Josef Mengele, an
SS physician infamous for his inhumane medical experimentation on prisoners at Auschwitz,
is in this film a character intent on furnishing the 95 Hitlers he has cloned
with Hitler’s own background. Crucially, Hitler’s father died at 65. So too,
Mengele, reasons, must the adoptive fathers of the boy Hitlers. Otherwise, they
might not turn out like Hitler. The ethics of Mengele’s task—killing 95
innocent 65 year-olds—is clear. When Ezra Lieberman stops Mengele in his
tracks, the question turns to the ethics of killing the 95 boys so none of them
will grow up to be another Hitler. This is a much more interesting ethical
question, and the narrative—and film as a medium, moreover—would be fuller had the script been deepened to make the question, and thus the ethical and ontological dimensions, transparent for the viewers.
Even if the boys
have the same upbringing environment as Hitler, and obviously the same
genetics, the world was not the same after World War II. Antisemitism cannot be
assumed—even less the Aryan-race ideology. The news of the Holocaust alone
changed the public discourse. Hitler’s demise meant that any aspiring Hitler
would face considerable headwind in securing a dictatorship in Western Europe.
In short, the leap from same-environment, same-genetics to another Hitler is
unsupportable. Hence, killing the boys to save future lives and even safeguard
democracy could not be justified ethically under consequentialism.
Deeper than the
ethical dimension is the question of whether a clone of a person is identical
to the original person from which the DNA sample is used to make the clones. In
philosophical terms, the question is that of ontological identity. I contend
that such identity does not hold in the case of cloning.
That no two
environments (e.g., upbringings) can be exactly the same means that a cloned
person cannot be formed just like the original. It follows that the clone makes
different choices, and even has different thoughts. In other words, the stream
of thoughts is not identical. Indeed, the consciousnesses are different. It is
not as if Hitler could see or hear the world through the boys after his death. The
minds are thus not identical, even though the brains are constructed by the
same genetics—but environment can impact brain chemistry! Severe abuse, for
instance, can alter the chemistry. Hitler’s father was stern—perhaps abusive.
If so, a cloned boy whose father is distant but not abusive would not have the
same brain chemistry as Hitler.
The ontological non-identity
provides a strong basis for the ethical claim that killing the 95 cloned-Hitler
boys to prevent another Hitler from becoming a vicious dictator would be
unethical. The assumption that another Hitler must necessarily result from a
shared genetics and a similar upbringing is faulty because too many other
variables would be in play for such a deterministic relationship to hold.
Should it be
argued that the boys should be killed to punish Hitler, who in the film’s
story-time is already dead, the ontological non-identity means that the 95 boys
are innocent of Hitler’s atrocious deeds. Punishing the innocent is itself
unethical. That Hitler is dead when the boys are cloned means that he would not
be punished. Admittedly, killing the clones would not be in Hitler’s interest,
and doing something that would impact Hitler negatively has ethical merit on
account of Hitler’s deeds. However, the immoral act of killing the innocent outweighs
such merit, I submit, both because of the boys’ pain of death and the fact that
Hitler would not be aware of the punishment because he is dead.
Ethical analysis
can be complex, but it can indeed lead to definitive answers. One philosopher
who criticized moral theory, Friedrich Nietzsche maintained something very
close to an ontological identity—the same consciousness being absent—in positing
that given infinite time and the infinite possible number of galaxies, a person
just like you—in effect, you—must certainly be the case at some point—and indeed
innumerable times—on a planet somewhere that is just like Earth. In fact,
Nietzsche holds that the person would be you! How excruciating it must be to
know that all your heartaches are to be felt an infinite number of times. So
Nietzsche has a demon announce:
"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you
will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be
nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and
everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you,
all in the same succession and sequence -- even this spider and this moonlight
between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of
existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of
dust!"[1]
I submit that
Nietzsche’s assumption of ontological identity (i.e., his use of the pronoun you) goes too far. As I argue above,
even an identical genetics and the very same environment do not give the same
consciousness. Physically, two (or more) brains exist. The recurrences are thus
not really so. Nietzsche admits, for instance, that we have no awareness of our
respective “recurrences; we don’t suffer again what we have suffered. Nor, for
that matter, can we experience our past joys again. So you will not have to
live once more, and innumerable times more, the life you have lived, even if
that life is repeated; the reason is that the person is not ontologically
identical to you.
Even in terms of
physics, Nietzsche’s theory of the Eternal Return is problematic. Simply put,
his idea is that infinite space means that infinite universes (each of which
contains galaxies) exist so mathematically an infinite number of Earths with an
infinite number of variations, including that which we experience in our lives,
must be the case. In short, an infinite number is very, very large. Nietzsche
applies the mathematics to physics:
“If the world may
be thought of as a certain definite quantity of force and as a certain definite
number of centers of force -- and every other representation remains indefinite
and therefore useless -- it follows that, in the great dice game of existence, it
must pass through a calculable number of combinations. In infinite time, every
possible combination would at some time or another be realized; more: it would
be realized an infinite number of times. And since between every combination
and its next recurrence all other possible combinations would have to take
place, and each of these combinations conditions the entire sequence of
combinations in the same series, a circular movement of absolutely identical
series is thus demonstrated: the world as a circular movement that has already
repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game ad infinitum.”[2]
In short,
Nietzsche is saying that a finite system within an infinite system must occur
an infinite number of times. Even though Nietzsche calls this the Eternal
Return, he is not suggesting that infinity itself is divine. If space is
infinite—a claim that Einstein rejects in his theory of curved space—that space
is in Creation and thus not divine. Even so, Nietzsche’s assumption not only
that space is infinite, but also that galaxies exist throughout that space is
problematic. If space goes on and on without limit, it is possible that matter
and energy cease at a certain location.
Furthermore, even
a “definite quantity of force” and “a certain definite number of centers of
force” can involve an infinite number of variables. One reason why the social
sciences fall short of the empirical lab experiments in the natural sciences
(i.e., biology, chemistry, physics) is that all the variables that go into
human behavior and social scenarios have not been identified and thus subject
to being held constant or adjusted. I contend that the infinite number here
cancels out the infinite number of recurrences (e.g., of you). Think of “infinite”
in a numerator and “infinite” in a denominator of fractions. The two infinities cancel out. In short, there has not been, is not, and will not be another you.
In conclusion,
even an “absolutely identical series” applied to identical genetics is not
sufficient for us to posit the sort of ontological identity that would permit
us to say that Hitler recurs in the 95 clones in the film. Killing the boys
would thus be unethical. In keeping the audience from knowing that the boys are
cloned from Hitler’s DNA, the story does not permit much time for discussion of
the philosophical issues here. Even so, the Lieberman character is of the sort
who would be inclined to have such thoughts and thus ask other characters, such
as his wife, questions that could get the audience thinking. Such a narrative
dimension would make film that much more powerful, and thus rich, as a story
medium.
[1]
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New
York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 341.
[2] Friedrich
Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York:
Random House, 1967), p. 1066.
