The reason we hate Lisa Simpson is because she is a deontologist
She's so stupid and anti-physicalist that she thinks it's better if her reputation is damaged and the school gets no money, than if the school does get money and she faces no consequence for cheating one time
or if cable companies don't get the pittance because her family is pirating TV because a God she no longer even believes in told her stealing is wrong
or that she's still capable of enjoying milk even though the dairy industry is arguably crueller than the beef industry.
She believes lies are an ontological taint and not simply information obfuscation which can have a tendency to backfire if more information comes to light. And that is why she is no fun.
Wake Up Dead Man is a fab movie with one thing I disagree with
After seeing it for the first time, I love it, there's so much fun to be had and I think who the ultimately film frames as in the wrong is completely the right choice. The emotional payoff is right on the money, and I can't wait to rewatch it again when it's more available to catch all the cleaver things I missed the first time. That being said the very ending has something that bothers me.
Spoilers follow
First, I don't think money is the apple, I think the apple is the desire to preserve the image of the church. The belief that all of the evil the church does can't be exposed because that would compromise the good the church can do, which just perpetuates the bad and lets it fester.
This leads me to my larger thought. I think keeping the jewel hidden is a selfish choice. Keeping something that you could use to help people inside a symbol of sacrifice as a masturbatory statement of how pious you are, for an audience of one, is just wasteful and a dick move. The story does a decent job of predicting this complaint, setting up that the church would be audited if they made any large donations. But it's weird none of the characters, even Blanc, raises the possibility of a scheme. Even if it was only for another character to shoot it down. As it's stands it's taking a threat from an antagonist who has been established to be pretty easy to outsmart as insurmountable.
It's part of a wider issue with treating the pursuit of money in and of itself as evil. Assuming there are only selfish reason to want the jewel (like for a visual metaphor of your own character arc) ignores that there are good uses for money. Like feeding the hungry or providing shelter. A deontologist might argue that theft in and of itself is always wrong, but when that purity comes at the cost of letting people go hungry I think that's a useless ethical system, and calling a list of dos and don'ts a system is generous. You could also say this is justifying theft by saying you can use stolen money to do good, but I'd say that is a justification. Yes rampant theft is a net negative, but that doesn't mean theft can't be a tool. Like if someone has all the insulin and is extorting people for it, then stealing the insulin to distribute it more fairly is the right move.
This is a minor point, in the context of a film that has so many valid and nuanced things to say about what good people can do adjacent to faith and how faith can be used for evil just as much. But it's interesting in the context of the wider series. It reminds me of the closing image of Knives Out, Marta looking down at people who have treated her awfully, in a house that's now entirely hers, it make me wonder what justice would mean in that situation, are the bad rich family now homeless? Is that a good thing?
Might not shoot a person but kill an ant; is the value of life determined by the size of the body or human-centric understandings of social contributions or responsibilities?
tbt when i was starting my first philosophy course and also starting house md at the same time and i kept saying 'deoncology' instead of 'deontology' and people thought i was like. anti-vax or something.
At the end of the Job minisode, Crowley inaugurates Their Side by proclaiming Aziraphale "an angel who goes along with Heaven... as far as he can," parallel to his own stated relationship with Hell.
Only it... doesn't actually work that way. Their exactlies are different exactlies.
Crowley defies and lies to Hell as often as he thinks he can get away with it. He never disabuses Downstairs of their misconceptions about his contributions to human atrocities. He cheerfully lies in his reports Downstairs, something Aziraphale briefly turns on his Baritone of Sarcastic Disapproval about in s1. Crowley even turns evil homeopathic in the latter part of the 20th century, likely in hopes that it will look good to head office while accomplishing essentially nothing. (This, of course, is another way he Crowleys himself, both with the London phone system and the M25.) After Eden, Crowley's default given an assignment from Hell is to see how he can subvert it.
Aziraphale, on the other hand, defies Her and Heaven as little as he possibly can. Sometimes, as with his sword giveaway, his compassion gets the better of his anxiety. Sometimes, as with Job's children in the destruction of the villa, he can try to stay within the letter of the law by leaving the defiance to Crowley.
His default, however, is "'m 'nangel. I can't dis- diso -- not do what 'm told." This comes out most often as respect for the Great/Divine Plan, which to him is sacrosanct. He sounds quite sincere in s1 when he says "Even if I wanted to help I couldn’t. I can’t interfere with the Divine Plan."
Aziraphale quite frequently Good Angels along by parroting Heaven's party line, whether it's "it'll all be rather lovely" or "I am good, you (I'm afraid) are evil" or droning on about evil containing the seeds of its own destruction, or condemning Elspeth's graverobbing as "wicked" (a stance he offers absolutely no reasoned support for, no logic, no "but She said," not a word -- that's very Heaven; most of Heaven's angels have the approximate brainpower of paramecia). Maestro Michael Sheen even has a particular voice cadence -- I think of it as Sententious Voice -- he uses when Aziraphale is thoughtlessly party-lining.
