Downton Abbey and Philosophy

The Truth Is Neither Here Nor There

William Irwin

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118386613
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

A unique philosophical look at the hit television series Downton Abbey

Who can resist the lure of Downton Abbey and the triumphs and travails of the Crawley family and its servants? We admire Bates's sense of honor, envy Carson's steadfastness, and thrill to Violet's caustic wit. Downton Abbey and Philosophy draws on some of history's most profound philosophical minds to delve deeply into the dilemmas that confront our favorite characters. Was Matthew right to push Mary away after his injury in the war? Would Lord Grantham have been justified in blocking Lady Sybil's marriage to Tom Branson? And is Thomas really such a bad person?

• Offers fresh and intriguing insights into your favorite Downton Abbey characters, plot lines, and ideas
• Addresses many of your most pressing questions about Downton Abbey's story and characters, such as: Should Daisy have lied to William about her feelings toward him—especially to the point of marrying him? Should Mr. Bates have been upfront with Anna from the beginning about his past?
• Views Downton Abbey through the lens of some of the most influential philosophical thinkers, from Saint Augustine and David Hume to Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill
• Ventures upstairs and downstairs to examine key themes involving ethics, virtue, morality, class, feminism, the human condition, and more

Philosophical speculation awaits on every page of this essential Downton Abbey companion. So take a seat in your personal library, have the butler pour a cup of tea, and start reading!

Chapter 1

“The Cat That Walks by Himself”

Sacrifice, Duty, and Love in Downton Abbey

Mark D. White

One of the most captivating things about Downton Abbey is its variety of romantic relationships, and the two that capture our imaginations the most seem to be the relationships between Matthew and Lady Mary upstairs and between Mr. Bates and Anna downstairs. (I’d add the Dowager Countess’s undying love for herself, but that would take an entire chapter to itself!) We know from the first episode that Matthew and Mary are destined to end up together, especially after they are repulsed by each other on their first meeting. The attraction between Bates and Anna, however, smolders over the first few episodes before they announce their feelings for each other halfway through the first season.

One of the reasons we’re drawn to these two romances in particular is the noble self-sacrifice displayed by both Matthew and Bates.1 Each man tries to shield his beloved from having to carry the burden of injury (in Matthew’s case) or a sordid past (in Bates’s case). In this chapter we’ll use the duty-based ethical system of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) to explore Matthew’s and Bates’s behavior toward Mary and Anna, respectively, especially in terms of how they put the women’s happiness above their own—reminding us how wonderful a great love story can be.

Wait a Minute—Kant? Really?

It may come as a shock that I would use the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to look at romantic relationships, given Kant’s reputation for being rigidly logical. Kant is best known for the categorical imperative, his formalization of the “moral law,” which people are supposed to apply to their plans of action (or maxims) to determine if they correspond to duty or violate it. For instance, the universalization formula of the categorical imperative commands us to “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”2

Based on this formula, lying is contrary to duty because if everyone lied, no one would believe anything anybody said, which would defeat the purpose of lying. Another formula of the categorical imperative tells us to “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means,” which also forbids lying because it uses the person lied to as a means to the liar’s own ends.3

In addition to forbidding certain actions like lying and killing, the categorical imperative also demands that certain attitudes be adopted, such as helping others and cultivating one’s talents. In this way, Kant’s ethics not only discourages immoral behavior but also clearly encourages positive moral behavior.

It is not Kant’s categorical imperative that concerns us here, or even the specific duties that result from it, but rather how duties should influence our decision making. According to Kant, we are endowed with autonomy, the ability to make decisions without undue influence from either external authority or internal desires. Autonomy implies that we can—and should—follow our duties before attending to our wants.

Kant’s moral philosophy flew in the face of the common thinking of his time, which is represented by the famous statement of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.”4 According to Hume (and others), the way to be moral is to develop moral attitudes or sentiments and make choices according to them. But Kant held that such attitudes are unreliable—just because people “like” being moral now doesn’t guarantee they always will—and that truly moral behavior must be based on a recognition that duties take precedence over desires and preferences.

Furthermore, Kant held that in order to be moral, we must act not only according to duty but also for the sake of duty; in other words, the motivation behind an act is a better reflection of one’s moral character than the act itself. For example, it seemed like a nice thing for Thomas to ask Daisy to go with him to the fair, but we know that he did it only to frustrate William, who truly cared for Daisy.5 We know that Thomas does kind things only when it’s in his own interest, so we don’t think he deserves our praise for them. But when Mrs. Hughes helps the former maid Ethel support her baby boy and tries to forge connections with his father and his grandparents, we admire her for it (even though it didn’t always work out).6 Today we say “It’s the thought that counts,” suggesting that most of us agree with Kant that the reason someone did something is a better guide to his or her moral character than what he or she actually did (or what resulted from it).

