Table of Contents
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE - THE HORCRUX OF THE MATTER: DESTINY, IDENTITY, AND THE SOUL
Chapter 1 - THE SOUL IN HARRY POTTER
Philosophical Conceptions of the Soul
Ghosts and “Going On”
The Dementor’s Kiss
Horcruxes
A Plausible View?
NOTES
Chapter 2 - SIRIUS BLACK
Mind-Body Distinctions
Whose Reasons?
A Step in the Right Direction
A Unified Self
NOTES
Chapter 3 - DESTI NY IN THE WIZARDING WORLD
Varieties of Prophecy
Fallible Prophecies
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Destiny
A Rodent’s Destiny
Time Travel and Fixed Time
NOTES
PART TWO - THE MOST POWERFUL MAGIC OF ALL
Chapter 4 - CHOOSING LOVE
Snape and the Many-Splendored Thing
The Abandoned Boys
Snape the Occlumens
Snape’s Choice
A Work in Progress
NOTES
Chapter 5 - LOVE POTION NO. 9¾
Violently Pink Products
Little Hangleton
Real Love or Mere Infatuation?
Not His Mother’s Son
NOTES
Chapter 6 - HARRY POTTER, RADICAL FEMINISM, AND THE POWER OF LOVE
The Feminist Debate So Far
Radical vs. Liberal Feminism
More Wonderful and More Terrible than Death
The Triumph of Love
NOTES
PART THREE - POTTERWATCH: FREEDOM AND POLITICS
Chapter 7 - PATRIOTISM, HOUSE LOYALTY, AND THE OBLIGATIONS OF BELONGING
The Dangers of Patriotism
Death Eaters and Discrimination
The Sorting Hat Speaks: Division and Divisiveness
Patriotism and Global Conflict
Patriotism Restored
The Importance of Community
Human Flourishing and the Preservation of Dying Cultures
NOTES
Chapter 8 - DUMBLEDORE’S POLITICS
Is Dumbledore a Libertarian?
Barton’s Libertarian Interpretation of the Potter Series
NOTES
Chapter 9 - DUMBLEDORE, PLATO, AND THE LUST FOR POWER
Plato and Dumbledore: Separated at Birth?
Fudge and Umbridge: The Lessons of Obviously Unfit Power-Brokers
Voldemort and Dumbledore: Two Tempted by Power
Harry’s Cloak, the Ring of Gyges, and the Temptations of Power
NOTES
PART FOUR - THE ROOM OF REQUIREMENT: A POTTER POTPOURRI
Chapter 10 - IS DUMBLEDORE GAY? WHO’S TO SAY?
Truth in Fiction
So, Is Dumbledore Gay?
Closing Speculations: Genre
NOTES
Chapter 11 - CHOICES VS. ABILITIES
Choices
How Revealing Are Our Choices?
Abilities
How Revealing Are Our Abilities?
Beyond Choices: Toward a Deeper Self-Understanding
The Ultimate Measure of a Person
NOTES
Chapter 12 - THE MAGIC OF PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION
Positioning Our Prejudgments
The Ignorance of Ickle Dudleykins
Betrayed by Biases
Dangerous Dreams
The Cost of Overconfidence
Memories Help Make Meaning
Moving Past Misdirection
NOTES
Chapter 13 - JUST IN YOUR HEAD?
Tell Me One Last Thing
What Is Real?
Going Mental
Rowling as an Inkling
Harry’s Near-Death Experience
NOTES
Chapter 14 - A PENSIEVE FOR YOUR THOUGHTS?
“A Swirling, Silvery Mass”
The Hallows of the Mind
Confundus!
Mischief Managed
Lumos!
NOTES
Chapter 15 - A HOGWARTS EDUCATION
The Good
The Ugly
Like Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavor Beans, a Mix
NOTES
PART FIVE - BEYOND THE VEIL: DEATH, HOPE, AND MEANING
Chapter 16 - THE REAL SECRET OF THE PHOENIX
Remorse and Death
The Inversion of Voldemort
The Integrity Objection
The Fantasy Objection
Fawkes’s Secret
NOTES
Chapter 17 - BEYOND GODRIC’S HOLLOW
Death and Philosophy
The Approaching Battle
King’s Cross Station
Reap a Destiny
NOTES
Chapter 18 - WHY HARRY AND SOCRATES DECIDE TO DIE
Fulfillment for Muggles and Wizards
Voldemort and the Sophists
The Common Good versus the Greater Good
Two Keys to the Good Life
The End of the Story
NOTES
CONTRIBUTORS
THE MARAUDER’S INDEX
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series
Series Editor: William Irwin
South Park and Philosophy
Metallica and Philosophy
Family Guy and Philosophy
Edited by J. Jeremy Wisnewski
The Daily Show and Philosophy
Lost and Philosophy
24 and Philosophy
Edited by Richard Davis, Jennifer Hart Weed, and Ronald Weed
Battlestar Galactica and
Philosophy
The Office and Philosophy
Edited by J. Jeremy Wisnewski
Batman and Philosophy
Edited by Mark D. White and Robert Arp
House and Philosophy
Watchmen and Philosophy
X-Men and Philosophy
Edited by Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski
Terminator and Philosophy
Edited by Richard Brown and Kevin Decker
Heroes and Philosophy
Edited by David Kyle Johnson
Twilight and Philosophy
Edited by Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski
Final Fantasy and Philosophy
Edited by Jason P. Blahuta and Michel S. Beaulieu
Iron Man and Philosophy
Alice in Wonderland and
Philosophy
Edited by Richard Brian Davis
True Blood and Philosophy
Edited by George A. Dunn and Rebecca Housel
Mad Men and Philosophy
Edited by Rod Carveth and James South
30 Rock and Philosophy
Edited by J. Jeremy Wisnewski
For David Baggett
FOREWORD
Tom Morris
In 2004, there was an important literary event involving Harry Potter that didn’t require sleepy parents to show up before midnight at bookstores around the world with hyperactive, well-costumed children trembling in anticipation of a new adventure and completely unable to sleep. It didn’t involve J. K. Rowling writing something new or even leaving her home for a special appearance, and it never sparked front-page newspaper headlines or special television news bulletins. It was the surprising publication of an unexpected book: Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, edited by the philosophers David Baggett and Shawn Klein.