When the angel's conscience wars with his sense of Heaven's orthodoxy but (and this is an important but) he can't feasibly resist whatever's wrong, he offers strengthless party-line justifications he clearly doesn't agree with (as with the "rain bow" in Mesopotamia) or resorts to a Nuremberg defense: "I'm not consulted on policy decisions, Crowley!" Once or twice, he's even vocally aware of Heavenly hypocrisy: "Unless… [guns]'re in the right hands, where they give weight to a moral argument… I think." This isn't Sententious Voice. It's I-can't-disobey-and-I-hate-that voice.
But at base, the angel prefers obedience (not least because it's vastly safer), and he'd rather have someone else do his moral reasoning for him. Honestly? Pretty relatable. I know lots of people like this -- hell's bells, I've been this person, though I grew out of it somewhat -- and I daresay you do too. Moral reasoning is hard and often lonely (since it can be read as self-righteousness or even hypocrisy) and acting as it dictates can hurt. Nobody would need ethics codes if The Right Thing was also invariably The Convenient Thing.
Many GO fans find these Aziraphalean traits frustrating! Especially his repeated returns to parroting Heaven orthodoxy! Sometimes I do too! (Not least because I'm rather protective of my own integrity, and it's cost me quite a few times. I'm well-known in professional circles for picking up a rhetorical spear and tilting at the nearest iniquitous windmill. I often lose, but I sure do keep tilting. Every once in a blue moon I actually win one.)
The key, I think, to giving our angel a little grace on this (beyond honoring the gentle compassion that is pretty basic to his character) is noticing how often he can be induced to abandon an unconsidered Heavenish default stance. As irritating as his default is, and as consistently as he returns to it, it's not really that hard to talk him out of it. Crowley, of course, is tremendously good at knocking Aziraphale away from his default -- he's had to be. But Aziraphale even manages to talk himself away from his default once, in the form of the Ineffable Plan hairsplitting at the airbase!
I think the character-relevant point of the Resurrectionist minisode is making this breaking-the-Heavenish-default dynamic as clear as the contents of the pickled-herring barrel aren't. "That's lunatic!" Crowley exclaims, when Aziraphale Sententious Voicedly parrots Heaven's garbage about poverty providing extra opportunities for goodness. Aziraphale isn't quite ready to let go yet, replying "It's ineffable."
But Dalrymple (who, I think, parallels Heaven, perhaps even the Metatron -- there could be something decent there, but it's buried too deep under scorn and clueless privilege for any graverobber-of-souls to dig it out) manages to break Aziraphale's orthodoxy by explaining the child's tumor.
Once released from his orthodoxy, Aziraphale can't be trusted to handle moral reasoning well; his moral-reasoning ability is not-uncommonly (though not always) portrayed as vitiated. When he gives Elspeth the go-ahead to dig up more bodies, his excuses are just as vacuous as they were when he was convinced of her wickedness. He knows that he's crossed Heaven's line, too, and just as at Eden it's worrying him. That's why he has to talk to Crowley to nerve himself up to help Wee Morag... only he spends too much time talking, and it's too late.
But Crowley can then talk him into bankrolling Elspeth toward a better life. Aziraphale doesn't even put up any fight, both because he's compassionate and because Crowley is temporarily taking the place of Heaven (he's even Heaven-sized and staring down at them!) as the angel's moral compass.
S1 has an even worse example of Aziraphale's moral wavering, actually. Crowley yells "Shoot him, Aziraphale!" and Aziraphale sure does try to murder Adam. Again, he's adopting his morals from the nearest (and loudest) convenient source. Madame Tracy, thankfully, has enough of a moral backbone to save our angel from himself and Crowley.
(With my ersatz-ethicist hat on: this is a fight between utilitarianism and deontology. Crowley is the utilitarian, which is actually a bit of a departure for him, but he's admittedly desperate. Madame Tracy is the deontologist: One Doesn't Kill Children. Aziraphale is caught in the middle.)
I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason we start s3 with Aziraphale and Crowley separated is so that Aziraphale finally has to do his own moral reasoning, without Crowley's nudges. I don't think it'll be easy for him. It will absolutely be lonely. And it may well hurt.
But I will watch for it, because it's how he will become his own angel, independent of Heaven and even of Crowley. And he must do that.
So I recently had to take an ethics course for my degree, with one module being about philosophy of ethics and the topics were Deontology and Kantianism. Having re-watched The Good Place recently, I buckled up to listen to this lecture with full attention.
When the instructor reached the first slide about Deontology and Immanuel Kant, there was a point that stood out to me:
Actions should be driven by rational thinking and by duty and not by desires and benefits.
And as soon as I heard that, I thought of how we already know this from Shrimad Bhagwat Gita, He already told this. And to my surprise and delight, the course instructor said the same thing. So yeah. Our scriptures and texts have all the ethical principles required.
