Spies, Detectives and Philosophers in Divided Germany: Reading Cold War Genre Fiction from a Kantian Perspective

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

In the Department of German Studies of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences by

John Stobie Shahan Jr. M.A. in Philosophy, Baylor University, 2007

Committee Chair, Todd Herzog PhD.

Abstract

In this dissertation I focus on two types of genre fiction as viewed through the lens of Kantian ethics and social contract theory. The two types of genre fiction include detective novels written by a German speaking Swiss author named Friedrich Dürrenmatt, as well as two spy novels by John le Carré. All of these novels are set in the second half of the twentieth century and in le Carré’s case, during the height of the Cold War. Dürrenmatt is well-known throughout the German literary canon for both his plays and his prose. I argue that he tends to differ from other writers of detective fiction because he focuses less on the mystery of the murder itself and more on the interaction of the characters, as well as the philosophical ramifications of what is happening in the story. The first Dürrenmatt novel, Justiz, focuses on the conflict between a failed lawyer, named Spät, and an influential member of Swiss high-society, Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler, who has been convicted of shooting his friend, Dr. Winter, in a crowded restaurant. This novel focuses on Spät’s tortured quest for justice, in that Kohler is able to elude justice. This first chapter sets up the idea of the Kantian hero and Kantian villain. Kantian heroes and villains differ from conventional heroes and villains in that they are judged not by conventional standards but by ideas of duty, or deontologically based ethics, as well as how they treat the inherent dignity of their fellow humans. This conflict between Kantian hero and villain continues into the second chapter, which is also a detective novel by Dürrenmatt, called Der

Richter und sein Henker. The villain in this story is just as villainous as the hero is heroic, and again I will work with Kantian ideas of ethics to enhance the ideas of what makes a hero or villain. By this point it will be the case that conventional methods of defining heroes and villains are quite different from Kantian standards. In the third chapter, I bring in the spy fiction of John

ii le Carré, specifically the first and third novels of the “Quest for Karla Trilogy,” or as is commonly also called “the Karla Trilogy.” In these books, ideas of good and evil become very nebulous, and on both sides of the Cold War, spies and espionage agencies combat each other, trying to gain the upper hand. In this case, conventional heroes and villains differ, but from a Kantian perspective, all of the intelligence operatives are simply doing their duty towards their institutions. Looking again at the Kantian social contract, as well as looking again at Kantian ethics, in addition to what Kant had to say about spying in general, will provide the analysis. In this dissertation I attempt to re-evaluate ideas of heroism and villainy as demonstrated by what

Kant had to say about ideas of duty, about human dignity, and about how states should relate to each other within the categorical imperative.

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Acknowledgements I would like first to thank the members of my dissertation committee. Without them, my dissertation never would have even left the ground. They have provided me with ideas, counsel, and encouragement. Specifically, I would like to thank Dr. Todd Herzog, my dissertation advisor. Our regular meetings kept me on track and provided me with motivation to seek new avenues of analysis and secondary scholarship that I would have never initially considered. Todd has been great at sending me in the direction of new quests for ideas and ways to make my dissertation better. His expertise in genre fiction in general have been indispensable. He has been kind, encouraging, and has always found the silver lining in my situation when I may have been discouraged on my own. Todd has had the unique ability to hold me accountable while at the same time rejuvenating my energy and enthusiasm when I needed it most. I would like to thank my second reader, Dr. Tanja Nusser. She first helped me find the right detective fiction on which my dissertation is now based, namely Friedrich

Dürrenmatt. She helped bring everything together in our talks before and after my PhD exams, wherein I was given leads on options for pursuing Dürrenmatt’s work in a scholarly fashion.

Tanja also provided me with invaluable feedback on how to make what I had into a viable dissertation. In addition, her friendship has been at the cornerstone of my experience and my life here at the University of Cincinnati. I would not have been able to succeed without her friendship and kindness. Dr. Richard Schade has also been instrumental in my life at UC. He inspired me in many ways, including with his stories of the Cold War, a major part of my third chapter, and with his conversations about John le Carré and le Carré’s iconic character, George

Smiley. He has always been willing to talk with me and provide encouragement, especially right

v after my PhD exams, when I was trying to narrow down topics. My final committee member,

Dr. Werner Jung, of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, has been a great part of my committee as well. He has read my chapters as they have developed and has always provided very valuable feedback and encouragement. The fact that he specializes in Kant has been of great help and I can rest easier knowing that he brings these expertise to my committee.

I would like to thank the other members of the German department as well. Dr. Valerie

Weinstein has always been there to listen and provide helpful encouragement, as well as keeping me grounded. Dr. Evan Torner has been of great help bouncing ideas around, and helping me find secondary literature on Kant when I needed to build up my dissertation. Dr.

Sunnie Rucker-Chang has provided valuable advice and reassurance. I learned a lot being her teaching assistant and have been grateful for her help along the way. I also would like to thank

Dr. Svea Bräunert, who provided invaluable feedback as well and would always ask me about my progress and how I was doing, helping me to feel more positive about the process. I would especially like to thank Dr. Jennifer Kelley. She has been a wonderful mentor to all of the graduate students in the department. I learned equally as much from her as in any seminar, and she believed in me even when I was discouraged. I would finally like to thank my friends and fellow graduate students. You all have been a wonderful component of my life during my PhD studies.

I would like to thank the Taft Foundation for giving me a year to focus on writing my dissertation, as well as providing me with the opportunity to present my research at a great inter-disciplinary conference. I would like to thank the Verband der Deutsch-Amerikanischen

Clubs, or in English the Federation of German-American Clubs for providing me with the

vi opportunity to spend a year during my graduate studies in Heidelberg. I would also like to thank the German studies department at the University of Duisburg-Essen for allowing me to go to

Germany twice and engage in scholarship and make great friendships and connections. This includes especially Dr. Rolf Paar and my committee member, Dr. Werner Jung.

In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Ronnie Littlejohn, and Dr. Regine Schwarzmeier, who mentored me during my undergraduate years and helped me develop interest in philosophy and German studies. They started me on this path at the beginning of my college career.

Finally, I would like to thank my family. My mother, Paula Reed, my father, John Shahan, my stepfather, Arthur Reed, and my stepmother, Sharon Cobb. They have listened to my progress and have been interested in my latest research, and have provided me with much needed emotional support. I would also like to thank my five brothers, in order of age, Patrick, Arthur,

Andrew, Clay, and Watson, for being the best brothers a guy could have.

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Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………ii-iii. Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………………………………iv-vi Introduction: Kant, Heroism, and Genre Fiction ………………………………………………….1 Chapters: Chapter 1: Justice and the Introduction of the Kantian Hero………………………………..13

Chapter 2: Another Twist on Heroism and Villainy in Dürrenmatt’s Novels…………..89

Chapter 3: Onward to the Cold War………………………………………………………………………152

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………237 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………………….246

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Introduction: Kant, Heroism, and Genre Fiction

There is no question that genre fiction such as this has become incredibly popular in the last century. Audiences of suspense and mystery films, as well as readers of detective fiction and spy fiction have carried the genre from what was once considered low-culture, to becoming something more significant. One of the most compelling features about these types of genre fiction is the emphasis on heroism and villainy. In these stories, sometimes there is a stark difference between hero and villain, as is often the case in detective fiction, or spy stories like

Ian Fleming’s James Bond. In stories written by authors like John le Carré, the differences become less stark. There are still heroes and villains but characters sometimes seem to cross the line. This is where my interest begins. I would like to explore heroism and villainy in this capacity. Some heroes in genre fiction are so iconic that every fan of these types of fiction knows their name and what sort of work they do. Sherlock Holmes would be an example.

Although he may not have been the very first character to be popular in detective fiction, he is perhaps one of the most well-known among English speaking audiences. In spy fiction, of course one of the most famous is James Bond. His character has now been featured in so many films that it is difficult to count. James Bond has skyrocketed the popularity of spy fiction and film in the U.S. since the 1950’s and 1960’s. I will not be working with either one of these heroes, however exciting they may be. I will be working with the fiction of John le Carré and

Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

First I would like to discuss John le Carré and his hero. The spy of choice in this dissertation is

George Smiley. George Smiley has become, among readers of spy literature, close to comparable in fame with James Bond. John Cobbs, who provides analysis on le Carré, indicates

1 that George Smiley is an “anti-spy, who would become, with James Bond, the most famous agent in literary history.”1 Smiley is described as being “rumpled, cuckolded, socially awkward if not exactly insecure, and decidedly the antithesis of suave James Bond or all the sleek Oxford and Cambridge men whom le Carré had known in the secret service.”2 Cobbs provides a good summary. “Smiley was sketched as le Carré’s statement of protest against the British intelligence establishment and it was doubtless a satisfying irony for his creator that this pudgy, unfashionable emblem of reality came to be so visible an image of the messy world of espionage for the vast reading public.”3

Le Carré was attempting something that was less of an action movie and closer to reality. Cobbs continues, “The cresting of the Bond craze had left the public hungry for a more realistic form of spy story…”4 What made le Carré’s spy fiction so poignant at the time was that the Cold War itself, in which Smiley is a participant, was one of the most frightening and influential aspects of the second half of the twentieth century. “The Cuban missile crisis, coupled with the provocative building of the Berlin Wall and the bellicose stance of President Kennedy in the

United States and Premier Khrushchev in the USSR, made the public aware that the Cold War was more dangerous than many had thought during the halcyon Eisenhower years.”5 Thus this fear of the unknown and another power on the other side of the world would have made spy fiction extremely relevant. It is my opinion that it still is, in the same way that one can learn from events like World War II. Andrew Hammond states that “critics have argued that the Cold

1 John Cobbs, Understanding John le Carré (Colombia: University of South Carolina, 1998), 7. 2 Cobbs, 7. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 8. 5 Ibid.

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War was the guiding influence on all major forms of cultural and philosophical expression in the period.”6 The interesting thing to consider about le Carré as a writer of spy fiction is that he witnessed part of the Cold War firsthand. One of the things to consider is that the character of

George Smiley is a scholar of Grimmelshausen and German literature. In creating a brief biography, John Cobbs describs le Carrés background. If one does some biographical digging, one learns that le Carré was also a scholar of German studies, specifically the language and literature.7 Le Carré studied German language and literature at the University of Bern and these studies “would profoundly influence his work.”8 One of the reasons is that he used his German while being posted to Vienna with the British army in 1949, as part of army intelligence, “where both the skulduggery of the Cold War and its ghastly effects on civilians came home to the young man, for among his jobs was debriefing British officers and interviewing refugees.”9 Thus le Carré had a firsthand and unique perspective on the Cold War. I will specifically be working with the “Karla Trilogy,” also known as the “Quest for Karla Trilogy,” as described by John

Cobbs. This trilogy documents the battle between George Smiley of the British Secret Service, or the “Circus”, and Karla of the KGB, or “Moscow Centre.” I will be analyzing heroism and villainy not necessarily from an historic perspective, but from a philosophical perspective. Ideas include, who really qualifies as hero or villain and why? To do this, I will be working with

Immanuel Kant’s deontological philosophy, which I will comment on shortly in this introduction.

To provide a definition for what deontology means, it most often refers to a system of ethics

6 Andrew Hammond, “The Twilight of Utopia’: British Dystopian Fiction and the Cold War,” The Modern Language Review, 106, no. 3, (July 2011): 662, accessed May 29th, 2017 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/modelangrevi.106.3.0662 7 Cobbs, 2. 8 Ibid., 2. 9 Ibid., 3.

3 based in duty. Deontological means duty based. The important thing that will be considered will be the type of fluid or non-consistent level of morality that occurs in this type of spy fiction, otherwise known as a moral grey-area. One question is, why choose le Carré and not other authors of spy fiction? There are a few reasons. The main ones have to do with the potential for intellectual analysis that is possible with le Carré and not as easy with some others who are equally as popular. For example, while James Bond is a fantastic character, his stories have less of the intriguing aspect of fluid morality that I am concerned with. James Bond is more of a clear cut “good guy vs. bad guy” narrative. Also, le Carré himself is a scholar. As John Cobbs says, people forget about le Carré’s scholarly excellence.10 “Le Carré’s works are actually packed with intellectual apparatus and arcana as well as linguistic legerdemain—but not flamboyantly.

Critics could ruminate endlessly, for example, simply on the symbolism of his names and titles.”11 Thus le Carré allows for better intellectual discussion. Another aspect of this question is that le Carré is highly relevant to scholars of German studies. This dissertation is designed to be compatible with a German studies curriculum, and not only does le Carré himself have a

German studies background, and not only Smiley himself, but most importantly, many of le

Carré’s novels take place on the border of the Cold War with Germany right in the middle.

Smiley’s People, the third novel in the trilogy, takes place largely in Germany and at the end, on a bridge between East Berlin and West Berlin. The books are not only relevant for Central

Europe, but for scholars of German as well. The Spy who Came in from the Cold, which stars the character Alec Leamas, also features Smiley and also takes place in Germany during the height of the Cold War. Thus there are a combination of factors that make le Carré an excellent choice

10 Ibid., 4. 11 Ibid.

4 both for the analysis of heroism and villainy in spy fiction in general, but also for this dissertation specifically.

The other component of fiction to consider is detective fiction. For this component I will be working with the detective fiction of Friedrich Dürrenmatt. One interesting feature about considering Dürrenmatt’s detective fiction is that there is a relatively small quantity of detective novels in comparison with his plays. Some of his very well-known plays include Die Physiker, as well as Der Besuch der alten Dame. These are sometimes taught in German classes. There are only a handful of detective fiction novels written by Dürrenmatt, the classics being Das

Versprechen, Der Richter und sein Henker, and Der Verdacht. I will be working with Der Richter und sein Henker in the second chapter of the dissertation. It tells the story of the forty-year struggle between Kommissar Bärlach, and his enemy, Gastmann. In the case of spy fiction, I will argue that moral distinctions are more difficult to make, but in the case of this novel, descriptions such as good and evil are more relevant. In the first chapter I will also work with a book from Dürrenmatt, called Justiz. In this story, the reader experiences an ongoing narration from the point of view of a lawyer, named Spät. His name does mean “late” in German, and we learn why in certain scholarly analysis of the story. In this case, from a conventional sense, Spät appears less heroic than a typical heroic figure like James Bond or Sherlock Holmes on the surface, given his problems with alcoholism and obsession with his views of justice. But I will argue that a Kantian analysis changes this evaluation. Furthermore, a Kantian analysis can change the reader’s perspective of the villain, Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler. Dürrenmatt is a good choice here too, because of the potential for scholarly interpretation of his stories. Just like le Carré,

Dürrenmatt had a scholarly background. Roger A. Crockett supplies questions that Dürrenmatt

5 was concerned with. “What kind of God, if any, sits behind the chaos? Is justice possible? Is corruption inevitable? Are free choice and human responsibility only illusions? Can the world be changed and if so, how?”12 Crockett continues, “These questions are the themes that run through the works—lifelong concerns of a writer who stopped short of a planned doctoral dissertation in philosophy but never stopped being a philosopher, and who never lost his love of a good game.”13 These questions are asked in the works that will be examining, and for that reason there will be a significant philosophical component explored. Questions of justice, free choice, and corruption are especially poignant. In fact, Dürrenmatt did study philosophy for three years. He mainly studied Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger.14 What is relevant here for my work is that philosophical discourse is inherent in Dürrenmatt’s fiction. Just like with le

Carré and Smiley, Dürrenmatt’s novels with inspector Bärlach were extremely popular. Der

Richter und sein Henker, according to Crockett, sold millions of copies worldwide.15 Crockett asserts, naturally, that “this alone does not qualify a novel of great literature.”16 However, says

Crockett, “the two works do possess unique qualities which set them apart from the standard murder mystery potboiler. One such quality is their genre-critical standpoint. Another is the abundance of philosophical monologues and discussions.”17 Crockett is referring to the two

Bärlach novels in this quotation. I am concerned in the upcoming two chapters with the philosophical monologues and discussions which arise in works such as Der Richter und sein

12 Roger A. Crockett, Understanding Friedrich Dürrenmatt. (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), ix. 13 Crockett, x. 14 Ibid., 4. 15 Ibid., 38. 16 Ibid., 39. 17 Ibid.

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Henker. The conflict and conversations between Gastmann and Bärlach are highly philosophical in nature and they, as Crockett mentions, are part of the philosophy which drives the plot.

While I will be exploring traditional ideas, or conventional standards of what defines heroism and villainy, my main project is to examine them from a Kantian perspective. Doing this will actually create a type of contrast which will hopefully cause the reader to re-examine notions of heroism and villainy. Essentially, a person may be an anti-hero, or barely heroic at all, but when re-interpreted from a Kantian perspective, can become a Kantian hero and thus heroic in a new way. Villains, in turn, who seem despicable from a conventional point of view, can seem even worse, in the case of Gastmann, or suddenly somewhat justified, in the case of Kohler. I think that this type of analysis is important because ideas of good and evil are so difficult to grasp in contemporary times, especially with the developments of thinking since World War II, as a result of that war, the Cold War, and all of the cultural developments in between, that an alternate definition of what is heroic and what is villainous is helpful. In the case of the detective fiction, I will demonstrate that there is more of a dichotomy in place between hero and villain, whereas with spies in the le Carré section, the distinctions are less stark, even from a Kantian perspective.

I will mainly be working with Kant’s two texts that focus most closely on duty and the categorical imperative, namely, the Metaphysics of Morals and the Groundwork of the

Metaphysics of Morals. I will go into deeper explanation of Kant’s ethics and social contract theory in the upcoming chapters, but there are a few axes of measurement for determining heroism or villainy. A very significant one is duty. If one acts out of duty, meaning a person performs a moral action regardless of reward or other benefit, then one is acting of duty.

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Another aspect of duty is adhering to the categorical imperative. This is a good way to measure heroic qualities from a Kantian perspective. Another one is having a good will. Kant does discuss briefly the value of having a good will in the Groundwork.18 The catch, however, is that a person cannot normally act always from good will alone. Also, as I will discuss later, according to certain scholars, not everyone has a sense of pure good will, and also, acting out of good will without other limiting factors can lead to unforeseen problems. Another axis of measurement is of course, the categorical imperative. There are several formulae of the categorical imperative.

One of them is as follows and is perhaps the most famous: “I ought never to act except in such a way that can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”19 This formulation of the categorical imperative is a source of controversy, because some scholars find it oppressive that one should act in this way. I will address this problem later. One very valuable formula that is derived from it is the formula of humanity, or the humanity formula.20 It is also related to the concept of the kingdom of ends, in which a commonwealth of people live in mutual respect. I will also refer to it as the practical imperative sometimes because that is what Kant calls it when he first states it in the Groundwork. Each time Kant formulates it in the Groundwork, the point is that people are not to be treated as a means to an end.21 Basically, one is not to use another person for purposes that would either harm that person or violate inherent human dignity.

Kant describes the inherent dignity within human beings in the Metaphysics of Morals. He relates human dignity to the assertion that people deserve mutual respect and should not be

18Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (London: Routledge, 1991), 59. 19 Kant, 67. 20 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy refers to it as the Humanity Formula, while other scholars such as Allen W. Wood refer to it as the Formula of Humanity. Either way, the Humanity Formula necessitates respect for humanity. 21 Ibid., 91.

8 used as a means to an end. 22 This is also a good means by which to measure heroism and villainy. Heroes try to protect people from harm and villains use them for their own gain. There are other aspects of Kantian behavior that derive from these arguments, such as an inherent duty toward the well-being of other people. It all becomes more complex, again, in the third chapter, because good and bad are in many ways replaced by loyalty to institutions and countries. In this case even the villains can qualify for Kantian classification. In turn I will be employing Kantian social contract theory to evaluate how people function within a society and between societies. In general then, by the end of this project, I hope to raise discussion about how heroism and villainy, while being crucial aspects of genre fiction, can be examined differently through Kant, and thus become even more compelling after such analysis. I will also be working with other sources from Kant scholars in recent years who bring Kant into a newer age and solve some controversy. I will not be working with other Enlightenment philosophers, nor any others who are not related to Kant. Partially this is due to the fact that to work with other philosophers would be an entirely separate project, for which, though interesting, would take almost a separate dissertation to analyze. Furthermore, Kant is different than quite a few other philosophers in that his type of social contract theory is good for describing both small- scale, personal relationships, as well as relationships between nations, using the same argumentative apparatus. Another point to consider is that the type of morality in which I am interested necessitates that the ends absolutely do not justify the means. Such thinking can lead down a slippery slope and Kantian philosophy protects us from that. Essentially, Kantian analysis can help not only to reevaluate engaging genre fiction, but to show how, if a hero or

22 Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 209.