What made this a remarkable occurrence for Harry and his fans and the broader world of readers is that it demonstrated the range and depth of attention this ongoing story was receiving, not only among kids, teens, and imaginative young adults, but also throughout the professorial ranks of the academic world. The wizards of wisdom in our colleges and universities were taking note of Harry’s remarkable story and were finding in it great ideas and lessons for life. Courage, duplicity, friendship, happiness, justice, love, and ambition joined issues of good, evil, death, and freedom, among many other topics, in this remarkable examination of themes to be found in the adventures of Harry Potter as they unfolded before us, book after book.
When I was initially asked to write an essay for that first collective philosophical look at the deeper themes in the Potter tales, I must admit that I was simply perplexed. At the time, I wasn’t a Potter reader. I thought these were just books for kids. But after one of the editors of the project vigorously assured me that the Harry Potter stories were for everyone and were enthralling people of all ages around the globe, I cracked open the first volume mainly out of curiosity and then, like many adults before me, was instantly hooked. In no time at all, whenever I prepared to sit down to read, I felt a strange urge to dress up in black robes and a tall, pointed hat. I breezed through the first four volumes, which were then the only ones in print, and subsequently began to read each one again, slowly, while awaiting the new books, savoring the intricacies of the story and the sparks of wisdom I started to see everywhere.
By the time the series was complete, I had read most of the seven large volumes six times through, and with deeper insights as my reward each time. There was much more going on in Harry’s world than met the casual glance, and far beyond the hidden skullduggery and secret machinations of the many characters. Ideas were percolating under the surface. Real wisdom was suffused throughout the pages. The former classics major Joanne Rowling was not merely a masterful storyteller, but was also a talented weaver of profound perspectives on some of the things that matter most in our lives.
I was inspired. I quickly wrote an essay on what I saw as one of Harry Potter’s central attributes, his courage, and then could not stop writing. In no time at all, I had written an entire book of my own, examining the philosophical insights to be found in these incredible stories that were linking the generations like perhaps nothing else in our time. I had to wrap up my book and send it in for publication right after Rowling’s sixth volume of her planned seven installments came out. So I ended up holding my philosophical breath for a good while in anticipation of the concluding storyline and what it would say about my take on the earlier books. I’m happy to report that I was able to breathe a great sigh of relief when the series ended and all of my major interpretations had held up. But I had not had the last word, as a philosopher, on Harry and his friends.
This exciting new book that you now have before you, The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles, is a fresh and distinctive report on the great ideas in the series. All of the authors of the chapters have had the advantage of thinking through their chosen issues and writing up their conclusions after the entire Potter storyline was complete and Rowling had even had her say in public about things that never made it into the pages of the official texts. The philosophers and other top Harry Potter experts who are gathered together here offer new voices and new perspectives on many of the most important ideas that come up in the books—some of which can be genuinely life changing. Reading this book will be like putting on a Philosophical De-coder Ring. It will show you vital aspects of the deepest story that lies behind these famous novels.
The dust has settled and the air has cleared. The great battle is over, and the surviving characters have gone on with their lives. It’s time to take stock and cast a long view over the most remarkable literary phenomenon of our time and to see what it says about some of the ultimate issues we face in our lives. As you read these pages and personally grapple with their important issues, you will experience anew the real magic that will forever animate J. K. Rowling’s immortal tales.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some House Points I’d Like to Award
Someone must have spiked my Chocolate Cauldrons with Felix Felicis, because this book has been a pure pleasure to work on from beginning to end. House points are due to the long-suffering contributors for their efforts, patience, and good humor through the long gestation of this book. I am grateful to Potter scholars John Granger and Travis Prinzi for answering my queries and providing helpful feedback at various stages of the project. Drafts of several chapters were helpfully discussed by my students in Honors Philosophy II class at King’s College. Thanks are due to all of the good Muggles at Wiley, particularly Connie Santisteban, Lisa Burstiner, and Eric Nelson, for believing in this project and seeing it through to completion. I am deeply indebted to Tom Morris, public philosopher extraordinaire, for agreeing to write the foreword. Kudos, also, to the biggest Mugwump of all, series editor Bill Irwin, whose editorial skill and passion for using insights from popular culture to teach philosophy continue to be second to none. A special word of thanks is due to Dave Baggett, who was exceptionally generous with his advice, criticism, and time. Finally, I must thank those who share Bassham Burrow with me and make it a place of love, laughter, and warmth: Mia and Dylan. Love is truly the most powerful magic of all!
INTRODUCTION
Harry Potter and the Enchantment of Philosophy
Let’s play a little word-association game. What comes to mind when you hear the word philosophy? Deep. Dense. Complex. In short, heavy stuff, right?
So, what’s the connection between philosophy and the Potter books and films? How can there be any real philosophy—or any good philosophy—in fantasy works aimed primarily at kids? Easy!
Philosophy, as Plato said, begins in wonder. And kids wonder about everything. They’re naturally curious, questioning, and eager to learn. Often they understand a lot more than adults give them credit for.
That’s why J. K. Rowling—like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and other great children’s writers—doesn’t hesitate to raise complex issues and pose challenging questions. Of course, Rowling realizes that most of her readers won’t grasp all of the subtleties and complexities of the issues she raises. But she also knows that young readers—like Fang gnawing on a large, meaty dragon bone—can get a great deal of nourishment from foods they can’t completely digest.
This book is for Rowling fans who want to explore some of the deeper issues posed in the Potter books and films. What is love? Is it, as Rowling says, the most powerful magic of all? Is there an afterlife? If so, what might it be like? Is death something to be feared—or “mastered,” as Harry ultimately was able to do? Do people have souls? If so, how are they related to their bodies? Can souls, if they exist, be divided, as Voldemort fragmented his by means of the Horcruxes? What can shape-shifters like Animagi and boggarts teach us about personal identity and the self? Does power inevitably corrupt? Is Hogwarts a model school, or are there real shortcomings with the education students receive there? Is it true, as Albus Dumbledore says, that our choices reveal far more about us than our abilities do? What can the complex and intriguing character of Severus Snape teach us about moral conflict, character judgment, and the possibility of redemption? Would it ever be ethical to use a love potion? Is it true, as Kingsley Shacklebolt proclaims, that “[e]very human life is worth the same”? Is it true, as Dumbledore says, that something can be real even if it exists only inside a person’s head?
This is a book written for Potter fans by Potter fans, most of whom happen to be professional philosophers in their nine-to-five lives. Like other volumes in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, it uses popular culture—in this case, the Potter books and films—as a hook to teach and popularize the ideas of the great thinkers. Some of the chapters explore the philosophy of the Potter books—the basic values and the big-picture assumptions that underlie the series—while others use themes from the books as a way to discuss various philosophical ideas and perspectives. Like others involved in the popular culture and philosophy movement, our hope is to bring philosophy out of the ivied halls of academia and make its methods, resources, and critical spirit available to all.
Several of the philosophers who contributed to this book also contributed to Harry Potter and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2004; coedited by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein). In some ways, this book is a follow-up to that earlier volume. The earlier book covered only the first five volumes in the Potter series. Some of it, therefore, was guesswork, because many of the important revelations and plot developments occur only in the last two books of the series. This volume covers the entire seven-book saga and focuses particularly on developments in the climactic final two books.
So, the wait is over. The faculty has assembled for one last time; the Great Hall, ablaze with light, is buzzing with excitement, and the long wooden tables groan with delectable things to eat. Once more, it’s time to don your robes, take a generous nip of Baruffio’s Brain Elixir, and prepare for a philosophical feast. It’s going to be a great year.
All references to the Harry Potter novels are taken from the following American editions, published by Scholastic, Inc., in New York: Sorcerer’s Stone (1998); Chamber of Secrets (1999); Prisoner of Azkaban (1999); Goblet of Fire (2000); Order of the Phoenix (2003); Half-Blood Prince (2005); Deathly Hallows (2007).
PART ONE
THE HORCRUX OF THE MATTER: DESTINY, IDENTITY, AND THE SOUL
1
THE SOUL IN HARRY POTTER
Scott Sehon
Souls play a huge part in the Harry Potter saga. At different points in the books, Harry, Sirius Black, and Dudley Dursley narrowly avoid having their souls sucked out by dementors; Barty Crouch Jr. does not escape this fate. And notoriously, Lord Voldemort intentionally creates six Horcruxes, and unintentionally creates a seventh in Harry, thereby dividing his own soul into eight parts, all of which must be destroyed before Voldemort can die.
So, what is the soul? In Harry’s world, people have souls that generally survive bodily death. But it is not entirely obvious how souls work and what their nature is. Over the centuries, philosophers and theologians have proposed and debated various accounts of the soul. In this chapter, we’ll survey some of those accounts before turning to the questions of how souls work in J. K. Rowling’s books and whether her picture of the soul is plausible.
Philosophical Conceptions of the Soul
While competing conceptions of the soul are legion, we’ll focus here on five different philosophical views.
The Life-Source View
According to some ancient Greek philosophers, the soul accounts for life itself. In this view, the essential difference between living and nonliving things is that living things have a soul and nonliving things do not. Yet because the lowest animals and even plants are alive, this means that all plants and animals have souls. Blast-Ended Skrewts and even gillyweed would have souls, according to this view. These days, not too many people think that this conception of the soul is correct.
The Sentience View
According to a second conception, the soul is responsible for sentience , the ability some organisms have to feel pleasure and pain and sense the world around them. If an organism is consciously aware of its surroundings, then the organism feels, it has experiences. According to the sentience view, the soul is responsible for sentience, along with all higher-level thought. Plants, one assumes, do not have sentient awareness and so, in this conception, would not have souls. (Of course, in the universe of Harry Potter some magical plants, like the Whomping Willow, do have some direct sensation of the world and would thus have souls.)
The Cartesian View
A third view of the soul further narrows the scope of ensouled organisms. According to a view associated with the philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), the soul is not responsible for sensation and awareness. Descartes thought that those features of mental life could be accounted for by purely material causes; however, he believed that mere material causes would never be able to explain our ability to use language and formulate complex beliefs. For this, we need souls. So Descartes said that our immaterial soul is responsible only for higher-level cognitive functions, including beliefs, desires, and, especially, our ability to use language.
One consequence of the Cartesian view is that nonhuman animals do not have souls—at least, if those animals lack linguistic ability and higher-level thought. Descartes was willing to accept this and thought that nonhuman animals were entirely soulless. Some of the magical creatures in the Harry Potter stories might blur this distinction within the Cartesian view. For instance, owls seem to understand human speech, although they don’t speak in return, and magical pets like Crookshanks seem much more intelligent than your average cat.
According to the life-source, sentience, and Cartesian views, the soul is usually thought to be some sort of immaterial substance, something not made of matter but still associated with, or connected to, a person’s material body. If souls are in fact like that, then there is a possibility that the soul could survive a person’s bodily death. On the other hand, there are many philosophers and scientists who would deny the existence of a soul, if what we mean by a soul is some sort of entity independent of the brain and the body. This leads to a fourth view of the soul: materialism.
Materialism
Materialists hold that ultimately there is nothing but matter and physical forces. All mental functioning, including language and emotions, is due to physical processes in the brain, and there simply is no extra entity above and beyond this. Needless to say, according to a materialist view, there is no life after death; with bodily death, the processes that underlie our mental and emotional life simply cease, and that’s all there is to it.
The Sentimental View
In everyday talk, the word soul is often used in a way that does not clearly correspond with any of the more abstract conceptions just discussed. From the Hoagy Carmichael tune, we have: “Heart and soul, I fell in love with you./Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, madly.”
Or we might speak of a person seeking his or her soul mate. We talk of people having good souls. We might describe music or art as soulful or as soulless.
These sorts of everyday sentimentalist uses of the word soul need not be taken to imply any particular metaphysical view. That is, they don’t commit one to any view on which the soul is an actual substance existing independently of the body. If we say, “Unlike her later work, the artist’s early paintings were soulless,” clearly we are not suggesting that the artist literally lacked and then later somehow obtained an immaterial soul. Rather, we are suggesting that the artist’s early work was uninspired or somehow lacked genuine emotional depth. Or if I say that I love her, heart and soul, or that we are soul mates, I am commenting about the emotional depth of my attachment and the deep connection we feel for each other.1 If we say that someone has bared her soul, we mean she has let us see through the superficial trappings and down to what is most deeply important to her. These uses of the word soul are essentially metaphorical ways of talking about that which makes us most human and makes life most full: our deepest emotions, our ability to love, our moral conscience. Materialist philosophers don’t need to renounce any of these ways of talking and certainly don’t need to go back and translate Hoagy Carmichael’s lyrics into some sort of thesis about brain states (“C-fibers firing, I fell in love with you . . . ”).
With these sundry options on the table, we are now ready to turn to Harry Potter and try to place the conception of the soul as developed in the story. To foreshadow, we’ll see that Rowling’s picture of the soul is an interesting mix of views. In many ways, it seems that her conception of the soul is closest to the sentimental view, but she combines it with a metaphysics that incorporates parts of the Cartesian and sentience views.
Ghosts and “Going On”
Materialism is the dominant view among philosophers and scientists in our world today. But materialism is false in the world of Harry Potter, where souls typically survive bodily death. Here is Hermione Granger’s explanation of souls:
“Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron, and ran you through with it, I wouldn’t damage your soul at all.”
“Which would be a real comfort to me, I’m sure,” said Ron. Harry laughed.
