The Virtues of Captain America E-Book

Mark D. White

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 509

Beschreibung

The first look at the philosophy behind the Captain America comics and movies, publishing in advance of the movie release of Captain America: The Winter Solider in April 2014. In The Virtues of Captain America, philosopher and long-time comics fan Mark D. White argues that the core principles, compassion, and judgment exhibited by the 1940's comic book character Captain America remain relevant to the modern world. Simply put, "Cap" embodies many of the classical virtues that have been important to us since the days of the ancient Greeks: honesty, courage, loyalty, perseverance, and, perhaps most importantly, honor. Full of entertaining examples from more than 50 years of comic books, White offers some serious philosophical discussions of everyone's favorite patriot in a light-hearted and accessible way. * Presents serious arguments on The Virtues of Captain America while being written in a light-hearted and often humorous tone * Introduces basic concepts in moral and political philosophy to the general reader * Utilizes examples from 50 years of comics featuring Captain America, the Avengers, and other Marvel superheroes * Affirms the value of "old-fashioned" virtues for the modern world without indulging in nostalgia for times long passed * Reveals the importance of the sound principles that America was founded upon * Publishing in advance of Captain America: The Winter Soldier out in April 2014.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

Notes

Acknowledgments

Notes on Source Material

About the Author

1 Superhuman Ethics Class

Utilitarianism

Deontology

A Civil War … of Ethics!

Virtue Ethics

Virtuous Deontology … No, Deontological Virtue … Maybe “Deontovirtue”?

Notes

2 Captain America as a Moral Exemplar

Can a Fictional Character Be a Moral Exemplar?

Aren’t Fictional Characters Liable to Be Perfect?

Fifty Years, Dozens of Writers … One Captain America?

Notes

3 Five Basic Virtues

Courage

Humility

Righteous Indignation

Sacrifice and Responsibility

Perseverance

Notes

4 Honor and Integrity

The Honor of Captain America

External Honor as Respect

Internal Honor as Integrity

Principle and Compromise

Duty and Sacrifice (Again)

Notes

5 Judgment

Making the Hard Decisions

Whose Right Answer?

Tragic Dilemmas and How to Avoid Them

“Black-and-White” or Red, White, and Blue? When Judgment Evolves

Hitting the Threshold

Notes

6 Principle and Politics

Patriotism: The Captain and America

Cosmopolitanism

The American Dream Versus the American Reality

“I’m a Hero, Not a Politician!”

Principle over Politics

Captain America in (Principled) Action

Notes

7 Can Captain America Help Us Achieve Greater Unity and Civility?

The “Divided States of America,” Then and Now

The Three Core American Ideals

Debating What We Disagree On While Recognizing What We Share

Now It’s Our Turn

Notes

Appendix: Why Are There Seven Volumes of Captain America and Five Volumes of Avengers?

Notes

References

Notes

Index

To my father, who never lost his love for his countryeven when disheartened by the people who ran it.He will always be my Captain America.

This edition first published 2014© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Paperback: 9781118619261

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Cover image: Flag © LoudRedCreative; Star © Moose2000; Wings © Visualgo; Metal background © Pomachka (all images iStockphoto)Cover design by Simon Levy

Introduction

This is a book I’ve wanted to write for years, and I’m very excited finally to share it with you. In these pages, I’m going to explain how Captain America—the fictional World War II super-soldier and modern-day Avenger familiar from comic books, movies, and animated TV series—provides an example of the personal virtues that philosophers since ancient times have put forward as defining personal excellence, as well as the ideals and principles upon which the United States of America was founded. To do this, I will combine my love of superhero comics with my background in moral and political philosophy to show how we can be better people—for ourselves, our family, and our communities—and how we can raise the level of political discussion in America so we can start addressing our problems rather than simply yelling at each other about them.

Not bad for something based on a “funny book,” huh?

