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Pic 01 Ethical Dilemma: Is Peter Parker morally obliged to be a superhero? (Image courtesy Marvel)
Spiderman, a Marvel Comic hero, is serious business both as box office smashing success and an ethical dilemma. Is it true that great powers come with great responsibility? Initially Peter Parker didn’t think so. Who cares is the attitude? Ethics will have it as “love your neighbour as yourself” and “Do unto others if you want others do unto you”.
"Philosophy starts with Socrates in the streets of Athens taking his message to the people and speaking in their language - agricultural analogies and common mythology." Through the centuries, though, philosophers retreated into academia, creating a convoluted vocabulary that can appear inaccessible to the average first-year university student - those "deontological" ethics for example.
Great power, great responsibility?
Superhero-based thought experiments can help people grapple with ethical dilemmas in an unsentimental fashion.
Pic 02: Great powers come with great responsibility?
Peter Parker's Uncle Ben told him that with great power comes great responsibility, an axiom that thematically recurs through the series (Image courtesy Marvel Entertainment)
Imagine for example, that you are Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) and you have just discovered that you have superpowers. Do you have a moral obligation to use your new-found powers to help others?
The question to explore consequentialism, an approach to morality which, as the name suggests, judges the rightness or wrongness of an action based solely on its outcomes.
A consequentialist would be likely to argue that Peter Parker has a moral responsibility to be Spider-Man because that decision would bring about the greatest good.
But Peter Parker was also a talented scientist, so a non-consequentialist could argue that fulfilling his scientific vocation could be an equally valid choice for him. Perhaps being Spider-Man is above and beyond the call of duty - the answer is murky.
Pic 03: Consequentialists or Non-consequentialist approach?
The conversation does not end with superheroes, of course. Mr Robichaud of Harvard University encourages students to take the framework they have learned and apply it to decisions in their own personal and professional lives.
But he says it is a neutral way to start talking about ethical issues that people often find provocative or confronting.
"Ethics is one of those hard things to teach because for a lot of people the answers are very personal," Mr Robichaud told the BBC. "If you make it about artificial examples at first, then it allows people to think a little bit more safely and clearly about ethical issues."
Questions:
1) Is Peter Parker obliged to be a superhero?
2) Can he use the ill-gotten gains from villains to support his heroic work? Or he must work part time in pizza delivery?
Next article, I shall explore another superhero. Serious movie that sends our head spinning.
Source:
Katie Connolly, BBC News, Teaching philosophy with Spider-Man2010 12 August
2 comments:
1) Is Peter Parker obliged to be a superhero?
2) Can he use the ill-gotten gains from villains to support his heroic work? Or he must work part time in pizza delivery?
1) no, he's not oliged to be a superhero. he may choose to live as a normal human being, regardless what power he's having with him.
2)depends on the attitude and the appetite of him, how much would it be enough to sustain his living? or even how he want his life to be? He may choose to use the ill-gotten gain (which is unethical) or continue to work pt at pizza delivery (which i believe it would just be enough for him, excluding all the luxurious living style) which is a very very seductive and quite hard for people to resist nowadays
Ehtical Dilemma does exist in this article and in the real life, it's only appropriate to say that, depending on the attitude, lifestyle, appetite and decision of one person. On how,who, and what he/she want to be
HI.
Good analogy.
If Peter Parker adopts the Post-conventional ethics (Kohlberg) to benefit the greater good ie the society, then he is obliged to use his superpowers.
If apply Ethics Relativity, then his powers can assist the weak and poor.
Verdict : He has to continue as Spiderman.
Marcus
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