9 villain is interpreted as being a Kantian hero, that person can be given dignity and viewed as an even richer, more complex character. Also, it will be demonstrated how it is possible for people to live in a collective in a more harmonious state. I hope, finally to show how Kantian ethics is not as oppressive as some people think.

I will now provide a brief summary of what is upcoming in the following three chapters. In chapter one, I will be working with Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s detective novel, Justiz. This novel documents the struggle between the protagonist, Spät, a failed lawyer, and Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler, a high society Swiss citizen who has committed a murder and sent Spät down a path to madness and ruin in pursuit of justice toward Kohler. I introduce several key concepts that are pervasive throughout the dissertation. I introduce the reader to two main terms, the Kantian hero and the Kantian villain. These describe how a person can be re-evaluated as heroic or villainous based on her or his adherence to ideals such as duty, respect for humanity, adherence to an ideal, and regarding human life as so inherently valuable that it is to be viewed as an “end in itself,” as Kant states.23 The hero, for all of his or her flaws, treats humans as inherently valuable, acts out of duty without regard for profit or gain, and pursues an ideal, which in the case of these novels, is justice. The Kantian villain does the opposite, and is most distinguishable by his or her propensity for violating human dignity and treating people as a means to an end. I also introduce the reader to basic Kantian social contract theory, as it is important to my argumentation to understand how a villain can nullify the existence of the social contract and create a very dangerous state of nature on a small scale.

23 Kant introduces this argument in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, page 91.

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In the second chapter I will be looking at the relationship between Kommissar Bärlach and his enemy, Gastmann, whom he has been pursuing for forty years by legal, honorable means. In this case, I argue for Bärlach being more of a conventional hero than Spät, because he is classically a good detective. At the same time, as a result of unfortunate events, Bärlach does become a vigilante, knowing that he has a limited time to live, that his investigation was ruined by his new partner, and that he has no other option for stopping Gastmann. This makes it more difficult to classify him as a purely Kantian hero, but I do argue that he acts out of duty, that he has a good will, which Kant discusses in the Groundwork, and that he knows his own heart, also something Kant mentions in the Metaphysics of Morals. Gastmann is a fantastic Kantian villain because he is so nihilistic and described in the book as capable of any crime and any type of evil. One concept introduced in secondary sources that I bring in is that Dürrenmatt was very much concerned with justice being out of the reach of humankind. In many ways we are denied justice and it is left up to the divine, to fate, or to chance depending on how one sees the world.

Either way, justice is out of the reach of humanity. This book creates the type of binary contrast between good and evil that makes for a great detective novel.

In my third and final chapter I switch from binary views of good and evil and enter a space where, due to the nature of espionage in the Cold War, good and evil have given way to devotion to ideology and to institutions. I will work with two of John le Carré’s novels from the

Karla Trilogy. While the main hero is George Smiley, and the main villain is Karla, a codename for an agent of Moscow Centre, there are plenty of other supporting heroes and villains. An interesting puzzle is created when one applies Kantian analysis to the double-agent, Bill

Haydon, who betrays his friends and his country by leaking information to Russia and Karla. The

11 question that arises is, can he be considered a Kantian, having betrayed his friends and more?

In a sense, he is a Kantian, because he has been acting out of a sense of duty toward the cause and country that he has placed his faith in, at the expense of his own safety and life. It is questions like this that paint a grey picture. Morality is not as certain as in detective novels, even if we like George and despise Bill Haydon as readers. Another central problem is that Kant categorically disapproved of spying. I will have to take that into account by working with secondary sources, including an essay by John le Carré in which he claims that the Cold War was unique because spies were the soldiers on the front lines of the battlefield. They were actually fighting for the safety of their own nation and to end a state of nature which is the Cold War itself. This chapter will not deviate from my Kantian analysis, but will be significantly different from the analysis provided in the detective fiction.

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Chapter 1: Justice and the Introduction of the Kantian Hero

As mentioned in the introduction, I will be interpreting two detective novels by Friedrich

Dürrenmatt in this chapter and the next. In this first chapter I focus on Justiz, and then in the next chapter I will discuss Der Richter und sein Henker. The pervasive method of interpretation will be through a Kantian analysis of justice, ethics, and social contract theory, as also mentioned in the introduction to this dissertation. In this first chapter, I will show how the protagonist, the lawyer Spät, can be evaluated in one sense as heroic but also lacking in heroism from a conventional sense, and then at the same time as a hero in the Kantian sense, which I will define later in this chapter. I will also try to show how viewing the main villains from a Kantian point of view creates new discourse regarding what the role of a villain is in a detective novel. I will try to explore how applicable conventional terms such as good and evil really are, and if Kantian analysis combined with Dürrenmatt’s own writing style changes our views on these themes.

Before beginning, it is important to examine other scholarship which interprets Dürrenmatt’s texts. While Kantian analysis is my main interpretive method, these other approaches are helpful and will also be referred to throughout the dissertation. Roger A. Crockett provides some unifying themes that I will reference throughout the next two chapters. In the very beginning of his book, called Understanding Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Crockett emphasizes the importance of games in Dürrenmatt’s plays and novels. “Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s characters are

13 most often involved in some form of game, and understanding how and why they play is a big part of understanding the author.”24 There are two sets of games that Crockett mentions, which are directly portrayed in Justiz and Der Richter und sein Henker. “One detective…plays with a murderer like a cat and mouse…. A prime minister plays factions off against each other in a political chess game; a billiards master eliminates his opponents a la bande…”25 The cat and mouse reference is taken from the novel in our next chapter, Der Richter und sein Henker, from the perspective of inspector Bärlach, who mentions in a conversation with his new partner,

Tschanz, that he plays with criminals in this way. The billiards master refers to the villain in the book of this chapter, Isaak Kohler. The billiards table is a central metaphor for systematic murder and the continuation of Kohler’s agenda throughout the book, as well as a metaphor for the protagonist, Spät’s lack of experience in life, in that he does not know how to play billiards. There is more to the games paradigm than this, however. The games illustrate a pervasive theme in Dürrenmatt’s work that involves the role of chaos in the universe. Crockett continues, “That so many characters play games and act roles—the later itself a type of deception and control game—is a logical manifestation of the way the author views reality. The predictability of human nature gives a false sense of security to just and unjust alike, for it only masks the underlying chaos of the cosmos. In a chaotic, unpredictable world, any game of skill turns into a game of chance.”26 This struggle between meaning and chaos is an important part of Dürrenmatt’s world view. He is concerned with the fact that order may not win over chaos, that concepts such as justice may be outside of our control. As Crockett says, “Heisenberg, not

24 Crockett, Roger A. Understanding Friedrich Dürrenmatt. (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), ix. 25 Crockett, ix. 26 Ibid., ix.

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Leibniz, designed Dürrenmatt’s universe.”27 Dürrenmatt, according to Crockett, wants to know whether justice is possible, whether corruption is inevitable, and whether free choice and human responsibility are only illusions.28 I will be investigating especially these questions of uncertainty regarding justice and corruption in the next two detective novels.

Edward Diller also comments on the idea of a chaotic world. He places a slightly different emphasis on chaos which is equally as important; namely the idea that fate is out of our hands as human beings. He begins,

Dürrenmatt has insisted on occasion that he regards the world as chaos, as an incomprehensible mass of forces acting upon man in unpredictable ways. As a result, men are not masters of their fate; and all their relentless activity and fanatic insistence on improving society only compound the confusion of existence and expose their own impotence. Men cannot save the world, or even themselves for that matter,….that is God’s prerogative!29 The unifying theme here is chaos and the fact that fate is out of the hands of humankind. No matter what the argument is as to why, the point is that Dürrematt did not have confidence in humans alone to find solutions to the problems of key concepts such as meaning and justice.

Diller makes the argument that Dürrenmatt’s Calvinist upbringing has influenced his view of the world. In fact, Dürrenmatt did grow up as a protestant. In Roger A. Crockett’s biography of

Dürrenmatt, the author mentions that his father was a protestant pastor.30 Diller, in his article, makes the argument that Dürrenmatt has a Calvinist or theist orientation to his works. While some scholars agree that Dürrenmatt was raised protestant and initially wrestled with theist

27 Ibid. I am not concerned with going into depth about Heisenberg’s theory vs. that of Leibniz, but recall that Leibniz was an apologist for God and what he perceived as a universe that was the “best of all possible worlds,” where Heisenberg and his principle of uncertainty came much later in the history of science and philosophy. 28 Ibid. 29 Edward Diller. “Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Chaos and Calvinism.” Monatshefte. Vol. 53, No. 1 (Spring 1971): 28, accessed September 23, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30156508. 30 Crockett, 1.

15 based questions of fate being in the hands of God, not all agree that this was Dürrenmatt’s major motivating factor.

Olivia G. Gabor-Pierce also makes the argument that Dürrenmatt saw ideas such as fate and justice being beyond our control and sometimes our immediate reach. Where Edward Diller makes the case that Dürrenmatt had a Calvinist based motivating factor, Gabor-Peirce argues that Dürrenmatt moved beyond his religious upbringing to hold a non-Calvinist viewpoint.

Though he always considered himself an atheist, Diirrenmatt has a peculiar atheism, one that does not necessarily exclude the existence of God and, as Eberhard Busch correctly expresses it in his article "Gespannte Beziehung" ("Tense Relationship"), one that is not about the "Nichtexistenz Gottes" ("non-existence of God"), but rather about the "Unmoglichkeit, sich Gott vorzustellen" ("impossibility to imagine God" 189).31 The author clarifies further, however. She says, “a divine presence can be traced throughout many of Dürrenmatt’s works at the points of negation and contradiction and, paradoxically, at the points in his works where hope ceases to exist. Within the contradictions and absences, at the schlimstmögliche Wendung…faith becomes indespensible.”32 While I personally will not be making a theist argument for the interpretation of Dürrenmatt, what is valuable to consider is that other scholars also note that fate, meaning and in our case justice is outside of the hands of the characters in the story. The novels that I will be working with were written later in

Dürrenmatt’s career. He has less of a theist motivation at this point, but at the same time, justice is still something that is out of the hands of human beings and is left to fate or chance. I will show later how Bärlach and Spät attempt to make sense of their world and control their fate, and fail in various ways. The difference between the two characters is that Bärlach takes

31 Olivia G. Gabor-Peirce. “Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Divine Traces in the Work of an Atheist.” Religion and Literature. Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring, 2007): 79, accessed September 23, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060055. 32 Gabor-Peirce, 80.

16 hold of reality and defies his fate, which is to die of cancer in three days, so that he may catch the criminal. Chaos has ruined his plans to catch his adversary, but he can sidestep this problem by harnessing that which is chaotic, embodied in his new partner, Tschanz. In the case of Spät, he is not anywhere near as successful in his quest for justice.

It is useful to consider the idea that justice is beyond the realm of human experience, at least to a certain extent. What is relevant to my work here is that traditional, dualistic notions of morality are not what Dürrenmatt is seeking to explore. Gabor-Peirce indicates this assertion in the following, “Dürrenmatt continues to grapple for most of his life with the problem of humanity’s separation from God as well as with subjective divine existence, yet in his later years his preoccupation with paradoxical, controversial, and enigmatic—and especially the existential—becomes more intense.”33 It is worth noting that scholars such as Diller and Gabor-

Peirce are mainly concerned with a type of inability of humankind to make full sense of reality.

In the case of these two detective novels which I am working with, justice is not fully graspable and again, it is only fully reachable by the divine, or as pertains to the later period of

Dürrenmatt’s career, chance or fate. The novel of this chapter, Justiz, displays the controversial and the paradoxical, through the ongoing struggles that the protagonist, Spät, has with the characters around him, as well as the villain, Kohler, and also his own views of what justice and morality really entail. Spät is unable to achieve the type of justice that he is ultimately seeking.

The final aspect of outside scholarship that needs mentioning is not only that Dürrenmatt had a unique view of justice and fate, influenced by his religious upbringing and struggles with his ideas of theism, but also that his writing was influenced by his studies of philosophy. Roger A.

33 Ibid., 85.

17

Crockett mentions that Dürrenmatt switched his major in school and spent three years studying philosophy.34 He was most strongly influenced by Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger.35 If one examines Joseph A. Federico’s article, entitled " The Political Philosophy of Friedrich

Dürrenmatt,” one can see how ideas of social contract theory, such as those found in Kant’s work, are pervasive throughout Dürrenmatt’s work. Federico states, “Dürrenmatt’s approach to political questions…is firmly embedded in a liberal tradition whose conception of government and the state is an outgrowth of its commitment to the fundamental principle of human freedom, that is, the state in which man is not subject to coercion by the arbitrary will of another or others.”36

In fact, later in this chapter I will bring up Kantian analysis that sounds very similar to this statement, the idea that freedom from coercion by another or others is fundamental to a constructive human existence. Something very Kantian is the notion that the reason human beings need a social contract is so they can live in a state of harmony together. Federico describes what Dürrenmatt opines to be the role of politics. “Politics should strive for freedom and justice, but it should always be aware that these goals cannot be realized in an absolute sense. The goal of politics is ‘das würdigste Zusammenleben der Menschen’, not ultimate answers or Utopian solutions.”37 As I shall show later, this is what Kant wants. Also, this demonstrates the limits of what Dürrenmatt’s protagonists can achieve. A utopian version of

34 Crockett, 4. 35 Ibid. 36Joseph A. Federico. “The Political Philosophy of Friedrich Dürrenmatt.” German Studies Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, (Feb., 1989): 91, accessed September 23, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1430292. 37 Federico, p. 94

18 justice is simply not possible. Ideas of justice and human moral behavior are pervasive throughout the two novels in this chapter and the next, but there are other themes as well.

Dürrenmatt and Justice in General

Gabrielle Robinson comments on the fact that Dürrenmatt in general is highly concerned with justice. She focuses on his plays, as in, “In Dürrenmatt’s plays justice is at stake,” but we can certainly adapt her ideas to his detective novels as well.38 She continues by saying, “Dürrenmatt tends to examine every situation and every action from the standpoint of justice, discussing such themes as the perversion and parody of justice in our world…”39 This aspect of

Dürrenmatt’s playwriting applies directly to stories such as Justiz. In the story, Dr.h.c Kohler is

Spät’s main adversary, and he does cause a type of mishandling of justice to occur. There is in fact a perversion of justice occurring all around Spät, not just on behalf of Kohler. Robinson continues by mentioning,

As far as his characters are concerned, they are obsessed with it; it is the idea of justice which makes their existence meaningful…..Dürrenmatt’s characters fight to their last breaths for their vision of justice, however distorted. For no matter how elevated or debased their aims, their conflicts arise from their pursuits of justice: whether hunting down a criminal, sentencing a son, robbing a bank, seeking revenge, destroying or saving an empire, they all believe themselves to be fighting for justice and order.40 It is this theme of the pursuit of justice that is the common thread in each of the detective novels, in this chapter and the next. Keep something in mind, however. Robinson mentioned that each character fights to their last breath for their vision of justice, however distorted. In

38 Gabrielle Robinson “Justice Breeds Murder: Justice in Durrenmatt as Theme and Theatrical Material.” Modern Drama 24, no. 1 (March 1981), 73, Quoted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 102. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center (accessed July 1, 2017). http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=ucinc_main&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CH1100001680&sid=sum mon&asid=524023ed2123676257bfa935a212f73a. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.

19

Justiz, there is a lawyer named Spät, who falls in a downward spiral fueled by alcohol, into self- destruction, all in pursuit of an almost unwinnable war for justice. His vision gets clouded by his own frustration and inability to affect immediate change. The villains are just too powerful. In the case of Der Richter und sein Henker, Bärlach is on his last leg already, having a death sentence resulting from his diagnosis of stomach cancer. He loses all thought of self- preservation in favor of a manipulative and yet ingenious scheme to bring justice to two different criminals. Each man is indeed in a desperate pursuit of justice, but at the same time pursues it in such a way as to be perceived as imperfect beings at best.

Robinson makes the claim that Dürrenmatt’s heroes are Quixotic in nature, but I would argue that Dürrenmatt’s detective novels are not as Quixotic as his plays.41 While the characters in the detective novels are indeed sometimes tilting at windmills (trying singlehandedly to fix the

Swiss justice system), they know exactly what they are doing and they do not possess the foolish quality that a typical Quixotic character might be paired with. I argue that the protagonists in these stories are fully aware, rational, and often quite calculating. It is robbing them of their personal responsibility and agency to reduce them to a Quixotic diagnosis. There are other similarities that Robinson points out, however. She mentions the character of

Romulus in Dürrenmatt’s play, as an example of the typical Dürrenmatt character. I am not concerned with this play, the story of Rome, except insofar as to make comparisons. Robinson says, “Through him, Dürrenmatt shows how man’s every effort at justice is overthrown by accident and by an ironic fate which annihilates his plans and forces him into a ridiculous

41 Ibid., 78.

20 defeat.”42 In Justiz, Spät spends the whole story being used and frustrated by all of the people around him who are part of the upper social circles of his investigation. It is for this reason that his sense of justice becomes extreme and he seeks to kill both himself and Dr.h.c. Kohler, his adversary, as if this were the only way to bring about justice. Bärlach has been pursuing

Gastmann in vain for the history of his career as a Kommisar, but has always been foiled by fate and accident in catching him.

Justice as seen through a Kantian Lens

There must, however, be some standard by which one can judge how justice is treated in these detective novels. It is necessary to gain access to the philosophical world to gain further insight into the idea of justice. I will be working with the theories of Immanuel Kant’s key texts associated with justice, social contract theory, and right and virtue in general. There are several reasons why Kant is of importance to this dissertation. The most important aspect of Kant for my purposes is the categorical imperative itself. By working with the categorical imperative, I can create axes of measurement for determining who is heroic and who is villainous from a

Kantian perspective. While there are three main formulae of the categorical imperative, I am most concered with the formula of universal law and the formula of humanity. If one applies the idea of universalizing one’s moral operating principle and also making sure that one does not use a person for one’s own purposes, or as a means to an end, it helps to look at a character from a non-conventional perspective. Second, since duty is central to Kant’s ethical system, one can measure the Kantian hero from another axis, namely duty to justice, in the case of the two detective novels. In addition, Kant is useful for his duty to act towards the

42 Ibid., 79.

21 beneficence of humanity. If a Kantian hero fails in certain ways, acting out of a sense of beneficence can create a type of redemption. Thus, just as heroes can be measured along these axes, so can villains.

In this chapter, I will show who the heroes and villains are, as well as to judge precisely the moral quality of the heroes and villains in the stories. As mentioned in the introduction, good and evil are not as easy to distinguish in the post-modern world, especially in the world of

Dürrenmatt’s detective fiction. Kantian analysis will enhance the ability to work with these concepts. Kantian ethics helps to determine what leads to a just, harmonious society and what does not. One reason that the categorical imperative is so important is that if a person comes together with others who follow it, they can create a safe, just, harmonious society. Kant does mention the term evil in the Metaphysics of Morals, but only insofar as his command to know what is in one’s own heart.43 If one sees evil, then the only extent of it is to use rationality and wisdom to remove the evil. As Kant says, once a good will is developed, “it can never be lost.”44In a sense, he has too much faith in the human being as a being with the potential for virtue and dignity to create a significant dichotomy of good and evil. He does, however, describe an opposite condition to a just society, and that is the state of nature. Before continuing along these lines of argumentation, it is necessary to discuss for a bit as to why I am working with Kant over other social contract theorists. If one looks back at the article, “The

Political Philosophy of Friedrich Dürrenmatt,” by Joseph A. Federico, one can see that he makes

43 Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 191. 44 Ibid., 191.

22 the direct claim that Dürrenmatt was influenced by Kant.45 There is more to my argument than this however. Recall how Federico states that Dürrenmatt is interested in the politics of a liberal tradition in which a state venerates human freedom, wherein people are free from coercion.46

As shown later in this and subsequent chapters, Kant argues for the importance of freedom, which is the basis for allowing someone to choose their moral operating principle, and also that coercion by others is unjust and should be protected against. Kant fits in uniquely with

Dürrenmatt’s detective fiction for several reasons. First, it lends itself to an unusual type of evaluating that which is heroic. I will call such heroes Kantian heroes. They adhere to the formulae of Kant’s categorical imperative, which I mentioned on the page above. In so doing, they uphold the Kantian idea that humans have an inherent quality of dignity. In truth, Kantian morality is designed above all to uphold the dignity of human beings.47 I will explore the formula of universal law and the formula of humanity more in depth, but I will define them here and explain them. The central engine behind the formula of universal law, as part of the categorical imperative, is based in duty. A Kantian hero observes a duty to better herself, better humanity, and the world around him or her. It does not have to be this complicated, however.

A Kantian hero esteems duty as her prime motivating factor, and as such, has a sense of duty toward upholding her maxim, which is Kant’s way of saying a moral operating principle. In the case of Spät, the pursuit of justice is his operating principle, or maxim, and so it is his duty to uphold it as best he can. Kantian heroes are marked by adherence to duty, and upholding the maxim that they have chosen. As Kant says, “An action done from duty has its moral worth, not

45 Federico, 92. 46Ibid., 91. 47 In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant expresses the idea that humanity itself is a dignity. Page 209

23 in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim according to which it is decided upon; it depends, therefore, not on the realization of the object of the action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which, irrespective of all objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been performed.”48 The question is, why is it so important to adhere to duty without natural inclinations? Kant gives some examples of duty that make sense. For example, we have a duty to help others when we can.49 This is not so difficult. Spät tries this throughout the story.

In his case, he has decided that it is his duty to pursue justice. This is what makes Kant relatively unique. One has the freedom to choose any operating principle that seems realistic and will help other people, as long as it does not contradict itself. Many readers of Kant have criticized

Kant for the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative consists of several formulae, but the most fundamental formula is the formula of universal law. “Act only on that maxim, through which you can at the same time will that it should be universal law.”50 It is sometimes argued that Kant was putting forth unreasonable demands on people for having to universalize their moral operating principle, or maxim, as Kant would call it. There are a few things to consider. A person has, under Kant’s plan, complete freedom and autonomy to determine what is most important to that person in terms of what his or her maxim will be. Many people who are familiar with Kant do not realize that the moral world is completely open to them in terms of what principles of just action they find important. We can choose things like helping those in need, feeding the poor, which would be under the categories of duties to help other people, or more abstract concepts, like in the case of the protagonist in Justiz, justice. The reason that a

48 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (London: Routledge, 1991), 65. 49 Kant, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 63. 50 Ibid., 84.

24 maxim has to be universalized is that only in that capacity can a person be certain that his or her maxim will not violate the space and freedom of others in the community. A maxim can only be universalized in the first place if it is compatible with other people’s freedom. If everyone is willing to do their best to follow the categorical imperative, they will avoid hurting one another. Kant defines what is right in the Universal Principle of Right. “Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law.”51 Also, any type of coercion is only warranted when one person’s freedom is a hindrance to that of another.52 In fact, it is through following the formula of universal law that one arrives at another formula of the categorical imperative, the formula of humanity, which Kant refers to briefly in the Groundwork as the practical imperative. Kant wants a person to understand that a human’s dignity is so valuable that “in general every rational being, exists not as an end in himself, not merely as a means for an arbitrary use by this or that will; he must in all his actions… be viewed at the same time as an end.”53 This statement means that human dignity is so valuable that nobody should be used as a means to someone else’s agenda. The practical imperative follows from this, “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”54 The point is, when everyone else is living together in a community, it can be difficult to create one that is beneficial to all, such that nobody is mishandling others for their own ends, and also that nobody is violating the freedom of another via coercion or other

51 Ibid., 24. 52 Ibid., 25. 53 Ibid., 90. 54 Ibid., 91.

25 tactic. If everyone can all get along under these formulae of the categorical imperative, they can create an ideal society called the Kingdom of Ends. A Kantian hero strives for this, even if only indirectly, and in this way Kant provides a valuable means of interpreting heroism in the midst of the ambiguity of the post-modern world. A Kantian hero does not have to realize that he or she is contributing to the actualization of a just community, or a Kingdom of Ends. In fact, it would be unusual for a detective to pursue abstract concepts such as this actively. This does not matter, however, because if one pursues one’s Kantian duty, one is automatically contributing toward the formation of the commonwealth, or Kingdom of Ends. He or she must simply strive toward living a just life, based on a sense of duty toward said realization of that just life. Conversely, the Kantian villain violates both of these formulae and the Kingdom of

Ends itself. The villain uses people for his or her own amusement or selfish purposes and thus puts the community in danger. In Justiz, it will be shown that even if one can sympathize with

Kohler once his true motivations for murder are known, he is still a Kantian villain because he destabilizes the community and brings about the ruination of the protagonist as part of his master plan. If a person looks at heroism and villainy through this Kantian lens, one does not have to use terms such as good and evil, but rather can look at either those who uphold human dignity and those who violate it. In the case of Justiz , I argue that the lawyer Spät is not a conventional hero, nor is he an anti-hero, but instead a Kantian hero. At the same time, the villains are judged as villainous by Kantian standards. What will become apparent is that Spät can more easily be thought of as a hero by Kantian standards, whereas the villain is villainous by both conventional and Kantian standards, even though there is a divergence between the two categories.

26

Justiz Plot Summary

Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Justiz is a story revolving around a murder and an element of mystery, but it defies all description beyond that as to whether it is in actuality a murder mystery. What becomes compelling is that reality itself unravels as the mystery of the murder is being solved.

The story takes place in a major city in Switzerland in the mid nineteen-fifties and is narrated by

Herr Spät, a down and out lawyer who drinks to extreme excess, frequents prostitutes, and is ultimately disbarred due to his scandalous conduct. He is the protagonist. The villain is a man named Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler, who is extremely influential in high society in Bern, is fabulously wealthy, and brilliant. He seems to have everything, leading a posh lifestyle, and then one day, in the very beginning of the story, he throws all of it away. As Spät narrates, Kohler pulls up to a famous restaurant, the Du Theatre, in his limousine. In the passenger area is also an unpopular

British Minister, asleep and drunk, unaware of what is about to happen.55 Kohler knows most of the people in the restaurant, and he spots one of his friends and colleagues, Professor Winter, greets him as if nothing is out of the ordinary, and then shoots him. At this point the entire restaurant has seen his deed, and he has made no attempt to disguise himself at all. He walks calmly out of the restaurant and drives off. The reader learns that he has made no attempts to flee and even turns himself in to the police commandant, also his friend. Kohler is offered the top defense lawyer in the city, and instead refuses him in favor of the public defendant. He is smiling the whole time, and during the trial, no motive is unearthed, no murder weapon is ever found, and he is sentenced to 20 years in prison. Kohler charms quite a few prison guards into becoming his friend, and here is ultimately where Spät’s story begins. Spät, oddly enough, is

55 Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Justiz. (Zurich: Diogenes Verlag, 1985), 22.

27 asked by Kohler to pursue the murder case anew. Kohler asks the following; “Sie sollen meinen

Fall unter der Annahme neu untersuchen, ich sei nicht der Möder gewesen.”56 Spät of course is in a state of shock and disbelief. Kohler is definitively the murderer, and one might ask, what is the point of such an investigation, when all of the evidence, including an entire restaurant full of eye witnesses, indicates that Kohler did it? In addition, Kohler will pay Spät an immense amount of money in fees and expenses to undertake the case. Spät ultimately accepts because he needs the money, but the rest of the book involves the downfall of both Spät, as he slips further into depression and alcoholism, and the destruction of several other elite members of

Swiss society who are somehow involved in Kohler’s life. Person after person falls, as Spät is used not only by Kohler, but by others, against each other.

For a good deal of the story the reader has no real idea how the suicide and ruination of everyone Spät interviews is connected, except that they all know Kohler and his daughter,

Hélène who is one of Spät’s main contacts. Each person is a piece of the puzzle in Spät’s investigation. By the end, in addition to the death of Professor Winter, the friend whom Kohler shot, there is the death of the woman whose fortune Kohler manages, after her fortune is somehow ruined by Kohler mismanaging her money. Her name is Monika Steiermann and is a really terrible person. Then there is the death of another member of the society, Dr. Benno, who commits suicide after Kohler is so successful in restructuring reality as a result of Spät’s investigation that he thinks he will take Kohler’s place in prison. Finally, there is the death of

Daphne Müller, a beautiful woman who was pretending to be the business mogul Monika

Steiermann, being given money in exchange for allowing the misshapen Monika Steiermann to

56 Ibid., 86.

28 live vicariously through her. She dies after her life is ruined by rejecting the offer of money, having become a high-profile prostitute to pay for her lifestyle. It turns out all are connected— one day when Hélène, Kohler’s daughter was 18, she was invited to Monika Steiermann’s house, where she is then raped and abused by Dr. Benno, Professor Winter, and Daphne

Müller. Only at the end does the reader learn that Kohler planned the whole set of deaths perfectly to avenge his daughter. It will be my task to show in this chapter who the heroes are, who is villainous and why.

Before doing this, it is important to consider Roger A. Crockett’s introductory analysis of the novel. As those in German studies are aware, Gerechtigkeit and Justiz both mean justice, but have slightly different connotations. Crockett mentions that Gerechtigkeit means “the abstract concept of justice. The second word, Justiz, means the practical application of Gerechtigkeit. It is the human apparatus for the administration of justice.”57 This means that it is significant that the novel is based on the second word, which focuses on the human capacity for the application of Gerechtigkeit. The protagonist is the most obvious administrator of justice, but there is also Kohler, who, as the reader learns at the end of the novel, has engineered the entire series of events to enact a type of justice against those who abused his daughter.

Crockett says that “the tension between these two concepts, the wide gulf between theory and practice—forms the basis of the novel.”58 Thus the novel in part focuses on the conflict between these two types of justice. Each character who tries to carry out justice has a differing idea of what Gerechtigkeit is and what it requires. This separation of theory and practice creates interpersonal conflict and leads to a frustration of Spät’s goals as an arbiter of justice.

57 Crockett, 179. 58 Ibid., 179.

29

Crockett also mentions the presence of abstract labyrinths that the reader must traverse. The first labyrinth relates to Spät as a narrator. “The inebriated first-person narrator of the novel’s first and secoünd parts repeatedly confuses present with past and narrates past events out of sequence, only to apologize and attempt to correct the confusion. In part 3 the narrative perspective changes to that of the author Dürrenmatt, but he narrates from no higher perspective initially than does his drunken chronicler.”59 The fact that one is jostled around in his or her external perception of how time passes leads to even more confusion regarding the struggle to figure out who is just and who is acting unjustly. Only once Spät gives up his role as narrator and that role shifts into that of a different narrative instance, is there any real notion of why crimes were committed and engineered by Kohler. In part III Dürrenmatt describes how he came across the story. Keep in mind th.at this is a character representing Dürrenmatt who is there to further the story. The events in the story are not real, but having a type of representative figure of Dürrenmatt gives them new meaning “Nachwort des Herausgebers: Ich machte auf eine recht seltsame und im Grunde zufällige Weise Bekanntschaft mit einigen

Personen, von denen ich erst später begriff, daβ sie nicht nur in diese vielschichtige Handlung verwickelt, sondern auch deren Hauptakteure waren.”60 In this section Dürrenmatt’s character clears up the story, helps explain Spät’s confusing narrative, meets the characters, and learns the truth. At the end he muses over the situation and signs his name. The confusion over the passage of time is the first labyrinth that Crockett mentions Dürrenmatt being concerned with.

Crockett indicates that the second labyrinth “is the search for truth.”61 Crockett continues,

59 Ibid., 179. 60 Dürrenmatt, 315. 61 Ibid., 179.

30

Through this maze the author leads the reader down corridors of conjecture, into walls of contradiction, down new corridors, each fraught with blind alleys…This is rather a novel about the elusive nature of truth. That Justiz, the human apparatus of executing justice, is such a fallible and so easily corrupted instrument, is shown to be a logical consequence of the daunting labyrinth surrounding and shielding the truth from all but the most dedicated and crafty Theseus.62 One question to ask is, is the shift from Spät’s narration to that of the small epilogue that

Dürrenmatt creates, part of the labyrinth? Why would Dürrenmatt insert himself into the narrative at the end, and get a different set of answers from the characters, finally to muse about what might have happened differently? One possibility is that the lack of resolution, the lack of knowledge that Spät provides is painful, that without a resolution we can never know why Kohler did what he did. Once Dürrenmatt learns the truth, we in turn learn the truth. This fits in with the idea that justice is outside the realm of humankind. Dürrenmatt almost has to fill the role of the divine in order to give us a type of resolution. I would not like to acuse

Dürrenmatt of engaging in a type of Deus ex Machina in order to give us the truth we need, but for certain, Dürrenmatt is leading us out of the labyrinth. Given that as an author, Dürrenmatt created the labyrinth, but at the same time, he avoids a type of clichéd approach to the seeking of truth by treating the characters as real. This is yet another type of labyrinth that makes the story masterful.

Essentially, as Crockett argues, at the core of the novel “is a miscarriage of justice.”63 This fallible carrying out of justice, however, is not entirely Spät’s fault. As seen in the novel, Spät is

62Ibid., It is worth noting here that Crockett argues throughout his book on Dürrenmatt, that Dürrenmatt himself had an extensive background in Greek mythology and was fascinated by ideas of the labyrinth. In some works, such as The Assignment, or Der Auftrag there is an actual labyrinth which becomes a centerpiece of the novel. In the case of Justiz, the labyrinth is instead an apt metaphor. 63 Ibid.,179.

31 being pulled in different directions by more powerful members of Swiss society who can dictate much of what he does.

Spät as an unlikely Hero

I intend to focus on Spät as one of the only true heroes in the story. Roger Crockett provides an interesting and yet important fact to consider about Spät’s name. Those who know German are aware that Spät means “late” in English. As Crockett mentions, “Like virtually all of

Dürrenmatt’s protagonists of drama or prose, Spät is a comic rather than a tragic figure. His name means ‘late’ and is in itself a commentary on his relationship to the truth, which he always ascertains too late to do him any good.”64 What Crockett is referring to is that the more powerful members of the community, who end up being part of his investigation, are in many ways not just more influential, but also are more clever, more manipulative, and more jaded, as well as being less scrupulous. Spät is, without initially realizing it, taking on the onerous burden of bringing justice to the elite circles of Swiss society. He is often simply too late in his investigation or his uncovering of the truth to bring about effective change. One such example is when he drops Kohler’s case out of a sense of conscience and then decides to defend Dr.

Benno, who has been blamed for the murder as a result of the investigation. The problem is,

Benno commits suicide before Spät can even try to save him. Again, this fits in with the theme that justice is out of the reach of the average person.

64Ibid., 180.

32

How might one describe Spät as a hero? It is a difficult task to undertake in that Spät is angry, resentful, perpetually drunk, and has taken on Kohler’s case, seemingly for money at the expense of his sanity and his integrity. Contrary to Spät, most other figures in the story are profoundly selfish, corrupt, or highly immoral, and are happy to use and dispose of anyone they see fit. It is necessary at this point to clarify the use of the word immoral before continuing. In the first draft of his chapter I used the term evil, but this puts us on slippery ground. It has been the task of philosophers, theologians, and theorists in general for the past several thousand years to determine what evil and good really are, and there has never been uniform agreement on this debate, nor will there perhaps ever be. People use the terms in general because they are convenient as short hand ways of describing human moral behavior. In the case of Kant,

Christine Korsgaard offers a useful approach. Keep in mind that while Kant does use the term evil in texts such as the Metaphysics of Morals, he believes that anyone is capable of cultivating a good will.65 The main problem that Christine Korsgaard presents is that Kant, in the

Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals is normally thought of as distinguishing between autonomous actions, or those governed by free will under a categorical imperative, and heteronomous actions, or those governed by inclinations, such as selfish motives for doing something that may end up being harmful to people.66 In order to discern what sort of dichotomy of morality is more fitting in interpreting Kant, Korsgaard provides the metaphor of a house. A good house follows the guidelines for providing safe shelter and being in observance of building code in general. It is a good house in terms of internal standards because the

65 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 191. 66 Christine M. Korsgaard “Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant.” The Journal of Ethics, vol.3, no. 1 (1999), 13, accessed September 23, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115598

33 insides, the plumbing and insulation and so on, meet specified code. A bad house is a house that does not meet the standards provided for being safe and offering adequate shelter inside.

It has faulty plumbing or perhaps bad ventilation. However, rather than using the delineation of bad, we should think of it as defective. Korsgaard says that building a good house vs. a bad house is the same action, just badly done in the case of the bad house.67 How does this help the current project of trying to evaluate Kantian heroes and villains? In the case of Spät, one needs to remember that while he has a grand vision of justice, he does not always make the right decisions. Sometimes he acts unjustly or inconsistent with his categorical imperative when he is drunk. He is in these cases, however, just being a defective house, to continue the metaphor. In the case of Kohler, Kohler is more extreme, and can more easily be called immoral, but to look at the issue from Korsgaard’s perspective, Kohler has been misguided by his pursuit of a type of justice based in revenge and so has violated whatever categorical imperative formula he may have once had. In this respect he is defective and not acting according to free will, but is governed by his inclinations, to use the Kantian term, or passion, to use a more generalized term. The important thing to consider here is that a Kantian hero tries to uphold a sense of duty and morality in general while a villain does not. Also, a Kantian hero knows that people are not to be used for one’s own ends, as according to the formula of humanity, or the practical imperative.68 A Kantian villain does not care about this either. The biggest problem, however, is that when justice is not upheld things can escalate until the law breaks down and a community or social group is plunged into a Kantian state of nature, which is highly dangerous. In a Kantian

67 Korsgaard,15. 68 To review, the practical imperative, also called by Kant scholars the formula of humanity, “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” Essentially, do not use people for one’ own purposes.

34 state of nature there are no rules to ensure that people’s safety and rights are taken care of.

Also, to reach that point, the formula of humanity would have to be continuously violated as people are routinely used as a means to an end. In Kohler’s case, Spät is the center figure in

Köhler’s plans of vengeance and destruction. Kohler really has nothing against Spät. The fact of the matter is that Kohler is a highly skilled manipulator and Spät is a sufficient tool to carry vengeance out. The term evil could apply here but I prefer to think of venerating the dignity of humanity vs. violating it. This seems more Kantian. The danger here is figuring out who is justified and who is not. Interpreting what Korsgaard said, Kohler and Spät are both creating a house. Both have also done the house badly in different ways. So could one ask, can this move

Kohler into the category of being a Kantian hero? What is the real distinction? The formula of humanity is helpful as a measuring apparatus in this case. Spät attempts to avoid violating other people’s humanity, while Kohler has been plotting the whole time to destroy the lives and humanity of several people, all the while leading to Spät’s destruction as collateral damage.

Kolher’s house is a bad house because it never has a real foundation to stand on, if it were to be a Kantian house. Spät may be flawed, but he certainly does not violate people’s humanity in the same way that Kolher does. This is the qualifier between Kantian hero and villain.

One of the things that makes Spät also a bit unusual as a hero is that Spät himself is used and manipulated worse than anyone. In fact, the reader is shown again and again how Spät is made into an instrument of everybody else’s will. Spät is a good Kantian hero because he has a sense of duty toward an abstract principle of justice. I interpret Spät’s devotion to justice in turn as being in accordance with a Kantian idea of duty to justice. Thus, again, it is possible to say that he is a Kantian hero, or in this case, someone whose maxim is justice and has a categorical need

35 to uphold it. In turn, what makes the others so villainous, from a Kantian perspective, is the readiness with which they use others. Back to Spät-- Spät is obsessed with justice as a philosophical concept throughout the story and it is this obsession that keeps him from sinking into the corrupt cesspit that surrounds him. Before delving further into Spät, it is necessary to consider his antithesis, the Swiss justice system, which has been made farcical not just by

Kohler, but by everyone else in the story. I will show shortly how a justice system that does not function correctly is very dangerous from a Kantian perspective because it does not ensure the safety of a working social contract. One of the greatest violations of justice was of course

Kohler’s ability to use Spät’s investigation, as well as the gossip and hearsay that it would generate, to blind the town population’s sense of reality and get a retrial. In the same way that an eye witness is not always the best source of evidence in a trial, Kohler twists people’s perceptions to exploit the different dimensions of reality and thus alter the ultimate verdict.

