The Comics Professor

Why We Relate to Batman

Batman is celebrating his 80^th anniversary this year, and while he has served admirably as the protector of Gotham City, there is one mystery that the world’s greatest detective has never been able to solve: his own moral inconsistency. Many focus on his all-too-human motivation and lack of superpowers to explain why he’s more relatable than other superheroes, but most of us also share his struggle to reconcile the various elements of his moral code, which serves to make him a different sort of role model from most of his costumed colleagues as well.

Let’s start with Batman’s mission, the guiding principle of his life, sworn over his parents’ graves after their untimely deaths at the hands of a mugger: to save the lives of the people of Gotham, chiefly by fighting the scourge of crime. This is broadly consequentialist in its ethics, striving to do as much good as he can, both as the costumed crimefighter Batman and as wealthy philanthropist Bruce Wayne. At the same time, he breaks many common-sense moral rules in the process—he practices violence, often to the point of inflicting torture, and generally ignores the law when it is inconvenient—all of which would fly in the face of deontological ethics, which focuses on the right and wrong of actions rather than their consequences.

None of these actions, however, is the cause of his moral distress or inconsistency, because Batman justifies them all by how they help him further his mission. To him, the end does justify the means in such cases, which may be disagreeable to some (especially deontologists), but it is not morally inconsistent within Batman’s consequentialist mindset. If he believes that beating a reluctant informant senseless will help him save an innocent life, then he will do it (and he does it a lot).

For Batman, this reasoning justifies a lot of behavior that many others feel is wrong, but even the Caped Crusader draws the line at one wrongful act: killing. Countless times in the comics, Batman has refused to kill even his most homicidal foes, including the Joker, and even risks his own life to save theirs (yes, including the Joker). In other words, Batman will do almost anything to further his mission to save the lives of the citizens of Gotham, but to paraphrase the philosopher Meat Loaf, he won’t do that—he will not take a life, even to save many others.

This is the central moral conflict in Batman’s life: He refuses to perform the one wrongful act that would most significantly advance his mission and further his idea of the good. Here, his deontological convictions about means—perhaps his only one—run into his underlying consequentialist ends.

What accounts for his refusal to kill? Most of Batman’s explanations in the comics focus on the effects that killing would have on his moral character. For example, he worries that crossing that particular line will make him like the people he fights (as if their shared predilection for violence and lawbreaking weren’t enough). This concern is a key feature of virtue ethics, yet another school of moral philosophy, but Batman’s skewed version of it reflects an obsession with maintaining a virtuous self-image at the expense of the mission he has adopted as his version of the good life, and in the end, it furthers neither.

We could debate whether or not Batman should kill the Joker and his other murderous enemies until Bat-cow comes home. (Yes, there is a Bat-cow.) Certainly, comics fans have been doing this since before the first poisoned fish with a Joker grin popped up in Gotham Harbor. More important, however, Batman has long been debating this as well, both to himself and with his friends and fellow heroes, making much the same arguments I outlined above. He is keenly aware of this essential moral conflict, which is much harder to dismiss than using violence or breaking the law to further his mission. In this case, Batman has to explain what makes his concern with his virtue more important than his mission, or what makes the life he would take more important than the lives his foes would take.

Batman’s ongoing struggles with moral inconsistency provide us with a point of reference to consider our own. Most of us have a concept of the good we want to further, whether it’s saving lives as first responders, curing disease as medical researchers, or pursuing justice as policymakers or activists. At the same time, we all have moral lines we refuse to cross, such as those at the borders of lying, cheating, or stealing, and we also have ideas of who we want to be as people that includes but also supersedes all of these considerations.

All of this moral “material” is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile and make consistent, especially when we have to marshal it in the face of hard choices. As many philosophers acknowledge, a faculty of judgment is necessary to combine, prioritize, and balance all of these moral criteria to make an actual decision. Philosophy professors teach the basic elements of ethics to our students, but as Immanuel Kant wrote in the Critique of Pure Reason, “judgment is a peculiar talent which can be practiced only, and cannot be taught.” Judgment is developed through experience over time (and many mistakes), and it is also be learned through example—and not necessarily by those who exercise it well. It is more important to see the process of judgment than its results, and fiction can be just as valuable to this end as the stories of real people, if the characters portrayed in it are sufficient complex.

Batman is indeed complex. Over his eighty years, he has developed into a fascinating character with a multifaceted ethics, and because of this he can not only entertain us but also inspire us. His struggle to reconcile his conflicted moral code, likely as impossible a task as eradicating crime in Gotham City, is yet one more reason he is considered so relatable to millions of fans around the world. His moral and psychological extremes may not qualify him as a role model similar to Superman or Wonder Woman, but his awareness of his own conflicts, especially regarding trying to be moral in several different ways at the same time, is certainly worthy of admiration and emulation. Among superheroes, no one lives a more thoroughly examined life than Batman.

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See here for more on my book Batman and Ethics, which you can buy at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or IndieBound.

Captain America #700 reminds us who Steve Rogers is...

The final issue of Captain America by the now-classic team of Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Caramagna was, appropriately enough, the bonus-sized issue #700, and true to its anniversary status, it serves as a reaffirmation of who Steve Rogers is. In wrapping up their near-future storyline, the team puts Cap in an impossible situation, forces him to make a tough decision, and gives us one of the best Cap scenes in recent memory, all before setting him up for his next round of adventures from Waid and an all-star roster of artists (before a new #1 this summer from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Leinil Yu).

 

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Now available, in print and ebook: A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War

At long last, today is the release day for A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Civil War: Exploring the Moral Judgment of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man, published by Ockham Publishing in both paperback and ebook.

Comic book readers and moviegoers love to see superheroes fight, whether to protect innocent people from supervillains or to save the world from invaders from outer space. But superheroes also fight each other, and if we can look past the energy blasts and earth-shattering punches, we can find serious disagreements over principles and ethics. This was certainly the case when Captain America and Iron Man went head-to-head over liberty and security in Marvel Comics’ epic Civil War storyline, a fictional allegory to post-9/11 America (as well as the basis for the third Captain America film).

In his latest book, Mark D. White, author of The Virtues of Captain America and editor of Iron Man and Philosophy, carefully leads you through the ethical thinking of the three characters on the front lines of the Civil War:

Iron Man, who has taken charge of the US government’s efforts to register and train superheroes to enhance safety and security

Captain America, who leads the resistance against registration in the name of individual liberty and privacy

Spider-Man, who is torn between his two mentors and has a uniquely personal stake in the battle

In his characteristically light and humorous tone, White lays out the basic ethical foundations of each hero’s thinking and highlights the moral judgment each must use to put his ethics into action. He also explains how the Civil War affected the three heroes after the battle ended and how the experience continued to test them in very different ways as events in the Marvel Universe continued to unfold. Finally, he uses examples from Civil War to show how conflicting principles such as liberty and security must be balanced in the real world, lest both be lost.

Written in a style that will be easily accessible to those new to philosophy or superhero comics, A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics’ Civil War will be a fascinating read for diehard comics fans and philosophy buffs as well.

If you want to find out more about the book, there are several places to look (and listen):

• My podcast with Nerdsync, in which Scott Niswander and I covered many of the topics and issues in my book, the Civil War comics, and what we could surmise about the upcoming movie, and still only seemed to scratch the surface!

• The lectures I gave at Northwood University on the topic of superheroes, liberty, and security, the video of which can be found here (although the player can be very touchy with respect to browsers, with Internet Explorer and Edge working the best, and Firefox sometimes).
• Comics Worth Reading generously ran a brief excerpt from the book on their website (and The Philosopher's Magazine is planning on doing the same in an upcoming issue).
• Finally, Troy Powell (a contributor to The Avengers and Philosophy) interviewed me about the book for Graphic Policy.

I am available for interviews, podcasts, signings, or lectures—just contact me at [email protected].

If you read the book, please let me know what you think, either in the comments here; on Amazon, Goodreads, or elsewhere; or on Twitter (@profmdwhite) or email ([email protected]).

Announcing my first self-published book: A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War

UPDATE: See new publication and ordering details—new post coming soon with new cover!

It's finally here, my long-promised book on Marvel Comics' Civil War storyline and my initial foray into self-publishing with Amazon's Kindle Direct, publishing on February 3 and available now for pre-order: is now being published by Ockham Publishing in print and ebook formats and is available for pre-order on Amazon:

A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War: Exploring the Moral Judgments of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man

From the promotional copy that someone other than me definitely wrote:

Comic book readers and moviegoers love to see superheroes fight, whether to protect innocent people from supervillains or to save the world from invaders from outer space. But superheroes also fight each other, and if we can look past the energy blasts and earth-shattering punches, we can find serious disagreements over principles and ethics. This was certainly the case when Captain America and Iron Man went head-to-head over liberty and security in Marvel Comics’ epic Civil War storyline, a fictional allegory to post-9/11 America (as well as the basis for the third Captain America film).

