Philosophical Movies (Part 1): Crimes and Misdemeanors

My friend Jon recommended I watch the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors. He thought it was philosophically significant and that I might find it interesting. He was right.

Hopefully, Jon and I will be sharing our thoughts on the movie via the podcast in the next couple weeks. We are both former atheists; Jon becoming more agnostic, and myself becoming Catholic.

In the meantime, there were three points that especially stood out to me.

First impression: the movie is atheistic in the philosophically proper sense. It is clear about the implications of a Godless world and is unapologetically, though unhappily, nihilistic.

The embrace of meaninglessness is exhibited throughout the film, especially at the Seder scene where an argument is happening between family members of Martin Landau’s character, Judah. One woman, a Marxist non-believer, says, “Whoever wants their morality, can have their morality,” but claims passionately that no such binding moral structure exists. She can see if the foundation of the world is simply “dust” (particles in motion; insert whatever physicalist story you like)… well, that “dust” doesn’t form into a moral standard, doesn’t issue binding moral commands, etc. Morality, on this atheistic picture, is something we invent, rather than discover. In which case, we can abandon it whenever scruples become inconvenient or a burden.

The man at the head of the table disagrees but doesn’t offer much of an argument. In fact, neither of them do. What’s interesting is they agree on the argument “If no God, no morality,” and simply assert their respective allegiances. However, the woman does ask at one point if the man would follow God before truth and he says that he would. This is the one part I felt did not get the atheistic, or religious, picture right.

After all, it is not as if nihilism is nihilistic only about morality. Remember what Nietzsche taught us: So long as we still believe in grammar, we believe in God.¹ That is, even the reliability of reason itself — which is an instrument for finding truth — is contingent upon God. Hence why so many atheists (at least in the good old days) are not just nihilists but absurdists.

The point is this. What conditions best affirm our position as knowers and enable rational inquiry? Nietzsche saw the answer to this was theism and that no rival alternative was possible. The abandonment of theism entails (radical) skepticism, and radical skepticism is NOT atheism. For me personally, while morality was a significant consideration, it was ultimately reason itself that caused me to become a theist.

Anyway, what the religious man should have said is that he believes in God BECAUSE he believes in truth (just like he does morality) rather than embracing the absurd suggestion that he would follow God before truth, especially since in classical theism truth and being are convertible.

As Aquinas explains, “As said above (A. 1), truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is, and in things according as they have being conformable to an intellect. This is to the greatest degree found in God. For His being is not only conformed to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect; and His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every other intellect, and He Himself is His own existence and act of understanding. Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is truth itself, and the sovereign and first truth.”

Next impression: there is a scene where a nihilistic philosopher (who eventually commits suicide!) presents a paradox concerning God and the sacrifice of Isaac. The objection is standard: how can God be all good and command Abraham sacrifice his son?

This brief scene struck me for several reasons.

First, I wonder how much this “Bible difficulty” was a real life struggle for Woody Allan, who presumably grew up Jewish. My hunch is he put this into the movie for a reason, the reason being it probably was a personal issue for him.

Second, is how much our society conflates theism with the God of the Bible. Of course, somebody could have independent (entirely philosophical) reasons for believing in God and God’s goodness and reject that the Bible is God’s inerrant revelation. Rejecting the Bible does not mean rejecting theism, though it is interesting to see how many people — including skeptics — see the two as something of a package deal. But this is obviously the wrong way to think, as there are many theists (Hindus, philosophical theists, etc) who believe in God but do not accept Scripture as special revelation. The point is as simple as it (should be) obvious. Just because somebody takes issue with the Bible that itself is not a good reason to become an atheist. It may be a good reason to not become Jewish or Christian but even that is a stretch since Biblical texts — especially in the Old Testament — afford a wide range of interpretation.

Third, is there are interpretations of this (in)famous Biblical narrative that embrace the paradoxical nature but argue these accounts are not only not incompatible with a God of love but revealing of him, when properly understood. Here I must highly recommend Eleonore Stump’s Wandering in Darkness.

The inadequate summary being this. Abraham wants things. Namely, he wants to be intimately related to God and he wants to be THE father of faith. Yet, Abraham is double-minded. He believes in God’s existence but seems to not fully believe in God’s goodness or his role as promise-keeper. Hence Abraham’s desire to control every situation betrays this lack of trust in God’s promises — in a word, a lack of faith. How, we might ask, can somebody who lacks faith ever become the father of faith?² There’s a problem here, and God sees that.