Matthew Keeps a Stiff Upper Lip

When Matthew Crawley first meets his cousin Lady Mary sparks do not exactly fly. He sees her as pretentious and stuffy, and she sees him as a usurper—and a hopelessly low class one at that (a solicitor, of all things!). It is obvious to the viewers, however—and crucially important for the Crawleys of Downton Abbey—that they will be together eventually, and over the course of the first two seasons they gradually realize it too, despite Matthew’s later engagement to Lavinia Swire and Mary’s engagement to Sir Richard Carlisle.

As the second season begins, the world is at war, with Matthew serving on the front lines in France. At the insistence of Matthew’s mother, Isobel, Downton Abbey is soon retrofitted as a convalescent home for officers, and after an explosion severely injures him, Matthew returns there to recuperate. Dr. Clarkson informs Matthew that his spine is irreparably damaged, paralyzing him from the waist down.7 Feeling unable to be a proper husband, he rejects his fiancée, Lavinia, and tells Mary that he would kill himself if she sacrificed her own marriage plans to take care of him.

Matthew obviously desires a loving wife. He was devastated at the end of the first season when Mary’s affection wavered in response to the possibility of a new heir to the Grantham fortune (the baby boy that her mother, Cora, loses as a result of her maid O’Brien’s knavery).8 When the second season begins, we find Matthew engaged to Lavinia, whose affections seem more reliable than Mary’s. Matthew craves the stability and devotion he can expect from Lavinia—but also the excitement and challenge that is guaranteed from Mary.

While Matthew’s desires are strong, his devotion to duty is even stronger—in this case, his duty not to be a burden to others. Out of respect for this duty, he rejects both women after he is told of his impotence. Having pushed Lavinia away, he confides in Mary in the form of a quote from a Rudyard Kipling story: “I am the cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. I have nothing to give and nothing to share.”9 Matthew regards himself as an unfit husband to any woman and so suppresses his desires for the sake of what he sees as his duty.10

Of course, it is natural to wonder whether Matthew truly acts out of duty, or out of a desire to be moral (or to be seen as moral) that overwhelms his desire for love and companionship. Although Kant said that to be moral we must act for the sake of duty, he fully recognized that we rarely know our true motivations for any good act, especially one that corresponds to both our desire and our duty.11 For instance, William enlisted in the army during wartime, against his father’s wishes, because he believed it was his duty, but also because he wanted to. His choice was no less moral for being partly based on desire; he simply had mixed motivations, duty and desire, both of which supported the same dutiful action. So even if Matthew does have a desire to be (or appear) moral, this would not make his sacrifice less admirable—as long as it is based on duty as well (as it seems to be).12

The Trials and Tribulations of Mr. Bates

Even though Matthew practices dutiful sacrifice, Mr. Bates is surely the all-time champion. Strong but silent and humble to a fault, Bates arouses strong reactions among the staff at Downton: Carson and Mrs. Hughes doubt his ability to serve as valet, given his pronounced limp, and Thomas and O’Brien resent what they see as his “haughty” virtue. Lord Grantham, however, feels fiercely loyal to his former colleague-at-arms. Over time, most of Downton Abbey comes to appreciate him, none more so than Anna, whose long, wistful gazes leave no question about her growing affections for Lord Grantham’s new valet.

Bates falls in love with Anna also, launching the other great love affair of Downton Abbey. Like Matthew after his injury, however, Bates believes he is not good enough for his beloved, so he urges Anna to stay away from him and find a more worthy man instead. He clearly wants to be with her but feels unable to because of secrets in his past; these secrets come out one by one as the series progresses—and Anna travels to London to uncover some of them for herself. His adherence to his sense of duty to her, to protect her from the flawed man he considers himself to be, in the face of his love for her, makes him a compelling romantic hero—and, like Matthew, an example of Kantian respect for duty over desire.

Does Bates take this duty too far, though? Whether or not we agree with Matthew’s rejection of Mary and Lavinia, we can sympathize with his belief that his paralysis disqualified him from being a good husband (even the women he cast aside were taken aback by the news). But aside from Bates’s marriage to Vera—an important concern, no doubt—the sources of Bates’s feelings of inadequacy seem less clear. He claims to have been a thief, for which he went to prison, but Anna finds out from his mother that Vera was the true thief—committing a crime for which Bates assumed the blame and took the punishment. Because of this, Bates feels less than honorable and unworthy of a woman like Anna, whom he regards as a true lady.13 His perceived failings are a judgment of his own character rather than (as in Matthew’s case) his physical abilities—which is ironic, given his limp.

Bates’s predicament illustrates the importance of judgment in putting any ethical system into practice, including Kant’s. The duties generated by the categorical imperative are very general—do not lie, be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: “The Cat that Walks by Himself”
• Chapter 2: “But It’s a Lie!”
• Chapter 3: “Put that in Your Pipe and Smoke It”
• Chapter 4: Hume’s Moral Philosophy and Thomas’s Moral Corruption
• Chapter 5: Marriages, Miscarriages, and Morality at Downton
• Chapter 6: “Why Would She Want to Be a Secretary?”
• Contributors
• Download CD/DVD content