In his latest book, Mark D. White, author of The Virtues of Captain America and editor of Iron Man and Philosophy, carefully leads you through the ethical thinking of the three characters on the front lines of the Civil War:

Iron Man, who has taken charge of the US government’s efforts to register and train superheroes to enhance safety and security

Captain America, who leads the resistance against registration in the name of individual liberty and privacy

Spider-Man, who is torn between his two mentors and has a uniquely personal stake in the battle

In his characteristically light and humorous tone, White lays out the basic ethical foundations of each hero’s thinking and highlights the moral judgment each must use to put his ethics into action. He also explains how the Civil War affected the three heroes after the battle ended and how the experience continued to test them in very different ways as events in the Marvel Universe continued to unfold. Finally, he uses examples from Civil War to show how conflicting principles such as liberty and security must be balanced in the real world, lest both be lost.

Written in a style that will be easily accessible to those new to philosophy or superhero comics, A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics’ Civil War will be a fascinating read for diehard comics fans and philosophy buffs as well.

Although I've wanted to write about Civil War for a long time, and touched on it in The Virtues of Captain America as well as essays for Iron Man and Philosophy and Spider-Man and Philosophy, the late October 2014 announcement of Captain America: Civil War kicked plans for a full-length treatment into gear.

I originally planned to focus on the larger political issues in the book, but then decided to change the focus to what I really enjoy writing about: the characters themselves. This allowed me to explore the three heroes' different ethical frameworks, the way each used his judgment to put their ethics into action, and how their choices affected them during the Civil War as well as afterwards. Iron Man had the longest arc, which carried him through World War Hulk, the Secret Invasion, Norman Osborn's "Dark Reign," and the Siege of Asgard. Cap's and Spidey's arcs following the Civil War were shorter, for different reasons, but are just as fascinating, with Cap's nicely dovetailing with Iron Man's during the Siege.

As you might guess from the title—and especially from the banner atop the marvelous cover designed by the incomparable S.L. Johnson, a wonderful collaborator and adviser on this project whose work you can see here—I have a mind to publish more A Philosopher Reads... ebooks on various superhero characters and storylines in the future. (The title was inspired by books like this and is meant to suggest that this is only one philosopher's reading of Civil War, and is in no way definitive, much less comprehensive.) I will continue to publish superhero-related books with traditional publishers when our interests coincide; I'm working on one at the moment and in discussions to do another. But the self-published ebook format allows me the freedom to write on whatever I want, regardless of the availability of "promotional moments" like films or TV series, and at whatever length I choose; A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War is the same length as The Virtues of Captain America, but future ones may be shorter if appropriate. (But my epic treatment of Green Arrow's classic Van Dyke will naturally be a three-volume set.)

The other person without whom I could never have done this is my intrepid copyeditor Louise Spencely, who also worked on The Virtues of Captain America and Superman and Philosophy. Not only does she find all of my embarrassing typos and unforgivable offenses to grammar, logic, and common sense, she also "gets" my style and voice and helps it come out more clearly. On the top of all this, she was invaluable to helping me format the manuscript for Kindle, not only on technical matters but also finding the most attractive font and layout. (You can learn more about her here.)

If you liked The Virtues of Captain America or my essays in various books in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, or if you love Civil War and these characters as much as I do, or even if you just like a little philosophy with your superheroes (or vice versa), please check out A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War: Exploring the Moral Judgment of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man and let me know what you think!

Watch out... nuanced discussion of moral perspectives in Captain America: Sam Wilson #2

I clearly remember seeing the internet headlines on a Wednesday morning several weeks ago when the first issue of Nick Spencer and Daniel Acuña's Captain America: Sam Wilson was published, screaming about "Captain Socialism," which were joined later that day (naturally) by Fox News. The irony, of course, was that the alarm was completely unfounded, that all Sam Wilson said in the comics was that he planned to get more involved in politics than his predecessor Steve Rogers did (with all details given off-panel), and it was the press and the American public in the comic book that overreacted by accusing Sam of being anti-American, socialist, traitorous, etc. Were Spencer and Acuña engaging in a bit of playful trolling based on a too easily predictable real-world media reaction which they actually predicted in the same comic? (I hope so.)

Beneath the hype and hysteria, though, it remains that Sam Wilson is a different Captain America, forging a new path that diverges in some important ways from the one tread for decades by Steve Rogers. And even more impressive, Spencer and Acuña have achieved this distinction while staying true to Rogers' well-established characterization. (This contrasts with comments made by a previous creative team who, in the process of explaining the difference between Sam and Steve, oversimplified Steve's views to obscure the fact that Sam was going to be little more than a carbon-copy Cap with wings and a bird.)

Along the way to pointing out Sam and Steve's subtle differences, Spencer and Acuña also toy a bit with the segment of modern comics readership who like to jump to conclusions based on a handful of preview pages and solicitation text and fueled by internet speculation (and, in no small part, the marketing efforts of the comics publishers). Our creative team does so not only with Sam's internal dialogue but also in his exchanges with the dudebros seated on either side of him on an airplane, who take everything they read on Twitter to be the whole story and refuse to listen to Sam's mroe elaborate explanations. As Sam thinks to himself, "it's a complicated, messy story"—and Spencer and Acuña do a masterful job of peeling back the layers to this story (with many more still to be revealed, I'm sure).

The complicated and messy part I was most pleased to see dealt with the difference in Sam and Steve's moral perspectives, a difference which is nowhere near as simple or stark as the final scene of the first issue (or the cover of the second one) would have us believe.

Two scenes in Captain America: Sam Wilson #2 show this very well:

1. In these panels, a reporter asks Steve what he thinks about Sam's new political stance:

He simply nails it: Sam is his own Captain America and he can choose how to play that role, whether or not it's how Steve played it in his heyday or how he would play it now. Steve also struggled with the call to political activism in the past, such as when he wanted to support Andrew Bolt's congressional campaign (early in Mark Waid's Heroes Return run). His solution was to remain neutral as Captain America but work for the campaign as Steve Rogers (regardless of whether people knew they were one and the same—recall that he also made a big fuss about surrendering at the end of the Civil War as Steve Rogers, not Cap). Would Sam make that same decision? Perhaps not, but Sam is not Steve, and it was great to see Steve acknowledge that for the press (in the Marvel Universe as well as ours).

2. After SHIELD catches a man who released secret files describing a proposal to use Cosmic Cube fragments to make subtle changes to reality, Maria Hill makes clear she relishes the thought of submitting him to military tribunal. While Sam and Steve both oppose this project and personally make sure SHIELD scraps any plans to pursue it, they disagree on what should be done with the whistleblower (let's call him "Snedward Owden"), with Sam much more concerned about Hill's plans than Steve is.

Here we see Steve and Sam differ in terms of their confidence that the whistleblower will receive fair treatment and impartial justice at the hands of SHIELD and/or the military, and also their roles regarding the law (on which more below). Sam describes their essential difference of opinion the following page, an important yet nuanced disagreement that feels natural within the context of the two characters' backgrounds and which could lead to some fascinating character beats in future issues:

I could quibble a bit with Steve's statement above that "we don't get to put ourselves above" the law, especially after admitting his past civil disobedience to Sam (and emphasizing his willingness to be held accountable for it). Perhaps this is a result of Steve's official SHIELD role as chief of civilian oversight, just as his appointment as head of global security following the Siege of Asgard made him more assertive regarding Tony's exclusive use of the Iron Man armor (as seen in the first issue of Avengers Prime). Or maybe he feels it's his responsibility as chief of civilian oversight to monitor the tribunal, requiring a certain degree of faith in a process he'll be involved in. After all, unlike the registration act (and earlier government policies he regarded as unjust), he does not see any problem with military tribunals per se that warrants disobedience—especially if he's on the scene. Even if this does signal a shift in Steve's views, it is not a shocking or abrupt one. (This, of course, assumes that this is the same Steve Rogers we know from the 616 Marvel Universe, and not some New 52-style slight-of-hand where, post-Secret Wars, he's "basically the same character but different—just keep reading!" That remains to be seen.)

Only two issues into their run, Spencer and Acuña have fulfilled the hopes I had for Sam Wilson as Captain America since his "appointment" was announced. They've begun to give Sam a unique perspective on serving as Captain America that represents an interesting alternative view on the role that offers endless story possibilities, without watering down or stretching the concept of Cap itself beyond recognition. As well as further discussion with Steve, I hope we get to see some of Sam's internal struggles with his new stance, in which he questions how far Captain America can and should go in support of a particular position. This is not to say he shouldn't be more political than Steve was, but I would like to see him acknowledge and confront the fact that it is a different role for Captain America (rather than simply defending it to others).

Personally, this is the most excited I'm been about the Captain America title since Steve took up the shield after Bucky "died" during Fear Itself. (It's worth mentioning at this point that young James was a different sort of Cap too.) While a part of me longs to see Steve "enyouthened" and back in the star-and-stripes at some point, the rest of me looks forward to a long, insightful, and enjoyable run of Captain America: Sam Wilson from Spencer and Acuña.

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If you're interested, I discuss judgment and compromise, principle versus politics, and civil disobedience in chapters 5 and 6 of The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero.

Captain America and the Neglected Role of Moral Judgment

Imagine you’re a leader in your community, fighting on behalf of a principle for which you are personally willing to sacrifice anything. Your own well-being is of no concern to you as long as your actions are protecting and promoting the ideal in which you believe so strongly. One day, however, you notice that your actions are hurting those around you, both those who are similarly invested in your cause as well as others who are not involved—including, perhaps, many whom you’re trying to help. You may even be winning the fight, until you notice that its costs, especially those borne by others, are simply getting too high to bear. Do you fight on, regardless of the cost, or do you stop, cutting the losses but losing the larger fight?

This sounds like the type of hypothetical situation that philosophy professors give to their students to work through. But it’s not hypothetical to people around the world who fight for social justice, gladly sacrificing their own livelihoods for their cause, while perhaps also inflicting collateral damage on others. It’s also a situation that the superhero Captain America faced in the Marvel Comics storyline “Civil War” in which he defended the freedoms of his fellow heroes against a law that would compel them to reveal their secret identities to the government and register as agents of the state.

When we think of complex and nuanced moral decision-making, comic book superheroes probably don’t immediately spring to mind. If they did, most people would choose the psychologically complex Batman rather than the flag-waving Captain America. “Cap” is often criticized, by fans in the real world as well as his fellow heroes in the Marvel Universe, as embodying old-fashioned, “black-and-white” ethical thinking that is anachronistic in our modern, morally ambiguous world. What Cap actually shows, however, is how values are of no use in realistic moral dilemmas without the essential faculty of judgment.

Each of the three major schools of moral philosophy needs the help of judgment to result in specific actions. Unique among them, virtue ethics highlights the importance of nuanced and contextual decision-making, such as in Aristotle’s emphasis on practical judgment (phronesis). Virtue ethicists recommend the cultivation of character traits such as honesty that promote moral action but stop short of formulating rules to guide it, leaving it to judgment to determine how to balance virtues in any given ethical dilemma.

Judgment is essential to the other two schools of ethics as well, although this is often minimized in favor of their rule-focused aspects. Utilitarianism seems straightforward once you get to the final step, adding up the effect of individual utilities and comparing this sum to alternatives. But the process of determining those utilities, as well as deciding whose utilities to include and which contingencies you want to account for, require judgment—and the result can have an enormous impact on whether the utilitarian calculation results in a “yea” or “nay.”

Deontology, which emphasizes duties and principles, seems more clear-cut, avoiding the messy empirical details of moral dilemmas. But it has no obvious way to deal with conflicts between two duties or principles, nor to decide when the costs of standing by principle become too great. Even Immanuel Kant, a strict deontologist, stressed the necessity of judgment, which he considered “a peculiar talent which can be practiced only, and cannot be taught” (Critique of Pure Reason, A133/B172). As Onora O’Neill wrote about Kant, “Discussions of judgment . . . are ubiquitous in Kant’s writings. He never assumes agents can move from principles of duty, or from other principles of action, to se­lecting a highly specific act in particular circumstances without any process of judg­ment. He is as firm as any devotee of Aristotelian phronesis in maintaining that prin­ciples of action are not algorithms and do not entail their own applications” (“Kant: Rationality as Practical Reason,” in The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, edited by Alfred R. Mele and Piers Rawling, p. 104).

While Captain America’s moral character is based on virtues and duties—giving the impression of simplistic, “right and wrong” thinking—he shows the importance of moral judgment in balancing these moral factors before making a decision. Take the example from the Marvel “Civil War” that led off this essay: at the end of the story (Civil War #7, January 2007), Captain America and his allies were winning the climactic battle against Iron Man and other heroes defending superhero registration. As Captain America was about to deliver the final blow against his fellow Avenger, a group of ordinary people pulled Cap away and showed him how the battle had destroyed much of Manhattan. After realizing how much the battle was costing the residents of New York, he signaled to his allies to stop fighting and surrendered. Cap didn’t abandon his principle of freedom; he simply decided it was no longer worth the cost it was imposing on others. His values didn’t change—but his judgment did.

Simple rules such as “stand by your principles” or “minimize harm” are no good in situations like this. Captain America had to keep both of these rules in mind and balance them using his judgment. As Kant emphasized, there is no way to explain judgment as a rule or algorithm; rather it is what a person turns to when rules or algorithms fail to solve a moral problem. In this way judgment resembles Ronald Dworkin’s theory of judicial decision-making, in which a judge balances the various principles relevant to a “hard case” according to the principles and ideals he or she believes best explain the broader legal system. Similarly, in a moral dilemma a person must balance his or her various principles and beliefs to arrive at a decision that maintains the integrity of his or her moral character.

