16
BATMAN’S CONFRONTATION WITH DEATH, ANGST, AND FREEDOM
David M. Hart
A Determined Batman?
In the pantheon of comic book superheroes, few characters are more focused and determined than Batman. Superman makes time for a relationship with Lois Lane, Spider-Man worries about Aunt May and his job at the Daily Bugle, and the Fantastic Four are constantly preoccupied by their family squabbles. But Batman seems to devote every moment of his life to his personal war on crime, an endeavor that he takes to be his very reason for being. Even on the few occasions when he makes choices that might seem to give him something resembling a “normal” social life, like attending a Wayne Enterprises fund-raiser, invariably with a beautiful woman as his date, Batman always seems to justify those actions in terms of his mission. Being seen with a supermodel, for instance, helps keep up his playboy reputation and wards off suspicion that Bruce Wayne might be Batman. And going to a public event as Bruce Wayne gives him the chance to gather inside information and hear rumors. Relating every action back to his own personal war gives Batman’s life project a cohesive unity; everything he does is done to serve a single, greater purpose.
But the tricky thing about a character who is so deeply committed to one goal is that “excessive” passion can sometimes seem a little crazy. Indeed, since the mid-1980s, many writers have opted to push Batman’s single-minded dedication to such an extreme that the character often comes off as borderline psychopathic, driven not by an altruistic intention to create a better world, but rather by an irresistible compulsion induced by childhood trauma. In recent years, fans seem to have tired of this interpretation, and DC Comics has responded by focusing on a “kinder, gentler” version of the character. The new consensus among creators and fans seems to be that making Batman’s vigilantism no more than the simple product of a damaged psyche might have compromised the character’s heroism. The “grim and gritty” version of Batman appeared to be endlessly seeking vengeance rather than justice—and, at least in our current culture, being motivated by vengeance doesn’t seem all that superheroic.
The editorial decision to exorcise some of Batman’s psychological demons—literally, in 52 #30 (November 29, 2006)—and return him to a more traditionally heroic characterization raises some important philosophical questions concerning the problem of human freedom. For example, does Batman do what he does because he has chosen a path that he believes to be right, or does he do it because he feels like he simply can’t do anything else? Putting this question in philosophical terms, we might ask whether Batman’s behavior is completely determined by his past, or if there is a sense in which we can say that his choices are made freely. Furthermore, if his actions aren’t wholly determined by his past, can we explain Batman’s dedication to his mission in any way other than by a mechanistic law of psychological cause and effect, in which his childhood trauma leads inevitably to a need to punish bad guys? And can such an alternate explanation allow us to retain the notion of self-determination that seems to be tied to a hero’s nobility?
This chapter will offer some possible answers to these questions using the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889- 1976), and along the way, we’ll explore a classic philosophical problem known as the “free will versus determinism debate.” By examining Batman’s motivations and actions through one of the major figures in recent philosophy, we’ll shed a little light on the way the Dark Knight made his choice of a life (if, indeed, he even had a choice).
Alfred and Appearance
Heidegger sets himself apart from his predecessors by overcoming the philosophical distinction between appearances and that which is said to “truly” exist. This distinction, which had dominated philosophical discourse since its earliest beginnings, is usually expressed in more recent philosophy in terms of a “subject-object dualism.” In everyday life, we use these categories when we say that an opinion is “merely subjective,” in contrast to the presumed objectivity of empirical science.
At the heart of this distinction is a conception of the human being as an autonomous subject, who exists in a sort of “inner world” of the mind, which is held to be completely separate from the external world of objects. The problem with this position is that drawing a firm line between the inner world of that which appears to the subject, and the world that objectively exists outside of us, results in a radical disconnection. It becomes seemingly impossible to establish that the appearances in our minds actually correspond to anything outside ourselves in the “objective” world. If we follow this line of reasoning through, it then seems to be possible (in theory) that the way the world appears to us could be no more real than the hallucinations Batman has when he’s hit with the Scarecrow’s fear gas!
In the absolutely radical response to the subject/object, inner/outer world problem that is developed in his major book Being and Time, Heidegger’s fundamental claim is that there simply is no meaningful inner/outer world distinction for human existence.1 On the contrary, Heidegger argues that human existence (to which he gives the technical name Dasein, German for “existence” or, more literally, “being there”) is fundamentally always already “out there,” in the world, among things, and outside of itself.
