Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [74]
In the end, this essay is a plug for science fiction; after all, science fiction and fantasy allow us to examine possible ways this world could’ve been different, compelling us to analyze our scientific and philosophical concepts in a way that helps us get clear about what our concepts mean. What we mean by “cause” is a very important question, and one that the fictional reality of the Force allows us to examine more deeply than we would otherwise.
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The Force Is with Us: Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit Strikes Back at the Empire
JAMES LAWLER
Central to the unfolding plot of Star Wars is a question and a mystery: What is the Force? In A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker that his father was betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader, a Jedi Knight who “turned to evil . . . seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.” “The Force?” asks Luke. Obi-Wan replies: “The Force is what gives the Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
All living beings create the energy field of the Force, and at the same time this energy field is essential to living beings, binding the entire galaxy—ultimately the entire cosmos—in a unified whole. The Force has both Dark and Light sides, but there is not a Dark Force and a Light Force, not Evil over against Good. Such a conception of good versus evil is understandable in the context of Episodes IV through VI, dominated by the malevolent Lord Vader. Even when we learn that Vader is actually Luke’s father, the news only deepens our sense of repulsion for the evil servant of the Dark Side, which we maintain until the very last moment when Vader unexpectedly turns against his Master—Darth Sidious, the Dark Lord of the Sith and Emperor of the Galaxy—and dies reconciled to his son.
In the absence of the background trilogy of Episodes I to III, this ending to the entire story lacks depth and a sense of conviction. However, as the background story emerges, not only is the final ending fully justified but our understanding of the nature of the Force becomes more profound. We learn why there isn’t a Dark Force and a Light Force, a Good opposed to an Evil, but only one Force whose two sides must be brought into balance. And we understand how it is that Darth Vader, formerly known as Anakin Skywalker, is the Chosen One whose destiny it is to bring about this balance.
Thanks to the background story, Vader’s death-bed conversion to the acknowledgement of love is no artificial happy ending, but the outcome of what Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, at the conclusion of his Phenomenology of Spirit, calls “the Calvary of Absolute Spirit.”102 All life goes through transformations in which what at first appears to be evil turns out to be good, while the good must be crucified, as Jesus was on Mount Calvary, in order that a higher good be achieved. This transformation of light into dark and dark into light is the pathway of Spirit—Hegel’s philosophically probing conception of what George Lucas calls “the Force.”
Mythic Journey of the Hero
Star Wars provides an unparalleled modern account of the archetypal journey of the hero into the nether world of darkness as a means of discovery and knowledge, of power and freedom, of love and fidelity. The Force is Lucas’s distillation of religious thought and feeling throughout human history.103 In his understanding of this history, and at the core of Star Wars, the divine is no separate deity controlling events from the outside, but the inner God-force that impels the hearts and minds of all of us as we seek to fulfill our inner truth. Connecting with the Force gives the hero within each of us the insight and energy to rise to new levels