Captain America’s core principles and virtues may be “black and white,” but the way that he balances them is complex, nuanced, and sensitive to context. In the dramatic, life-threatening situations he faces in his comic books and movies, Cap demonstrates how the basic ideas of ethics serve merely as guidelines that by themselves cannot determine the best or right action on their own. As the narration to Captain America, vol. 1, #184 (April 1975) read, "he thinks in principle... tempered on the forge of understanding, and honed to the edge of reality." Moral philosophy can help identify the critical elements of a problem, but each person’s judgment is crucial to finding what Dworkin called (in the context of jurisprudence) the “right answer,” the one that is consistent with his or her moral character. By doing so, we can craft our own character much like Cap’s writers craft his—with or without the red, white, and blue costume.

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For more on Cap and philosophy, pick up The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero, available now.

New book: The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero

Well, it's time to let the Cap out of the bag... I'm very pleased to announce my next book, The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero, which will be published by Wiley-Blackwell next March ahead of the film sequel Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier. (If you're so inclined, you can pre-order it now from Amazon.)

Unlike the books I edited or co-edited for the Blackwell Philosophy and Popular Culture series (such as Batman and Philosophy), this one is written solely by me—for better or for worse! Also, rather than presenting a survey of philosophical ideas presented through the lens of its topic, The Virtues of Captain America has a specific focus: showing how the "old-fashioned" ethical code of Steve Rogers is just as essential today as it was in the past, not only as a role model for individual character but also as a way out of America's current political divisiveness.

I had several goals in mind as I wrote this book:

• Similar to the approach of the Blackwell Philosophy and Popular Culture series, in this book I introduce basic concepts of moral philosophy, especially virtue ethics, using examples drawn from decades of Captain America stories. In particular, I wanted to address the complexity of moral decision-making, for which simple rules, formulas, and virtues can be a guide but never the final answer. For this reason, judgment is a constant theme in the book (and takes up an entire chapter in itself).

• I wanted to address the perception that Captain America's ethical code is anachronistic, simplistic, and "black and white." As I argue throughout the book, none of these could be farther from the truth. The ideals that ground Cap's ethics are timeless, and while his core principles may be simple, the process of using judgment to balance them to make moral decisions in specific circumstances is anything but black-and-white, as Cap shows time and time again in the comics.

• More ambitiously, I wanted to show that Captain America's relationship to his country—in particular, the way he emphasizes principle over politics—can help Americans in the real world to start to heal our radical political divisions. If we focus, as Cap does, on the core ideals of justice, equality, and liberty that Americans share, we can better put into context our differences of opinion regarding how best to put these ideals into practice.

• And, most personally, I wanted to share my love of this classic superhero character through his decades of stories in comics such as Captain America, Avengers, and the countless other titles in which he's appeared over the years (hundreds of which are cited in the book). In the process, I also pay tribute to the dozens of talented creators who have crafted his stories, starting with Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee, and continung with legends such as Jim Sternako, J.M. DeMatteis, Mark Waid, Ed Brubaker, and Paul Jenkins (just to name a few).

I'm sure to bombard you with more details and sneak peeks as the book approaches publication, but for the time being, you might like the following articles and blog posts I've written about Cap in the past (many of which laid the groundwork for the book):

• My Captain America op-ed from 2011, published in both The San Diego Union-Tribune and The Washington Times (PDF of print version), which serves well as an abstract of the book. (In fact, it was a large part of the proposal for it.)
• "Can Captain America Heal a Divided Nation?", at The Good Men Project (as well as here), which uses a storyline from the Ultimate Marvel Universe (not covered in my book) to address the issue of principle versus politics.
• "Are Captain America's Ethics Too Old-Fashioned for the 21st Century?", a blog post at Psychology Today that addresses the anachronist and "black-and-white" issues about Cap's moral code.
• "Can Captain America Show Us How to Be More Cosmopolitan?", a more recent Psychology Today blog post addressing Cap's worldly brand of patriotism.
• Another piece from The Good Men Project extolling several of Cap's virtues, along with my GMP review of the first Cap movie.
• A piece from this very blog discussing Cap's sense of authority in the context of Stoic thought. (You can also click on Captain America at the right to see more posts on him, not all of which are worth listing here.)

Finally, I discussed Captain America, directly or indirectly, in a number of chapters in the Blackwell Philosophy and Popular Culture series:

• "Captain America and the Virtue of Modesty," in Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, edited by William Irwin, a free e-book collecting chapters from superhero-themed books in the series along with exclusive chapters on Cap and Thor.
• "Superhuman Ethics Class with the Avengers Prime," a survey of the three main schools of ethics using Thor, Iron Man, and Cap, from my edited volume The Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers. (Note that here, Cap is cast as the deontologist while Thor is the virtuous one; in The Virtues of Captain America I explain why virtue ethics and deontology both help to characterize Cap's ethics.)
• "Did Iron Man Kill Captain America?", an essay addressing Tony Stark's role in the Marvel "Civil War," particularly in contrast to Cap (another recurring theme in my new book), from my edited volume Iron Man and Philosophy: Facing the Stark Reality.
• "'My Name is Peter Parker': Unmasking the Right and the Good," in which I cast Peter Parker as the prize in Iron Man and Cap's moral tug-of-war during the Civil War, from J.J. Sanford's edited volume Spider-Man and Philosophy: The Web of Inquiry. (I revisit this theme in this blog post.)

