Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [79]
If the human species is to survive, Hegel argues, some individuals must surrender to others. Out of surrender of the weak to the strong, there emerges the world of Masters and Slaves, until finally everyone is subservient to the one Emperor—the Dark Lord of the separate ego that is the deepest potential and ultimate aspiration within every separate ego.118 Here is the Dark Side of the Force, which for Hegel is the negative being of God. But the true nature of God, which Hegel calls Spirit, is not that of a separate power ruling over a universe of dominated creatures. This is an idea of an outmoded religion, as Han Solo recognizes. Such an all-controlling God is really the ultimate Dark Lord of unlimited egotistical power.
On a psychological plane, the “I” that is “We,” or Spirit, is discovered most vitally in the experience of love. The true meaning of the sacred journey of the hero, exemplified in the life and death of the Christ figure, is infinite love.119 But, as Diotima teaches Socrates in Plato’s Symposium, the path to infinite love begins with the love of one person.120 A crucial moment in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is the love of the intellectual and magician Faust for the young maid Gretchen, a love that is made possible only through Faust’s bargain with the devil—to give up his soul in exchange for the intense experience of life that can only be found through love. This is indeed what the power of love seems to be for the separate ego—the very loss of one’s soul. Such love, which Faust obtains by giving himself over to the powers of darkness, brings about death to Gretchen as well as peril to the immortal soul of the lover. But for Hegel passionate love in which body and soul are totally at stake is the only way to achieve a higher level of vitality and wholeness.
Hegel thereby helps us appreciate a central problem with the Stoic philosophy of the Jedi Knights. Their ideal of detachment from emotional involvement with others seeks to forestall the descent into the darkness of a Faustian love, but in doing so it leaves no room for the higher vitality that only comes through deeply personal connections with particular individuals. It’s this unnatural Stoic detachment that leaves a lovelorn Anakin no alternative, and so precipitates his Faustian bargain with the devil.
In a debate with the Jedi Council in The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon defends Anakin’s candidacy for Jedi knighthood despite his age. Anakin has spent the first nine years of his life living alone with his mother. Yoda explains to Anakin why his attachment to his mother is dangerous for a Jedi warrior: “Afraid to lose her, I think.” “What’s that got to do with anything?” Anakin protests. “Everything,” Yoda tells him. “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Qui-Gon disagrees with the negative assessment of Anakin. He tells the Jedi Council, “Finding him was the will of the Force. I have no doubt of that.” Indeed, for the devotee of the Force, as Qui-Gon says to Shmi earlier in this episode, “Nothing happens by accident.” Only the mysterious operation of the Force could explain the series of events that led from the Naboo cruiser’s leaking hyperdrive, to an emergency stop on an obscure planet, to the discovery of the slave boy Anakin with his remarkable abilities. As skeptical here as Han Solo, the Jedi Council would rather put this all down to accident, for accepting Anakin means confronting their own deepest fears. If it’s possible to be seduced by the Dark Side, it must also be possible to be overly attached to the light—and overly fearful of the dark. The Jedi too are afraid—afraid of real human love, afraid of connection with the other person, afraid of the loss of self-control that comes to the “I” of passionate love which is at the same time a “We.”
Padmé asks the grown-up Anakin in Attack of the Clones: