Frankenstein and the Nature of Morality

            The novel Frankenstein is a story of ethical dilemmas.  The most obvious one, of course, is that of creating life.  The novel explores the potential consequences of humans using technology to create a living creature from scratch.  However, there are other, equally profound ethical issues presented by the book.  One of these is humans’ treatment of and moral obligations to other living creatures, as well as to each other and ourselves.  This is exemplified by Victor Frankenstein’s choices with how to treat his creation, a monstrous human-like living being.  The monster may seem like an evil, heartless brute at times due to the havoc he wreaks and murders he commits, however his violence is in actuality a result of his reeling against the immense pain and isolation he feels for being an outcast from society because of who he is.  Victor at first abandons the monster when he sees the hideousness of what he has created, initiating these feelings in the monster.  Later on in the story, Victor is confronted with the consequences of his creating and rejecting the monster, and must decide how to deal with them and whether to even help him, particularly when the monster demands that he make a new, female creature for him to have as a companion (Shelley).  Victor’s challenges and decisions with how to treat the monster raise ethical questions of whether or not he has some type of moral obligation to help the creature. And these ultimately raise broader questions of what it means to act morally in the first place.

            There are two basic arguments for the nature of Victor’s obligation to the monster. First, that he has an obligation to him, and it would be ethically right for him to help the monster in some way. And second, He has no obligation to the monster, and there is no ethical reason for him to help the creature.  The answer could be argued on a variety of different grounds.  For example, there may be a special moral responsibility one has to something living that one creates.  Or it could be argued that the monster either is or is not intelligent and capable enough to care for himself without having someone responsible for his wellbeing. 

            These are all important things to consider, however they are ultimately irrelevant to the question of whether Victor has an obligation to the monster.  This is because, when we talk about moral obligations, there is no point at which someone does not have an obligation to another being.  As long as there is a potential for one being to have any type of effect on another being’s experience, they have a moral obligation to them; that is an obligation to simply act morally towards that other being.  Victor has the obligation to act in a moral fashion towards the monster, whatever that may specifically mean.

            If it is true that every living being has a moral obligation to every other living being, then there are two questions that naturally arise and should be answered about this concept. First, there is the question of what it means to be a “living being”.  There are lots of forms of life and things that have been considered “alive”; however in the realm of ethics, the only life that really matters is anything that has the ability to experience positive and/or negative feelings, and whose experience may be altered by the actions of particular living beings.  This can, of course, never be proven in a creature, however there are forms of life that are generally assumed to have or not have this quality. For example, humans and other animals are typically assumed to have this, while plants are not.  Although it is never stated exactly how Victor’s monster is created or what he is made from, the book seems to want us to assume that he is every bit the same as a human in this respect.

            The second question is what exactly it means to act morally.  Many philosophies have defined moral behavior by the nature of the intentions of the person committing the actions.  Here, a person may have good intentions that seek to do “good” unto others, or bad intentions that seek to do “bad” unto others (Driver).  This is problematic, however, because there is no such thing as a truly “bad” intention.  It is in the inherent nature of living beings to always want the most moral outcome to occur in any situation.  It makes no sense for anybody to wish an undesired outcome on themselves, and likewise a living being will always wish the most desired outcome on those around them.  It may not always seem like this, however this is simply because a person’s concept of what is morally right is very often misguided.  For example, a person may unjustly attempt to cause harm to another person, but this is simply because they feel morally justified in their actions and do not fully understand the suffering they are causing in the other person.  This definition also doesn’t address what “good” and “bad” really mean.

            The best definition of moral actions, and therefore our obligation to living beings has been described in the philosophy of utilitarianism, one of the most important ethical concepts to be used by thinkers throughout history.  The general idea of utilitarianism is that the most “moral” or “good” action is the one that produces the greatest positive effect among all parties involved (Driver).  I would describe it specifically as the action that creates the greatest overall positive effect among the experiences of all living beings that have the potential to be affected by an action.  What this means is that our obligation to other living beings is to act the most morally in this sense as possible. 

            Even with this general rule, it can still be very difficult to determine what the best action to take is, and there is still much room for ethical debate on many issues.  Victor struggles greatly with determining what action will have the best effect among everyone around him, but ultimately he makes many rational decisions.  For example, when the monster demands he make him a female companion, he eventually decides that it’s not a good idea.  Though he does have an obligation to help the monster in some way, he know that creating another monster could be extremely dangerous to himself and other people, possibly even resulting in the breeding of even more monsters.  By considering the overall effect on everyone involved, he is able to make a rational moral decision (even though this eventually leads to the monster murdering several others out of rage) (Shelley). 