Snyder and Lee give us a complex but heroic Superman in Superman Unchained #2

In Superman Unchained #2, Scott Snyder and Jim Lee show Superman facing insurmountable odds at the hands of an unknown but incredibly powerful foe. Rather than relying on brute force and heat vision to try to save the day, "this a Superman who is all about taking a deliberate, systematic approach to the business of being a superhero," as Forrest Helvie notes in his review at Newsarama. He continues:

There is a certain way that the Man of Steel thinks through every step he will take to save the day. But instead of being an uncomplicated tactician who’s able to think himself out of every situation, which would feel somewhat two-dimensional, Snyder subtly sneaks in a little more nuance to his vision of Superman. There are various plans he could employ to deal with the situation he faces in the beginning of the story with varied outcomes, some of which would necessarily include civilian casualties.

Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool emphasized the trade-offs in terms of lives saved that we see Superman explicitly considering (thanks to inner dialogue—Superman’s, that is, not Rich’s). He does find a way to save the day—Superman again, not Rich—and as Rich puts it, “Situations avail themselves, and there is an answer to be found. But there might not have been, we see here a Superman willing to sacrifice some to save more.”

Forrest and Rich capture much of what I appreciated about what Snyder and Lee did in this comic:

1. They showed Superman facing what a situation in which he might not be to save everyone and determining which course of action would save the most lives. (I've written about the need for even Superman to use this kind of moral judgment in Superman and Philosophy and elsewhere on this blog.)

2. In the end, Superman saved everybody, even when—especially when—it seemed that he couldn’t. As I wrote in my commentary on the Man of Steel film, that’s what Superman does. Just when you think all is lost, there's no way he can win or save everybody, he does. Because he's Superman.

It’s easy to write Superman into a situation in which there’s no easy solution, a tragic dilemma from which he “cannot escape with clean hands.” It’s much harder—but more gratifying to fans of the classical Superman concept—to write a situation like that, from where there's no way out, and then show Superman figuring a way out anyway.

Call me old-school—I’ve certainly been called worse—but when I read a superhero story, I expect to see the hero faced with unbeatable odds, wonder to myself “how will my hero get out of this one?”, and then when he or she does, think to myself, “wow, I would have never thought of that!” When I was a kid, my first thought may been about the hero and how smart and strong he or she was. But now that I’m older—much, much older—I give more credit to the creators, in this case Snyder and Lee, not just for being clever enough to develop a fresh take on a well-trod comics plot device, but also for retaining the classic sense of heroism that fans like me want from our superheroes.

To me, it seemed like the writers of Man of Steel wanted to show that they could "beat" Superman by writing him into an impossible situation, exclaiming "a-ha, we got 'im!" and pounding another nail in the coffin of fans' "foolish" idealism. Instead, Snyder and Lee are giving us a Superman who acknowledges difficult decisions but rises above them, showing that true heroism rises above defeatism. Luckily for fans like me, Snyder and Lee's "S" does stand for hope after all.

Superman and Philosophy: First chapter available for free

While preparing my nearly-monthly update to my personal blog, I noticed that Wiley has made my Superman and Philosophy chapter, "Moral Judgment: The Power That Makes Superman Human," available for free at its website.

In this chapter, I explain how Superman's powers don't make him immune to the need to make difficult moral choices that can't be solved by simple rules (much less super-strength). For examples, the chapter draws Superman's execution of three Kryptonians villains (including an alternate version of General Zod), which led to his self-imposed exile from Earth, as well as his more recent walk across America in the "Grounded" storyline (which I discussed previously here and here).

Another perspective on why Batman doesn't kill--and the problems with it

This week's Batman and Robin #8 (written by Peter Tomasi and illustrated by Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray) was a welcome denouement to the Morgan Ducard/Nobody storyline that culminated at the end of #7 when, as Bruce explains to Alfred, "Nobody's dead. Damian killed him." (Imagine parsing that statement if you hadn't been keeping up with the storyline!) As Bruce and Damian recover from their injuries (gee, good thing Bruce hasn't gotten thrashed lately in any other title), father and son talk about what happened. Bruce shares his oral diary, revealing his own desire to kill Ducard, to show Damian that the urge is natural but that he must never give into it.