“It should be, actually! But my point is that whatever happens to your body, your soul will survive, untouched,” said Hermione. 2
So we know that in Rowling’s world, the soul survives destruction of the body. Beyond the fact of survival, it’s not entirely clear what happens to the soul of a deceased person. In Order of the Phoenix, in the room at the Ministry of Magic where Sirius dies, there is a mysterious archway with a veil, and both Harry and Luna Lovegood hear voices from beyond the veil. Luna’s interpretation is that dead people exist just beyond and that we will see them again. Later, Nearly Headless Nick tells Harry that the recently killed Sirius will have “gone on,” but he has no further light to shed on what happens in the ordinary case. Nick, of course, is a ghost, and he explains to Harry that a wizard is able to avoid “going on” by remaining behind as a ghostly imprint of his former self. He says that few wizards choose this path, and perhaps it is not too hard to see why. Nick lives on, sort of, in a ghostly imitation of a body, one that can see and be seen, hear and be heard, but that otherwise walks through walls and has few physical effects. Rowling’s ghosts apparently induce an icy sensation when a person has contact with them, and Moaning Myrtle is somehow able to make splashes in toilets, but beyond this, they seem to mostly lack bodily effects. Voldemort presumably could have had this sort of immortality all along, but it is a form of immortality devoid of real physical contact and, more important for Voldemort, devoid of power.
Besides being a ghost, there are several other ways in which souls can appear on earth after their bodies have died. First, there is the case of Voldemort himself, who, because of his Horcruxes, survives bodily death when his killing curse aimed at baby Harry backfires. We’ll talk more about Horcruxes later, but at this point it is worth noting that when Voldemort’s soul continues, it is in an incredibly weak form; he later describes his condition at the time as “less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost.”3 In that state, Voldemort needs to attach himself to a living body to have any physical effects at all.
Second, there is the semi-ghostly condition in which Harry twice sees his departed loved ones. In the graveyard scene in Goblet of Fire, Cedric Diggory, Bertha Jorkins, Frank Bryce, and Harry’s parents appear out of Voldemort’s wand. These ghostly figures look to Harry much more solid than ordinary ghosts, and they have enough of a physical presence that James Potter tells Harry that they will give him some time to escape once the wand connection is broken. Similarly, when Harry uses the Resurrection Stone in Deathly Hallows he sees Sirius, Remus Lupin, and his parents, and it seems that they are again, at least in some sense, real. Less substantial than living bodies and here only temporarily, they are nonetheless not mere ghosts; they are described as “neither ghost nor truly flesh.”4
So, it seems that although souls normally “go on” in some undescribed way, disembodied souls can stay or return to earth in certain circumstances, and when they do, they take one of a variety of forms, ranging from Voldemort’s almost entirely nonphysical state to Nick’s ghostly state, to the temporary but slightly more substantial physical states of the souls brought back by the Resurrection Stone. 5 All of this would be impossible if materialism were true. So, materialism is false within the Potter universe. But to learn more about the nature of souls, we need to consider dementors and Horcruxes.
The Dementor’s Kiss
Dementors suck good feelings and happy memories out of people. Worse than that, they can destroy your soul. As Lupin explains to Harry:
“You see, the dementor lowers its hood only to use its last and worst weapon.”
“What’s that?”
“They call it the Dementor’s Kiss,” said Lupin, with a slightly twisted smile. “It’s what dementors do to those they wish to destroy utterly. I suppose there must be some kind of mouth under there, because they clamp their jaws upon the mouth of the victim and—and suck out his soul.”
[. . .]
“What—they kill—?”
“Oh no,” said Lupin. “Much worse than that. You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you’ll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no . . . anything. There’s no chance at all of recovery. You’ll just—exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever . . . lost.” 6
This is very interesting. A wizard’s soul normally survives bodily death, and the natural further assumption would be that souls are immortal. But with dementors around, not all souls achieve this happy state, for dementors can apparently destroy souls completely. You can still exist even without your soul, however. Lupin’s words here are open to more than one interpretation. He might merely mean your body can still exist and keep functioning biologically as long as your organs are still intact. According to this reading, the Dementor’s Kiss would leave the victim in something like a permanent vegetative state, in which basic metabolic functions continue but in which there is no substantial mental life at all. Yet if this is what Lupin means, it’s odd that he portrays it as the continued existence of the person but in a state worse than death. If the soul is the source of all conscious mental life, and if all of that disappears after the Dementor’s Kiss, then it would seem more appropriate to say that the person truly is no more, that the empty shell of a body is just that—a body but not a person.
Because Lupin is insistent that a person can continue to exist without a soul, a different picture seems to be suggested. This is speculative, but here’s my guess. A soulless person still has sensations and even thoughts about the passing show. After the Kiss was applied, Barty Crouch Jr. may have still recognized that there were people in the room, but he had no idea who they were or who he was, for he had no substantial memory or sense of self. Accordingly, perhaps we should think of existence after the Dementor’s Kiss as akin to a severe case of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease—perhaps similar to the condition Lockhart found himself in after one of his memory charms backfired.
The Dementor’s Kiss would appear to rule out at least two, if not three, of the remaining conceptions of the soul. If one can be alive without one’s soul, then the soul cannot be the source of life itself, and so the life-source view cannot be correct. And if a victim of the Dementor’s Kiss still has sensations, and even a body in a vegetative state may be somewhat responsive to sensory stimuli, then the sentience view also seems ruled out. Moreover, if the Dementor’s Kiss does allow someone to think, feel, and notice the passing show, albeit lacking memories or a sense of self, then even the Cartesian view seems unlikely. According to the Cartesian view, the soul is that which is responsible for our higher-level functions, our ability to have beliefs and, especially, to understand language. In the interpretation I have suggested, the Kiss might leave those abilities at least partially intact, despite the soul itself being utterly destroyed.
Horcruxes
A central plot element for the Harry Potter story as a whole is Tom Riddle’s quest to defeat death using Horcruxes. Professor Horace Slughorn explains to a young Riddle what happens when a wizard creates a Horcrux: “ ‘Well, you split your soul, you see,’ said Slughorn, ‘and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged.’ ”7
Indeed, later, when Voldemort attacks the infant Harry using the Avada Kedavra curse that rebounds then destroys Voldermort’s body, Voldemort himself remains alive, albeit as “less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost.” 8
The young Riddle presses Slughorn further and asks how one splits one’s soul. Slughorn answers, “By an act of evil—the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage to his advantage: He would encase the torn portion—.”9 Slughorn does not answer Riddle’s further question about exactly how one encases the soul, other than saying that there is a spell. Riddle then asks, “Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn’t it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn’t seven the most powerfully magic number, wouldn’t seven—?” 10 Slughorn is horrified that Riddle would apparently think of killing repeatedly to do this, but he also warns against it for another reason. He has already told Riddle that “the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole” and that splitting “it is an act of violation, it is against nature.”11
Two points from Slughorn’s words are worth emphasizing. First, that it requires a supreme act of evil to make the soul such that it can be ripped, and, second, that the soul is thereby damaged or made unstable, and that ripping it more than once presumably increases the damage. This is a point that Hermione makes as well, after she read Secrets of the Darkest Art, which, along with other dark magic books, she summoned from Dumbledore’s office after his death: “ ‘And the more I’ve read about [Horcruxes],’ said Hermione, ‘the more horrible they seem, and the less I can believe that he actually made six. It warns in this book how unstable you make the rest of your soul by ripping it, and that’s just by making one Horcrux!’ ”12
Although both Slughorn and Secrets of the Darkest Art are clear that ripping the soul damages it, it is not immediately obvious how the damage to the soul translates into harm to the living human being. There is, after all, no indication that Voldemort’s mental faculties or magical abilities are in any way diminished. Indeed, Dumbledore warns Harry, “Never forget, though, that while his soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort even without his Horcruxes.” 13
This seems quite clearly to rule out the Cartesian view, according to which the soul is responsible for all higher-level thought. If a Cartesian soul were horribly damaged, then one’s thoughts, skills, and, presumably, magical abilities would be damaged as well, but all of this is left intact in Voldemort. Because Voldemort’s sensory abilities seem unharmed, too, despite his damaged soul, it seems that the sentience view is also excluded.
Rather than applying the Cartesian or sentience views, Rowling adopts the sentimental view of the soul, according to which the soul is associated with that which makes us most human, with our capacity to love and our moral conscience. This was already suggested by the fact that one rips and damages the soul by committing the supremely evil act of murder. If the soul is associated with what makes us deeply human and good, then it at least makes poetic sense that the soul would be damaged by committing the ultimate evil. The key evidence lies in what seemed different about Voldemort after he damaged his soul so badly: not his higher cognitive functions, but his humanity. Dumbledore tells Harry, “Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he has undergone seemed to me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call ‘usual evil.’ ”14 Specifically, after ripping his soul and creating Horcruxes, the handsome young Tom Riddle undergoes a significant physical transformation. Few of us look better as we age, but with Riddle/Voldemort, the change is extreme. In Goblet of Fire, when he has completely regained his body in the graveyard, he is described as “whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils.”15
Voldemort’s change in appearance is Rowling’s metaphor for what was happening to Voldemort on a deep emotional and moral level. Of course, the child Riddle in the orphanage already had a significantly sinister side to him, and there is no evidence that he ever truly loved anyone, but in his early days at Hogwarts he at least had the ability to charm people. He was a leader among his peers, even among older students, and he accomplished this through personality rather than fear. He charmed Professor Slughorn, who predicted that Riddle would become Minister of Magic, and managed to get him to discuss Horcruxes, which was a banned topic at Hogwarts. By the time Riddle begins his reign of terror as Lord Voldemort, however, all indications are that Death Eaters continue to follow him out of fear, rather than because of anything remotely approximating devotion. Even Bellatrix Lestrange, his most devoted follower near the end, seems worshipful of his power but hardly charmed. That capacity, Riddle’s most human attribute, seems to have utterly disappeared after his soul was ripped into seven pieces (eight, if you count Harry as the seventh Horcrux).
Voldemort might have been able to repair his damaged soul, but not by use of a potion or an appropriate incantation (not even with the Elder Wand). Rather, according to Secrets of the Darkest Art, a ripped soul can perhaps be repaired through remorse; as Hermione puts it, “You’ve got to really feel what you’ve done.” 16 In none of the other views of the soul would there be any reason for the particular emotion of remorse to have a special effect on the immaterial soul. But according to the sentimental view, the soul is most closely connected with our deepest emotions and our moral conscience. Our goodness and humanity are damaged by evil actions, but we can go some ways toward restoring that goodness and humanity if we feel genuine remorse. In the climactic scene, Harry in fact suggests to Voldemort that he “be a man” and try to feel some remorse.17 Voldemort, of course, having gone so far beyond even the “usual evil,” feels no inclination toward remorse, and Voldemort is finally killed when his own killing curse, shot from the Elder Wand of which Harry is the master, rebounds off Harry’s Expelliarmus.
A Plausible View?
If Rowling indeed adopts the sentimental conception of the soul, she does so with an interesting twist. The sentimental view is not a philosophical theory developed by theologians or philosophers but rather a distillation of various ways we use the word soul. These ordinary uses of the word could easily be taken as metaphorical and do not necessarily imply that there really is some sort of independent and immaterial entity that explains our deepest emotional commitments and moral conscience. Even materialists can and do use the word soul as a perfectly good metaphor. But within the Harry Potter universe, Rowling clearly also presupposes a metaphysical view: that the soul is independent of the body, is not harmed by normal physical events, and can even survive the destruction of the body. In other words, Rowling takes the metaphysical picture normally associated with the more philosophical views of the soul (especially the sentience view and the Cartesian view) and combines it with the metaphorical picture suggested by the sentimental view.
So, does Rowling offer a theory of the soul that is likely to be true? Probably not, but the issues are contentious. First, many philosophers and scientists plausibly argue that there is no good evidence for the existence of an immaterial substance that is causally responsible for anything above and beyond what the human body does. It would be possible to have such evidence someday: if neuroscientists saw that there were events that happened in brains with no observable physical cause, then this would at least be an indication that the events had an immaterial cause. But we have not seen any such brain events up to now.
Moreover, philosophers have pointed out for centuries that it is difficult to see how an immaterial soul would even be able to interact with a purely material body. If the soul is not made of matter and does not have physical properties, then it is mysterious how it could cause the human body to move or how anything in the material world would have any effect on it. This kind of dualism of mind and body would be outside anything of which we have experience. Dualism is not incoherent, and it is possible that it is correct, but it faces substantial obstacles.18
Finally, Rowling’s combination of an implausible metaphysics with the sentimental view of the soul probably makes the problems worse, rather than better. It is especially implausible that there would be an immaterial part of us that is specifically responsible for only our deepest emotions and moral traits but not for other psychological capacities. These traits may seem linked to us because they are arguably what makes us most human, but from the standpoint of scientific psychology, there is nothing that is so different in kind here. So there seems to be no need to postulate something altogether different from the brain to explain these traits. In addition, as mentioned earlier, within the story the immaterial soul can sometimes remain on earth with a variety of different physical powers or presences, depending on whether the soul is here as a ghost, as something conjured by the Resurrection Stone, or as a bare soul saved from destruction by a Horcrux. If, as we’ve seen, it would be difficult to explain how an immaterial soul could interact at all with the physical world, then it would be even more difficult to explain why the soul would have different physical abilities depending on what magic spell is at work.
Of course, the implausibility of Rowling’s metaphysics is not a strike against her work of fiction. After all, it is also extremely unlikely that there are witches, wizards, and magic in the real world. And Rowling’s picture of the soul does have a way of making vivid what we care about, or what we hope we care about. Besides, talk of souls, Horcruxes, dementors, and magic makes for a terrific story, and that’s reason enough.19
NOTES
1 Originally, the idea may have been different: according to some myths, our souls were split in two, and finding one’s soul mate literally meant finding one’s other half. But such an overtly metaphysical picture is clearly not presupposed in our colloquial uses of the phrase.
2 Deathly Hallows, p. 104.
3 Goblet of Fire, p. 653.
4 Deathly Hallows, p. 698.
5 When Harry “dies” in the Forbidden Forest toward the end of Deathly Hallows, he finds himself with Dumbledore in a place that appears to him as King’s Cross Station. One interpretation is that he is in a way station between death and the afterlife. Even so, Harry learns nothing about what will happen if he decides to die by, say, taking a train. Dumbledore merely says that the train would take him “on.” Moreover, Rowling is deliberately ambiguous about whether this is some real sequence of events in which Harry actually encounters Dumbledore’s postmortem self or whether it’s simply a vision or a dream in Harry’s mind.
6 Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 247.
7 Half-Blood Prince, p. 497.
8 Goblet of Fire, p. 653.
9 Half-Blood Prince, p. 498.
10 Ibid., p. 498.
11 Ibid.
12 Deathly Hallows, p. 103.
13 Half-Blood Prince, p. 509.
14 Ibid., p. 502.
15 Goblet of Fire, p. 643.
16 Deathly Hallows, p. 103.
17 Ibid., p. 741.
18 For more detailed recent arguments of this sort, see Scott Sehon, Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and Explanation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), chap. 2; and Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2005), chap. 2.
19 Special thanks to Josephine Sehon and Hayden Sartoris for years of reading and discussing Harry Potter and for useful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
2
SIRIUS BLACK
Man or Dog?