How can he make such a claim? Obviously, from a scientific perspective, we exist in and through our bodies; if Killer Croc takes a massive chomp out of our brains, we can no longer exist. But Heidegger’s response to that line of reasoning would be that a medical approach is guided by the same technical interpretation of being that led philosophers to the subject-object distinction. While it may be valid and good for its own purposes (for medical science or for the design of Croc-resistant Bat-cowls), thinking of the brain as an inner world in opposition to an external world doesn’t really get at the core of what it is like to be human. Instead, Heidegger’s analysis of human existence claims that our particular kind of being is fundamentally “in the world,” not simply in the sense of being within an area of space, but also in the sense of being always involved with or engaged in a world.
To clarify Heidegger’s claim that human existence is always “being-in-the-world” and thus always outside of itself, let’s consider Alfred’s way of being. As someone who has been a butler for many years, Alfred has a particular kind of existence, and accordingly, his world exists in a very particular way. When he glances around a room in Wayne Manor, Alfred doesn’t just see an “objective” collection of matter, mere atoms taking various forms. Rather, he sees the grandfather clock that needs to be dusted, the dust cloth he’ll use on the grandfather clock, the silver tray he uses to carry tea to Master Bruce, and so on. That is, he sees the world in terms that are not scientifically objective but are instead specific to his own existence. Moreover, according to Heidegger’s argument, insofar as these things “really are” anything, they really are just as Alfred understands them according to his own interpretive horizon. If we ask him, “What is a silver tray?” an entirely appropriate response would be, “A device used to carry Master Bruce’s tea.” For Heidegger, the scientific perspective, according to which a silver tray might be defined as “a polished silver instrument of such and such dimensions,” is only one possible interpretive horizon among many; while it is useful in terms of its own goals, it is still no more absolutely valid than Alfred’s perspective (or anyone else’s).
The major conclusion we can draw from this position is that for Heidegger, the most basic answer to the question of the meaning of being is that being is appearing. Particular beings in the world really are what they show themselves to be in appearances, so that Alfred’s silver tray can exist as both an instrument for transporting tea and as an object of scientific study, depending on one’s interpretive horizon; neither interpretation is more absolutely true than the other. And, to bring us back to the subject-object problem, if being is appearance, this also means that there simply is no purely “objective” world for us to be separated from. Rather than an inner world of the subject that might be cut off from the external world, Heidegger argues that we are fundamentally always out in the world, engaged with things as they show themselves (which is to say, exist) through our interpretive horizons; humans exist as beings who are always concerned with (and thus related to) things, and things exist in and through their appearances.
However, thinking further about Alfred’s existence leads us to what Heidegger argues is an even more fundamental way in which human existence is always outside of itself. We said that things show themselves to Alfred in terms of his own interpretive horizon, but what determines this interpretive horizon? In Alfred’s case, the answer lies in his being a butler. Batman doesn’t see the dust on the grandfather clock as something he needs to worry about; he probably doesn’t notice it at all. But because Alfred has chosen to live his life as a butler, dust is an issue for him; it’s something he has to concern himself with. In Heidegger’s terminology, being a butler is a project for Alfred, a way of living that determines not only how the world at hand appears to him, but also how he relates to his own future. Because Alfred has taken up this project, the clock is something that ought to be dusted immediately, dinner is something that should be prepared by the time Master Bruce comes home, and living as Batman’s faithful assistant is what he plans to do for the rest of his life.
Thrown into Our Worlds
Like all of us, Alfred is always related to his own future in terms of the life he has chosen for himself, the projects he has taken on. Furthermore, this means he’s also always related to his own past. At some point in his life, Alfred made a choice between the possibilities available to him and decided to become a butler. This is why Heidegger characterizes human existence as a “thrown-project.” Finding ourselves always already “thrown” into a world, various concrete possibilities have always already presented themselves to us. For example, Alfred, as a young man, might have had the opportunity to become a professional actor or a career man in the British military. Becoming a butler was a choice he made from among the possibilities that he found available to him as a person thrown into that particular situation. Having made his choice of a life, he now relates to his own future in a way that is appropriate to (and determined by) that choice. It is in this sense that Heidegger makes the claim that human existence is temporally ecstatic (“ecstatic” being derived from a Greek term meaning “standing out”). Humans live as always outside of ourselves in time, projected toward the future so that we’re always, in a sense, ahead of ourselves through the plans we make and, at the same time, thrown into our present from out of a particular past.
More important for our purpose, the temporally ecstatic way in which humans exist means for Heidegger that we fundamentally are our own possibilities. The possibilities we’ve chosen in the past determine the concrete possibilities that are available to us in the present and the way they appear to us, while our being projected into the future determines how we’ll relate to those present possibilities. To continue our example, having at one time chosen to be a butler, Alfred now finds himself having the possibilities of either dusting the clock or starting dinner early. Because he wants to continue effectively serving Batman well into the future, Alfred will choose whichever of these possibilities he thinks will best bring about that future for himself.