Bruce argues that he adheres to a principle of not killing that doesn't "allow for exceptions." This sounds very much like a Kantian perfect duty, which is fantastic--to a degree. In an ideal world, it is easy to say "I will not kill" or "I will not lie," regardless of the circumstances, and it is an admirable person that tries his or her best to stick to them. But such a person must also recognize that there can be circumstances that will force him or her to question whether these duties or principles are truly absolute.

Take Kant's infamous "murderer at the door" example: Your good friend shows up at your door one day, frantically trying to escape someone who's trying to kill him. You agree to hide your friend, and minutes later the would-be murderer shows up, asking if your friend is about. What do you do: lie to the murderer to save your friend, or tell the truth and help the murderer?

Kant said you must not lie. According to  him, you have one concern and one concern alone: following your strict duty not to lie. If you tell the truth (or simply say nothing, which will save the same effect), your hands will be clean. If you do right, you're not responsible for anything that happens as a consequence, whereas if you were to lie, and the murderer went on to kill someone else (in mistake, perhaps), you would be responsible for that.

But Kant was wrong, and he was wrong by his own standards. The murderer-at-the-door example appeared in the Berlin Press as a retort to Benjamin Constant, a French statesman, but in his more considered work, he wrote that no one can apply simple rules, including the duties one derives from the categorical imperative, to real-life situations without using judgment. For instance, even if you decided not to lie to the murderer at the door, you would need to use judgment to decide what to do instead: tell the truth, stay silent, or say "look--a squirrel!"

More relevant is the need for judgment to settle conflicts between obligations, and this provides a more reasonable answer to the murderer-at-the-door example (and much-needed perspective on Bruce and Damian's discussion). Clearly there is more than one principle, duty, or obligation at play when the murderer comes to your door--specifically, you should also help save your friend's life, based on a moral principle to prevent wrongful harm to others. I think most morally reflective people would consider that to be a more important principle in this case than the principle that you shouldn't lie. Of course, this judgment is contingent on the context of the situation: the harm threatened is severe and the lie would be to a person intent on doing wrong. In a different situation, the judgment may be different, though the two principles are the same, because the context gives the principles different relative weight.

In the second panel above, Damian essentially states the opposing principle to his father's: "But if killing them is the only way to stop them..." Bruce knows this principle well: while he says in this issue that he made a promise to himself ("and on the souls of my parents") not to kill criminals, he also made a promise that night (as seen in countless retellings of his origin) to make sure what happened to him doesn't happen to anyone else. Bruce and Damian recognize both a principle of preventing wrongful harm and a principle of not killing--but for Bruce, the latter principle always takes precedence, where I think Damian is more open to weighing the principles against each other in any given situation. (I realize this may be due to his early training by the League of Assassins, which leads him to minimize the importance of the no-killing principle. If nothing else, Bruce is helping him see the importance of this principle by adhering to it with no exceptions--the opposite extreme to Damian's dear mother and grandfather.)

Bruce does give other rationales, familiar from previous Batman stories in which killing has been discussed. He gives the virtue argument, that killing makes you a lesser person ("bankrupts your soul") and makes you no better than those you're sworn to fight. (His caution against indulging vengeance can be considered part of this, and is the clearest argument he makes; few would defend a principle based on vengeance.) He also presents the consequentialist argument ("reinforcing the same cycle of violence") that killing only leads to more killing. But note that neither of these escape the need for judgment: is your purity of character more important than saving lives, and does killing necessarily lead to more killing--or may judicious use of it lead to less deaths instead?

Bruce's continued idealism on this issue is particularly welcome following Geoff Johns' flip comments about killing earlier this week. If we give him the benefit of the doubt, Johns may have been thinking much the same as I wrote here when he said, "there are heroes that, when they need to cross that line, they do it," citing Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman as examples. I would just like to see more discussions like the one in Batman and Robin #8, in which these heroes defend their decisions and explain why they "need to cross that line." I'm less interested in whether or not they kill than I am in how they justify it.

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Kant presented his murderer-at-the-door example in an essay titled "On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns," available in the Hackett edition of his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Philosophers have spilled much ink and killed many trees trying to reconcile the absolutist position given there with the rest of his philosophy; my favorite is Christine Korsgaard's "The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil," available in her book Creating the Kingdom of Ends, which focuses on the difference between ideal and nonideal moral theory. Finally, I wrote about Batman and killing, relying chiefly on the Joker and the trolley problem (which can easily be framed as a conflict of principles as above), in my chapter "Why Doesn't Batman Kill the Joker?" in Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul.