Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [32]
So suppose you fear skydiving, but you learn to overcome your fear. If you decide to go ahead and skydive because you are essentially a thrill-seeker, would this count as a courageous act? While Aristotle would applaud Luke’s decision to help his friends as a courageous act, he would probably label your decision to satisfy your thrill-seeking desire as a rash act rather than a courageous one. What’s the difference? Well, for Aristotle, the act of confronting danger or risk becomes courageous if and only if both decision and just cause enter the picture. The skydiving decision lacks just cause, which is essential to a courageous act. In contrast, Luke’s decision, reached after serious consideration, involves a just cause—the lives of his friends.
Yet the very notion of fear seems to oppose the Jedi teaching at its core. Yoda tells Anakin that he’s not fit to begin training because of the great fear the young boy feels. The Jedi Master warns, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Yoda also warns Luke about anger, fear, and aggression. Does Yoda mean a Jedi should never experience fear and anger? His words could be interpreted in this way. But if we think about it, although the virtue of courage and the emotion of fear may seem to be mutually exclusive, they’re actually quite compatible. The truly courageous person not only fears what she should when there’s a reasonable basis for fear, but she can also stand up to fear and confront risk or danger. This is also true of anger, provided that anger is guided by reason. When Luke battles his father for the last time, as the Emperor goads Luke to “use your aggressive feelings” and to “let the hate flow through you,” he controls his anger when he realizes it will lead him to the Dark Side. He reasons that the only way to destroy the Dark Side is to renounce it. Yet his anger, controlled by reason, is what gives him the courage to stand up to the evil, powerful Emperor. Throwing his lightsaber aside, he says with resolve, “I’ll never turn to the Dark Side. You’ve failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”
Not only is “righteous” anger compatible with courage, but it can also result in acting justly—another virtue. Feeling angry about someone’s unfair treatment could lead you to take positive action to correct this treatment. For the Jedi, it’s important to stop violent and abusive behavior, and to defend the innocent against assault. Yet, if possible, a Jedi should use nonviolent means to accomplish this. It is true, now, that your emotions enable you to act more promptly and easily than merely reasoning about a situation. So if controlled by reason, emotions can actually fuel the kind of virtuous action a Jedi should engage in.
It’s thus unlikely that Yoda’s admonitions about fear and anger should be interpreted as meaning that a Jedi never feels those emotions. Rather, he probably means that a Jedi never acts from fear and anger. A Jedi acts when reason is in control, when he’s “calm, at peace, passive.” In fact, as Yoda tells Luke, only a calm mind can distinguish the good side from the bad. In contrast, acting from an agitated condition clouds one’s mind from knowing right from wrong. Anakin acts from uncontrolled anger when he sees his mother die at the hands of the Sand People. He confesses to Padmé that, in retaliation, he killed them all: “They’re dead, every single one of them. And not just the men . . . But the women and the children, too. They’re like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals . . . I hate them.” Padmé attempts to console Anakin by