Avatar and Philosophy

Learning to See

George A. Dunn, William Irwin

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118886762
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

James Cameron's critically acclaimed movie Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards and received countless accolades for its breath-taking visuals and use of 3D technology. But beyond its cinematic splendour, can Avatar also offer us insights into business ethics, empathy, disability, and the relationship between mind and body? Can getting to know the Na'vi, an alien species, enlarge our vision and help us to "see" both our world and ourselves in new ways? Avatar and Philosophy is a revealing journey through the world of Pandora and the huge range of philosophical themes raised by James Cameron's groundbreaking film

• Explores philosophical issues such as religion, morality, aesthetics, empathy, identity, the relationship of mind and body, environmental and business ethics, technology, and just war theory
• Examines a wide range of topics from the blockbuster movie, including attitudes toward nature, our responsibilities to nonhuman species, colonialism, disability, and communitarian ethics
• Written by an esteemed group of philosophers who are avid fans of Avatar themselves
• Explains philosophical concepts in an enjoyable and accessible manner that will appeal to all levels of readers
• With a new trilogy of sequels now announced, this is the ideal entry point for understanding the world of Pandora for fans and newcomers alike

Part I
Seeing Eywa: “I'm With Her, Jake. She's Real!”

1
The Silence of Our Mother: Eywa as the Voice of Feminine Care Ethics

George A. Dunn and Nicolas Michaud

“If there is a hell, you might want to go there for some R&R after a tour on Pandora,” Colonel Miles Quaritch informs the new arrivals to Hell’s Gate. Yet Pandora reveals itself to Jake Sully as an enchanted world of wonder. Can Pandora be both a heaven and a hell?

Quaritch depicts Pandora as a living nightmare, a den of horrors where every conceivable danger lurks. Pointing toward the jungle, he warns the new arrivals: “Out there, beyond that fence, every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes.” To his mind, Pandora is a deadly arena with enemies at every turn. Not only does the planet harbor a race of hostile humanoids with natural endowments and fighting skills that make them “very hard to kill,” along with a dizzying assortment of other hostile life forms, but even the atmosphere itself is poisonous. To survive in such an environment, you must harden yourself, so you’ll be mentally prepared to do whatever it takes to stay alive. “You’re on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen,” Quaritch grimly reminds the new arrivals. “Respect that fact, every second of every day.” The upshot of his ominous “old school safety brief” is that a healthy dose of fear is an indispensable tool for survival in this pitiless place. Let down your guard and Pandora will “shit you out dead with zero warning.”

After listening to Quaritch’s description, we might be surprised to learn how very differently the Na’vi view their world. Of course, like Quaritch, they “respect” Pandora, but not as a powerful foe. They know the perils of their environment every bit as well as Quaritch does, but fear doesn’t define their relationship to their world. Above all, they revere Pandora – and Eywa, the deity who pervades and animates the planet – as a source of life, a nurturing mother, a provider, and a protector. Pandora, for them, is more than just an arena of deadly conflict. It’s first and foremost a place of caring.

How Can You See, with Jujubes for Eyes?

That Quaritch and the Na’vi have such divergent views of the natural world may have something to do with the very different social worlds in which those worldviews were born. The militarized precinct of Hell’s Gate epitomizes the conventional idea of a “man’s world” – a place where your status depends on demonstrating courage, strength, and endurance in the face of adversity. It’s a contentious world that is forever sorting its denizens into winners and losers. Jake’s voiceover at the beginning of the movie nicely sums up the ethos of this place, at the same time as it lays bare his own fiercely competitive temperament: “I became a Marine for the hardship. To be hammered on the anvil of life. I told myself I could pass any test a man can pass.” And the world that does the hammering is, according to this hardcore Marine, nothing short of “a cold ass bitch.” Of course, to describe Hell’s Gate as a “man’s world” is not to deny that a tough gal like Trudy Chacón can more than measure up to its demands; but she’s clearly in a minority. The military personnel on Pandora is overwhelmingly male. By contrast, the world of the Na’vi is much more feminine. Na’vi women are equal partners with their men and are just as capable as their male counterparts. And as the tsahìk (spiritual leader) of the Omaticaya clan, Neytiri’s mother Mo’at exercises an unrivalled degree of power and influence due to her ability to interpret the will of Eywa, the Na’vi’s female deity. With their devotion to Eywa – their “Great Mother,” who connects them to each other and to everything else on Pandora – the Na’vi embrace an ethic that is distinctly maternal.