            Like Victor, our task is to rationally weigh out the potential positive and negative effects of our actions on other living beings, as well as ourselves, in order to determine what is morally best.  Luckily, as inherently moral beings, this is what our minds will always attempt to do anyway, and it seems indicative that we are getting better at this as a species as we increase in intelligence and overall interconnectedness with one another. 

Works Cited

Driver, Julia. "The History of Utilitarianism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. N.p., 2014. Web. Nov. 2015.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones, 1818. The Project Gutenberg. Web. 2015.

Creativity in A Non-Creative Universe

            What is “creativity”?  This word is passed back and forth often in our culture, usually referring to a quality a person has in which they act in original and interesting ways.  This form is both highly valued as a positive attribute someone can have, and yet often undervalued, especially when being creative could lead to financial or social risks.  The obvious realm that this concept is used in is when discussing art.  A child may be seen as creative if they create a unique drawing or painting, for example, or a filmmaker or musician may appear creative if the works they produce are somehow unique from other artists in their field.  But this term can also be applied to people of other lines of work, such as scientists or engineers who are innovative in their methods and the things they create. 

            But what is “creativity” really? When a musician writes a song, where does that uniqueness in his or her material actually arise from?  Are they really producing anything totally new or are they simply borrowing elements from music they’ve heard in the past and rearranging them in new ways?  Or as singer-songwriter Danny Dolinger bluntly put it, “any songwriter who doesn’t admit to being a thief is also a liar” (Auxier 118).  This certainly seems true when listening to much of the music that is popular today, which often displays a mix of influences from a variety of genres from the past half century.  Music serves as a good example to pose this question, but the same thing can be asked of any type of thing created by people. 

            To answer these questions it is helpful to expand our definition of “creativity”.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary gives as broad a definition as you’ll ever need: “the ability to make new things or think of new ideas” (Merriam-Webster).  If we think of creativity as simply being able to “make new things”, or, in other words, the ability to create, we can really think of any action or event in the universe as having creativity.  Because every action always creates something, right?  Well, again the question comes up, and this time in a broader sense – is there such thing as actual “creation”?  Does anything truly new in the universe ever actually arise, or are things simply rearranged into different combinations?  This problem has been debated by thinkers throughout history, including Kant who described the two possibilities of occasionalism and pre-established harmony.  To explain these positions simply, occasionalism implies that the universe is subject to real change at any point in time, such as incited by an all powerful being such as God, and pre-established harmony holds that that the universe changes through time, but these changes are simply part of a long chain of events established at the beginning of time with no real freedom for new possibilities to arise (Kant 309).                   

            The rational answer to this problem falls largely in line with the latter position.  If we think of the universe as ruled by cause and effect interactions, it makes sense that nothing should be able to arise without a previous element coming before it and an already set outcome in place.  Thus, nothing new is actually created, just a different arrangement of things with in a set system.  This is similar to the belief taught by Parmenides that “something which is, comes from being” (Mcdermott 60).  It seems obvious, but if everything comes from what already exists, then creation and creativity cannot exist – at least not in the truest sense.

            To bring things back to more practical terms, it’s true that a musician can never create something entirely new.  Even if they are not directly copying from another musician, the music they create is still largely a combination of all the influences they’ve been exposed throughout their lives.  But this doesn’t mean that creativity can’t have importance in our lives.  That’s because creation in the sense of reordering still means that something entirely unique is produced.  Yes, it a combination of already existing parts, but the specific combination is one that has never existed before and never will exist again.  This is why music and nature and everything else in our lives has the ability to continually surprise and delight us.  And in this sense the individual quality of creativity, as in the commonly used definition, is plenty real and something to be encouraged.  Though we can’t produce anything truly new, the reordering of existing elements and cultivation of influences is what drives innovation and how great art is produced.  The problem is when we rely too much on obvious combinations of elements.  This we should avoid at all costs.                     

References

Auxier, Randall. "Magic Pages and Mythic Plants." Led Zeppelin and Philosophy All Will Be Revealed. Ed. Scott Calef. Chicago: Open Court, 2009. Print.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.     Print.

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.