Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [91]
Padmé may represent a view closer to Dewey’s. Although she agrees with Anakin in part when she claims in frustration in The Phantom Menace that the Republic is broken, she seems to have changed her mind in Attack of the Clones when she agrees with Queen Jamilla of Naboo’s assertion that “the day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it.” By opposing the Senate’s Military Creation Act from the beginning, Padmé may have seized on a version of Dewey’s central idea that democratic ends can be reached only by democratic means. Measures that threaten or clearly violate the republican and democratic principles we looked at earlier may create the façade of democracy, but they line the foundation of the democratic house with coercion, deception, and the establishment of aristocracies of all kinds—of wealth, of influence, or even those of higher education and virtue as Strauss suggests. Democracies can and should still value virtue and ability, but they should also put their trust in healthy checks and balances on the abuse of power, all at the reasonable cost of lessening the efficiency of democratic leadership. Of course, it’s this loss of efficiency that future strong leaders like Anakin Skywalker deplore. When Palpatine seizes ultimate power, Anakin wins, but at the cost of his own soul. For the rest of the denizens of the Republic, the importance of balancing security and democratic principles is a lesson learned the hard way.
Palpatine’s Legacy
Palpatine’s rise from democratically-elected Supreme Chancellor to Emperor is a gripping, if ultimately tragic tale of how democracy may be destroyed from within by its own weakness when security is pursued by non-democratic means. It also exposes a flaw in the Straussian thinking of even well-meaning people like Anakin: “Who watches the watchers?” Strauss’s virtuous statesmen don’t ultimately answer to the common person but to a higher truth to which only the statesmen are privileged to. What checks are put on their obtaining power and who is to say that they are virtuous in their efforts?—only other members of “the wise.”
The bitter truth raised here may stem from the fact that we have become more cynically distrustful of centralized authority, but there is also a deeper point to be made. Virtue is good, we agree, but our vision of human excellence today is much more diverse and plural than it was with Strauss’s beloved Greeks. There are many goods worth pursuing, and perhaps some conflict with one another: the democratic challenge for now is to explore how to balance or reconcile these conflicts in order to maximize virtue, not concentrate it in figures of authority. As Senator, Supreme Chancellor, and ultimately Emperor, Palpatine’s example throws light on the path from democracy to empire, a path paved with fear and insecurity, the illusory endpoint of which is freedom and peace. In some ways, it may seem unsatisfactory to say that democracy is an “unfinished project” in which we all still have a part to play. In the end, however, admitting this might be the best guard against our own Palpatines, present and future.140
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Humanizing Technology: Flesh and Machine in Aristotle and The Empire Strikes Back
JEROME DONNELLY
The philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) once remarked that in an age of technology the copy takes on greater importance than the original. The Sony Corporation’s mechanical dog created a sensation that illustrates Benjamin’s insight.
George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back achieves its powerful effect in a very special way, by making the mechanical and bionic world of science fiction preferable to nature’s flesh and blood. Lucas captivates his audience by combining ultra-realism and familiarity with the content of its predecessor, A New Hope. Together, these provide The Empire Strikes Back with an unusually powerful appeal in drawing the viewer into Lucas’s strange new world. This compelling verisimilitude lends plausibility not only to the film’s action but also to its underlying themes, especially the