Importantly, God does not just want to bring us to himself but wants also to give us the desires of our hearts.³ God cares about the things we care about because we care about them and because God cares about us. The “test” of the sacrifice of Isaac is to get Abraham to see that God is, in fact, a perfect promise-keeper, and that, somehow, against all expectations of the command, God will ensure Isaac lives and flourishes, and Abraham needs to trust this completely. He does, and so he passes the test. Though it wasn’t a “test” at all, but a method; a way of God making Abraham a man of certain character and will; specifically, making Abraham into the man that Abraham wanted to be, which is the father of faith. Had this method not been used — or something similar to it — Abraham would not have gotten what he (Abraham!) wanted; he may have been a great tribal leader, but he would not be the father of faith as we know him today. This trial was the means by which Abraham not only grew closer to God but achieved the deepest desires of his heart. Paradoxical? Yes. Contradictory? No.⁴

Again, the summary is inadequate (apologies to Stump) but hopefully shows how some of the apparent tensions are only that — apparent, but not substantial. In fact, many of these “Bible difficulties” have for me (a former religious skeptic) become a powerful source of consolation and assurance of God’s goodness when I’ve taken the time to study them and not leave matters at a superficial analysis. Again, I must emphasis how important a book like Eleonore Stump’s is in this regard.

Final impression: Crimes and Misdemeanors, though itself open to interpretation on how it ends, clearly shows the reality, the interconnectedness, and the compound effects, of sin. A man (Judah) makes a poor decision by becoming an adulterer. He leads a double life and — no surprise — it eventually comes back to haunt him. He first consults a man of religious faith, who urges the adulterer to confess his wrongdoing and pray for his wife’s forgiveness. However, the adulterer mulls the possible consequences of confession — divorce, financial ruin, etc — and, instead, convinces himself to hire a hitman. The adulteress is murdered and Judah’s conscience is racked with guilt. However, as the movie ends, he not only seems to have gotten away with his evil actions but even proposes he might eventually be able to live with himself.

I thought this was the perfect way for the movie to end, which is to say, on a note that invites contemplation on part of the viewer. One must love movies that refuse to do all the thinking for you but rather encourage you to think long after the movie has ended. If only Hollywood were still like that, movies might still be worth watching.

Here is my take.

Sin demands repentance for the good of the sinner, as no one can be ultimately happy, either in this life or the next, if they are out of alignment with the true good, which is God. Hence, God finds ways of encouraging people back toward the Good (God), eventually. Better to do that sooner than later, as I’ve become aware of. Otherwise God may increase the amount of suffering to bring a person to the point of necessary self-reflection and ultimately surrender, since God wills the ultimate happiness and salvation of all, but coerces none. Of course, it may also be the case, given our fallibly liberty, that somebody never repents — a possibility we see played out in Crimes and Misdemeanors: how people can rationalize themselves into even horrendous evils, often in attempt to escape the consequences of prior sins. Given the nature of our intellect and will, we can engage in voluntary ignorance. We can choose to ignore what we habitually know is the true and proper good — to “cover our eyes” from the moral rule — and focus just on certain aspects of a situation to orient ourselves in whatever direction we choose. The account of how this works — and how it could even carry over into eternity, by our own free choosing, which would demand eternal retribution (= hell) — is harrowingly examined in The Thomistic Psychology of Sin. (Ed Feser offers another perspective here.)

The adulterer-turned-murder assumes we only go around this world once. He does not accept an afterlife. Hence if he can escape being caught for his crimes and not be racked by the guilt of his conscience, he then sees no downside to his actions. This shows how critical worldview considerations are to morality, given our ability to self-corrupt. Obviously, if there is more than just this life, and if God exists and is perfectly just, then, as Crimes and Misdemeanors reminds us, “God sees all things,” and will set the accounts straight eventually. Still, I think it is incorrect to say somebody can commit evils— especially horrendous evils — and be able to live with themselves, at least in the sense of being truly content. Perhaps some truly sociopathic people could do that, but certainly not most people. Our nature is configured in such a way to flourish through particular actions and suffer because of others. God made it so.