Could differences in male and female temperaments give rise to different ethical outlooks? That was the thesis of psychologist Carol Gilligan in her 1982 book In a Different Voice, which has come to be regarded as a watershed in the history of thinking about gender issues. Whereas men tend to view life as a contest in which individuals constantly attempt to advance themselves at each other’s expense, women more typically view themselves as intimately tied to larger interpersonal networks sustained by relationships of care and intimacy. According to Gilligan, these two ways of situating ourselves in relation to the world have given rise to two distinct “voices,” masculine and feminine, each of which is associated with a different approach to moral decision making.

The masculine voice puts a premium on justice – in particular, on protecting individual rights and on appealing to abstract rules in order to adjudicate conflicts. Principles of justice are important because they allow us to manage our conflicts without having to break out the poison-tipped arrows on a regular basis. We can define justice in many different ways, but in the modern world it has become common to think of justice as consisting in a set of rules or principles that aim to safeguard the rights and to balance the legitimate interests of all people, impartially. One of the most influential theories of justice is known as “contractualism,” which likens the demands of justice to the terms of a contract that we have entered into with each other. We all give up our rights to do whatever we please, we agree to live under a set of rules that apply to everyone as free and equal individuals, and we receive the benefits of social cooperation and a guarantee that our rights will be protected just so long as we don’t interfere with the rights of others.¹

The feminine voice, on the other hand, bears a remarkable resemblance to the voice of Eywa, since it focuses not on refereeing disputes, but rather on the care that sustains the web of concrete relationships in which people can flourish. “Our Great Mother does not take sides,” Neytiri tells Jake. “She protects only the balance of life.” We can think of these two voices as belonging, respectively, to the impartial judge and the caring mother. Gilligan argues that men tend to gravitate to the “justice perspective” and women to the “care perspective,” though both genders are sufficiently versatile to approach questions of morality from either perspective.

The problem, according to Gilligan and many other feminist critics, is that almost all of the ethical theories that have dominated Western philosophy until quite recently have been one-sidedly masculine: they view conflict as the fundamental fact of society and morality as a way to manage our skirmishes and prevent them from getting too destructive. In short, these “masculine” ethical theories express a view of society not unlike the view of Pandora expressed by Colonel Quaritch. Imagine a different sort of “old school safety brief,” one that someone like Quaritch might give not to new arrivals on Pandora, but to individuals on the threshold of adult life in the human world:

You’re not in diapers anymore, ladies and gentlemen. You’re in the adult world, where you’re just one among many individuals, all fighting to get ahead and prepared to eat your eyes for jujubes if you get in their way.

Truth be told, this isn’t a bad description of what we see of life on Earth in the opening sequence of the movie, before Jake leaves for Pandora. And in such a world, where “the strong prey on the weak” and interpersonal conflict is both inevitable and, as Jake’s brother Tommy discovered, sometimes deadly, a morality focused on rules that insure fair treatment for all has an obvious appeal. Fairness matters greatly to Jake, as we see when he brings his fists to the defense of a young woman who’s being bullied by a man in a bar. As Colonel Quaritch says: “You’ve got obey the rules.” In this case, though, it’s not “Pandora rules” but rather the rules of morality that offer us our only hope for survival in “the most hostile environment known to man” – the human social world! However, while conflict may be an undeniable fact of social life – as well as an ineliminable feature of the natural world on both Earth and Pandora, as Jakes discovers in his very first outing beyond Hell’s Gate – this is by no means the whole story. Both the Na’vi and the terrestrial proponents of feminine “care ethics” help us see the bigger picture.

The Gifts of Our Mother

“Try to see the forest through her eyes,” Grace admonishes Jake. Through Neytiri’s eyes Jake will learn to see heaven on Pandora, while the belligerent Quaritch can never see anything but a hellish landscape of danger and strife. Neytiri’s more benign vision of Pandora comes into clear focus for Jake at a crucial moment during his training, when the two of them spy on a mother viperwolf playing affectionately with her pups. Previously known t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Seeing Eywa
• Part II: Seeing the Na'vi
• Part III: Seeing Nature
• Part IV: Seeing Our Bodies
• Part V: Seeing Our Political Communities
• Part VI: Seeing Our Ethical Responsibilities
• Part VII: Seeing the Movie
• Notes on Contributors
• Index
• End User License Agreement