Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [92]
The attitude expressed in The Empire Strikes Back represents a break with the dominant philosophical tradition of Western culture, one with roots in Aristotle and usually referred to as “philosophical realism.” For Aristotle, the natural universe is shot through with order, meaning, and value. Nature is not only the principle of order and growth in the universe; it is purposive and serves as a guide for human activity. Things in the world are composed of matter, for example, the flesh, blood, and bone of human beings, and form. Aristotle defines form as “that which makes a thing what it is.”141
Form is what makes living things develop into what they become; acorns develop into oak trees, and chicken eggs into chickens, all the while transforming food and water into the different matter of wood, leaf, feather, and flesh.142 Aristotle observes a hierarchy in nature, extending from the inanimate through vegetable, animal, and human life. The vegetable form (or soul) has the capacity for such activities as nutrition and reproduction, while the animal soul adds to these powers with others, such as locomotion and perception. Human beings combine these powers with the greater powers of language and rational thought, and are thus at the apex of the natural hierarchy.143
Artificial products, including technology, can complete “what nature is unable to carry to a finish,” but Aristotle insists on a basic distinction between things that exist as part of the natural world and those made by human skill, which include art and technology. Art can be wonderful but is subordinate to nature, which is both prior to it and its source. Aristotle’s sharp distinction between the natural and the artificial would apply to Luke Skywalker’s bionic hand, since the limb is produced from a pre-existing form and matter (or material). All manner of products—clothes, ladders, glasses, prostheses—extend or enhance nature, enabling human beings to keep warmer, reach higher, see better, or even replace damaged or missing natural body parts.
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In The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas implies that the world is mostly artificial, a world made up simply of interchangeable parts, a view reinforced by the constant tinkering and fixing of all the intergalactic gadgets used in space travel. Nature is depicted as little more than a nuisance, and technology is superior and necessary to repair the mess that nature continually finds itself in, whether it is a lost limb or repeated threats to the safety of the body and the potential extinction of life. This is in sharp contrast to Aristotle’s view of the relationship of art (which would include technology) and nature. While everything in both art and nature consists of form and matter, they do so in very different ways.
Aristotle emphasizes that nature works from within, while art and technology are produced from outside, whether in making a statue with limbs or prostheses to replace them. Art and technology fall outside of the order of nature and aren’t alive. Pygmalion, the ivory statue, which in Greek legend was brought to life by the goddess of Love, is only a story. In the real world, statues don’t live or love; only people do. And anyone who fell in love with a statue would be wasting both time and affection. Technology is not only lifeless; it depends on nature as the basis of both its forms and matter. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle uses the example of a bronze sphere to make this point: “the