority” in a couple languages shows that authority has always been regarded as something natural.

The English word authority comes from the Latin word auctoritas. A person’s auctoritas depends on the fact that one is, in some sense, an auctor. The word auctor entered English as the word “author”; in Latin, however, it is not restricted to a person who produces a written work. A better translation would be something like “originator.” It is in this sense that we call God the “author of life,” auctor vitae. God, then, is an authority because He is the author of life. If we extend by analogy the notion of God’s authority to human society, we can quickly see whence a paterfamilias derives his authority: a father has authority over his children because he has made his children.

Interestingly enough, even though German adopted the Latin word as Autorität, there does exist in German a more literal translation of auctoritas: Urheberrecht. Urheber corresponds to the Latin auctor, and Recht is a cognate of the English word “right.” This word, though, has become a purely technical term for “copyright.” Nevertheless, it still retains the idea that one who makes something unique retains a special right—authority—over it.

The Greek word for “authority” is also very interesting: exousia. This word is a compound of two words: ex + ousia, meaning “from nature” (ex natura). For Aristotle and the Greeks, then, an unnatural authority was by definition unthinkable. The word also has an interesting parallel usage to English. The plural form of this word means “authorities” such as civic officials, just as the English term does. For an example of this usage, see Rom. 13:1.

All this etymology should at least raise the inference that authority is not something artificially created by men when they enter into society by contract.

Finally, I would like to emphasize the importance of the analogy of being. Properly speaking, only God is authority, while any authority we have comes from Him. What we have is not absolute authority, but we call it authority by analogy. This philosophical doctrine, I think, helps explain why (besides Greek idiom) St. Paul speaks in Rom. 13:1 of God’s “authority” in the singular, but of human “authorities” in the plural. Only God’s authority is absolute and utterly unique, and thus necessarily singular. No single man, on the other hand, can possess absolute unfettered authority, and so his authority must coexist with other men’s authority.

Dubious Watchmen

Last night I went to see The Watchmen with some friends. Though I've not read the comic book, I like superhero movies, so I figured I would enjoy it. I left the theater with mixed feelings, but on reflection I've increasingly turned against it.

What didn't you like? you ask. The gratuitous sex and violence are worth a mention (though they're not the biggest issue). In superhero movies, I expect violence. Bad guys get blown up - that's the way it goes. But there were several scenes in The Watchmen that were just plain gratuitous. Not bad guys getting their comeuppance (with awesome special effects), just violence for its own sake. Likewise, sex scenes have become something of a staple of modern populist films. I don't like 'em, but in a certain sense, I can accept them: in the language of modern film, we know the hero and heroine love each other because they have sex. It's a wrong-headed notion, of course, but it often has a plot value. Not so the extended sex scene of The Watchmen: it's just an excuse for several pornographic minutes of actress Malin Åkerman.

**Warning: Spoilers, or elliptical references to them, follow.**

Beyond all that, I found the film's plot and attempt to struggle with moral questions sorely wanting. This is not a standard superhero film with good guys who - in spite, perhaps, of occasional foibles - are clearly good and bad guys who - in spite of occasional moments of charm - are clearly bad. A comparison may illustrate the point: Batman Begins is a film which grapples with the moral ambiguities and difficulties which arise from trying to do good in a world filled with evil. Bruce Wayne/Batman refuses to join the League of Shadows; whereas they see death and destruction as the only answer to a decadent and corrupt society, Wayne believes mankind can be saved. The ends do not justify the means. Justice must be tempered by mercy. I was less satisfied with the sequel, The Dark Knight. It seemed to me the desire to paint moral ambiguities at times overwhelmed the basic struggle of good versus evil. This is most clearly seen at the end of the film, when Wayne convinces Lt. James Gordon, his police sidekick, to blame Harvey Dent/Two-Face's murders on Batman, arguing that the people of Gotham City will lose all hope if they find out the truth about Dent. Batman flees as a fugitive. The painful lesson seems to be that doing good can require falsehood and not just the deception of Bruce Wayne hiding behind a mask, but an inversion of the truth about who has committed good and evil deeds.

Now take that trajectory from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight and follow it several steps further. There you will find The Watchmen. The villain, Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, motivated by a desire to bring peace to the world, kills a few million people and blames it on Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan, his former colleague. In the end, his scheme does bring world peace, and no one dares reveal the truth, lest it all be ruined. (We are given a hint at the end that the truth may come out, but through circumstances set in motion before our heroes knew about Veidt's plan.) There is no doubt that Veidt is the bad guy here, and yet... it's hard to hate a man who brings about world peace. One of the subplots mirrors this strange moral ambiguity: Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre reveals to her daughter that the reason she could never bring herself to hate Edward Blake/The Comedian, a man who tried to rape her, is because he fathered her daughter, Laurie Juspezyk/Silk Spectre II. The suggestion is that the means (Blake) justify the ends (Laurie).

Other contradictions and problems abound: Dr. Manhattan, Laurie's boyfriend, becomes increasingly disenchanted with her and humanity generally, though he ultimately defeats Veidt to save mankind. In spite of his conversion of sorts, eventually concluding that life may not be totally worthless, he nevertheless goes into self-imposed exile in the distant reaches of the galaxy, leaving her and everyone else behind. The Comedian is a psycho-killer and a sex-addict. Rorschach, our most morally consistent character, enjoys exacting psychotic revenge on evildoers. Laurie and Daniel Dreiberg/Nite Owl II are happy to take up an affair when her boyfriend - who left his previous love, Janey Slater, for the younger Laurie - grows more distant. These are not model citizens.

However, bad people don't necessarily make for a bad story. Indeed, one of my favorites, Homer's Iliad, is full of bad people. They're part of what make it compelling, actually. So what makes The Iliad different from The Watchmen? The difference, I think, is in the way that the Iliad's plot confronts these problems, whereas The Watchmen's accepts them. The Iliad opens with the problem of Achilles' honor being offended. Does he choose to withdraw from the fighting and protect his personal honor, or does he acknowledge his communal responsibility, continue fighting with the other Greeks and swallow the dishonor? He chooses to sit it out. However, when the Greeks are hard pressed, his sense of communal responsibility kicks in and he tries to paper over the problem by allowing his friend Patroklos to fight in his place. Does this seeming compromise solve the problem? No. That is made painfully clear when Patroklos is killed and Achilles accepts that he should have been fighting (which he promptly resumes). But then the whole question of personal honor versus community responsibility is circumscribed when Priam comes to Achilles to ask for the body of Hektor. Empathy triumphs over rage, providing the peace of mind that neither Achilles nor Priam could heretofore find. At each turn the plot introduces a moral quandary, allows the reader to dwell on it for a time, and then, through the action of the story, shows the consequences of a particular response to that quandary. Moral difficulties are not ignored, they are confronted.

It's been a few years since I read any of Aristotle's Poetics, but as I recall, one of his big points is that the plot must carry a story. You cannot try to describe a character as X, if his actions reveal him to be not X. You cannot say that the moral of the story is Y, if the action reveals it to be not Y. By this standard, the Iliad deserves high marks. The Watchmen, on the other hand, fails. More than just a story of mostly despicable people often doing despicable things, the action of the plot fails to interrogate whether or not these people are exemplary, whether or not they provide a valid window into the nature of reality. That is not only woefully disappointing; it is dangerous.


PS: Intrigued by what Barbara Nicolosi, a respected movie critic, had to say about The Watchmen, I took a look at her review. "WE WALKED OUT. Awful. Disgusting. Degrading. Vile. Barbarous. The kind of entertainment the Roman mobs were watching just before the barbarians came over the walls. Did I say depraved? I meant to. If you let your kids go to this piece of absolute unmitigated garbage, you deserve whatever nightmare lives they end up inflicting on you. I fear I haven't expressed myself strongly enough..." Wow.

Even The Dark Knight didn't get a review that bad, though it wasn't a lot better: "Too Dark. Too long. Too fast. Too pretentious. Too loud. Too many characters. Too much steady cam. Too little substance. Too little fun. The whole world has lost its mind." So I looked up her review of Batman Begins. Far more positive (though not without reservations): "Batman Begins is a very solid movie. It is well-produced, structured for suspense, and incorporates a number of satisfying - if not hugely compelling - characters. It just isn't what you expect it to be as a comic book movie, which might be the kiss of death with the comic book genre fans who want some mystery under their capes. We'll see. I'm giving two bats ears up."