Imagine yourself virtually imprisoned, cooped up inside, unable to go outdoors for several months. Now, finally, you get to go outside. You’re free to do anything you want—you can run around, enjoy the fresh air, go to a movie, do whatever you wish. What would you do?
Now suppose you had a tail. Would you do anything different? Would you run around in circles, trying to bite your tail? Neither would I. Oddly enough, this is exactly what Sirius Black does in Order of the Phoenix when he transforms into a dog in order to escort Harry to the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the school year. And he does it because he’s excited to be outside. Or so J. K. Rowling tells us. This behavior strikes me as so strange that I’d ask Sirius about it if I could. Unfortunately, I can’t, as Sirius is no longer alive.1 So we’ll have to try to answer this question using the tools of philosophy. Fortunately, even though most philosophers are Muggles, we can use the same skills of rational analysis that enabled Albus Dumbledore to discover the twelve uses of dragon’s blood. So, let’s push on.
Chasing his tail wouldn’t be so strange if Sirius were a dog. But he’s not a dog. He’s a man in a dog’s body. Or is he? How can we best describe Sirius: as a man who is sometimes in a dog’s body (and sometimes in a man’s body), as a dog who is sometimes in a man’s body (and sometimes in a dog’s body), or as someone who is sometimes a dog and sometimes a man? If the answer is the last, then what is that “someone” who stays the same while Sirius changes between being a dog and being a man?
Sirius is not the only one who transforms in the Potter series. During the course of the seven books, we come into contact with other Animagi (Peter Pettigrew, Rita Skeeter, Professor McGonagall), as well as werewolves (Remus Lupin and Fenrir Greyback), boggarts, and the frequent use of Polyjuice Potion. 2 Several transformers behave in odd and sometimes illuminating ways.3 For example, a transformed Lupin would attack Harry, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, and as Mad-Eye Moody, Barty Crouch Jr. is the one of the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers Harry ever has, even going beyond the call of duty to teach Harry to resist the Imperius Curse.4 Why do they do these odd things?
This is a question about their identities, about what makes them who they are. It is also a question about the relationship between one’s mind and one’s body. It seems obvious that Padfoot’s body is a dog’s body, but is his mind a dog’s mind or a man’s mind? Let’s see whether we can answer these questions. The path we follow will be full of twists and turns, like a Snitch trying to avoid a Seeker, but if we keep our eye on the gold, we should be able to catch it.
Mind-Body Distinctions
When Sirius transforms into a dog, sometimes he acts as if he’s a man, and other times he acts as if he’s a dog. Why does the transformed person sometimes act as if he is his normal self and other times act as if he is the person or the animal he has transformed into? Answering this question requires us to understand just what a transformed person is. Put simply, when Sirius transforms, does he become a dog, or is he still a man?
Both of these options are too crude. Sirius transformed is not merely a dog: a dog would not do many of the things that Padfoot does (for example, standing on his hind legs, putting his forelegs on Harry’s shoulders, and looking Harry in the eye when Harry goes off to school in Order of the Phoenix). Nor is Padfoot still a man: many of the things Padfoot does (for example, chasing his tail) are more appropriate for a dog than for Sirius. The transformed person isn’t wholly the object he’s transformed into or wholly the person he was before he transformed. Obviously, then, the answer is that Padfoot is part man and part dog.
Since the time of René Descartes (1596-1650), who is generally considered to be the father of modern philosophy, there has been a natural way to think of how people might be divided: we think of each individual as being made up of two distinct parts—namely, a mind and a body. So perhaps when we say that Padfoot is part Sirius and part dog, we mean that he has the mind of one of them and the body of the other. There are four possibilities here:
1. Padfoot has the mind of Sirius and the body of a dog.
2. Padfoot has the mind of a dog and the body of a dog.
3. Padfoot has the mind of Sirius and the body of Sirius.
4. Padfoot has the mind of a dog and the body of Sirius.
The last two options would seem to be nonstarters: we can tell by looking at Padfoot that he doesn’t have the body of Sirius. He looks nothing like Sirius—or any other man, for that matter. But this dismissal is too superficial: If Padfoot doesn’t have Sirius’s body, then what happens to Sirius’s body when he transforms? Where does it go? It’s all very well for Professor McGonagall to assert that vanished objects go “into non-being, which is to say, everything,” but it seems implausible that Sirius’s body will go into nonbeing when he transforms into Padfoot and then will come out of nonbeing when he transforms back. 5 What’s more plausible is that Sirius’s body itself changes. Before he transforms, it is the physical body of a man, and afterward it is the body of a dog. But it is the same physical stuff, somehow rearranged. That is, if the body has an effect on what Padfoot does, the effect isn’t going to come from his having Sirius’s human body, because even if Padfoot does literally have Sirius’s body, it is physically the body of a dog.6
What of the other two options? Both are problematic, for similar reasons. Why, if Padfoot has the mind of Sirius, does he chase his tail? And why, if he has the mind of a dog, does he stand on his hind legs at King’s Cross Station? (Mrs. Weasley chastises him, hissing, “For heaven’s sake act more like a dog, Sirius!”7) These are the questions with which we started. Thinking about Padfoot as divided between mind and body doesn’t get us anywhere.
Whose Reasons?