Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [87]
“Nobody Makes a Fool out of Our Family without My Help.”7
While Gob is one of the most endearing characters on Arrested Development, the terms of his endearment are those of the fool. It’s because he’s a buffoon that Gob is such a great character—some of the funniest parts of the show are those moments of realization when Gob utters his famous catchphrase, “I’ve made a huge mistake.” We love these moments, frankly, because, we don’t have to deal with them. We just get to watch as the high jinx and hilarity ensue, knowing all the while that everything will be fine at the end of the half hour (for us, anyway).
In the real world, we’re far less forgiving of people like Gob. We’re usually willing to look past understandable mistakes, but we tend to blame others when their actions are obviously unwise. We feel that they should’ve known what would happen when they acted. Of course, when Gob makes a mistake, it’s always incredibly obvious (For instance, everyone knows he should never have given up animation rights to Mr. Bananagrabber®). No matter how much we may like Gob as a character, the truth is that if we had to deal with him in real life, we would think he was a jerk (because, well, he is).
Since Gob doesn’t fare well with Aristotle, let’s consider another philosopher who might come to Gob’s defense. David Hume (1711–1776) was a very influential thinker in the field of epistemology (the study of knowledge and how people know). According to Hume, people have two kinds of thoughts: impressions and ideas. Impressions are the things that we experience—sights, sounds, tastes and smells, as well as feelings and emotions. Ideas are the things we think about—they are the rational concepts we use to make sense of our experiences, like the idea of a circle, or the principle of addition, or even the concept of justice. But where does morality fit? Well, when we blame people for making obvious mistakes, we’re putting morality in the category of rational ideas. We’re saying that being moral is a matter of being rational, and so by acting in a way that is clearly unreasonable, a person is acting immorally. Gob should know better, and that’s why we consider him a jerk.
But Hume would disagree with this line of thinking. In his first book, A Treatise on Human Nature, Hume points out that being immoral and being irrational are two totally different things. Most of us have at some point discovered that reason can justify some very immoral actions. Hume makes this point in a famous line from the Treatise, “’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”8 If we were to find out that Gob would rather see the whole world fall apart than have two of his fingers cut off by Buster during a magic trick (illusion . . . master) in “Sword of Destiny” and subsequently reattached incorrectly by an incompetent doctor, we could call him selfish and immoral, but not irrational. Hume points out that as long as the conclusion doesn’t involve a misunderstanding or miscalculation, it is perfectly rational—no matter how reprehensible it might be. And if it’s possible to be rational and immoral at the same time, then morality can’t be based on rationality.
But if morality isn’t based on rationality, what’s it based on? Hume believed that impressions provide the answer. We experience morality more like a feeling than an idea. For example, when we see the attack ad that Gob made for George Michael’s campaign for student president in “The Immaculate Election,” we don’t have to reason out whether or not the ad is bad. As soon as Gob’s voice-over