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• How do we know the sun will rise on Alderaan tomorrow, even if it has done so every day since the beginning of time? (Hume)3

• If Vader looks into the abyss, doesn’t the abyss also look back into him? (Nietzsche)

• Is hell other Sith lords? (Sartre)

• Who’s scruffy-lookin’? (Solo)

Here, you’ll encounter thoughtful and lively discussion of these questions, but not hard-and-fast answers to them—don’t blame us, some of these questions have gone unanswered for over two thousand years! Judith Barad takes on the most ancient of these while exploring the virtues of the Jedi Order. Yoda is conceived of as a both a great Jedi Master and a wise Stoic sage by William Stephens. For Chris Brown, Anakin’s fall and redemption may be unavoidable if evil is needed for good to exist. Emperor Palpatine, in the eyes of Kevin Decker, is the galaxy’s most masterful practitioner of Machiavellian political arts. Robert Arp finds Descartes’s question about mind and body just as intriguing to ask about C-3PO and R2-D2 as of ourselves, and Jerome Donnelly concurs that droids may be more “human” than the humans in Star Wars. While we know the answer to the Alderaan question, Jan-Erik Jones finds similar cocktail party discussions about expected cause-and-effect relationships still unresolved on our planet—just what makes gravity work anyway? Of course, Darth Vader’s entire life is spent looking into the metaphorical abyss of darkness and evil, and occasionally into the literal abyss of space station reactor shafts; what this says about his moral character and capacity for redemption is the fascination of many in what follows. And while Sartre’s question regards three strangers trapped in a room with “no exit” for all eternity, Brian Cameron notes that it takes only two Sith to dance the pas de deux Hegelian “dialectic” that leads to mutual self-destruction.

These are by no means the only philosophical questions raised and addressed by our Force-sensitive contributors. Using nature and other sentient beings merely as means to one’s own ends, valuing deception as a tool to bring about the greatest good, avoiding the dehumanizing influence of technology, finding the balance between love and duty, taking a leap of faith, and achieving the enlightened mind of “no mind” are also defining philosophical issues in Lucas’s galaxy and our own.

This book came together with Socrates’s thought that wisdom, for humans as well as R5 droids, begins when we discover our own “bad motivators.” The preceding questions and the issues they raise are deep and challenging, but thinking about them can be rewarding and even fun to those whose thinking is slightly more precise than a stormtrooper’s aim. Consider this book a “Kessel Run” for your brain, and enjoy—you get bragging rights if you read the whole book in less than five parsecs!

Part I

“May The Force Be with You”

The Philosophical Messages of Star Wars

1

“You Cannot Escape Your Destiny” (Or Can You?): Freedom and Predestination in the Skywalker Family

JASON T. EBERL

In The Phantom Menace, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn brings a nine-year-old boy, recently released from slavery and separated from his mother, before the Jedi Council to ask that he be trained in the ways of the Force. When the Council refuses to permit the boy’s training, Qui-Gon declares, “He is the Chosen One. You must see that.” To which Master Yoda replies, “Clouded this boy’s future is.”

The boy is, of course, Anakin Skywalker—the future Darth Vader—and his being “the Chosen One” is based on a Jedi prophecy that refers to Anakin “bringing balance to the Force.” Approximately thirty-five years (Star Wars time) after this exchange, Anakin’s son, Luke, has nearly completed his training to become a Jedi Knight. After the deaths of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, Luke will be the “last of the Jedi” and the “last hope” for the galaxy to be saved from the tyrannical power of the Dark Side of the Force exercised by Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine. Yoda tells Luke, however, that he will be a Jedi