15
DARK NIGHTS AND THE CALL OF CONSCIENCE
Jason J. Howard
Does Batman Have a Conscience?
Not many things I was interested in as a teenager continue to appeal to me with the same intensity as the Batman. He is the modern Dracula, a wraith, a dark knight, and an avenging spirit, someone you would sooner find in a Greek tragedy than in a comic book. Batman’s method is to terrify his enemies almost to the point of madness, and in terrifying them he forces them to confront who they have become. The central question for me has always been how the Batman, who uses the very fear tactics and subterfuges employed by his enemies, and who himself is damaged goods, can remain the hero without becoming the villain. His quest to purge Gotham of crime and avenge his parents’ death is played out on the moral equivalent of a razor’s edge. (To see just how sharp this edge can be check out Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, from 1986.) What enables Batman to walk this edge, look into the abyss of men’s souls, and continue on? The best way to answer this question is to find out whether Batman has a conscience.
The problem of conscience—where it comes from, how it justifies moral behavior, and whether it even exists—has been debated in moral philosophy for over two thousand years. To appreciate how Batman fits into this debate, however, we need to go beyond the typical line of moral reasoning, which would focus on the nobility of his intentions and his moral authority as a “superhero.” These questions certainly bring out the complexity of Batman’s behavior, but they are of limited use in clarifying the underlying origin and legitimacy of conscience as a form of motivation. Rather we need to see these questions against the larger backdrop of Batman’s struggle to lead an “authentic existence.” Just as most of our moral choices are determined, at least in part, by who we are as individuals, Batman’s choices also flow from his deeper existential struggle to lead an authentic life. Because Batman is very much aware of the complexity of his dual life and the questionable character of his own choices, his life is an existential struggle. How he contends with these issues can not only explain the difference between an authentic and an inauthentic conscience, it can also help account for his continuing appeal as a superhero.
Conscience and Authority
This idea of leading an authentic life, as well as having an authentic conscience, is a philosophical theme that was introduced with the trial and execution of Socrates (470-399 BCE). But it was with twentieth-century existentialism that authenticity was defined in its full glory. Existentialism is a prominent school of philosophy that emphasizes the ambiguity and absurdity of human existence. It focuses its attention on the alienation that underscores much of everyday life, while largely rejecting any straightforward universal explanation of human behavior, whether religious, economic, political, or moral.
It may seem strange to turn to the Batman to gain some clarity on the meaning of authentic conscience. Certainly a man hiding behind a mask and prowling around at night seems inauthentic to say the least! Yet if we understand the term in its existential sense as developed by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), the notion of authenticity is entirely appropriate. To say someone is authentic means at least two things: First, they are honest with themselves about what is and is not in their control, especially when it comes to the inevitability of death. Second, they take full responsibility for the direction of their lives and try to make transparent the meaning and purpose of what they do. Batman manages to live up to both these standards, despite serious emotional, psychological, and physical challenges.
People constantly make appeals to their conscience. Whether it is Martin Luther King Jr. or Osama bin Laden, there is a widespread belief that somewhere deep within everybody, if only we take the time to listen, we will discover an unfailing moral compass. This mainstream view endorses an “authoritarian” or “essentialist” form of conscience, where our most important moral duty is to follow through on our moral convictions. There have been many different philosophical advocates of this view, most notably Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in his Emile or On Education.1 If this innate view of conscience were the one embraced by the Batman, where moral goodness consists of listening to one’s heart, there would be little to be learned from him. But Batman is not Superman, and as an expert on criminal psychology, he is far too experienced to embrace such a simplistic view of moral behavior. That does not mean Batman has no moral stance, but only that this stance is not founded upon some “a priori” (timeless and universal) moral sense. Instead, Batman’s moral stance stems from an appreciation for the complexity of human behavior and the extreme forms such behavior can take.
For Heidegger, as well as for other existentialist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960), life is what you make of it.2 Each of us as individuals defines the meaning of our own existence through the choices we make and the stances we take. We cannot avoid this burden if we want to appreciate the reality of human freedom and its connection to moral integrity. Yet how does this struggle for authenticity relate to the Batman?
The young Bruce Wayne was disillusioned and unsure of himself before he discovered the symbol of the Bat, traveling the world to perfect his detective skills with little more than vengeance on his mind. But if the symbol of the Bat was more than just an invention to cope with the grief over his parents’ death, what did it promise young Bruce that he did not already have? The persona of the Batman completes the identity of Bruce Wayne by instilling in him a new sense of authentic conscience, one that is not clouded by revenge, burdened by the expectations of others, or anchored in any single all-embracing moral vision, but rather speaks to the actualization of freedom and human potential. (I think that’s enough, don’t you?)
Money, Hot Tubs, and Life’s Tough Decisions
One of the central concepts of Heidegger’s philosophy, developed in his masterpiece Being and Time (1927), is the notion of “fallenness.” According to Heidegger, it is inevitable that people take on the expectations and concerns of other people. But when this happens, we often become so wrapped up in these concerns that we lose ourselves in the lifestyle and the views of the majority. This is especially true when it comes to other people’s opinions on moral matters. In this state of “fallenness,” as he calls it, we give up our own authentic potential to be ourselves, because others have decided upon the very meaning of our existence, and so we simply act out our part in life.
For Heidegger, as for most other existentialists, human life is constantly open to reinterpretation. To emphasize the interpretive character of human existence Heidegger employs the German word Dasein when discussing human beings. In using this term, Heidegger draws our attention to the unique way in which human beings are aware of their own “Being” (Sein) as always “there” (da) in some specific place, and engaged in some specific project. It is precisely because Dasein (aka human beings) can be aware of not only practical projects (like building bridges and making money), but also of what it is to exist, that conscience is possible.
Because we are Dasein, the meaning of our being is never settled. However, society functions on the premise that existence is settled, and that the purpose of life is to be a doctor, make lots of money, have a family, or some other host of clichés. As Heidegger explains: “The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the authentic Self—that is, from the Self that has been taken hold of in its own way.”3 You’re probably familiar with the “they-self” from such bits of conventional wisdom as “They say you shouldn’t wear white after Labor Day” and “They say you shouldn’t swim until twenty minutes after eating.” When we follow the “they-self,” we don’t think or act for ourselves. Instead we just accept what the anonymous “they” of society has to say. In many ways the life of the young Bruce Wayne exemplifies the experience of fallenness and the difficulty one can have in affirming one’s own unique identity. (We are all in search of role models, and the death of Bruce’s parents would have made this search especially painful and confusing, though Alfred made for an excellent surrogate.)
But life as just Bruce Wayne would not have been so bad, right? Blessed with an ungodly fortune and good looks, he could have made a name for himself in countless ways. And the irony is that if his sole purpose in life was to do something with his life that his parents would recognize as noble, he would have been better off as just Bruce Wayne, running Wayne Enterprises full-time as a charity organization.4 But regardless of how much good Bruce Wayne could have done, his life would not have been free, because the choice to run Wayne Enterprises would not have been his own authentic choice. Moreover, his parents’ death would have become just one more statistic, and Bruce just one more anonymous CEO. Rather than resign himself to the world of the “they” and their expectations, Bruce Wayne decided to struggle against that world to accommodate the pangs of his own conscience. In doing so, Bruce confronted not only the meaning of his own existence, but also the deeper meaning of his parents’ death.
Seeing Things Clearly with Better Bat-Vision
The conventional wisdom among Batman fans is that the tragic death of his parents transformed Bruce Wayne into the Batman. For Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, all meaningful transformations and changes in people’s lives come from the realization that we interpret existence. The meaning of life and death is never settled and finished, like some equation that can simply be memorized and parroted. In Batman’s case, although there is little doubt that the murder of his parents was the catalyst for change, it is the act of interpreting the meaning of their deaths that initiated the existential transformation from Bruce Wayne into the Batman. Following Heidegger’s insight on this score, we can say that it is through “wanting to have a conscience” that any substantial insight into the meaning of existence is gained.5 And it is the unique combination of wanting to have a conscience while facing up to the full meaning of his parents’ death that initiated his metamorphosis from a bloodthirsty young man to a caped crusader.
But what does it mean to want to have a conscience? According to Heidegger, much of what passes for human behavior is motivated by self-deception, both intentional and unintentional. People are constantly fleeing from their own possibilities, their past, and the inevitability of their own death, toward what is familiar and comforting. This state of fleeing is the defining characteristic of fallenness. We want existence to be something settled, to know we had no real choice in our failures or misfortunes, and that life has a clear-cut purpose we just need to find. As a result, much of social life ends up being an elaborate diversion to avoid contemplating the reality of our own mortality. As Heidegger sees it, we cannot authentically desire to have a conscience as long as we buy into a world in which everything in life is settled and death is some vague and distant event, since the only purpose that conscience can have under these conditions is censoring our individuality.
The common view of conscience that is epitomized by the anger and guilt of young Bruce Wayne is not the “authentic” conscience, but an internalization of familiar reactions and expectations. This internalization, although a common expression of conscience, ends up dictating how we should act and feel, making any personal resolve or insight we may have into the meaning of existence redundant. Appreciating the distinction between these two ways of experiencing conscience—authentic and inauthentic—can be difficult. On the one hand, we have the authentic sense of conscience that affirms individuality, while on the other, we have the inauthentic sense of conscience that denies any role for personal insight and ingenuity. What makes the Batman such an intriguing character is that despite being a superhero, he demonstrates the distinction between these two senses of conscience in a very instructive way.
Batman: Year One (1987) makes it quite clear that despite his many years of training, Bruce Wayne was largely a failure as a crime fighter without the persona of the Batman to guide him. But the interesting question here is: why? It’s not as if his training substantially improved once he put on the costume, or that his identity could be sufficiently hidden only through cape and cowl. As he states himself, commenting on his first few months as a crime fighter: “I have the means, the skill—but not the method . . . no. That’s not true. I have hundreds of methods. But something’s missing. Something isn’t right. I have to wait.” Certainly Bruce is not waiting for someone or something in the usual sense, nor is he expecting something to happen, so what exactly is he waiting for?
As Heidegger explains, “Conscience summons Dasein’s Self from its lostness in the ‘they.’ ”6 This “summons” is not expressed in words, or moral commands—if so, conscience would just be another incentive to live up to other people’s expectations. On the contrary, conscience “individuates” people by pulling them away from the world of others by making them confront their own unique possibilities. The crucial point here is that the experience of authentic conscience is one of intense individuation, wherein we realize that at the end of the day no one can share the event of our death, nor prevent it. Just as we must own up to the inevitability of our own death, so we must take direct responsibility for the “meaning” of our own lives.
On that fateful night when a lone bat flew through the window of Wayne Manor, answering Bruce Wayne’s search for a new identity, he had what Heidegger calls a “moment of vision.” This moment of vision is distinctive in that it is not the expression of some religious command, or a simple moral ideal. Neither is it the answer to all of life’s problems. Rather, it is in this moment of vision that we experience the full meaning of conscience, which “calls us forth into a situation” by disclosing the deepest riddle of our own Being, revealing that who we are is perpetually an “issue” for each one of us.7
Through appropriating the symbol of the Bat “for himself” Bruce discloses his own anxiety and stands up to his own unique calling. As suggested in Legends of the Dark Knight #1 (November 1989), the Bat is recognized as Bruce Wayne’s totem, yet we miss the full significance of this totem if we look to give it some specific content or message. This would be to reduce Bruce Wayne’s discovery to that of the “public conscience.” Recognizing the Bat as Bruce Wayne’s totem discloses his authentic conscience in a moment of vision, in which Bruce confronts the power of possibility. Consider the following description from “The Man Who Falls,” which comments on Bruce’s realization of the Bat as his elemental symbol: “He knew. In that single instant, he understood what his direction had been all those years, what was possible to him—what he had to be. For a moment, he quietly savored a new emotion. For a moment he was happy.”8
Feeling Guilty (or “How to Battle the Blues”)
Batman’s existence is a continual attempt to locate and reaffirm the meaning of his own rebellion. Rather than deny the madness of his parents’ death and his own futile efforts to thwart crime in Gotham, Batman affirms the absurdity of his predicament as his own unique possibility. For when viewed in terms of overall success, Batman’s career as a crime fighter is surely questionable. Crime in Gotham never really decreases, and every major villain he puts away just ends up escaping again. Moreover, as the early issues of the Legends of the Dark Knight show, Batman’s exploits bring out copycat “vigilantes” who cause havoc for the general public.9 Beyond that, Batman’s very presence in Gotham acts as a beacon for every would-be lunatic in the area. The only explicit moral codes that Batman follows are his refusal to spill the blood of an innocent and his vow to never intentionally take another’s life, yet even these stances have been compromised on rare occasions. Yet if it is true that Batman’s success as a crime fighter is questionable given the collateral damage his very presence creates, what kind of guidance or wisdom is gained from having an authentic conscience?
Batman’s existence is his liberation and his torture, and it is the way he affirms both while acknowledging the larger futility of his quest that keeps him honest and authentic. Unlike many other heroes, Batman has no illusions about the questionable character of what he is doing.10 In early issues of Legends of the Dark Knight he repeatedly considers retiring the cape. What’s more, in The Dark Knight Returns, it is the summons of his truest possibility, the Batman, that after ten years of retirement calls him back from his fallen state of alcoholism. As Heidegger clarifies, the summons of authentic conscience “constitutes the loyalty of existence to its own Self.”11 Yet this true self is not some timeless person or voice deep within us, which is the common view of conscience, but the resolute desire to distinguish what is trivial and accidental in life from what is inevitable and truly one’s own. This struggle to unearth our deepest commitments and motivations can be seen in the way Bruce Wayne comes to terms with the fact of his parents’ death.
His transformation into the Batman occurs when Bruce confronts his guilty conscience over his parents’ death by grasping the meaning of his guilt in a different way, which is what Heidegger claims distinguishes the “moment of vision” as a form of awakening. Bruce’s personal guilt, which is experienced as suffocating and confusing, is disclosed at a more basic level of existence as the guilt of Being. Here the issue is not primarily one of “indebtedness” or “duty,” but the awareness of one’s own “nullity” or negativity.12 This means that one owns up to the fragility that limits life while also recognizing that this very fragility holds the power to transform life. The guilt shifts from one of simple blame to the realization that everyone is guilty to the extent we all must take a stand on who we are and how we should live.
In choosing to free himself from the typical response to his tragedy, that of blind rage and vengeance, Bruce interprets the event of his parents’ murder as a calling to rebel against a life of victimization, complacency, and cynicism. In so doing Bruce redeems a senseless tragedy by confronting the senselessness of violence itself. With this the guilt that originally condemned him is experienced as a summons to be himself, and so Batman becomes the authentic conscience of Bruce Wayne. Taking on the persona of the Dark Knight enables Bruce to confront the absurdity of his parents’ death by disclosing another way of experiencing guilt, through recognition of one’s own mortality. It is in the acceptance of this and what it means for the legitimacy of his choices that gives Batman the courage to see the inevitability of his own death as a challenge “to be.”
Dark Nights and the Call of Authentic Conscience
Batman is ready to die. He has come to terms with the inevitability of death, yet this alone does not make him authentic; many people are ready to die for a cause. So what can Batman, a “mere” comic book character, teach us about being authentic? One of the crucial points to keep in mind is that Batman’s choice to risk his freedom on an impossible cause is not an escape from the reality of the world, but an affirmation of it. Batman does not seek to convert people to his cause, nor does he begrudge those who choose to fight crime in other, more traditional ways. Likewise, there is no completion to his quest, no proper ending, and no salvation, but only a continual reappraisal of his own choices. In accepting his choices in life as his own unique fate, Batman reveals himself as someone who has accepted the world for what it is, with all its absurdity and sorrow, while nonetheless remaining tolerant and compassionate toward everyone except those whose actions end in senseless violence.13
Batman does not stand against this onslaught of senseless violence on the basis of an explicit moral code or religious creed, but rather from the resolute acknowledgment of his own freedom to accept death, which is the authentic conscience. It is this freedom to accept life in all its perplexing ambiguity, and to decide for himself how to deal with it, that makes Batman who he is, not his costume. Batman lives in his decision “to be,” acknowledging the reality of his own anxiety while anticipating the nothingness that haunts each of us:
Anticipation allows Dasein to understand that that potentiality-for-being in which its ownmost Being is an issue, must be taken over by Dasein alone. . . . Dasein can be authentically itself only if it makes this possible for itself of its own accord. . . . When, by anticipation, one becomes free for one’s own death, one is liberated from one’s lostness in those possibilities which may accidentally thrust themselves upon one; and one is liberated in such a way that for the first time one can choose among the factical possibilities lying ahead.14
This “freedom towards death,” as Heidegger calls it, is the distinguishing feature of the authentic conscience. To say someone is free to anticipate their own death does not imply a death wish, nor is it some morbid fixation on “the end.” It is the penetrating realization that the point of existence is something each of us must come to grips with as individuals by continually reaffirming the meaning of our own mortality. It is this attitude of authenticity that ensures that our lives are as transparent as possible in terms of who we are, freeing us from the “illusions of the ‘they’” and their obsession with familiarity, tranquility, and distraction.15 This is not easy. It requires that we admit our own vulnerability, along with rejecting any kind of fatalistic determinism or escapism, accepting that “to be” is to be anxious about who we are.
If we assume people are simply “born” with a conscience, rather than struggling to have one, as Heidegger explains, then there is no room for people to exercise their freedom to authentically make their own decisions in life. This does not mean that having an authentic conscience entails abandoning morality. On the contrary, it prevents morality from becoming another kind of conformism where the exercise of free and spontaneous moral judgment is exchanged for blind commitment and intolerance.
Of course, Batman is not the only example of an authentic conscience, but he is certainly an instructive one. Moreover, what makes him so instructive is the existential complexity of his identity, and not simply the fact that he is a superhero. It is his willingness to come to grips with his past, his rejection of all facile excuses, and his passion to deal with reality on its own terms that distinguish Batman from the moral fanatic, and that make his type of heroism so significant. As Batman himself puts it, “You play the hand you’re dealt. . . . What I am, I am of my own choice. I don’t know if I’m happy, but I’m content.”16
Conclusions, Capes, and Cowls
The choice to lead an authentic life brings with it some dark nights, yet this is the price we have to pay to lead a life without delusion. Batman’s acceptance of this sustains his heroism. He relies on his own will to have an authentic conscience, not some superhuman power. Consequently, the purpose of his cape and cowl is not to hide who he is. Rather, it stands as testament to the choices he has made and the man he has become. Although we cannot literally emulate the Batman and the risks he takes—after all, he is a comic book hero—his internal battles are by no means alien to most of us. He is a person struggling to affirm the weight of his own choices and lead an authentic existence. In a world where mindless conformism is rampant, ignorance is the order of the day, and fear is our greatest taskmaster, Batman’s call to conscience is an example of how our willingness to confront the meaning of our own existence can also be the path to personal liberation.17
NOTES
1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762), Emile or On Education, trans. Alan Bloom (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1991). Other notable examples are St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Bishop Butler (1692-1752).
2 A good introduction to Sartre is Existentialism Is a Humanism (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2007), while a good introduction to Camus is The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage, 1991).
3 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 167.
4 See the essay by Mahesh Ananth and Ben Dixon in chapter 8 of this book for the ethics of young Bruce’s decision to become the Batman.
5 Heidegger, Being and Time, 342.
6 Ibid., 319.
7 Ibid., 347.
8 “The Man Who Falls,” from Secret Origins (1989 trade paperback), reprinted in Batman Begins: The Movie and Other Tales of the Dark Knight (2005).
9 For instance, see “Prey” (Legends of the Dark Knight #11-15, 1990) and “Faith” (#21-23, 1991).
10 Consider Batman’s testimony before the government subcommittee on the issue of superheroes: “Sure we’re criminals . . . we’ve always been criminals. We have to be criminals” (The Dark Knight Returns).
11 Heidegger, Being and Time, 443.
12 Ibid., 332.
13 For examples of this compassion, consider his complex relationships with Two-Face and Catwoman.
14 Heidegger, Being and Time, 308.
15 Ibid., 311.
16 Legends of the Dark Knight #23, 26 (October, 1991).
17 My thanks to Rolf Samuels and Ken Lee for looking over earlier versions of this paper.