The original trial was such a farce partially because Kohler treated it like one. Acting jovial, charming, and shaking the hand of his archenemy in the case, Prosecutor Jämmerlin, Kohler dumbfounds the whole town. He is perfectly willing and happy to go to jail. The problem is, justice is not served because going to jail has been part of Kohler’s plan the whole time. He is able to use Spät’s investigation to carry out his plans. He refuses to provide a motive or a murder weapon the whole time during the trial, and as a result confuses people even more.

When the police Kommandant interrogates Kohler for any shred of meaning in the situation at all, Kohler provides no meaning. As the Kommandant says, “Ein Mord ohne Grund war für ihn nicht ein Verstoβ gegen die Sitte, wohl aber gegen die Logik, und das gab es nicht.”69 I will focus

69 Dürrenmatt,39.

36 later on Kohler as a character and his motivations for manipulating the justice system, but his decisions are not just based in contempt for the justice system or a sense of arrogant entitlement. Kohler has plotted out everything to insure the destruction of his enemies. He is just not willing to say this to anyone who might be interested, including his high society friends.

By sending Spät on the initial investigation into the hypothetical conclusion that Kohler did not actually shoot Winter, he generates gossip that convinces the outside world that Dr. Benno is the murderer. What he is taking advantage of is that the township and the city in general refuse to believe that he is anything other than a shining pillar of respectable Swiss society. It is as if people will go out of their way to prove that Kohler, who shot Winter in the middle of a crowded restaurant, is not guilty. Kolher is employing two assets in this case. The first is that he is very charismatic. We learn in the prison, for example, that the guards like Kohler almost too much. Second, he is taking advantage of the fact that he is so important in the community that people want to believe that he is innocent. Conversely, Dr. Benno, who was also in the restaurant, has a tarnished reputation around town, and was also a pistol shooting master.

Here is where Kohler really stands out as a Kantian villain because he is knowingly violating justice by exerting his charisma and influence to manipulate people as a means to an end, or in other words, violating the formula of humanity. When Spät asks his secretary, Ilse Freuede, much later in the investigation, if she believes Kohler is innocent, Freude says, “Das weiβ doch die ganze Stadt.”70 The killer is Dr. Benno. “Dr. Benno,’ erklärte Ilse,’ Der war schweizerischer

Meister im Pistolenschieβen.”71 By sheer force of will and taking advantage of the lack of objectivity in the public psyche, Kohler has won. Years later, the reader is presented with a

70 Ibid., 221. 71 Ibid.

37 scene of Kohler in a hotel bragging to an audience about his acquittal. He brags about the fact that the lack of a murder weapon and the newspapers’ manipulation of the public, which caused witnesses to contradict each other, all put his acquittal into place. One can deduce from this scene that in this town at that time, justice is subordinate to wealth, power, and charisma.

This dark side of justice is what bothers Spät and drives him to self-destruction. It is to rebel against such corruption that motivates all of Spät’s actions.

Dürrenmatt Revisited

One may ask though, if Spät sinks into alcohol and depression fueled self-destruction, can one really call him a hero? After all, his ultimate concept of justice in the novel is that he must kill

Kohler. My solution in this case is to apply Kantian ethics to Spät’s case. Before looking at Spät specifically, I will show what makes someone moral from a Kantian perspective. Keep in mind that using a Kantian interpretation creates a divergence from the traditional approach to detective novels. As mentioned before, axes of measurement include adhering to a sense of duty and to the categorical imperative. This is part of what makes the Kantian hero and villain different. In quite a few detective novels, the hero and villain have more in common, or can relate to each other more than they can with the average civilian. This approach to detective fiction occurs in Dürrematt fiction as well, as will be shown in the second chapter on Der Richter und sein Henker. If one views detective fiction from a more conventional perspective, the hero and villain might be able to relate to each other better. As Howard Haycraft, one of the initial scholars on detective fiction in the 1940’s points out, this similarity is shown in the novels of

Émile Gaboriau in the character Lecoq, starting with L’Affaire Lerouge, a serial in a newspaper published in 1866, Le Pays. Lecoq is a character who began his detective career after having

38 been a criminal.72 Haycraft points out that there are similarities between Lecoq and true to life reformed thief, named Eugène Vidocq. Vidocq lived from 1775-1857 and was a member of the

Sûreté, a French police force. Interestingly, he came from a career of crime but was given a second chance by working as a “thief-catcher,” to use Haycraft’s terminology. Thus he made an excellent detective. Due to the fact that detective and criminal can be locked into a type of battle together, they can relate to each other better than other members of the community. An example would be Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, who really do not like each other, but at the same time can relate to each other as two geniuses who do not fit in to normal society While it is important to consider this type of bond and ability of hero and villain to relate to each other, looking at the dichotomy of hero and villain from a Kantian perspective creates an unusual method for dividing the two. It breaks with the more conventional perspectives of detective fiction.

The Deontological Approach

One of the ways in which one can think of the Kantian hero, or Kantian moral exemplar, is that such a person acts out of duty, as his or her mechanism that drives her moral view of the world.

Kant defines duty as that action to which someone is bound.73 Duty is the impetus behind all other moral enterprise. Kant says in the Metaphysics of Morals, “A deed is right or wrong in general insofar as it conforms with duty or contrary to it; the duty itself may be of any kind. A deed contrary to duty is called a transgression.”74 Kant says in the Groundwork of the

72 Howard Haycraft. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story. (England: Lowe & Brydone Printers Limited, 1942), 33. 73 Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.), 15. 74 Ibid., 17.

39

Metaphysics of Morals that self-interest also nullifies the moral goodness of an action. Morality is not motivated by pain or pleasure, by abstract notions of harm vs. aid, or by utilitarian notions of what is the greatest good for the greatest number. One is bound as a moral being in

Kant’s reality, simply to act out of a sense of duty. For example if I have a split second decision as to an action, be it pulling someone out of the path of a car or deciding whether or not to give money to someone in need, duty is my concern. Kant wants us to feel a sense of duty to carry out the most definitive moral imperative that we can think of—the categorical imperative. Kant defines it as the following—“act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”75 What that means is that when one commits an action, it should never be in moral contravention of any other action that a person undertakes.

Kant sets up the categorical imperative as the basis for his ethical framework. At the time, Kant was attempting to create a solution to an old problem—how to create a moral system that would hold up to the problem of evil, as well problems of human self-interest. As Pauline

Kleingeld, a Kant scholar, mentions, “Because agents who live in proximity to one another can influence each other’s sphere of activity, and hence can infringe on each other’s freedom, the question arises of how to regulate their activity in such a way that the freedom of each is compatible with the freedom and equality of all.”76 Kant wanted to start a just society from the ground up. As Kleingeld mentions, Kant existed in a dynamic time wherein the French

Revolution was happening, and it was a huge influence on Kant’s thinking. 77 It was finally time to re-imagine how a government should be structured, and how it should focus on the rights of

75 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 84. 76 Pauline Kleingeld, “Editor’s Introduction: Kant on Politics, Peace, and History.” Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History, ed. Pauline Kleingeld, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), xvii. 77 Ibid., xvii.

40 its citizens. Kant’s solution for the problem of creating an ethical and juridical framework that would create a harmonious society, protected by a benevolent government, was to allow all people to choose their own maxim, and the test for whether that maxim can work or not as part of the greater community is whether it can be universalized. For example, if my maxim is that I must exact vengeance on those who hurt me, I cannot universalize this, because such behavior would lead to blood feuds and violence. If everyone universalized the maxim of vengeance then society would break down. Thus such a maxim cannot be willed by the agent as being universal. Again, as long as our actions are done out of duty rather than self-interest or concern for an outcome, they are less likely to violate or contradict each other. The classic moral problem is that we are flawed as human beings and philosophically it is very easy to look at everything in relativistic terms, such that we do not have a solid ground to stand upon in terms of creating a solid moral framework. Kant believed that by basing his morals in duty, he was cutting out the need for human experience.

More on the categorical Imperative

Kant indicates in the Metaphysics of Morals that some of the principles of natural law, as seen in Newtonian physics, are true a priori, meaning before and external to human experience.78 So physics, while modified by human experience, is based in that which is a priori. By creating a moral framework that is a priori, it can also be true outside of human experience. This task is very onerous. Not everyone agrees as to whether Kant was able to accomplish this task. His motivation was simply to help create a more “airtight” system of ethics. Before continuing, it is important to consider what scholars have to say about the categorical imperative and

78 Kant, the Metaphysics of Morals, 9.

41 universalization in general. People who disagree with Kant can argue that it is in fact unjust to ask someone to choose an operating ethical principle that must always be adhered to behaviorally, cannot be deviated from, and must be in accordance with all of the other operating principles of the community as a whole. It is almost as if one is even more oppressed under a Kantian society than in a state of nature. Marcia W, Baron clarifies this problem in her book, Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology. One of her main points is, that no government under Kant, or even Kant himself, is given the right to tell us which maxim we have to try to universalize. Baron says,

Ethical duties, whether perfect or imperfect, imply no corresponding right to coerce us to fulfill them; indeed, it is impossible to coerce someone to fulfill an ethical duty. It has to be impossible, since the constraint entailed by an ethical duty is self-constraint (MM380), and it has to be self-constraint because otherwise one would not, in acting morally, act freely. (This is tied to other differences: the constraint entailed by juridical duties can merely be external, while that entailed by ethical duties is internal; and while the doctrine of right dealt with outer freedom, ethics is concerned with outer freedom.)79 Baron is pointing to the fact that any ethical principle, namely maxim, that one adopts, cannot be coerced. We alone have the capacity to choose our maxim. This argument as stated by

Baron helps to clarify a bit that Kant is actually not so tyrannical, especially given that one’s maxim is self-governing. One must motivate oneself to choose it. This aspect of Kant’s ethical system actually liberates a person from oppression because nobody else can tell that person how to operate. One is given free agency in terms of what one finds important from a moral perspective. This understanding makes Kant seem significantly less oppressive. There are other problems to address, however. There are two main contentions remaining that need to be addressed. The first is that sometimes one needs to violate the categorical imperative in order

79 Baron, Marcia W. Kantian Ethics almost without Apology ( Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1995), 31.

42 to do good, such as lying to save someone. I will address this problem. The second is that acting from duty alone seems lacking in basic human compassion. This means, if one acts out of duty instead of love or kindness, one might be avoiding that which makes a person human. Kant scholars have addressed both of these problems and I shall address them in turn.

We all have the freedom to choose our maxim, defined by Kant as “a rule that the agent himself makes his principle on subjective grounds.”80 Essentially, we have the freedom to choose our own operating framework, according to the free will that we are given. At the same time, our decision, made under freedom of choice, is made lighter by the fact that it must be able to be universalized. The purpose of the whole system is to use freedom as the ultimate natural right, a right that cannot be taken away. Recall as stated earlier, that an action is right if it can, “ coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law”81 A perfect society is one in which people have the freedom to act without damaging other people’s freedom to act. In fact, Kant indicates that freedom is the only innate right, defined as “independence from being constrained by another’s choice.”82 People often think of Kant’ system of external and internal duty as restrictive, but in fact Kant was trying to create a system whereby minimal interference or coercion from others is necessary. Again, coercion is only okay under limited circumstances, or when someone else’s freedom is violated.83 The question is, what is an example of a maxim chosen through free will? The classic example is that if I am to avoid lying, I am bound by duty not to do so. There is a good reason for this. If I want to have a society where people are not violating each other’s freedom, we need to have a consistent operating principle. Murdering,

80 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 17. 81 Ibid., 24. 82 Ibid., 30. 83 Ibid., 25.

43 killing, lying, are all done in the name of a greater cause sometimes, but they cannot be universally good. It is not possible to justify immoral actions on anywhere near a regular basis. I can justify such actions on a case by case basis, but I cannot make them my maxim, or my categorical imperative, because it is a paradox to say that a maxim of murder should be universal. Thus one has a duty not to violate others’ freedom of will. However, things do go wrong. Sometimes the state has to use coercion to bring a person to justice. Kant builds the argument as follows: 1) whatever is wrong is a hindrance to freedom in accordance with universal laws. 2) coercion is itself a hindrance to freedom. 3) if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance to freedom in accordance with universal laws, coercion that is opposed to this is right.84 What this means is, that sometimes people fail at acting out of duty, and end up wronging another person. The state is there to rectify this mistake via coercion. In Justiz, people are coerced by being sent to prison. But this does not seem to be enough. The justice system itself in Dürrenmatt’s story is broken and, as I will indicate later in the chapter, it exists in what

Kant calls a state of nature. What happens in the novel, from a Kantian perspective, is that the social contract is violated consistently by the elite using and mishandling others for their own benefit. The Kantian social contract differs from other Enlightenment era social contract theorists in that the main operating principle is that people should not use one another as a means to an end. Kohler and the others violate this exact principle and in turn violate the categorical imperative. Now to go back to defining what makes a Kantian hero.

84 Ibid.

44

Defining the Kantian Hero

A Kantian hero is someone who has chosen a moral operating principle that allows that person to go through life doing good, not based on self-interest or even on the results or outcome of an abstract principle, but based on a duty to oneself and to humanity.

At this point one might ask the question, how does Spät fit into the Kantian sphere of ethics?

He sleeps around, drinks too much, and does things for money. I would argue that there is one redeeming factor in Spät’s personality and it is so redeeming that it qualifies him for being thought of as a Kantian hero. There are a few major instances in the story wherein Spät demonstrates that his maxim, or operating principle, is justice. The reader first learns about

Spät’s obsession and sense of duty when he is figuring out how to interview Kohler’s daughter and asks her to confess about the murder weapon, given that Spät is convinced that she was responsible for concealing it.85 Keep in mind that even though Spät has somehow accepted the money from Kohler for the investigation, he cannot rest. He wonders how he can appeal to her to tell the truth. In his daydreams he tries to reason with her, tries to appeal to her sense of justice but he already knows that he will fail. It is at that point that Spät resigns himself to his private battle against society. “Aber es galt durchzuhalten, sich aufzurappeln, die Philosophie hinunterzuwürgen, den Kampf gegen die Gesellschaft, gegen Kohler, gegen Stüssi-Leupin weiterzuführen.”86 Spät sees problems on all sides. Even though society itself has not committed a murder, nor has Stüssi-Leupin, there are other considerations. Spät is in a position whereby he is challenging Swiss high- society. The justice system is set up in the story to favor

85 Dürrenmatt, 27. 86 Ibid., 50.

45 the influential and powerful and Spät is not part of that circle. In fact, one of the reasons why he is so poor is that he refuses to join Stüssi- Leupin’s lucrative law firm because he is repulsed by it. Spät knows that Stussi-Leupin is motivated not by ethics but partially by love of money and power. Later in the story Stüssi-Leupin is willing to take the Kohler case from Spät just for his own advancement. Another adversary mentioned in the quotation is Kohler. Spät has learned of Kohler’s manipulation of the system, and decides that Kohler must be stopped. It seems unfair to Spät that through societal positioning and the influence that Kohler commands, things seem to be going Kohler’s way even though he is in prison. Another thing to consider is that Kohler’s murder seems to defy conventional ethical considerations of what is moral and what is not. Spät thinks to himself, “Je geistiger das Motiv eines Gewaltakts, desto böser ist es, je bewuβter, desto weniger zu entschuldigen.”87 At this point it might seem that Spät is waging a type of warfare on Swiss high-society, especially on Kohler. Kant has a couple of things to say about war. A state against which war is being waged has the right to defend itself.88 The problem is, Spät is not a soverign state. As a citizen, he is obligated to live side by side with others. Second, a state of war is a type of state of nature and must be left behind eventually. In a state of nature there is an inherent lack of distributive justice.89 Essentially, due to the fact that a state of nature is immoral, what one does in a state of nature is amoral. What is wrong is perpetuating the state of nature.90 The above quotation by Spät is part of the ongoing monologue that Spät provides. Spät is saying that the more intellectual a crime, the more evil it is. A crime of passion can lead to remorse and repentance, whereas a crime nurtured and

87 Dürrenmatt, 127. 88 Kant, 117. 89 Ibid., 85. 90 Ibid., 86.

46 carried out by the intellect involves a process where the perpetrator has full knowledge of what is being done. One can also translate böse as wicked or villainous, and perhaps this is what Spät meant. Why do the different translations matter? Spät seems to be more concerned throughout the novel with what is just or unjust, rather than what is good and evil. He is a lawyer, not a philosopher. There is no doubt that he believes that Kohler is a criminal and needs to be stopped before he does any more damage, however. A Kantian hero believes in the inherent dignity of humanity and so such a hero would believe even in the potential that people like Kohler might have. He is not concerned with revenge. He just needs to stop Kohler from killing again. The difficulties are apparent, however, in Spät’s musings. He tries and fails to understand Kohler’s motives and this is why he thinks that Kohler is so villainous. The reader only learns later, after Spät’s story ends, that Kohler was concerned with avenging his daughter.

Spät’s obsession with fighting corruption throughout the book is revealed in the previous two quotations on the page above, in his personal musings. Eventually, Spät’s happiness and sanity are taken away from him, but not because he is poor, or because of being disbarred, or because of any of the trivialities of his life, but because he is profoundly upset that Kohler and the other elites in society are openly mocking justice and everything that Spät holds dear. Eventually Spät demonstrates his sense of justice by dropping the case. His conscience can no longer support his efforts in helping Kohler to scheme and plot behind the scenes. Perhaps dropping the case was the best approach if one interprets it from a Kantian perspective. He was acting from duty, rather than from inclination, by giving the case over to Stüssi-Leupin. One might object to this line of argumentation by asking, if Spät is acting out of duty, does he not have a duty toward

Kohler? The problem is that he has a greater duty to justice. He sells the materials he collected

47 to his former boss, the star lawyer Stüssi-Leupin, who then represents Kohler in the new trial.

The thing to consider is that Spät decides to represent Dr. Benno in the case, who has been accused wrongly of the murder. Spät is at a disadvantage here because he would be going against the grain of the entire city, and he is just not as experienced a lawyer as Stüssi-Leupin.

Everyone loves Kohler and everyone thinks Benno now committed the murder. Unfortunately,

Benno’s suicide is all the convincing that the public needs to free Kohler and posthumously convict Benno. One might ask, why is it important from the perspective of a Kantian hero, that

Spät drops the Kohler case and gives it to Stüssi-Leupin, while at the same time defending

Benno? Again one might ask, doesn’t Spät also have a duty to Kohler, his previous client? This is a tricky problem, in that Spät did in fact agree to take on the case. I can apply a few Kantian ideas toward this. First, consider the fact that Spät is righting previous wrongs by dropping the case. After all, he took the case for money. In this case he might have made things worse by leading to the suicide of Dr. Benno. Also, Stüssi-Leupin is the superior lawyer and could help

Kohler even more. From a Kantian perspective, this is less important. What matters is that Spät is fulfilling his duty to justice. He knew already that Kohler was guilty. This is in fact what has tormented Spät the whole time, and is the driving force behind the novel. In the Metaphysics of

Morals, in the Doctrine of Right, Kant says, “Be an honorable human being. Rightful honor consists in asserting one’s worth as a human being in relation to others, a duty expressed by the saying, ‘Do not make yourself a mere means for others but be at the same time an end for them.’91 This is the first of the General Division of the Duties of Right. This is an aspect of the formula of humanity, that people are always an end in themselves. Spät, by allowing himself to

91 Ibid., 29.

48 be used and exploited by Kohler, is in fact allowing himself to be used as a mere means to an end. So by terminating that relationship, he is being a Kantian hero. A second duty is, “Do not wrong anyone, even if, to avoid doing so, you should have to stop associating with others and shun all society.”92 This aspect of the Duties of Right justifies the fact that Spät severs his ties with Kohler. By severing ties with Kohler Spät is doing his best to avoid harming people. Also, by taking on Benno’s case, who is now being falsely accused of murder, Spät is being a Kantian hero by preventing Benno being wronged. Spät fails to protect Benno because Benno commits suicide before the trial can begin, but Spät did his best to help. This small act in the novel shows what a complex character Spät really is. He makes mistakes and then is redeemed. Throughout the whole novel, however, he is concerned with his duty to see justice carried out, even when he fails in his quest.

Spät’s Solution

One must ultimately evaluate Spät’s sense of justice based upon his narration from the very beginning—that Spät has decided that he must kill Kohler. He plots this murder throughout the whole story, at least, whenever the narration is switched from events past to the present.

Recall what Roger A. Crockett says about the chronological anomalies present in the book.

“Dürrenmatt’s first nonchronological novel is characterized by a postmodern playfulness. The inebriated first-person narrator of the novel’s first and second parts repeatedly confuses present with past and narrates pat events out of sequence, only to apologize and attempt to

92 Ibid., 29.

49 correct the confusion.”93 This confusion is part of the labyrinth that was mentioned earlier. In many ways, Spät creates more mystery for the reader than the murder itself, because it is already known who did it. What is confusing is following Spät through his musings and rants about injustice and how he is going to fix the problem of injustice in general. In the very beginning of the book one learns that Spät feels that killing Kohler is the only solution. As he says, “Die Zeit wird sein Verbrechen nicht heilen, mein Warten es nicht milden, meine

Betrunkheit es nicht auslöschen, mein Schreiben es nicht entschuldigen.”94 What Spät is trying to say here is that there is no way to bring justice about without the death of Kohler. I interpret

Spät’s position as being that which is found in a Kantian state of nature. Pauline Kleingeld summarizes this state as “the condition in which there is no rule of law and no state authority set above the individuals.”95 Spät knows full well that there will be no justice anywhere. Kohler will be let go, Benno will die, and the others will keep using others to their own ends without consequence or repercussion. It is for this reason that Spät considers radicalizing himself and becoming a self-appointed agent of justice, or a vigilante. This would put Spät in violation of the categorical imperative, but as I discuss later, Spät does not go through with the plan to eventually murder Kohler or himself. He can be interpreted as realizing that this is wrong and so he does not go through with it.

Back to the state of nature. Spät’s world is breaking up around him. While he does not perpetuate the state of nature, he exists within it because Kohler has broken down the social contract. Kohler has violated justice. Kant describes the state of nature as follows: “A condition

93 Crockett, 179. 94 Dürrenmatt, 10. 95 Kleingeld, xviii.

50 that is not rightful, that is, a condition in which there is no distributive justice, is called a state of nature. What is opposed to a state of nature is not a condition that is social… but rather the civil condition, that of a society subject to distributive justice.”96 In a state of nature all bets are off because everyone in the state of nature is equally wronged by the lack of law. Kant also indicates that while in a state of nature, “humans do another no wrong at all when they feud among themselves, for what holds true for one holds also in turn for the other… But in general, they do wrong in the highest degree by willing to be and remain in a condition that is not rightful, that is, in which no one is assured of what is his against violence.”97 In a Kantian state of nature, any selfish behavior, while permissible, is neither justified nor unjustified because there is no real law. Thus what one does within the sphere of the state of nature is amoral, neither justified nor unjustified. One is simply either trying to survive or trying to take something away from someone else. A Kantian villain does wrong in the sense that he or she perpetuates the state of nature, rather than entering into a civil agreement where a person’s freedom is protected by law. Kant is pointing at the fundamental nature of the social contract here. The social contract is either fulfilled or not based upon the actions of its citizens. What one should think of is that at any given time, there are microcosmic instances of a Kantian state of nature, where law is undermined by the Kantian villain. Kohler is undermining the social contract and forcing people into a microcosmic state of nature by manipulating Spät, killing his foes indirectly, and corrupting the justice system. So the social contract itself is rendered invalid on a small, localized basis. Laws can no longer protect people under Kohler’s influence. This is part of what makes him a good villain. I will discuss later, however, how the justice system itself

96 Kant, 85. 97 Ibid., 86.

51 is the major villain. The justice system has failed Spät and Kohler both. It is perpetuating the state of nature for both figures. Spät then is the opposite force, trying to uphold justice, keep the legal system from being broken by those with power and influence, and thus fighting against a localized instance of the Kantian state of nature. Given that Spät believes himself to be one of the only rational and just agents in the whole community, he believes that he is acting justly. He is trying to cancel out the state of nature.

Spät says at the beginning of the story that he has written the whole narrative in order to prepare for what he thinks is a just murder.98 As he mentions, “Die Gerechtigkeit läβt sich nur nach durch ein Verbrechen wiederherstellen.”99 This seems like paradox. How can Spät only restore justice with a crime? To continue, “Daβ ich daraufhin Selbstmord zu begehen habe, ist unvermeidlich.”100 But one must ask why suicide is necessary?

Ich will mich damit nicht der Verantwortung entziehen, im Gegenteil, nur so ist mein Vorgehen zu verantworten, wenn auch nicht juristich, so doch menschlich. Im Besitze der Wahrheit, kann ich sie nicht beweisen. Für den entscheidenden Augenblick fehlen mir die Zeugen. Durch meinen Freitod wird es leichterfallen, mir ohne Zeugen zu glauben.”101 Spät feels that the only way to bring justice is a murder-suicide, not because he believes that this is the optimal solution, but because he thinks it is the only solution. By committing suicide, he believes that his story and his efforts might be more credible. What is remarkable here is that this monologue takes place at the beginning of the story. The reader is introduced to Spät through these anachronistic musings, or seeing him explain things out of temporal sequence.

Spät learns, as the reader knows, later in the story that Kohler has a good chance of being

98 Dürrenmatt, 4. 99 Ibid., 11. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid.

52 retried and acquitted because of the investigation that Spät agreed to, which he took up upon meeting with Kohler in prison. In a sense, Spät brings about his own doom. What is confusing is that Spät is saying this before the story even begins. Spät believes that the justice system has failed entirely. Again, think of the Kantian state of nature where no real law is viable. The people who are to blame are those who perpetuate the state of nature itself. In a way, Spät wishes to restore permanently the social contract and render the justice system back to its original state. Again, we know from a Kantian perspective that this logic is flawed and unsound.

If Spät had gone through with the murder-suicide, he would have fallen from grace and been disqualified as a Kantian hero. We do learn, at the end, as I mentioned before, that Spät could not go through with it.

It is the case that Kant does not approve of suicide. If one looks at the Groundwork of the

Metaphysics of Morals directly though, what Kant stipulates is that killing oneself to avoid pain is not acceptable.102 Avoiding pain is not Spät’s motivation. As Spät says, he is not trying to shirk responsibility. Spät is motivated by duty and an obsession with justice. Also, Kant would disapprove of one person killing another, as this cannot be consistent with the categorical imperative. On the other hand, Kant does authorize the state to impose the death penalty in certain cases.103 Furthermore the state has the right to use coercion when one being limits the freedom of another in accordance with universal law.104 I pose the question, who is the State?

The State itself is an abstract collective of people with no agency of its own. The judicial system is normally the arbiter of justice. That means judges and attorneys. The problem is that a

102 Kant,Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 91. 103 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 107. 104 Ibid., 25.

53 lawyer, in our current legal system, does not have the authorization to act without the verdict of a judge. Spät is simply not the appropriate representative of the state. Here is where the paradox lies in the story. Nobody is able to challenge Kohler. The judges and the prosecutor have failed. Spät believes that it is his duty to carry out justice. From a certain perspective, he is being deputized by the state to keep Kohler from restricting the freedoms of others. Or at the very least, he is being a good Kantian by adhering to his maxim of justice. He is acting from duty. Spät believes that the system has broken down and needs to be repaired.

Does Spät go through with it?

As mentioned earlier, the reader learns much later that Spät was never able to actually shoot

Kohler. He failed during his one chance because he could not take another person’s life. In this case, one might see that Spät’ sense of how to carry out duty was in conflict, but ultimately he made the superior Kantian decision, in that murder is not consistent with the categorical imperative. I perceive this fact as exceptionally virtuous, because Spät upheld the categorical imperative even while in a perceived state of nature. He never recovers from this part of his life, but what broke him was his obsession with justice and the realization that his world, and the elite circles of Switzerland, were not ready for Kantian devotion to duty, and to justice. I can call Spät a Kantian hero because despite his flaws, his prime motivator is an abstract ideal. He is not even concerned with his own safety and well-being if justice can be better served by putting himself at risk. He is not perfect by any means. One must remember however, that a

Kantian hero in general can be flawed. Kant himself did not ask for perfection, but simply that

54 we strive for perfection, even though we will never reach it in this lifetime. 105 Spät on the other hand, however flawed, is clearly motivated by intense pain and suffering resulting from the tragedy of justice that occurred in the story. It is his motivation that matters from a Kantian perspective. He is not a conventional good hero, or even an anti-hero, but for the aforementioned reason, among others, he is a hero in accordance with Kantian principles.

Spät’s Fall from Grace

The reader learns very early on about Spät’s obsession with justice in his interactions with

Hélène, whom he loves and was once truly in love with, prior to her actions in aiding her father carry out the murder of his friend, Winter. Spät is desperate for some type of closure from

Hélène and finds her at a coffee shop with Stüssi-Leupin. Having provided his theory about how she might have helped her father to conceal the murder weapon, he is then instead met with coldness from her. She rejects him emotionally and ideologically. Spät provides an internal monologue about how to appeal to her. He starts by realizing that she was “Schuldig wie ihr

Vater.”106 But that Kohler had already won, given her willing aid “dann muβte sie wissen, daβ ich recht hatte, dann hatte ihr Vater schon gewonnen. Er war stärker gewesen als ich.”107 In what way, might we ask, is Kohler, her father, stronger than Spät? We should consider the fact that Kohler bends everyone to his will in the community, in one way or another, and it is particularly hurtful that Kohler won his daughter over the cause of justice. One thing to consider here is that Spät does not know the backstory, and at this point, neither does the reader. Only later does the reader learn that Hélène was the initial victim. This is also part of

105 Ibid., 196. 106 Dürrenmatt, 48. 107 Ibid.,48.

55 the sad nature of the story. The fact that the initial crime was the rape of Hélène can lead to a type of sympathy with Kohler. The rape of any woman, especially from the perspective of a father, is horrific. Keep in mind, though, that Kohler might be justified in his revenge plot from a conventional perspective, but not from a Kantian perspective. Leaving it up to the courts would be better, but again, the Swiss justice system has failed both Kohler, Spät, and Hélène.

This is perhaps the most disturbing paradox in the whole story, and why I argue later about the

Swiss justice system being the villain.

I will now get back to discussing Spät. Spät rants,“Ein Kampf mit Héléne war sinnlos, weil sie sich schon entschieden hatte, weil er schon entschieden war. Ich konnte sie nicht zwingen, ihren Vater zu verraten.”108 This has been demonstrated already, that he cannot win Hélène back. What is interesting is when he plunges into his own hellish philosophical world.

Woran sollte ich den bei ihr appellieren? An die Ideale? An welche? An die Wahrheit? Die hatte sie verschwiegen. An die Liebe? Sie hatte mich verraten. An die Gerechtigkeit? Dann würde sie mch fragen: Für wen? Für eine lokale Geistesgröβe? Asche ist zufrieden. Für eine windelweichen, verlogenen Schürzenjäger? Der ist auch kremiert. Für mich? Nicht die Mühe wert. Die Gerechtigkeit ist keine Privatsache. Und dann würde sie mich fragen: Wozu Gerechtigkeit? Für unsere Gesellschaft?109 This internal monologue leaves the reader with no doubt that Spät feels betrayed on multiple levels. He feels betrayed by Hélène romantically, given that she is with Stüssi-Leupin, a wealthy and somewhat amoral attorney. He also feels betrayed because his greatest love, justice, has been violated. One can ask, why is this scene important in terms of how Spät relates to Hélène?

Does the scene merely point at Spät’s failed romantic relations with Hélène from his past? As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, Spät is unaware of what the reader knows by the end of

108 Ibid.,49. 109 Ibid.

56 the book, which is told by the character played by Dürrenmatt himself acting as a new narrative instance. The entire book revolves around Hélène even though the reader does not realize this because of Spät’s ongoing first-person perspective. Kohler has set about the destruction of his former friends because of their rape of Hélène. For her to help her father in achieving vengeance is human and occurs in many a novel. From Spät’s perspective, however, he only sees Hélène protecting a corrupt and murderous father. Spät cannot appeal to love, to justice, or any other ideal. This is why he says that Kohler has already won.

A bit later in the story, Helene comes back to talk with Spät. By now, he has sunk down into alcoholism and alcohol fueled rage. She finds him with a prostitute on his lap, and her pimp sitting at a table nearby. This time, he screams at her, calling her a murderer and the daughter of a murderer.110 He falls down drunk and ends up in a urinal after having been beaten up by his pimp friend for acting inappropriately. Spät, in his own way, gives an explanation for his fall into booze and self-hated. He says:

Mein Leben hat nur noch einen Sinn: mit Kohler abzurechnen. Die Abrechnung ist iceinfach. Ein Schuβ genügt. Aber nun muβ ich warten. Dies habe ich nicht einkalkuliert. Auch nicht die Nerven, die es kostet. Die Gerechtigkeit zu vollziehen ist etwas anders, als in Erwartung dieses Vollzugs leben zu müssen. Ich komme mir wie ein Rasender vor. Daβ ich so viel trinke, ist nur ein Ausdruck meiner absurden Lage: ich bin von der Gerechtigkeit wie betrunken. Das Gefühl, im Recht zu sein, vernichtet mich. Es gibt nichts Entsetzlicheres als dieses Gefühl. Ich richte mich hin, weil ich den alten Kohler nicht hinrichten kann.111 Here is the paradox, the enigma that is Spät’s ongoing conflict, alcoholism and his need to see justice done. Spät could be interpreted as saying that he cannot bear the strain and that the alcoholism is a side effect of his struggle. How does one interpret this from a Kantian

110 Ibid., 144. 111 Ibid.

57 perspective? Kant actually speaks specifically against excessive consumption of alcohol. Kant compares a human being who is drunk to that of a “mere animal.”112 It violates a duty to oneself, as Kant puts it. People temporarily dream that they are “happy and free from care, and even imagine that they are strong; but dejection and weakness follow and, worst of all, they create a need to use narcotics again and even to increase the amount.”113 It is important to examine this aspect of Kant’s ethics. Does it really matter that much if someone consumes alcohol to excess? The problem is, there is a good chance that the person will lose his or her ability to think rationally and thus be at risk for losing the ability to follow his or her own maxim. This is a loss of freedom from being ruled by inclination. From a Kantian perspective, this is dangerous. I would argue that, while Spät is neglecting a duty to himself, namely to keep himself healthy and rational, he has never lost sight of his goal of seeing justice carried out. He is not in denial of the fact that he drinks to excess. He is acting like a person who has nothing to lose because all that matters is justice. The ultimate analysis here is that he is still a Kantian hero. While he is hurting himself with alcohol, at least from a Kantian perspective, he has not lost sight of his quest and thus has not lost sight of his particular approach to the categorical imperative. At the same time, it is fair to say that he is influenced by alcohol at the very least.

Being drunk alters one’s thinking no matter what, and this partially detracts from Spät’s character both as a narrator and as a Kantian.

112 Ibid., 180. 113 Ibid.

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Spät and the false Alibi

Something one cannot justify at all, which Spät carries out is providing an alibi for Lucky the pimp and his political friend. Essentially, Spät, however grudgingly, accepts money from Lucky to provide false testimony to the police that Lucky and the Marquis were in fact absent from the scene where a murder occurred, so that they could not be implicated. Spät comes up with an elaborate plan to smoke a couple of hours worth of cigarettes in order to show evidence that they were at his office. What happens next is very sad and displays the beginning of the permanent downfall of Spät. The Kommandant comes to visit, and talks with Spät. After hearing the ridiculous alibi, the Kommandant takes pity, but also indicates his disbelief.

Wenn ich mir nur ein Bild von Ihnen machen könnte, fiele es mir dann leichter, Sie zu verstehen. Aber ich kann mit kein Bild machen. Als ich Sie zum ersten Mal besucht habe, hat mir Ihr Kampf für die Gerechtigkeit eingeleuchtet, und ich bin mir schäbig vorkommen, aber jetzt leuchten Sie mir nicht ein. Das Alibi nehme ich Ihnen noch ab, aber daβ es Ihnen um die Gerechtigkeit geht, nehme ich Ihnen nicht mehr ab.114 The Kommandant is telling Spät and the reader that Spät has fallen from grace. The

Kommandant once believed in Spät’s dedication to justice, but no longer. Accepting the bribe and lying for Lucky, has violated his own principles and in turn the categorical imperative. The

Kommandant understands, however. “Sie tun mir Leid, Spät. Daβ Sie in eine absurde

Geschichte verstrickt sind, ist mirk lar, daβ Sie dabei selber absurd werden, ist wohl nichts zu

ändern. Ich denke, darum lassen Sie sich fallen.”115 The Kommandant actually feels sorry for

Spät. He knows why Spät has fallen into a state of corruption. Spät’s inability to see justice done with Kolher is making him cynical and jaded. Does this information doom Spät to being no longer of Kantian hero status? Spät justifies his own actions later in his journal, by indicating

114 Dürrenmatt, 249. 115 Ibid.

59 that he really wanted to be a guilty as Kohler. If that happens, then “dann ist mein Urteil und die Ausführung meines Urteils durch mich die gerechteste Sache der Welt, den die

Gerechtigkeit kann sich nur unter Gleichschuldigen vollziehen….”116 Why does Spät feel that he must become guilty so that he can exact justice upon Kohler? There are a few possibilities. One is that Spät believes so deeply in the legal system that he cannot bear to break his oaths as a lawyer without somehow sidestepping them by losing his integrity. If one thinks about it from within a Kantian interpretation, if Spät enters back into a state of nature, all laws cease to have meaning, and then he can justify the vigilante carrying out of justice to himself. This conflict is at the core of Spät’s paradox. Spät strives for justice and in that way has a sense of duty. In this case, though he fails completely at being a Kantian. The problem is he is alone, tired, depressed, and he knows that by conventional means he cannot win. Kohler is too influential and powerful.

Spät values justice more than his own life. In a Kantian sense, he is motivated by duty more than any other person in the story. Despite his temporary fall and temporary cloudy logic, what he suffers from is an intense love of justice and right. It is the violation of his ability to choose and carry out that maxim that breaks his spirit. Also, he never uses anyone else as a means to an end, which is important. If someone observes the practical imperative or the formula of humanity, one is in many ways a good Kantian. Spät is in fact the only main character in the story who avoids using others as a means to an end. One of the greatest signs of unethical behavior from a Kantian perspective is to violate the fact that we are all part of a Kingdom of

Ends, a community of people with the freedom to choose our own maxim and universalize it, without being used by others. I will explore this concept further in evaluating Kohler.

116 Ibid., 302.

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Dr.h.c Kohler the Villain

The main villain in the story is of course Dr. h.c. Isaak Kohler. There is much more to him than it seems. In fact, one could argue that he is as complicated a villain as Spät is a hero. Before I evaluate Kohler in a Kantian capacity, however, I would like to evaluate him from more conventional points of view. What makes Kohler seem more and more monstrous is the complete lack of concern that he has for his own welfare at trial, for the Swiss justice system, and also for what he has done. After all, he shot a man happily and amiably in the middle of a crowded restaurant. The reason this is important to consider is that it fits in with Kohler’s overall scheme. He has planned everything. The reader learns later that by denying the justice system of any reasonable explanation for his actions, he leads the people around him on a path to confusion and disbelief. Why would anyone calmly shoot another person in the middle of a crowded restaurant? It does not make sense to the Kommandant, his friend, or the prosecution. Shortly thereafter, everyone is looking for the missing Kohler, who has somehow disappeared. Polizeileutnant Herren had put out the equivalent of an APB (a city or state-wide search and alert) on Kohler.

Der Apparat lief auf vollen Touren. Man fand Kohlers Villa leer….Man schloβ auf Fluchtabsichten. Funkwagen pirschten durch die Straβen, die Grenzposten wurden benachrichtigt, ausländische Polizei avisiert. Dies alles war vom rein Technischen her nur zu loben, doch stellte man die Möglichkeit auβer Frage, die die Kommandant gewittert hatte: man suchte einen Mann, der nicht zu fliehen trachtete.117

117 Dürrenmatt, 33.

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The reader finds out that Kohler has been driving around town leisurely in his Rolls-Royce, and has no intention to flee at all. This torments Staatsanwalt Jämmerlin, who believes in and is obsessed with the success of the criminal justice system in Switzerland. Jämmerlin is at a

Mozart concert enjoying himself, when Kohler walks casually into the Opera house and sits next to him.