In fact, so much of what makes Hell Hell is that God simply corrects any mismatch between evil acts and their association with pleasure (as evil acts should not be associated with pleasure). Evil acts should be matched not to pleasure, but pain. However, given the complexity of this world and the nature of competing, finite goods we can derive pleasure when engaging evil acts — like rape or gluttony, etc — because of how those acts are always intermingled with particular goods (like sex, food, etc) which are not themselves inherently evil (sex and food are obviously good in the appropriate context). God permits this for a time but corrects it ultimately; in which case, those who maintain a perpetually evil will perpetually receive what is due to it: Pain.

As Feser explains, “Suppose further, however, that this person perpetually refuses to stop willing to do X.  Then the unpleasantness he ought to be made to feel must also be perpetual.  But that is the situation of the person whose will is, upon death, fixed on evil, as described in my previous post on the subject of hell.  Since such a person perpetually wills evil, God ensures that he perpetually suffers the pain or unpleasantness that ought to be associated with that evil.  If, for example, this person perpetually wills X and willing X ought to be associated with shame and contempt, God ensures that the person perpetually suffers shame and contempt.  The damned person is not permitted to avoid or block this consequence the way he might have avoided it in this life -- by way of self-deceptive rationalization, distracting himself in pleasure-seeking, duping others about his true character, etc.”

This point connects perfectly with what we see in C&M. While it may be the case that (to some extent) we can block or ameliorate the pains that ought to be associated with evil actions in this life, God ensures no such attempts are effective in the life after this one, in which case, should we perpetually will evil (even if we can no longer achieve it), then we perpetually suffer the appropriate effects. On a proper, nuanced understanding of Hell, God’s punishment is not arbitrary but connected to profound truths about human nature and the metaphysics of goodness.

Naturally, this account supposes that Hell is not an empty set. But maybe it is (Dare We Hope?), and everybody, by God’s grace some way or other at least gets to purgatory and eventually heaven. Still, as tradition holds, the least pains of purgatory are profoundly greater than any pains imaginable on earth, as indeed they should be for somebody who (perhaps literally) gets away with murder. Hence, “holding out” for purgatory would be a serious (if not damnable) mistake, for however “painful” the correctives may be in life — for example: the possible consequences considered by Judah when he imagines confessing — it is guaranteed that those are almost nothing compared to the purifying fire (however metaphorical that language may be) in the life to come. The point is it is always better to repent NOW and begin making reparations for the sins one has committed in this life, especially — again, now getting overtly theologically — reparations in this life are also meritorious in a way that cleansing in purgatory is not.

The most substantial point, however, is this. Given human nature, which is created and willed into existence by God, we cannot possibly be truly happy apart from from 1) a relationship with God and 2) not repenting of evil acts. Any notion to the contrary is delusion given that God exists and that there are demonstrably good reasons for believing this, the undeniable experience of a binding moral structure being just one of them. (Arguments here, here, here, and here.)

As far as movies go, I cannot recommend Crimes and Misdemeanors enough. It is refreshingly honest, and presents an enormously serious subject matter, one which Hollywood too often distracts from, rather than encourages us to contemplate.

- Pat

PS - For those interested in two top tier philosophers arguing about God’s existence, I recommend the recent book Three Views on Christianity and Science. Skip right to the exchanges between Bruce Gordon (theist) and Michael Ruse (naturalist). Assess the accounts honestly to see which side is more reasonable, better evidenced.

Final PS - I hope this will be the first in a series, offering reflections on movies with philosophical themes that don’t suck.

1. “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” Twilight of the Idols"

2. For Catholics, faith is not just about cognitive assent to God’s existence. It is a form of life, a method of intimacy, etc.

3. Stump argues that God is so good and omnipotent that he can, and does, simultaneously aim to give us both objective and subjective poles of flourishing — that is, to give us the highest good, which is God himself, and the desires of our hearts, which are things intimately related to our character, such as Abraham wanting to be the father of faith, or Samson a great warrior. Of course, God must ensure these things are aligned and the latter is not exclusive of the former; in which case, God may use suffering as an instrument not only set the proper alignment but to get us even more of what we wanted than we thought possible. It’s a beautiful theodicy, and strikes me as correct.

4. Remember, a paradox is where (initially) we don’t see HOW things fit together, whereas a contradiction is where we see things do NOT fit together.