Lord
of War (2005) is a film in which a Ukrainian-born American arms dealer,
Yuri Orlov, and his brother, Vitaly, who works with Yuri when not in voluntary rehab
for drug abuse, make money by selling military arms to dictators including
Andre Baptiste of Liberia. Whereas Yuri is able to maintain a mental wall
keeping him from coming to terms with his contribution to innocent people
getting killed by the autocrats who are his customers, Vitality is finally
unable to resist facing his own complicity, and that of his brother. This
itself illustrates that moral concerns may have some influence on some people
but not others. Yuri’s position, which can be summed up as, what they do
with the guns that we sell them is none of our business, contrasts
with Vitaly as he realizes that as soon as the Somalian warlord takes the guns
off the trucks, villages down the hill will be killed. Vitaly even sees a woman
and her young child being hacked to death down below. Yuri tries to manage his
brother so the sale can be completed and the two brothers can get out of Somalia,
but Vitaly has finally had enough and has come to the conclusion that he and
Yuri have been morally culpable by selling guns to even sadistic dictators like
Andre Baptiste. Even as Yuri ignores his own conscience, Vitaly finally cannot
ignore the dictates of his own, and he takes action. Does he ignore his
happiness, and thus his self-interest, in being willing to die to save the
villagers by blowing up (admittedly only) one of the two trucks, or has he
reasoned through his conscience and found that it coincides with his happiness?
In other words, are the moral dictates of a person’s conscience necessarily in
line with a person’s happiness, and thus one’s self-interest? This is a
question that the filmmaker could have explored in the film.
Joseph Butler (1692-1752), a European, Anglican bishop, theologian, and philosopher, “explicitly upheld the claims of conscience against all rivals, especially interest”, otherwise known as self-interest, which Butler claims is interested in the happiness of the self.[1] To be sure, because “’the greatest satisfactions to ourselves depend upon our having benevolence in a due degree’”, “’even from self-love we should endeavor to get over all inordinate regard to and consideration of ourselves,’ and cultivate other-regarding desires.”[2] Even with this extension, Butler took it for granted that “the dictates of conscience and self-love coincide,” even though, when he considered “which is the real arbiter of virtue, he [always came] down on the side of conscience.”[3] In the “cool hour” passage in one of his sermons, he asserts, “’Let it be allowed, though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good as such; yet that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it’”.[4] This does not mean that the ground of rightness is conduciveness to happiness, [and thus self-interest, and the passage] does not even mean that the motive of self-love is a good motive—the good motive is ‘affection to and pursuit of what is right and good as such’—it simply means that as a motive to action, self-love is more influential than the dictates of conscience.”[5] Yet rational self-interest, which is based or premised on self-love, is coincident to matters of conscience, he insists, so why should it matter which is more influential?
Firstly, Butler includes the happiness of heaven in self-interest, and so just looking at our embodied life here, even rational self-interest can give different results than conscience. "Butler believed, on theological grounds . . ., that virtuous behavior brings the greatest happiness in the end."[6] Secondly, Butler states that other-regarding benevolent motives (and acts) do not necessarily impact the moral agent’s mental state, and thus happiness. A person can indeed follow one’s own conscience to act benevolently such that the other person’s mental state will change without one’s own necessarily changing (i.e., being happier). So in terms of ethics alone, excluding theology, even Butler would admit that self-interest and the normative dictates of conscience can conflict. From this standpoint, Vitaly's ethic in the film can be analyzed.
Vitaly was lost and unhappy
both in being a cook in his parents’ restaurant and working for his brother
Yuri. In fact, his desire to escape—to feel happy—had been so great that he
resorted to cocaine and repeatedly went to a clinic without success. It is only
in coming to terms with the immorality of what he and his brother were doing in
selling arms to dictators around the world that Vitaly found meaning sufficient
to act with purpose. In witnessing a man in the nearby village use a machete to
kill a woman and her young child, Vitaly does not decide to destroy the weapons
to keep the warlord from killing all of the people in the small village in
order to have purpose; rather, he is overwhelmed emotionally by the severity of
the harm to the two innocent people and out of this sentiment he reasoned that
by destroying the guns in the trucks, he could prevent the deaths of all of the
villagers. That Vitaly found purpose—essentially, found himself—is not
his motive even though as he lays dying after being shot by Baptiste’s son for
blowing up one of the trucks, Vitaly finally is at peace and then he dies. It
is like in Jainism, where spiritual freedom from the material realm is only
realized as a person lies dying without even relying on one’s heart.
Therefore, even though acting
justly by honoring rather than bracketing the dictates of conscience may, and
Butler would say, does coincide with the self-interest that stems from
self-love, being motivated does not depend on the extra push from being happy
as a result even though happiness may result. In other words, the film
can be interpreted as contradicting Butler’s theory by showing that Butler
depends too much on self-love and its interests (i.e., to be personally happy
as a result) in motivating a person to follow one’s conscience. Other-regard,
or benevolence, can be oriented to improving the mental states, and thus
self-interests, of other people without being motivated by one’s own
happiness being positively affected too. This is so even if the moral agent is
happier as a result.
To be sure, Vitaly clearly is
very troubled internally by Yuri’s instance that Vitaly not disrupt or impede
the sale going through. Yuri is doubtlessly motivated by self-interest, but in
terms of money and being able to leave alive. That he has no moral scruples
does not mean that he is oblivious to how bad his customers are as people. Vitaly,
I submit, cannot live with himself unless he blows up the sale, literally, so
in this respect he can be said to be motivated not only because he does not
want the innocents below to be shot after he leaves, but also because he wants
to improve his mental state from being in such pain. However, his
ethical/mental crisis is triggered by his having witnessed the horrendous
double-murder with the murderer calmly walking away with impunity. Being so emotionally
shocked —in Hume’s terms, judging morally by having a strong sentiment of
disapprobation—is the basis of Vitaly’s motivation to follow his conscience even
though that means betraying his own brother.
The operative motive is not Vitaly’s
rational self-interest in being happy or at peace, as Butler would claim, especially
as Vitaly undoubtedly knows that he would probably be killed. What people are
capable of doing to other people can be so horrific that a moral agent may
emotionally disapprove so much and be so motivated to forestall further harm
that one’s own self-interest qua happiness is of no concern. Even if relieving
one’s own internal angst is motivated by a non-rational, instinctual urge, and one
may indeed be at peace afterward, the angst and peace can be effects of something
else that is triggering the distinctly normative, or ethical, process that ends
with a decision and an action. It is Vitaly’s strong emotional reaction in seeing
a woman and young child hacked to death out in the open that is decisive in
motivating him to try to blow up both trucks so nobody else in the tents below
would be killed. It can perhaps even be said that he is willing to sacrifice
himself, and thus his happiness, to save the lives of others. It is an odd, unfortunate,
commentary on human nature itself that even if Yuri had also witnessed the violence,
he would still be intent on completing the sale. Yuri’s ethical compass is
extremely compromised—he even reasons that because eventually lies become the
norm in a marriage, it is only logical to start one off by lying. His wife Ava
leaves him, and his parents disown him, and Vitaly is dead. So much for
self-love and even rational self-interest. Butler gave them too much credit.
Fortunately, the movie doesn’t.
2. Stephan Darwall, “Introduction,” in Joseph Butler, Five Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel and A Dissertation Upon the Nature of Virtue. Ed., Stephen Darwall (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), p. 7.
3. Alan R. White, ‘Conscience and Self-Love in Butler’s Sermons,” Philosophy 27 (1952), p. 332.
4. Ibid., p. 337.
5. Ibid.