Und Mondschein hatte schon den Taktstock erhoben, als der gesuchte, mit den modernsten Hilfsmitteln der Polizei gehetzte Dr.h.c an der Seite einer der reichsten und nun auch ahnungslosesten Witwen unserer Stadt durch den Mittelgang des groβen Tonhallesaals an den dichten Zuhörerreihen vorbei nach vorne geschritten kam, ruhig und sicher wie immer, mit der unschuldigsten Miene, als wenn nichts geschehen wäre und sich neben Jämmerlin niederlieβ, ja dem Fassungslosen noch die Hand schüttelte.118 Thus one sees Kohler enter the Opera with a complete lack of concern for just about anything and sit next to the man who will be prosecuting him at trial, Staatsanwalt Jämmerlin. How can one evaluate this behavior? Is it immoral or sociopathic? After all, it could just be a harmless joke. What hints here at the potentially nefarious nature of Kohler is that he is intentionally mocking the man who presents more danger to himself than any other. He is mocking the justice system in turn. The reader learns throughout the story that Jämmerlin has heart problems and Kolher would have known this. Kohler knows Jämmerlin well enough to know that it is torture for him to sit next to a man who has just murdered someone else, and who has just evaded capture only to walk in on an opera. Again, Jämmerlin has a bad heart and later in the novel he dies from the strain of it all. It is not necessarily immoral to mock Jämmerlin in this way, however. It is just unkind. We have at this point not seen everything that Kohler is capable of. At this point, the reader knows that he has killed somebody and acted strangely, but the reader is not aware of his master plan.

118 Dürrenmatt, 34.

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Kohler in Custody

Shortly thereafter Kohler is taken into custody by his friend the Kommandant. The

Kommandant just wants to make sense of it all. Why did Kohler shoot Winter? Again, during the conversation, Kohler is jolly and cooperative, seeming to have a lack of concern for himself and for the case in general.

Nun. Warum hast du den Professor ermordet?’ began der Kommandant aufs neue hartnäckig zu fragen, eindringlich, wischte sich wieder den Schweiβ aus dem Nacken und von den Stirn. ‘Ich habe keinen Grund’ gestand der Kantonsrat. Der Kommandant starrte ihn verwundert an, glaubte nicht recht gehört zu haben, leerte dann sein Glas Chambertin, schenkte sich wieder ein, verschüttete Wein. ‘Keinen Grund?’ ‘Keinen.’119 The Kommandant and Kohler were friends in the past. The Kommandant is seeing a side of

Kohler that he never has before. It is shown clearly during the interrogation, or really the discussion, that the Kommandant really wants to make sense of it all. Kohler will not give him that luxury. Kohler asks the Kommandant to do his duty, which is to arrest him, and then the

Kommandant offers to let Kohler stay in a psychiatric hospital for evaluation. Not only does

Kohler refuse that, but Kohler refuses to have a high-powered lawyer, instead asking for a public defender. Kohler is jolly and amiable the whole time. The Kommandant muses to himself in the following quotation,“Ein Mord war für ihn ein Unglücksfall, über den er kein moralisches

Urteil fällte. Aber als Mann der Ordnung muβte er einen Grund haben. Ein Mord ohne Grund war für ihn nicht ein Verstoβ gegen die Sitte, wohl aber gegen die Logik. Und das gab es

119 Dürrenmatt, 38.

63 nicht.”120 It is simply inconceivable that a person like Kohler would shoot a man without reason.

In fact, Kohler assures the Kommandant he is sane when the Kommandant mentions putting him in a psychiatric facility. Throughout the book, figures like the Kommandant and Spät want there to be cause and effect behind actions, which result from each other in a linear fashion. As the reader perceives, however, the narrative itself is not linear. People want to be able to make sense of the murder somehow. Kohler, by claiming no reason in a casual manner, without denying the murder itself, is turning human understanding on its ear. At this point in the chronology the reader still does not know what Kohler is playing at. He is up to something, however. Is Kohler a conventional villain for refusing to claim a motive for the murder and also at the same time not trying to defend himself? In the Kommandant’s opinion, he is not. He is simply a logical problem that cannot be solved. Mainly, a man like Kohler clearly must have some sort of motivation even he claims not too. In this way, he is not villainous in a conventional sense, but is overtly manipulative and seems to be hiding something. He is playing some sort of game. Recall what Roger A. Crockett mentioned, that Dürrematt’s “characters are most often involved in some form of game, and understanding how and why they play is a big part of understanding the author.”121 Kohler is lining everyone up in a cue and is setting the chain reaction in motion. We will see how shortly.

Kohler stumps people further at the trial. Das Verbrechen war öffentlich geschehen, wer der Mörder war, muβte nicht bewiesen werden. Nur über das Motiv der Tat war nichts auszumachen. Es schien keines zu geben. Aus dem Kantonsrat war nichts herauszubringen. Man stand vor einem Rätsel. Die Beziehungen zwischen Mörder und Ermordetem waren die denkbar korrektesten. Geschäftlich hatten sie nichts miteinander zu tun, Eifersucht war ausgeschlossen, nicht

120 Ibid., 39. 121 Crockett, ix.

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einmal Vermutungen waren in dieser Hinsicht möglich. Angesichts dieser seltsamen Tatsache gab es zwei Interpretationen: Entweder war Dr.h.c. Kohler geisteskrank oder ein amoralisches Monstrum, ein Mörder aus reiner Freude am Töten.122

The reader is now forced into a new way of interpreting Kohler’s crime. Obviously he refuses to provide a motive. The judges present the dichotomy of either mental illness or of him being a true monster. After all, someone who kills without motive might be doing it simply for the pleasure of doing so. In the story, Staatsanwalt Jämmerlin chooses the second option, which is that Kohler is a monster. The judges panel, however, is aware of Kohler’s role as in politics and in his service to the community. In this way, Kohler has the advantage and this is why people want to believe him. Ultimately, he is sentenced to twenty years in prison. The main story in terms of Spät’s actual role starts there.

Enter Spät

Spät enters the story officially after Kohler is incarcerated. Spät is not the only person that

Kohler will hire, however. First, Kohler hires a married couple, both involved in academia, to research the consequences of a murder. The retired professor is researching specifically the ongoing effects of the death of Winter. He gives Spät his instructions. “Sie sollen meinen Fall unter der Annahme neu untersuchen, ich sei nicht der Mörder gewesen.” He continues, “Sie haben eine Fiktion aufzustellen, nichts weiter.”123

Kohler wants Spät to question possibility. “Das Mögliche ist beinahe undendlich, das Wirkliche streng begrenzt, weil doch nur eine von allen Möglichkeiten zur Wirklichkeit werden kann. Das

122 Dürrenmatt, 62. 123 Ibid., 86.

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Wirkliche ist nir ein Sonderfall des Möglichen und deshalb auch anders denkbar. Daraus folgt, daβ wir das Wirkliche umzudenken haben, um ins Möglichen vorzustoβen.”124 This speech from

Kohler to Spät seems exceedingly abstract. Spät at this point has no idea what Kohler has planned. Kohler wishes to explore what is possible. What is thought of as conventional reality is only one possibility. In one way or another, reality unravels and restructures itself in contradictory ways, because of what Kohler has, without the reader’s knowledge, set in motion.

When Spät, a young and inexperienced lawyer, asks Kohler why he chose him to take up the investigation, he gives Spät an enigmatic answer: “Weil Sie nichts von Billard verstehen.”125 In fact, Billiards is one of the more central defining factors in the whole book. Kohler is obsessed with billiards and Spät has no idea why or how. Whenever he has met Kohler in the past, Kohler was playing pool. This includes Kohler’s house, where the original plan for revenge was set up on a billiards table. Billiards is the key to the entire mystery. All the reader knows at this point is that billiards is the symbol for Kolher’s ingenious ability to cause a chain reacton. Spät is, in a sense, to be the sacrificial lamb, merely because of his lack of knowledge of billiards—or, his lack of knowledge as to how to bend and reshape reality. Spät is, in a sense, the cue.

In fact, when Spät goes to visit Kohler’s villa, he finds a billiards table with three balls on it. The reader does not know at this point yet, but each ball symbolizes a person, an enemy of Kohler who is to be systematically dealt with and eliminated. Spät feels, upon seeing the balls lined up on the billiard table, that he has learned the true nature of Kohler:

Kohler hatte nicht gemordet, weil er ein Spieler war. Er war kein Hasardur. Ihn lockte nicht der Einsatz. Ihn lockte das Spiel selbst, das Rollen der Bälle, die Berechnung und

124 Ibid., 86. 125 Ibid., 89.

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die Ausführung, die Möglichkeit der Partie. Glück bedeutete ihm nichts (darum konnte er sich als vollkommen glücklich betrachten, er heuchelte nicht einmal). Er war nur stolz darauf, daβ es in seiner Macht lag, die Bedingungen des Spiels zu wählen….126

So again, Spät is learning a lot here. Kohler is setting up the formula and rules for way that reality will unfold, just like a well orchestrated billiards game. Billiards is no mere game for

Kohler, but an exercise in control and manipulation. Spät believes that Kohler is killing and restructuring reality purely for the intellectual exercise of doing so. That again is when he thinks to himself, “Je geistiger das Motiv eines Gewaltakts, desto böser ist es, je bewuβter, desto weniger zu entschuldigen.”127 Spät believes now that Kohler is truly villainous.

Where is the Motive?

Spät is still at this point trying to figure out a motive, however. He gets the picture that Kohler’s motive was scientific in nature.128 Spät surmises further.“Er hatte getötet, um zu beobachten, gemordet, um die Gesetze zu untersuchen die der menschlichen Gesellschaft zugrunde liegen.”129 Spät goes on to deduce that this is why Kohler had not provided a motive in court. It was too abstract, it would have flown in the face of any established ideas about the justice system. To kill out of a sense of experimentation, however, seems like a very selfish, deliberate type of villainy. “Je geistiger das Motiv eines Gewaltakts, desto böser ist es, je bewuβter, desto weniger zu entschuldigen. Es wird ummenschlich. Eine Blasphemie.”130 What Spät says makes perfect sense. The more intellectual the motive, the more evil it is. It becomes, as Spät says,

126 Ibid., 124. 127 Ibid., 127. 128 Ibid., 125. 129 Ibid., 126. 130 Ibid., 127.

67 inhuman and a blasphemy. At this point, how can one evaluate Kohler as a villain? He has made a mockery of the justice system, and has, as Spät theorizes, used billiards as a template for an experiment in murder. Most people murder out of passion, drug addiction, greed, jealousy, and so on. These are common human reasons. Not so with Kohler. He seems at this point about as villainous as it gets. As I said earlier, the reader does not learn about it all until the end of the story. Keep in mind the story of Spät. Remember that Spät’s ongoing narrative is that he believes Kohler is above the law and the only way to get justice is to kill Kohler. It is at this point in Kohler’s mansion that Spät begins to feel this way.

Collateral Damage

The reader learns later in the story that Spät’s investigation causes cascading collateral damage that leads to the death and destruction of other high society players in the Swiss city. The first person to be sacrificed in the wave of controlled destruction is Dr. Benno. Dr. Benno is part of a group of friends and close associates of Dr.h.c. Kohler. As a result of town gossip regarding

Spät’s investigation, people start to believe that Dr. Benno is the real murderer. Spät learns this from his secretary. Spät asks,

Sie glauben, der alte Kohler sei unschuldig?’ fragte ich bestürzt. Ilse Freude erhob sich gräzios, trotz ihrer respektablen Fülle, hing sich die Tasche um. ‘Daas weiβ doch die ganze Stadt.’ sagte sie. ‘Und auch wer der Mörder ist.’ “Da bin ich aber gespannt.” sagte ich und fröstelte plötzlich. “Doktor Benno.”erklärte Ilse. “Der war schweizerischer Meister im Pistolenschieβen. Das steht in allen Zeitungen.”131 This scenario is playing out like a game of billiards and Spät is the cue.

131 Ibid., 221.

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Benno gets word of this gossip and becomes terrified. He shows up at Spät’s office and begs him not to take him to trial. Spät tries to assure Benno that he believes Kohler did it, but Benno has given up. He says, “Ich bin verloren, ich weiβ es, ich bin verloren.”132 Benno somehow knows that Kohler must win. He knows that Kohler is a master manipulator. What has Kohler really done, however? Kohler’s plan was actually quite simple. He made use of town gossip, via satellite agents like Spät and Spät’s ongoing investigation, to convince people of other possibilities of reality. As he said to Spät in the prison, reality is already known. It is possibility that is important.

Before the reader learns about what happens to Benno, the reader learns of the death of another member of Kohler’s social circle. Her name is Daphne Müller. She is equally as high profile in town as Benno and Kohler, and equally as complicated. The first thing that complicates her identity is that she has been posing as a wealthy heiress named Monika

Steiermann. The Steiermann family is ancient and influential as well as wealthy. They have been a part of Swiss industry for hundreds of years. While she is taking over the persona of Monika, she has beauty, money, influence, and powerful lovers. She is an object of envy and adoration all over town. Dr. Benno is her primary lover, partially because he seeks financial well-being from her money. One day, however, we learn that her real name is Daphne Müller and that she is the illegitimate child of Dr. Winter. The real Monika Steiermann is a grotesque dwarf who has sequestered herself in her own mansion, accompanied by four massive and muscular servants who take care of her. She is essentially living vicariously through Daphne Müller by paying her to sleep with people and pose as herself. Eventually though, Daphne becomes tired of it all.

132 Ibid., 235.

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Somehow Spät is at the center of her affairs as well. She asks Spät to break off the engagement himself, by going to see the real Monika Steiermann. Once he enters Monika’s mansion, the narrator describes photo after photo covering the wall with Dr. Benno. The real Steiermann is in love with him. Once Daphne quits pretending to be the real Monika, however, she loses

Benno’s support, loses her cash flow, becomes a high- profile prostitute, and ends up dead.

There are a few things to consider First, Kohler is not directly controlling anything. All he has done is to set things in motion, using Spät as his main instrument, or billiard ball. Kohler is so skilled at planning that he knew all of this would happen. Thinking about Roger A. Crockett’s interpretation of Spät’s name again, it can shed some light on Spät’s role. By being “late” he is not late to act. Instead, he is the last one to be privy to the truth. Spät is the last one to know that he is an agent of Kohler. Benno realizes this even before Spät does. Also, we as the readers learn at the end, also before Spät, what the real motivation was behind the chain reaction of death.

Spät vs. Stüssi-Leupin

When Spät decides to drop the case, he has had enough and can’t take the death and manipulation anymore. He goes to his old boss’s house, the high-profile defense attorney, Herr

Stüssi-Leupin. Stüssi-Leupin gives Spät his theory.

Machen wir einmal das Spiel Kohlers mit. Einmal angenommen, er sei nicht der Mörder, ist ein anderer Mörder verdammt leicht zu finden. Es kann nur Benno sein, darum schlottert er ja. Er hat über zwanzig Millionen von der vermeintlichen Steiermann durchgebracht, Winter hat die echte Steirmann aufgeklärt, die Verlobung geht in Brüche, Benno wird ruiniert, schieβt Winter im “Du Theatre”über den Haufen. Viola.133

133 Ibid., 269-270.

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The fascinating thing is that Stüssi-Leupin is unconcerned about what the truth is or not. He indicates to Spät that, given that Benno now has motive for the killing, and is an Olympic grade pistol shooter, Spät now has access to one of the highest-profile appeals in recent years. Spät will be rich and famous. Stüssi-Leupin offers even more theories. He brings up the ever-present metaphor of billiards again for Kohler’s plan. It seems that everyone in town is somehow in on billiards except for Spät. He suggests that Kohler shot Winter in order to get to Benno. Spät has no idea why, however. Stüssi-Leupin explains that it is all about Steiermann’s money. Monika

Steiermann and Kohler have a symbiotic relationship.134 Benno had squandered 20 million of

Steiermann’s money and Kohler would have ruined Benno as a favor to her.135 This is just a theory however.

New Revelation

There is another death yet to occur however. Years later, Kohler gives horrible financial advice to the real Monika Steiermann, and after she loses her fortune, is found dead on a Greek island.

She is the final death to occur in this social circle.136 Why was it so important to Kohler to kill each of these people in such an elaborate manner? After all, the death of each of these people seems almost coincidental, but at the same time too perfect to be so. Spät and Stüssi-Leupin never find out. Both of them surmised that it had something to do with money or power, or in

Spät’s case, that Kohler was doing this all as part of a diabolical social experiment; an exercise in how far he could push the boundaries of reality. At this point in the chronology the reader

134 Ibid., 275. 135 Ibid., 276. 136 Ibid., 359.

71 really has nothing else to go on. If one evaluates the story from Spät’s perspective the conclusion is that Kohler is the most monstrous of villains. Spät believed that he killed out of purely intellectual motives. The reader learns the truth, as mentioned earlier, when the character of Dürrenmatt enters the story and relates events in a narrative instance. The entire story actually begins with Hélène, Kohler’s beautiful daughter. When Hélène was 18 years old, she was invited to go to Monika Steiermann’s house to visit Dr. Benno, whom she had a huge crush on. 137 When she enters the house, she is led into a trap, wherein she finds Dr. Benno,

Professor Winter, Daphne Müller, and the real Monika Steiermann. They proceed to rape her brutally, with Monika Steiermann watching vicariously. 138 Hélène is of course traumatized and goes back to her father. After telling him about what happened, her father goes to the infamous billiards table. After asking what she wants, she replied, “Rache.”139 Kohler proceeds to bring out a single ball at a time on the table.

Dann habe er vier Kugeln auf den Billardtisch gesetzt und zugestoβen, nur einmal, zuerst eine Kugel an die Bande, von dort sei sie zurückgekommen und habe eine Kugel in die ‘Tasche’ gestoβen, Winter, habe ihr Vater gesagt, als die nächste Kugel in einer Tasche verschwunden sei, Benno, dann Daphne, und als er Steiermann gesagt habe, sei der Tisch leer gewesen.”140 Here in Kohler’s house the true meaning of billiards is revealed. It is a representation, not of his desire to play with reality, but to engage in the systematic destruction of the people who raped his daughter. When she asks what will happen to them, he replies, “Sie werden sterben.”141

They will die. After that, Hélène and her father set into a motion a careful chain of events which will insure just that. It was she who tossed Kohler’s gun into the Thames river to hide the

137 Ibid., 348. 138 Ibid., 352. 139 Ibid., 354. 140 Ibid., 355. 141 Ibid.

72 weapon, it was she who manipulated Benno and Winter by having an affair with them. Thus it was Kohler who masterminded the whole thing. Is Kohler still as ruthlessly immoral as Spät believed? Granted, he did engineer the downfall of four people. The way the book describes the rape of Hélène however is truly horrific. Four people harming her at once in a secluded mansion is too much for any father to bear. Now one can almost call Kohler’s murder a crime of passion. Or can one? Either way, I argue that the reader can finally understand him as a person.

As a conventional villain he is somewhat ambiguous. What about evaluating him as a Kantian villain? Keep in mind that Spät is neither a conventional hero nor an anti-hero, but is indeed one who exhibits Kantian virtue in his pursuit of duty and justice. Does Kantian analysis shed new light on what to think of Kohler?

Questions about Kohler

Recall how Kant defines the concept of duty. “Duty is that action to which someone is bound. It is therefore a matter of obligation, and there can be one and same duty (as to the action) although we can be bound to it in different ways.” 142 As mentioned earlier, adherence to duty is the test for determining what is right and wrong.143 How can the reader evaluate Kohler in terms of duty? Was he acting out of duty when he got revenge for his daughter? Was it a type of fatherly obligation? In a conventional sense, one might sympathize with Kohler in this way.

After all, avenging a loved one is a type of vengeance that is very commonly played out in movies and books. In fact, it is a common motive for heroes and protagonists. If Kohler was

142 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 15. 143 Ibid., 16.

73 acting out of a sense of duty, then he would be forgivable to an extent. Kant, however, defines obligation a little bit differently.

The categorical imperative, which as such only affirms what obligation is, is: act upon a maxim that can also hold as a universal law.—You must therefore first consider your actions in terms of their subjective principles, but you can know whether this principle also holds objectively only in this way: that when your reason subjects it to the test of conceiving yourself as also giving universal law through it, it qualifies for such a giving of universal law.144 One needs to understand that while avenging his daughter is in certain circles a heroic thing to do, it is not the Kantian way. Even if Kohler was acting out of a sort of fatherly duty, and his operating principle was avenging his daughter, he cannot universalize this maxim. I ask again, why do maxims need to be universalized? The simple answer is that it is the best way to make sure that people have the freedom to choose their operating moral principle in such a way that it does not interfere with other people’s freedom and rights. Hence the importance of the categorical imperative. It is not based on pain or pleasure, not on having a good conscience. A person cannot be told by a governing body which maxim he or she should adopt. The doctrine of virtue as found in the Metaphysics of Morals has ideas for how we must conduct ourselves.