Alternatively, we can imagine an Elseworlds story in which Alfred gets sick of faithful servitude and decides that he wants to spend the rest of his life in peace and quiet without having to worry about whether his employer is going to survive another night of crime fighting. In this case, the decision of whether to dust or cook first would cease to have any importance to Alfred (“Batman can dust his own clocks, for all I care!”), and other possibilities would present themselves instead (such as whether or not to move to a less dangerous city). Ultimately, Heidegger’s point is that what and where a person is at any given instant is far less important to understanding human existence than that person’s past and their plans for the future. A scientific study of Alfred can tell us that he’s balding and has a mustache, but we can never understand who he really is without knowing the choices he’s made for himself and the way he wants things to be tomorrow, next month, and ten years from now. For Heidegger, understanding those things demands an understanding of one’s existence as the various possibilities that one has chosen and the possibilities that emerge from a projected future.
Death and the Dark Knight
So what is Heidegger’s connection to Batman’s mission? In a word: death. As even the most casual Bat-fan knows, Batman’s experiences with death play a major role in making him who he is. Every retelling of Batman’s origin includes the scene in which a very young Bruce Wayne witnesses the tragic murder of his parents, and we readers are to understand that this traumatic experience set him on the path to becoming Batman. But the comics (and films) don’t tell us exactly how this experience shapes the way Batman chooses to lead his life. If we discard the notion of Batman as compulsively driven and obsessed with vengeance (as the editors at DC have promised to do), then what exactly is the impact on Bruce Wayne of witnessing his parents’ murders? And just how does this experience lead him to take up his mission?
This is where Heidegger’s analysis of human existence comes in. For Heidegger, human existence fundamentally consists of its own possibilities, and, of course, death would be the limit of those possibilities. But for Heidegger, the significance of death is not that it is a literal end to one’s life, like a sort of end point on a line, but rather that it makes human beings aware of the fact that their own lives, their own possibilities, have a limit. That is, although we exist in a temporally ecstatic way, we are also temporally finite (limited), and what’s more, we know it. As Heidegger would say, “Initially and for the most part,” humans don’t think about our own deaths; we find ways to cover over death and avoid it. We busy ourselves with our projects, with our entanglements in the things at hand, and generally think of death as something that happens to other people. Admitting to ourselves that “people die” is easy enough, but there’s something unnerving about thinking “I will die.” Heidegger terms the uncomfortable feeling of authentically confronting the certain possibility of one’s own death Angst, and although we fans are quite familiar with “angsty” superhero comics, Heidegger has a very specific meaning for this word.
In the experience of Angst, Heidegger argues that death appears as what it really is: the possibility of my own impossibility. Once I die, I will no longer have my possibilities. After death, all my choices will have been made already, and the story of who I am will be complete. This is why Heidegger claims that the authentic confrontation with death in Angst individuates human existence. When I confront my own death, I see that it is something that no one else can do for me, something I will have to face myself. This in turn casts my whole life in a new light. Recognizing my death as the unavoidable end to my own life shows me that my existence is mine and mine alone. The completed story of my life will be the result of the possibilities I chose for myself from out of the situation into which I was thrown at birth. I alone will have been responsible for whoever I was. Beyond that, in Angst, the meanings of all the ordinary things of the world slip away, such that things in the world are no longer relevant at all. If we imagine Alfred in Angst, the silver tray and grandfather clock would no longer be things of concern to him. In the authentic relation to his own death, such things would be, quite simply, nothing.
Why should this be the case? Because confronting my own death puts all of my projects in question. Things show themselves to us in terms of their relevance to our projects, but in the consideration of one’s life as a whole that Angst brings about, our projects themselves appear to us as what they really are: possibilities we have chosen for ourselves. In our average, everyday way of existing, people don’t often deeply question the choices they have made for their lives. Alfred doesn’t lie in bed every morning wondering if he has any real reason to get up because most of the time, he simply thinks of himself as being a butler, and butlers get up in the morning to do their jobs. However, in Angst, being a butler would appear as a choice Alfred has made for himself, and in showing itself as a possibility, being a butler would appear as something changeable. In other words, it’s not written in stone that Alfred has to be a butler for the rest of his life; he could choose otherwise and begin a wholly different life. In short, Angst lets the world as it is fall away, bringing one’s projects into question by showing them as possibilities, and allowing one the freedom to choose a life (and thus a world) for oneself.
