Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [5]
What would eternal existence—living outside of time—be like? We experience the passage of time in a linear fashion—one moment passes to the next, which passes to the next, and so on. When Han Solo makes the Kessel Run in less than five parsecs (a measure of distance, not time), he must travel the first parsec, before he can travel the second, before he can travel the third, and so on. This, of course, requires that he travel for one period of time, before he can travel for a second period of time, before he can travel for a third . . . you get the idea. This is the nature of time from our perspective. From the eternal perspective, though, every moment in time occurs at once. Imagine seeing every frame of all six Star Wars films at the same instant, not one after another—like scenes on the page of a comic book; you would see Han shooting Greedo and being frozen in carbonite at the same time!
If someone could see from this eternal perspective, he would know the future, because, from this perspective, the past, present, and future are all equally present to the observer. For us linear observers, the future doesn’t exist. Neither does the past, which we simply recollect. We can perceive only the present. Aquinas writes:
God knows future events still undetermined . . . Now God knows such events not only in their causes but also as actual happenings. Though they happen one after another, God’s knowledge of them happening is not itself successive (like ours), but instantaneously whole. His knowledge, like his existence, is measured by eternity, which in one and the same instant encompasses all time; so his gaze is eternally focused on everything in time as on something present and known to him with certainty, even though it is future and undetermined in relation to its cause.7
Does the eternal observer’s knowledge of the linear observer’s future determine that future? Assuming that the eternal observer can’t be mistaken in his perceptions, it would seem that it does. How can I change the future that is already known by someone who can’t be wrong about it? Assuming that the prophecy is true and Anakin is indeed the Chosen One, it seems he can’t avoid bringing balance to the Force. He couldn’t freely choose not to kill the Emperor.
Some philosophers would answer that Anakin does not freely choose to throw the Emperor down the second Death Star’s reactor shaft. They assume that the eternal observer’s knowledge determines his fate; whatever has been correctly prophesied must happen. But what determines the eternal observer’s knowledge? What causes the prophecy of the Chosen One to exist in the first place?
When Anakin, as Vader, is watching his son being tortured and slowly killed by the Emperor, it’s evident that he’s wrestling with a moral choice between devotion to his master and love for his son. John Williams’s dramatic score reaches a dark crescendo as it seems all hope for saving the galaxy from tyranny is about to be lost. But then the music suddenly shifts to the triumphal “Force Theme” as Anakin makes his choice and destroys the Emperor—thereby saving his son, restoring freedom to the galaxy, and bringing the Force back into balance—all at the cost of his own life. It may be that Anakin’s choice determines the eternal observer