The formula of universal law is there to help facilitate the social contract and assure people’s safety. We cannot make murder or killing based on vengeance universal because society would completely fall apart if everyone killed as they wished, and there would be no good standard for how to determine who dies and who does not. We would be sent back to Kant’s version of a state of nature. Blood feuds between families or clans would be an example of what can happen. The two sides kill each other based on mutual hatred until either everyone is dead or a new law intervenes. Kohler’s quest for vengeance is a microcosm of this type of behavior. Is it

144 Ibid., 17.

74 valuable to adhere fanatically to the formula of universal law at all times? New scholarship on

Kant has developed a variety of interpretations on this question. It is easy enough to say that we cannot universalize killing because it can lead down a slippery slope. Scholars also point towards Kant’s strong recommendation that we help people, that we venerate human dignity.

Kant mentions a positive duty to others in the “Doctrine of Virtue,” in the second half of the

Metaphysics of Morals, how beneficence is a duty. “Benevolence is satisfaction in the happiness of others; but beneficence is the maxim of making other’s happiness one’s end, and the duty to it consists in the subject’s being constrained by his reason to adopt this maxim as a universal law.”145 A good Kantian hero upholds this, while villain is unconcerned with it.

Interpretations of Kant

Pablo Gilabert provides a couple of examples whereby the positive duty to help people outweighs the negative duty provided by the formula of universal law of what not to do. From the standpoint of the formula of universal law, we are not to act in any way that would could not be universalized. He brings up an example suggested by David Cummiskey.

But imagine you are in a situation in which you had an accident with your car (by no culpable fault of your own), and someone seriously injured will die unless you bring her to the hospital. Imagine that the only way to do this is to use the car of someone living near the road (your car does not work anymore). Assume that the owner is not willing to loan you the car. Can you legitimately help yourself to the car (i.e. temporarily steal it) to bring the moribund person to the hospital? Here the fulfillment of a stringent positive duty trumps the requirements of a negative duty.146

145 Ibid., 201. 146 Pablo Gilabert. “Kant and the Claims of the Poor.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 81, no. 2 (September 2010): 395, accessed September 23, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20779568.

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So a modern scholar is weighing the value of two of Kant’s imperatives, that of the formula of universal law, which tells us what not to do, and then the duty to make beneficence a maxim, which is a positive duty. In this case, Kohler still fails. He does not uphold beneficence by killing

Hélène’s abusers. Going even further, Gilabert cites another scholar talking about the duty to avoid lying. Thomas Hill argues that “it makes sense to say that lying to save an innocent life does not violate the duty not to lie, because that duty has built-in exceptions allowing for cases like this one.”147 They value Kant’s duty toward beneficence as being just as important as the formula of universal law. In fact, in order to universalize beneficence, sometimes this must be done. Again, however, this type of beneficence is within the sphere of the Kantian hero, not of the villain. Kohler cannot classify revenge killing as beneficent. It achieves no Kantian end.

Kingdom of Ends

Kohler’s violation of the practical imperative, or the formula of humanity, is one of the things that makes him a Kantian villain. Human beings are sacred in Kant’s mind because they are capable of reason, the entire principle around which the Enlightenment is built. If we make use of another individual for our own benefit, we violate not only that person’s freedom, but that of the whole Kingdom. Keep in mind that Kant says that freedom is our only innate right.148 But what is freedom? Freedom is the capacity to choose our own moral operating principle and navigate reality using our reason. In fact, one who violates the freedom of others does a gross injustice. We are all to seek the formation of a kingdom of rational thinking individuals who do

147 Ibid., 395. 148 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 30.

76 not use each other for our own benefit. But what is a kingdom? It is simply this—“a systematic union of rational beings under common laws.”149 He continues,

Now since laws determine ends as regards their universal validity, we shall be able—if we abstract from the personal differences between rational beings, and also from all the content of our private ends—to conceive a whole of all ends in systematic conjunction (a whole both of rational beings as ends in themselves and also of the personal ends which may set before himself); that is, we shall be able to conceive a kingdom of ends which is possible in accordance with the above principles.150 We are to form a commonwealth of people who respect each other and value each other based upon our shared capacity to follow the law. Kant places human dignity as valued above all and the Kingdom of Ends is his best model for protecting it. Here is where Kohler’s villainy really stands out. He has used everyone in the town for his own purposes. He has ruined Spät’s life, as well as indirectly brought about the death of some very immoral people. The thing to consider is that Kant does not want a person to be perfect. Kant already knows and accepts that we are imperfect, and that is why we need to do our best to help each other and to avoid limiting others’ freedom. Kant does want people to strive for perfection, but knows that it is never attainable.151 To act in this way leads to “continual progress.”152 All people are allowed to disagree with each other, but we cannot violate human dignity by using someone as a means to an end. This does not mean going to the dry cleaners and asking someone to clean his or her clothes. Violating the Kingdom of Ends means violating that person’s autonomy or human dignity, and perhaps causing harm to that person in the process. If one does this, society breaks down and the moral framework on which it is based does the same. One may wonder how

149 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 95. 150 Ibid. 151 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 196. 152 Ibid.

77 much harm one person can do. Kohler is only getting revenge, after all. The problem is, Kohler is a microcosm of what can happen when enough people violate the categorical imperative.

Looking at it from this perspective, Kohler is not a father doing his duty but a transgressor violating the freedoms of a good deal of the people in the city. He is just a much a Kantian villain as Spät is a Kantian hero. I will argue however, that there is one more villain in this story, one far more sinister in a Kantian sense. That would be the Swiss justice system in this story.

The Justice System as Villain

The Swiss justice system can be thought of as being at fault in the same way that a corporation has agency. Just as how a corporate entity can be treated as an individual, I shall use the same analogy with the Swiss justice system. Looking at the failure of justice in this part of Switzerland can show again how Spät represents the forces of Kantian virtue and Kohler the forces of

Kantian villainy. One issue to address initially is that Kohler can use his influence as an upstanding and charming member of Swiss high society to bring about his desired ends. He gains privileges in prison because he charms the guards so much that they love him. He gets a retrial and everyone looks at Dr. Benno as the real culprit because they want to believe that

Kohler is innocent. This is where the realms of possibility enter the picture, when Spät is first talking about accepting his assignment in his conversation with Kohler in jail. Kohler gains more and more influence as Spät, as his instrument, stirs up doubt, while the others surrender their agency to him. There is more to be said, however. Kohler mocks the justice system for his own pleasure, just to show how wealth, power, and influence can twist the justice process to his

78 own ends. There are a few scenes in which he does this. One is the reaction of the general public, being observed by Spät.

Die Handlungsweise des Dr. h.c. Isaak Kohler wirkte daher befreiend, man hatte inofiziell über etwas zu lachen, worüber man sich ofiziell entrüstete, und schon am Abend seines Hinschieds ging das Wort um, das man einem hohen Stadtbeamten, wenn nicht gar dem Stadtpräsidenten zuschrieb, Kohler habe sich einen neuen Dr. h.c. verdient, indem er Professor Winters nächste Erst-August-Rede verhindert habe. Auch lieβ das unglückliche Vorgehen der Polizei kaum zusätzliche sittliche Empörung zu, die Schadenfreude war einfach zu groβ….153 Before the quotation Spät observes that the people are unhappy. They need something like this trial and murder to have something to talk about and think about. They are able to laugh unofficially at the death of Winter because they could be spared from another one of his speeches. For this reason they joke that Kohler deserves another honorary doctorate. It is important to consider that in any reasonable capacity, the people should know that Kohler walked in a crowded restaurant, shot a man in cold blood, in front of a large audience, walked out, and was convicted accordingly. Somehow though, Kohler becomes a people’s hero because he provides them with some sort of release from the drudgery of their daily lives. Spät mentions later on the page that the people do not appreciate the police in general, that their relationship is tense and strained.154 This makes life seem especially without meaning, if a murderer becomes the talk of the town and that they joke sarcastically about what he has done. Schadenfreude is the most prevalent emotion. Due to the fact that the people of the city are in support of Kohler, it becomes inevitable that he will be exonerated and that his enemies will suffer.

153 Dürrenmatt, 57-58. 154 Dürrenmatt, 58.

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The warden in the prison describes how Kohler’s personable nature is so powerful—“Sehn Sie,

Herr Spät,’ sagte er, ‘wenn ich so in seiner Zelle sitze und ihm zuhöre, weiβ der Teufel, da geht eine Kraft von ihm aus, eine Zuversicht, man könnte da beinahe wieder an die Menschheit glauben, und an alles Schöne und Gute, auch unser Pfarrer ist hingerissen, es ist wie eine

Seuche.”155 The warden also comments that Kohler is either “ein Heiliger oder ein Teufel.”156

The warden is at this point convinced that Kohler is a bad person deep down. “Aber Verbrecher sind Verbrecher. Darum sage ich mir dann wieder: Der Mann kann gefährlich sein, muβ gefärhlich sein.”157The guards already believe in Kohler’s seemingly inherent goodness and humanity, and later in the story the reader learns that the warden finally comes around to

Kohler’s side too. The fact that the warden knows at first that Kohler is dangerous, but that nothing can stop him from charming the others, is alarming. The justice system is flawed even within the prison itself, because Kohler can convince all of the staff into supporting him and even liking or admiring him, despite the fact that he was convicted of murder. The reader learns during a conversation between Spät and the Kommandant that slippery slope has occurred based on rumor and hearsay. “Das Gerücht ist im Zuchthaus entstanden. Der Direktor und die Wärter schwören, Kohler könne unmöglich der Mörder sein…. Glauben einmal einige einen Unsinn, glauben es andere. Es geht zu wie bei einer Lawine. Immer gröβere

Glaubensunsinnsmassen stürzen herunter.”158 There are a few things happening. In some way,

Kohler is employing the fact that he is a respectable business man with an honorary doctorate, who has been hired to take care of many a person’s fortune such as that of Monika Steiermann.

155 Ibid., 78. 156 Ibid. 157 Ibid. 158 Ibid., 222.

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Such a phenomenon renders the system itself broken. How is there a system of justice at all if the system rewards a type of lawlessness in which the elite, influential members of society escape? Hence the justice system fails. Is it possible at this point however, to grant the justice system itself a type of agency? Can it be viewed as an entity in itself? What I mean is, can the justice system be viewed as a villain, separate from Kohler himself? A Kantian analysis would be helpful here, but before we investigate according to those parameters, it is necessary to explore a bit further how the system breaks down.

A Broken System

It has already been shown how Benno, Winter, Daphne Müller, and Monika Steiermann escaped being punished for raping Hélène. In fact, this illustrates perfectly how this circle of people are above the law, so to speak. It was only by Kohler’s own hand that they were punished. If not for him, they would have escaped the consequences of raping his daughter.

The issues are more extensive than just that, however. Spät’s entire quest for justice is predicated on what he observes regarding the inner workings of the Swiss justice system.

Die Justiz spielt sich zwar weitgehend hinter den Kulissen ab, aber auch hinter den Kulissen verwischen sich die gegen auβen scheinbar so klar festgelegten Kompetenzen, die Rollen werden ausgetauscht oder anders verteilt, Geschpräche zwischen Personen finden statt, die vor der Öffentlichkeit als unversöhnliche Feinde auftreten, überhaupt herrscht eine andere Tonart. Nicht alles wird festgehalten und den Akten zugeführt. Informationen werden weitergegeben oder unterschlagen.159 Spät is reacting to a possible conversation that took place between the Kommandant and

Kohler, in which Kohler is very politely and cordially questioned by the Kommandant because of

159 Ibid., 41.

81 the friendship and mutual respect that they share for each other. This aspect of Spät’s narrative demonstrates the beginning of Spät’s Sisyphean quest to reach into the upper echelons of Swiss society. He has observed correctly—such conversations between authority figures occur behind closed doors and with a different set of guidelines than that of the average citizen. Stüssi-

Leupin, the famous defense attorney and Spät’s former employer, indicates that he himself is fully aware of how there is an inconsistency at higher levels. When he is relating to Spät what he believes to be the reality of life and of one’s role as a high-profile attorney, he pontificates to

Spät in the following, “Die Wahrheit wird kein Mensch abnehmen,’ antwortete er, ‘kein Richter, kein Geschworener, nicht einmal Jämmerlin. Sie spielt sich in Etagen ab, die für die Justiz unerreichbar sind. Die einzige These, die der Justiz einleuchten wird, kommt es zum

Revisionsprozeβ, ist die, daβ Dr. Benno der Morder ist.”160 Here Stüssi-Leupin knows full well what happened. He is completely fine with the blame being shifted onto Benno because he is simply that disillusioned and cynical. It is in this way that we can assign the blame to the justice system itself. This level of cynicism is indoctrinated in all of the high society members of this small social circle in the city. The problem is not that Stüssi-Leupin is willing to take up Kohler’s appeal. That is within the bounds of the law in many western democratic systems. The problem is that Stüssi-Leupin knows full well how things are different in the upper echelons, but he does not try to change this fact. This conversation between Spät and his former boss demonstrates that Spät is still trying to change things, while Stüssi-Leupin has resigned himself to the idea that nothing can be done. As an attorney, he is not upholding his duty toward the law.

160 Ibid., 246.

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Justice and Warfare

Eventually, Kohler tells a story that equates business to warfare. Kohler, much later in his life is telling the story of his crime to an enraptured audience, who yet again likes him so much that they do not wish to believe that he committed the murder. In his speech, Kohler gives a narrative regarding money and power.

Die Politik und die Wirtschaft unterlägen den gleichen Gesetzen, jenen der Machtpolitik. Das gelte auch für den Krieg. Besonders die Wirtschaft sei eine Fortzetzung des Kriegs mit anderen Mitteln. Wie es Kriege zwischen Staaten gebe, gebe es Kriege zwischen Konzernen. Den Bürgerkriegen entsprechen die internen Machtkämpfe innerhalb eines Konzerns. Überall stehe man immer wieder wieder vor der Motwendigkeit, Menschen von der Macht auszuschalten oder selber ausgeschaltet zu werden.161 This may seem like a very cynical viewpoint. Essentially, Kohler is equating war to capitalism.

The fact that it occurs between countries justifies or somehow excuses its being exercised between corporations. There is a survival of the fittest mentality here in that Kohler describes that one must either be excluded from power or exert power and exclude someone else. This type of thinking is a type of ruthlessness in business practice that Spät has discovered exists throughout the elite circles of Switzerland. The reader learns throughout the course of the novel that Monika Steiermann’s corporation is one such entity with which Kohler is waging war.

She was one of the wealthiest people in Switzerland before Kohler destroyed her financially and ruined her life. Does he imply that it was with her corporation that he was at war? Was there more to this than just avenging his daughter’s death?

Da sei ein schneller chirurgischer Griff vonnöten und abzuwarten, ob er erfolgreich gewesen sei oder nicht. Das brauche, das sei zuzugeben, in den seltensten Fällen durch einen Mord zu

161 Ibid., 321.

83 geschehen. Morde seien eigentlch wirkungslose Methoden. Der Terrorismus kräusle nur die Oberfläche der Weltstruktur. Sein Mord sei notwendig gewesen.162 Kohler is viewing murder here as a surgical tool. It is justified, because killing while at war is justified. In a state of war, compassion has no place. Where in war, it is kill or be killed, Kohler says that in business, it is to have power or be excluded from it. Kohler continues by admitting that justice is different in higher social circles.

In welchen Gesellschaftskreisen wir uns bewegten, und die Justiz, die sich, wenn auch mehr unbewuβt als bewuβt, nach den Gesellschaftskreisen richte, über die sie zu befinden habe, wenn sie auch—besonders Priviligierten gegenüber—manchmal allzu rabiat vorzugehen pflege, um die Vorurteile abzustreiten, die sie nun einmal habe.163 One should not make the mistake of assuming that Kohler is the only villain here. There is a huge case in this part of the story for confirming that he is indeed a major villain. His two biggest crimes from a Kantian perspective here are looking at the business world as a state of war between nations, and also thinking that murder is justified as a surgical method. The justice system itself is set up so as to encourage and reward this sort of behavior, and there has been evidence of this fact throughout the whole story, from conversations between Spät and Stüssi-

Leupin to conversations with the Kommandant. I have already shown how Kohler is a villain because he uses people as a means to an end. The reason that the justice system is worse, however, is not because it rewards people like Kohler. It is because it has allowed itself to be exploited to favor corporate warfare. As I shall demonstrate, Kant mentions that when justice is absent, a state of nature is in existence.

162 Ibid., 321. 163 Ibid., 325.

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Kant’s Definition of a State of Nature

Kant provides a qualification for when a person or entity is in a state of nature. Recall that

Kohler describes business and corporate conflict to be a type of warfare and thus murder is justified as a surgical measure. The first violation of the justice can be found in Kant’s definition of “that which is mine.” Consider that the social contract in general, no matter which social contract theorist is defining it, involves a method of insuring that someone’s possessions and also health and well-being, are not in danger of being exploited, seized, or stolen unjustly. Kant says the following;

When I declare (by word or deed), I will that something external to me is to be mine, I thereby declare that everyone else is under obligation to refrain from using that object of my choice, an obligation that no one would have were it not for this act of mine to establish a right. This claim involves, however, acknowledging that I in turn am under obligation to every other to refrain from using what is externally his, for the obligation here arises from a universal rule having to do with external rightful relations. I am therefore not under obligation to leave external objects belonging to others untouched unless everyone else provides me assurance that he will behave in accordance with the same principle with regard to what is mine.164

This statement describes the basis of the need for a social contract. The social contract protects the basic right to have possessions and not be in danger of those possessions being taken away by force. A better way to think of it, however, is in more abstract terms. The right to safety, for example, is a type of possession. In a theoretical sense, we exist in a state of nature when there is no law or no governing body to help us to stay safe. This passage hints at where the justice system fails in the story. There is no guarantee that the contract will be honored. In a productive society, the state of nature, or a lack of law, is not desirable, and as Kant says,

164 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 44.

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In accordance with the original contract (social contract in other words), everyone within a people gives up his external freedom in order to take it up again immediately as a member of the commonwealth, that is, of a people considered as a state….He has relinquished his wild, lawless freedom in order to find his freedom as such undiminished, in a dependence upon laws, that is, in a rightful condition, since this dependence arises from his own lawgiving will.165

Kant is one of many social contract theorists from the Enlightenment period, but he shares with them the idea that we give up our freedom to treat others unfairly and in turn gain security, rights, and a civil condition. Here is where the Swiss justice system fails in the story. The less advantaged members of Swiss society in the story adhere to the social contract but that contract is rendered invalid when the elite, such as Kohler and Monika Steiermann, can do whatever they wish without any serious consequence. Kohler getting out of jail in exchange for

Dr. Benno’s suicide is an example. One might ask, can one really call the system of governance and justice in the story a state of nature? Consider first that the Kohlers and Steiermanns can do whatever they want. Kohler brought justice to his daughter but only by doing so within a state of nature. The prison system fails because it cannot hold Kohler, and the police fail because they allow the ruination of people’s lives, such as Spät. A question presents itself: what can be done about it? Ultimately, Kant wants to explain that it is necessary and inevitable that when the social contract is lost temporarily, the most important thing to do is to enter into another, suitable contract “From private right in the state of nature there proceeds the postulate of public right: when you cannot avoid living side by side with all others, you ought to leave the state of nature and proceed with them into a rightful condition, that is, a condition of

165 Ibid., 92-93

86 distributive justice.”166 People cannot avoid living side by side and taking up each other’s space and room. They can avoid hurting each other, however, by entering into an agreement. One must leave the state of nature and cultivate distributive justice. The definition of the state of nature is built on the idea of distributive justice. Kant says that “a condition that is not rightful, that is, a condition in which there is no distributive justice, is called a state of nature.”167 Hence the state of nature is not a type of Wild West scenario, but more a condition in which the social contract is routinely violated, and thus where there is no distributive justice. Kant goes further to explain that within a state of nature, all is fair game. “No one is bound to refrain from encroaching on what another person possesses if the other gives him on equal assurance that he will observe the same restraint towards him…. And it is not necessary to wait for actual hostility, one is authorized to use coercion against someone who already, by his nature, threatens him with coercion.”168 So does this mean that what Kohler did was okay? After all, he is authorized in this lawless state of affairs to do whatever is necessary to take what he wants and protect what it is his. Reading further provides an answer,

Given the intention to be and remain in this state of externally lawless freedom, humans do one another no wrong at all when they feud among themselves, for what holds true for one holds also in turn for the other, as if by mutual consent. But in general they do wrong in the highest degree by willing to be and remain in a condition that is not rightful, that is, in which no one is assured of what is his against violence.169

What people do to protect themselves while in a state of nature is not wrong, because there exists no legal contract by which to measure what is wrong or right. What this means is, since

166 Ibid., 86. 167 Ibid., 85. 168 Ibid., 86. 169 Ibid.

87 they exist in a completely amoral state, right and wrong lose meaning. However, choosing to ignore the social contract is the greatest injustice that can be undertaken. As long as people refuse to enter into a civil agreement, they are hurting each other. Kant relates this idea directly to the court. “a court is itself the justice of a country, and whether such a thing exists or does not exist is the most important question that can be asked about any arrangements having to do with rights.”170 If there is a lack of distributive justice then the court has failed. It has done the highest wrong by perpetuating the state of nature. Keep in mind that the state is under the same obligation to leave the state of nature as the individual.