Captain America—or simply “Cap”—has been one of the premier comic-book superheroes for almost three quarters of a century. Steve Rogers, the scrawny kid from New York who was transformed into a super-soldier by the United States government with super-soldier serum and Vita-Rays, was introduced when Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics #1 hit the newsstands on March 10, 1941, nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.1 The book lasted until the end of the 1940s, suffering the fate of most superhero comics as readers’ interests turned to romance, horror, and Western comics. After a short-lived revival in the mid-1950s, Captain America was not seen again until 1964, when Avengers #4 told the now-famous tale of how Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man, and Wasp found Steve Rogers frozen in a block of ice, his super-soldier-serum preserving his body in a state of suspended animation.2 For the last fifty years, Cap has been a central player in the ever-expanding Marvel Universe, both in his own solo title and various Avengers books as well as the epic crossover stories that have become an annual event in comics publishing since the mid-1980s. Add to those the Captain America and Avengers films and his appearances in animated series, videogames, and other media, and it’s easy to see why Captain America remains as much a heroic icon today as he was during World War II.

For all their groundbreaking ideas and innovative artwork, the “Golden Age” superhero comics published in the 1940s were never big on characterization, focusing mostly on exciting action and pure heroics. But that changed with the revival of superheroes in the late 1950s and early 1960s, especially when the Fantastic Four and other new heroes were introduced by Marvel Comics. Once simply a patriotic symbol meant to inspire a nation at war, upon his return Captain America became a tragic figure along with his fellow Avengers and other Marvel superheroes. Just as the Fantastic Four’s Thing was disfigured by cosmic rays, Iron Man’s heart was under constant threat of encroaching shrapnel, and Spider-Man bore the guilt of inadvertently causing the death of his beloved Uncle Ben, Captain America found himself a “man out of time,” uncomfortable in the modern age with its new technology, social customs, and values. This sense of displacement, established almost immediately by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Don Heck upon Cap’s reappearance in comics likeAvengers,Tales of Suspense, and his own title, came to define the character for years to come. And nothing epitomized Cap’s “strangeness” more than his “old-fashioned” values, forged in the Great Depression and World War II and thought by many of his fellow superheroes to be relics of a simpler time.

Ironically, it is this code of ethics, backed by Captain America’s steely resolve and careful judgment, that makes his participation and leadership invaluable to the Marvel Universe. Soon after his reappearance, Cap became the moral center of the superhero community, a figure to whom all other heroes would compare themselves and against whom they would argue their own moral positions. This was most obvious during Marvel’s “Civil War” when Captain America and Iron Man stood against each other over the issue of superhero registration. (We’ll talk about this conflict much more throughout the book, because “Civil War” is a storyline incredibly rich in moral and political concepts.) Soon afterwards, when Cap was apparently shot and killed, the Marvel Universe came under the control of a madman, Norman Osborn (formerly Spider-Man’s nemesis the Green Goblin), in what was called the “Dark Reign,” which ended only after Captain America returned from the “dead.”3 With the simple command, “It’s time to take back this country,” Cap rallied the other heroes to defeat Osborn, launching what was called the “Heroic Age.”4

While Cap was gone (not dead but rather thrown back in time), the Marvel Universe was literally a ship without its Captain, and without his leadership, Norman Osborn was able to take control of the world. After Cap came back during Osborn’s siege on Thor’s home of Asgard and helped to set the world right again, the moral center of the Marvel Universe was restored at last. This is not to say that the other heroes—or the readers—always agree with Cap on what the right thing to do is. There are sound arguments to be made against his positions, just as there are against anybody else’s. But the strength and constancy of Cap’s core moral positions provide a valuable source of debate and disagreement in the comics—and they also give us a lot of material to draw from throughout the course of this book!

In this book, I’m going to present Captain America’s personal morality in terms of virtue ethics, a type of moral theory originating with ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics. There are other ways to describe Cap’s ethics, certainly, and I’ll draw from these other traditions when appropriate. But I chose virtue ethics as my main framework because it has clear intuitive appeal, does not require a lot of fancy philosophical language to explain, and is easily applicable to the personal and political issues of today. Literally speaking, if we look at them this way, Cap’s values are old-fashioned, dating from about 2500 years ago, but many philosophers (including myself) regard the work of the early virtue ethicists as timeless, and innovative work continues in the tradition today.

The original virtue ethicists incorporated wonderfully perceptive observations about human nature into their prescriptions for behaving morally and promoting the “good life.” This allowed them to avoid the strict rules and formulas of the ethical systems that followed, and instead they offered the flexibility of moral judgment that people need to make decisions in complex real-world situations. As advanced as we like to think we are in the modern world, the essential moral problems of respecting each other, getting along, and working together have not changed much in the last several thousand years. In fact, because technology, along with its many gifts, has also expanded the scale and scope of the ways we can hurt each other, the lessons of the virtue ethicists are more important now than ever—and a “man out of time” such as Captain America can see that better than anyone.

Throughout this book, I’ll argue that Cap’s “old-fashioned” moral code is exactly what we need to restore civility and respect in the twenty-first century in both our personal lives and our political debates. He is what the ancient philosophers—yes, more ancient than Cap—called a moral exemplar. Today we’d call him a role model, but both terms refer to a person we can look up to and use as an example of how to act in certain situations. Role models today are often political figures, entertainers, or athletes—all of whom are real people (whether alive or dead). But can a fictional character be a role model? We’ll talk about that soon, but obviously I would answer yes, we can learn things from fictional characters (while keeping in mind that many of the details or stories we “know” about real-life role models are just as fictional!).

This book starts with an introduction of basic ethics in chapter 1 and discusses several issues with using fictional characters such as Captain America as role models in chapter 2. After that, we start looking at Captain America in detail, using examples and quotations from the last fifty years of his stories in the comics. In chapter 3, we’ll discuss several of the individual virtues that Cap exemplifies, such as courage, humility, and perseverance, and show how virtue ethics shows them to be more subtle and nuanced than they might seem. In chapter 4, we’ll look at qualities that describe Cap’s moral character more broadly, such as honor and integrity, and we’ll explore his adherence to principle and duty, both of which influence how Captain America exercises his virtuous character traits—and provide a valuable example for us in the twenty-first century as well.

While these virtues and characteristics describe the basic themes of Captain America’s ethics, they aren’t much help when it comes to making hard choices in specific circumstances. As we’ll see, having the virtue of courage doesn’t tell you just how brave you should be in different circumstances; for that, you need judgment, which we’ll discuss in chapter 5. We’ll borrow some ideas from legal philosophy to show how we can use judgment in moral dilemmas in the same way judges make decisions in difficult legal cases: by balancing our personal principles to arrive at a decision that maintains our integrity. We’ll also see how Captain America’s judgment regarding some issues like killing and torture may have changed over the years—and why. Did the world change in such a way that Cap had to make moral compromises, or was it his moral character that changed? I’ll present the evidence, and you be the judge.

In chapter 6, we’ll move from the personal to the political by exploring the “America” in Captain America. We’ll see what patriotism means to philosophers and how Cap’s particular brand of patriotism is inclusive and cosmopolitan rather than exclusionary and jingoistic. We’ll discuss how he consistently puts principle before politics, including the orders of his own government, which is a reflection of his moral integrity and sense of honor. This chapter reinforces the point that Captain America represents the basic ideals of America, not its politics or government, which explains how he can serve as a symbol of these ideals to all Americans, regardless of political orientation, as well as people around the world.

In the final chapter, I’ll argue that Captain America’s belief in principle over politics can help Americans in the real world to address our current state of political divisiveness. By focusing on what we have in common—the core American principles of justice, equality, and liberty—we can start to realize that our disagreements are largely about how we want to interpret and implement these ideals, with each of us balancing our versions of them in ways that express our individual characters. If we keep in mind what principles we share, we will have a common framework upon which to debate our different approaches to solving the problems America faces, instead of spending our time and energy arguing past each other, demonizing our opponents, and trying to “control the narrative” rather than push it forward. As Cap often says, we need to work together to turn the American dream into the American reality—and I’m just crazy enough to think a comic-book superhero can help us do that.

Most of the examples I use in this book are drawn from the various Captain America and Avengers comic books published over the last fifty years by Marvel Comics, many of which are available in collected editions in your local comics shop, bookstore, or online. (A complete listing appears at the end of the book.) But I promise, you don’t have to be familiar with any of this source material to appreciate the points I make—ultimately, this is a book about philosophy and politics, not superheroes. (You can consider them a bonus!) Just sit back and enjoy the book—and if it inspires you to pick up a Captain America comic or a copy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, all the better!

Notes

1 Cap’s origin has been retold a number of times since his first appearance, my favorite being Captain America, vol. 1, #255 (1981).

2 “A” Captain America (actually the villainous Acrobat in disguise) was seen in a story titled “The Human Torch Meets … Captain America” in Strange Tales, vol. 1, #114 in 1963 (later reprinted in Captain America, vol. 1, #216, 1977), to test the waters and see if readers wanted the real Cap back. (Guess we know the answer to that, hmm?)

3 Death in comic books is rarely what it seems, so I use quotation marks and words like “apparently” a lot. They’re not legal disclaimers, but they’re very close!

4Siege #2 (2010).

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jeff Dean for supporting this project from the beginning, and Allison Kostka, Lindsay Bourgeois, and Jennifer Bray at Wiley Blackwell for helping shepherd it through the process. I’d also like to thank William Irwin, who not only gave me the opportunity to edit and write on superheroes and philosophy for his Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, but who has also been a wonderful and supportive friend for many years. Speaking of the Blackwell series, I want to thank all the co-editors and contributors I’ve worked with—including Bill Irwin, who has the distinct honor of being thanked twice—all of whom helped me hone whatever writing style I’ve got. Many friends provided encouragement and support while writing this book, chief among them Lauren Hale, Lynn Beighley, Carol Borden, Heather Giltner, and Anita Leirfall. (I would mention Bill again, but no one deserves to be thanked three times—he’ll start expecting money!)

Finally, I could not have written this book if not for all the brilliant and inventive creators who contributed to the Captain America canon: first and foremost Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee, but also people such as Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Kurt Busiek, J.M. DeMatteis, Steve Engleheart, Christos Gage, Mark Gruenwald, Paul Jenkins, Dan Jurgens, David Morell, John Ney Reiber, Rick Remender, Jim Steranko, Roger Stern, J. Michael Straczynski, and Mark Waid. Steve Rogers may have made Captain America the symbol of justice, equality, and liberty that he is, but all of these creators (and more) made Steve Rogers who he is, and my gratitude to them is endless.

Notes on Source Material

1. Throughout this book I quote from many comics, and most of these quotes are of dialogue. Comic book dialogue—usually displayed in word balloons arranged throughout the artwork—has a number of unique conventions, including the frequent use of boldface, italics, ellipses, and dashes. Not all of these translate well in the printed word in a book, especially the boldface and italics that spruce up word balloons in comics but look excessive on a staid page of text. By the same token, ellipses and dashes, which help connect the dialogue across multiple word-balloons, look choppy when reproduced in a continuous series of words on a page. So I had to make choices: I omitted the boldface and italic, but I kept ellipses and boldface where I thought they were important to the dialogue. Furthermore, comics writers use a lot of exclamation points! Often after every phrase!! Like this!!! That’s just the nature of superhero dialogue; it can be corny but it’s part of the charm of the medium. So the exclamation points stay!

2. Since Captain America has appeared in various forms and media over the years, there are many versions of the character out there. To keep things simple, in this book I use only one: Steve Rogers, the Captain America in the mainstream Marvel Comics Universe, who was introduced in 1941, revived in 1964, and is still appearing regularly in comics books such asCaptain America andAvengers to this day. (An appendix at the end of this book details the titles he has appeared in over the years.) Although I don’t draw on them, the versions of Captain America who appear in theAvengers andCaptain America movies, as well as the one seen in animated series such asAvengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes andUltimate Spider-Man, are also very close to what I consider to be the “real” Captain America, based on the character traits reflected in his words and actions (as I’ll describe them in chapters 3 and 4).

 In terms of the comics themselves, when I discuss Captain America, I am discussing only Steve Rogers, not any of the other men who have served under that name in the mainstream Marvel Universe, including his former World War II sidekick Bucky Barnes. Also, I am not discussing the Captain America in the Ultimate Marvel Universe, who is also named Steve Rogers but sometimes exhibits distinctly different and less virtuous character traits. If you’re not a comics fan, none of this means anything to you, so don’t worry about it, but for those of you who are, I want to make clear that I am talking about the man I consider to be the one-and-only Captain America, Steve Rogers of Earth-616. (That number is a whole other story in itself!)

About the Author

Mark D. White is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where he teaches courses in philosophy, economics, and law. In addition to writing dozens of journal articles and book chapters in these areas, he has authored Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character (2011) and The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism (2013) and has edited or co-edited books such as The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essay on Procrastination (2010) and Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (2012). He is also a frequent editor and contributor to the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, having edited or co-edited books on Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Green Lantern, the Avengers, and Watchmen, and contributed to many more. Online, he blogs for Psychology Today, Economics and Ethics, and The Comics Professor, and you can follow him on Twitter as @profmdwhite. More details about his work are available at his website, www.profmdwhite.com.

1

Superhuman Ethics Class

Never let it be said that superheroes don’t take ethics seriously! After his fellow Avengers engaged in some questionable activities during an interstellar conflict in the “Galactic Storm” storyline, Captain America initiated a “Superhuman Ethics” class; later, the young heroes-in-training at Avengers Academy took the same class as part of their regular curriculum (taught by perennial screw-up Hank Pym).1

Even though the situations faced by superheroes may seem extraordinary, often involving aliens, wizards, or time travelers, most of them actually boil down to the same issues each of us face on a regular basis: the right ways to manage our interactions with other people given the various ways we can affect them in good ways and bad. We may not have super-strength or fire energy bolts from our eyes, but we can still use our very human abilities and the tools at our disposal to help or hurt people (including ourselves). Even if we’re of a mind to help people—like the heroes we are—questions nonetheless arise regarding when to offer help, how to do it when we decide to, and who to help if we have to make choices or set priorities. We also have to consider that the help we offer may come at a cost, not just to ourselves but possibly to other people, which also deserves consideration. Compared to the complexities of moral decision-making, all of the flying, punching, and mind-reading might seem like the easier part of a hero’s day! But these ethical dilemmas are the types of problems that we in the real world face all the time in our ordinary lives, and in the comics they lend an important sense of humanity to even the most super of heroes.

Before we get into the various schools of ethics, however, I want to clear up a popular misconception about philosophy professors (including myself). Some people think that when we teach ethics courses, we simply tell our students the difference between right and wrong by instilling our own ethical principles in them. But nothing could be farther from the truth. What we do is help students refine their own ethical beliefs by introducing them to the terminology and concepts that philosophers have used to discuss moral issues for thousands of years. We want to help students understand their values better by challenging them to consider their views in light of alternative ones and helping them to describe their ethical positions more precisely. After reflecting on their own ethical views, students may want to adjust or reject them—perhaps if they find inconsistencies or contradictions in the way they think about moral questions—but whether or not they do is entirely up to them. If both the professor and the students do their jobs, by the end of the term the students will have the tools to think about moral questions more clearly so they can express themselves better, engage in rational discussion about ethical issues with other people, and better appreciate other people’s points of view (without necessarily agreeing with them). And by discussing ethics with our students, we professors often come out with a better idea of our own morals—and sometimes our students challenge to look at moral issues in new ways. Everyone wins!