I Shall Become a Bat
Mindful of his own mortality, Batman is able to maintain a single-minded determination about his mission, seeing his life and his world exclusively in terms of the singular project he’s chosen for himself. Instead of being driven by guilt over his parents’ death (an event he really had no control over) or by a violent need to exact vengeance for that traumatic loss from criminals who had nothing to do with it, perhaps the real impact of that fateful night was instilling in young Bruce Wayne an authentic understanding of his own life as finite and limited. If Heidegger’s claims about our relation to death are right, then the consideration of his own death in Angst would have allowed Bruce to decide on a life for himself without any regard for the expectations of so-called normal society. Free to organize his entire existence around a mission of his own choosing, and limited only by the possibilities into which he finds himself thrown (which aren’t very limiting when you’re an heir to billions), an authentic recognition of his own inevitable death could have allowed Bruce Wayne to become Batman purely out of a sense of responsibility for his own existence.
To some extent, this Heideggerian interpretation of Batman is supported by the comics. The end of the first chapter of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One (1987) beautifully illustrates the idea of Angst as giving one the freedom to choose a life. Having completed his years of training abroad, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham. Although he wants to somehow take a stand against the criminals and corruption in his city, he has yet to find the right means to accomplish his goal. After a botched attempt to help out an underage prostitute, Bruce sits alone in the dark, bleeding profusely, having an imaginary dialogue with his father. Although he realizes that his wounds are severe enough that he could die, he doesn’t seem very concerned about them. Rather, he is concerned with the possibility that he may never find a way to do what he feels he should. He thinks to himself, “If I ring the bell, Alfred will come. He can stop the bleeding in time,” but having lost patience with waiting for the right solution to appear to him, Bruce would rather die now than continue living a life that doesn’t fulfill the expectations he has for himself.
Physically confronted with his own death and remembering the night his parents died, Bruce recounts all the possibilities he could take advantage of, if only he had a project to organize them: “I have wealth. The family manor rests above a huge cave that will be the perfect headquarters . . . even a butler with training in combat medicine.” Yet none of that matters without a concrete project to take make use of it; as Bruce says, it’s been eighteen years “since all sense,” all meaning, left his life, and he’s become absolutely desperate for a project that will once again give his world significance. Then, without warning, a bat crashes through the window, and everything falls into place. The possibility of a project that will give meaning to his life suddenly shows itself, making itself available for him to choose. At the moment when Bruce says to himself, “I shall become a bat,” the whole of his new existence, his new world, comes into view, and from that point on, his every action will be determined from out of this one, authentic choice of a life.
Determinism and the Dark Knight
If we return now to the debate between free will and determinism in light of this example, it should be easy enough to see why neither of these categories can sufficiently encompass Heidegger’s analysis of human freedom. In the first place, the free will-determinism distinction is grounded in the same subject-object dualism that Heidegger is so intent on critiquing and overcoming. Theories of free will rely on a notion of the human subject as radically disconnected from the “external” world, so that one’s choices may be determined by nothing outside of oneself.2
On the other hand, psychological and scientific understandings of determinism interpret human existence in the same terms we apply to objects that can be present at hand, such that human choices are in no way exempt from the regime of cause and effect. As nothing more than moments in a great chain of causation, determinism treats human choices as a mere illusion of self-determination. As we have seen, Heidegger’s thinking deeply complicates this simple, binary division between human existence and the world by reinterpreting the concept of “world” itself. When Bruce authentically confronts his own finitude in Angst, the world that had existed for him drifts away, leaving his choices radically undetermined.
Simultaneously, though, his choices are limited by the concrete possibilities that are available to him and that now appear to him as pure possibilities. Had the bat never crashed through the window, Bruce might never have had the idea to become Batman, yet at the same time, neither that event nor the death of his parents forces him to carry out his mission in the way that he does. Indeed, the experience of Angst lets all of his possibilities show themselves as they are. This means that the possibility of taking on responsibility for his own life appears right alongside the possibilities that would allow him to run away from that responsibility. The experience of death in Angst could always end with a flight from one’s own finitude and the responsibility that it entails. Bruce could easily have buried his experience of Angst by living the hedonistic life expected of a billionaire playboy. And perhaps it is just this choice, this refusal to flee from himself, that makes Batman such a great hero. When he could have taken the easy way out and when nothing forced him to do otherwise, Bruce Wayne authentically took up the choice of his life as a whole. He chose to become Batman when nothing demanded that he must.
NOTES
1 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); also see the articles in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993).
2 See, for example, the articles in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).