…Human beings, peoples, and states can never be secure against violence from one another, since each has its own right to do what seems right and good to it …. So, unless it wants to renounce any concepts of right, the first thing it has to resolve upon is the principle that it must leave the state of nature, in which each follows its own judgement, unite itself with all others (with which it cannot avoid interacting), subject itself to a public lawful external coercion, and so enter into a condition in which what is to be recognized as belonging to it is determined by law and is allotted to it by adequate power (not its own but an external power); that is, it ought above else to enter a civil condition.171 Here Kant applies the concept of distributive justice not only to human beings, but to governing bodies and states as being symbolic of individuals. In this way Kohler and the court are in violation of the same laws and are thus equally unjust. We could say however that the court system itself is worse. As Spät says at the beginning of the story, “Ich will mich zwingen, noch einmal die Ereignisse zu überprüfen, die zum Freispruch eines Mörders und zum Tode eines

Unschuldigen geführt haben….. Ich will noch einmal gewissenhaft die Chancen auslosten, die der Justiz vielleicht noch bleiben.”172 Spät has said from the very beginning that he needs a type

170 Kant, 85. 171 Kant, 90. 172 Dürrenmatt, 9.

88 of closure. The reason he needs this closure is that the justice system has not done its duty.

Spät has given himself the task of restoring justice and thus repairing the ailing social contract in the city. Only in this way can he gain closure. Spät has made justice his maxim in the sense that he has made repairing the social contract between the city and its people a maxim.

Contrasting Hero and Villain

At this point there is a stark contrast between Spät and Kohler. Spät is the only source of justice and right in the whole story. To review, he acted on an ongoing basis out of his categorical imperative to uphold justice as his maxim. Kohler on the other hand acted out of self-interest and violated the principle of the Kingdom of Ends on which Kant’s version of the social contract is based, namely a commonwealth of rational beings existing as lawmaking and law-abiding beings. Just about everyone in the story violated this principle except for Spät. Spät is certainly not a messianic figure, he is not a saint. He drinks too much and exhibits self- destructive behavior. Kant is a bit strict on not acting in a virtuous manner. I would argue however that Kant would approve of Spät because he was the only person who did not violate the practical imperative, the formula of humanity. Kohler may be justified in a conventional sense to enact revenge upon the people who hurt his daughter. The problem is that there is too much collateral damage in so doing. I am at this point not concerned with conventional heroism or villainy, but with Kantian heroism and villainy. Spät did his best to hold the social contract together and to avoid abusing other people, while Kohler did the opposite. Keep in mind that even if he plotted to kill Kohler, he put blanks in the gun and could not go through with the murder. The fact that he could not take a life, even though he had plotted throughout the

89 whole novel, is also evidence that he is a Kantian hero. One must also consider that Spät provided a false alibi to his pimp associate.

I would like to argue that Spät is an exceedingly complex hero and the way to make sense of it all is to remember that he is the only person in the whole book who tries to keep the perpetuation of the state of nature from happening. He fails in his Kantian quest by betraying justice in providing an alibi to Lucky and the Marquis. That is something one must not forget.

However, he is the only person who upholds Kantian principles with any consistency. He is a moral agent on his own, trying to make sense of a paradoxical world. But there is no mistaking that he is fundamentally different from Kohler, who uses people as he wishes and with no psychological repercussions. Kohler can be evaluated as both villain and hero for avenging his daughter. He is a Kantian villain for violating the formula of humanity and for the fact that everything he does is outside of the sphere of the justice system itself. Spät on the other hand does not fulfill his duty to himself, in the sense that he does not take care of himself. He does however, employ justice and the preservation of the social contract as his maxim. Given that duty is the central tenet of Kantian ethics, it is this observance of duty that makes him a Kantian hero.

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Chapter 2: Another Twist on Heroism and Villainy in Dürrenmatt’s Novels

Recap

A significant theme in this dissertation is the analysis of heroism and villainy as viewed through two different lenses. The first is the hero and villain in a conventional sense. This lens leads to viewing characters within a detective novel in a classical style. For example, is the hero a great combination of intellect and resolve like a Sherlock Holmes? Is the hero more of an anti-hero or more mysterious hero, like as found in the film noir style? Think of Jack Nicholson as Jake in

Chinatown, where a man still looks for the truth but has been ground down by a system that shows no mercy and lacks justice. The audience is reminded in the film that something happened to the detective in Chinatown that both drives him and causes him to have lost faith.

Villains can also be complicated but in general they are driven by greed or revenge. Usually the true villain hides in the shadows while he/she sends his or her underlings out to intimidate the pursuing detective and cause trouble to throw people off the trail. In the previous chapter there were two villains and one hero. Spät, the attorney was the Kantian hero, and the main

Kantian villain was Dr.h.c. Kohler and also the Kantian state of nature that came from a broken justice system. It was necessary to include Kantian social contract theory and ethics to show how a philosophical reading of the story could change a little bit how one might perceive heroes and villains, and this also helped establish a certain idea of justice that will continue throughout this dissertation. In the case of Spät, the protagonist, I argued that he was not a hero by conventional standards, but was fully a Kantian hero because of his complete devotion to the maxim that he chose—justice. In classic Dürrenmatt style, this quest led to Spät’s own destruction. Furthermore, I examined the justice system itself as represented in the novel as a

91 corporate entity and thus morally accountable for its biases in favor of the wealthy and the charismatic. In interpreting Kant I have shown how there was no real distributive justice in this scenario and so a good deal of the novel took place in a state of nature, a violation and nullification of the social contract, and thus a place where no liberty can be protected, nor can the freedom to choose one’s own categorical imperative. Spät fought to protect his, but failed ultimately and was broken down by the system. It was his fight against the state of nature that made him a Kantian hero.

Initial Differences and how to proceed

The next novel to be analyzed is Der Richter und sein Henker. Of initial concern is how the hero,

Kommissär Bärlach, differs from Spät.173 In this story, Bärlach is a classic detective hero. Unlike

Spät, Bärlach qualifies both as a Kantian hero and as a typical or conventional detective hero.

He is, besides any other standards, just a really good and dedicated detective. Conventional standards that can measure Bärlach as a hero include his desire to solve the case, to see that justice is done, and to avoid sinking to the villain’s level. Bärlach is also conventionally heroic because of a type of good-natured wisdom that he seems to exude. Where Spät drowns his woes in alcohol and sexual encounter, Bärlach seems dedicated only to his work and to seeing that the world is a better place. Another feature of Bärlach’s story that differs is that there is more of a presence of the struggle between conventional fictional ideas of good vs. evil. Sven

173 It is necessary to note, in this chapter, that Kommissar is spelled differently in the book than in standard German. In the case of Dürrenmatt’s writing, there is an umlaut above the “a.”

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Birkerts mentions in the forward to the English translation that Dürrenmatt is highly concerned with good versus evil.174 Birkerts describes the conflict,

The mutual challenge seems to liberate the dormant nature of each (Bärlach and Gastmann); the would-be criminal coming to embrace a full-blown nihilism, the signature of which, as in Crime and Punishment, is the gratuitous act—a murder enacted without compunction or pressing reason—and his opponent, Bärlach, upholding the social contract, its assumption of an essential morality.175 This formula sounds like classic good versus evil fiction. Examples of it exist even in stories such as Batman vs. the ultimate nihilist, the Joker. The difference between the two figures lies in the title of the book itself, Der Richter und sein Henker, or the Judge and his Hangman. However much an example of conventional morality Bärlach is, he still sentences Gastmann to death for a crime he did not commit. This despite the fact that Gastmann qualifies as an evil person and one who has committed countless heinous acts of nihilistic destruction. In fact, Bärlach manipulates his subordinate, Tschanz, whom I shall call a very minor villain in the story, into killing Gastmann. In this way Bärlach is the judge and Tschanz, the ambitious rookie, is his hangman. Manipulating another person into committing murder, even if that murder seems just, violates Kant’s version of the social contract and the categorical imperative on which it is based. Specifically, it violates the formula of the categorical imperative, the formula of humanity, which states that we must treat people as ends in themselves, rather than as a means to an end. The first major task as a result of this line of reasoning is to determine how laudable Bärlach is from a conventional perspective, and how culpable his methods are from a

Kantian perspective. After working on describing Bärlach, I shall evaluate Gastmann, the villain,

174 Sven Birkerts. “Forward.” The Inspector Bärlach Mysteries, trans. Joel Agee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), vi. 175 Birkerts, ix.

93 using the same criteria. Tschanz is an interesting character to consider because he is equally as much of a plot device as he is a separate being. Before continuing, however, it is necessary to provide a plot summary.

Plot Summary of the Novel

The novel centers around the murder of a police detective named Schmied. The scene begins during a foggy morning in rural Switzerland. One of the local police encounters a blue Mercedes with a dead man in it. Initially the policeman thinks that Schmied is drunk, but soon he discovers that he has been shot through the head from someone sitting on the passenger’s side of the car. Bärlach enters the scene shortly thereafter. He is placed in charge of the investigation by his boss, Lutz, who has recently been abroad learning about the latest advances in criminology. Lutz has an ongoing sense of favoritism toward the new way of doing things in criminal investigation. This becomes a theme in the story in that everyone around

Bärlach seems to be moving on to bigger and better ways of engaging in investigation. In fact,

Bärlach’s partner and subordinate in the investigation, Tschanz, is part of the vanguard of detectives using more modern methods of detection. Out of the whole department, only

Bärlach relies on more traditional methods, like subtle human interaction, common sense, and gut feelings about things. When they are working together, Tschanz insists on knowing all of

Bärlach’s leads and feelings about who killed Schmied. Part of the plot is that Bärlach allows

Tschanz to head the investigation the entire time, without sharing his own views on who he thinks the suspect might be. Tschanz seems intent on pursuing a man called Gastmann, who lives in a mansion in the small town near where Schmied was killed.

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Their next step is to enter Gastmann’s yard at night while a party is taking place. A large dog comes out and attacks Bärlach, whereupon Tschanz kills the dog with his revolver. At this point in the story, the reader has no idea that this was all part of Bärlach’s plan. Only later does the reader learn why Bärlach allowed himself to be bitten by the massive hound instead of defending himself initially. This revelation comes at the end of the story, however. Eventually the plot progresses such that Gastmann is so well connected that his lawyer, who is also Lutz’ superior in a Swiss organization, completely blocks any and all attempts to question Gastmann directly. Lutz kowtows to the Colonel von Schwendi, who is a politician in addition to being

Gastmann’s legal representative. Gastmann, according to von Schwendi, is too well connected, that he could not have committed the crime. He provides a list to Lutz of three categories of people who were at Gastmann’s party that night. There were artists, who were insignificant in that they were just there as a type of decoration and amusement. The higher echelon was taken up by important and powerful Swiss industrialists. Finally, the last third of the list was taken up by powerful foreign politicians trying to close a deal. Von Schwendi argues that Lutz should drop the case because a man like Gastmann is too well-connected and influential to be suspect. After all, he has earned top honors for his humanitarian achievements. Eventually the author introduces Gastmann himself. He is sitting in Bärlach’s office in Bärlach’s own house. At this point we learn that Bärlach knows Gastman. They have known each other for forty years.

They met early in Bärlach’s career as a policeman in Turkey, when he was working as a consultant. He and Gastmann developed a deep friendship very quickly, but had a drunken and amiable debate about committing a crime. Bärlach maintained that it was foolhardy to commit a crime because one would inevitably get caught. Gastmann wanted to be a contrarian and

95 argued that one could commit the perfect crime and never be caught. After making a bet about it, the next day Gastmann pushes a German tourist off a bridge, right in front of Bärlach, and the man drowned to death despite Bärlach’s attempts to save him. Rather than feeling remorse, Gastmann felt a sense of exhilaration and chose to commit crimes for their own sake for the rest of his life. The two figures become tied together by fate and while Gastmann lives life without morals and for his own pleasure, Bärlach lives in service to humanity as a police officer, always trying and failing to catch Gastmann. Gastmann seems like a figure right out of

Faust, in that he does good purely out of whim or when it entertains him, and he does evil in the same manner. His nihilism, as mentioned in the book, is so powerful that he does nothing unless it somehow amuses him, whether noble or ignoble. Either way, Bärlach has spent his life chasing Gastmann and has been unable even to arrest him. Bärlach hides his knowledge of

Gastmann from Tschanz, and we do not know why. The two interview an author who confirms what Bärlach already knew—that Gastmann is capable of any crime, but that he did not kill

Schmied. He was not in the right place at the right time, due to the alibi that the writer provides. For some reason, Tschanz becomes desperate in the conversation with the author and turns the conversation into an interrogation. This scene clues the reader in to the fact that

Tschanz is desperate in general to solve this murder. The final confrontation between

Gastmann and Bärlach takes place in a Taxi. Gastmann is present in a cab that Bärlach ordered and wants to have a final conversation while going way over the speed limit, at dangerous levels. Bärlach tells Gastmann that he has been judged and that he will not have much longer to live. He will be tried and killed for a crime he did not commit, namely, the death of Schmied.

Both Bärlach and Gastmann know that Gastmann is innocent of this crime. Bärlach however

96 does not reveal how Gastmann will die. Eventually Tschanz goes to Gastmann’s house and gets involved in a gunfight with Gastmann and his two bodyguards. Tschanz is wounded but prevails and creates a story that involves self-defense as the motive. Tschanz receives a promotion from

Lutz once everyone learns the true nature of Gastmann and how he was taken out by Tschanz.

At the end of the story the reader learns everything. Bärlach invites Tschanz to his house for a congratulatory dinner. Bärlach reveals his plan. It turns out that Tschanz killed Schmied. Bärlach had his suspicions from the beginning, but he learned for certain when Tschanz shot the dog that tried to attack Bärlach. It turns out that Bärlach had planned on being attacked by the dog, and that he had wrapped a towel around his arm before going into the yard. Bärlach later retrieved the bullet from the dog and it matched Tschanz’ gun. Also, Bärlach tracked down evidence of when and where Tschanz was during the night of Schmied’s death. Finally, Bärlach knew that someone who had broken into his house and tried to kill him in the dark and in the middle of the night must have been Tschanz and not Gastmann. The reason is that Tschanz was looking for a secret file that Bärlach had obtained from Schmied’s landlady. All of the evidence together reveals it. Tschanz’ motivation it turns out, was that he was jealous of Schmied, who was better educated, travelled in privileged social circles, and had a great career. Tschanz was more mediocre as a detective and knew that if he could steal the Gastmann case from Schmied, he could gain a promotion. Bärlach reveals that he knew all of this and that he used Tchanz as a pawn to take out Gastmann. He sentences Tschanz to exile and tells him that he must run away and never come back. The story ends with Bärlach feeling a sense of emptiness and the knowledge that, while Gastmann was eliminated, Bärlach had at most another year to live due to terminal illness centered in his stomach.

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Evaluating Bärlach as a Conventional Hero

Before engaging in Kantian analysis of Bärlach as a hero it is necessary to evaluate him by more conventional means. When it comes down to it, Bärlach is a fantastic detective. He is really good at what he does. He does not seem to be that bad of a person either. There are really two ways in which he shines. One is simply the wisdom with which he approaches the craft of being a detective. He has age and experience and he puts those qualities to good use. The second way in which he is laudable is when one compares him to the other figures in the book. It is not that he is more likeable than the others, although Dürrenmatt does an excellent job of motivating the reader to truly sympathize with this man who is dying and yet will not stop until he sees justice fulfilled. Mainly those who do evil in the book, such as Gastmann, and those detectives who are so ultimately incompetent in the novel, such as Tschanz, provide a type of foil for how skilled and, in his own way, good Bärlach is. When Kantian analysis is applied, I will arrive at a different conclusion, but I will do so later.

The Wounded Hero

One of the more appealing aspects of Bärlach’s persona is that he is wounded. The reader learns a lot in the story about a deadly stomach illness that he has. He keeps this illness as quiet as he can, however. We first encounter his illness being revealed to Lutz, his superior.

Der neue Twanner schien Bärlach nicht gutgetan zu haben, den er erklärte am nächsten Morgen, er habe die ganze Nacht erbrechen müssen. Lutz, der Kommisar auf der Treppe begegnete, war über dessen Befinden, ehrlich besorgt und riet ihm, zum Arzt zu gehen. ‘Schon, schon,’ brummte Bärlach und meinte, er liebe die Ärzte noch weniger als die modern wissenschaftliche Kriminalistik.176

176 Dürrenmatt, Der Richter und sein Henker (Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1985), 18.

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There are a couple of things here that are emphasized which point to Bärlach as a classic hero.

Bärlach first demonstrates his dedication to his craft. He does not have time for doctors. One learns over the course of the novel that it is not necessarily that he is stubborn, but that he truly believes that he needs all of the time he has to solve this case. The other thing that this passage says about him that demonstrates his dedication to his craft is that he cannot stand the new wave of scientific criminology. Bärlach is obviously part of the old guard who believe that the human mind is powerful enough to solve a case. The second time we have a major revelation regarding Bärlach’s medical condition occurs when Gastmann lets himself into

Bärlach’s house to meet with him again face to face. Gastmann somehow knows that Bärlach is deathly ill and has year to live. The reader learns in this conversation about the history of

Gastmann and Bärlach, how Bärlach has been chasing Gastmann for forty years without success. Bärlach tells Gastmann, “Ich höre nie auf, dich zu verfolgen. Einmal wird es mir gelingen, deine Verbrechen zu beweisen.”177 Bärlach reveals that his quest for justice regarding

Gastmann is of utmost importance. But Gastmann knows something; “Du muβt dich beeilen,

Bärlach…” Gastmann says, “Du hast nichte mehr viel Zeit. Die Ärzte geben dir noch ein Jahr, wenn du dich operieren läβt.”178 Somehow Gastmann has the knowledge that Bärlach is dying.

Bärlach reveals his own feelings about it—“Du hast recht…Noch ein Jahr. Und ich kann mich jetzt nicht operieren lassen, ich muβ mich stellen. Meine letzte Gelegenheit.”179 Here we see how Bärlach is not too stubborn to go to a doctor, but rather is aware that he is a very limited

177 Dürrenmatt, 64. 178 Ibid., 64. 179 Ibid., 65.

99 window of time to catch Gastmann. At the end of their meeting, after Gastmann leaves, Bärlach has a severe attack in his stomach, which has him rolling on the floor in agony.

Dann kam der Schmerz, der ungeheure, wütende, stechende Schmerz, eine Sonne, die in ihm aufging, ihn aufs Lager warf, zusammenkrümmte, mit Fiebergluten überbrühte, schüttelte. Der Alte Kroch auf Händen und Füβen herum wie ein Tier, warf siech zu Boden, wältzte sich übr den Teppich und blieb dann liegen, irgendwoin seinem Zimmer, zwischen den Stühlen, mit kaltem Schweiβ bedeck.180 This horribly painful attack is related to the psychological distress he is feeling. He says to himself, “Was ist der Mensch?” and repeats this question again.181 One way in which I interpret this quotation is that Bärlach’s emotional pain corresponds with his physical pain. He is sick, he is tired, and he has been chasing Gastmann for forty years. The cause of such acute pain is that

Gastmann is so evil. The fact that a man who was once his friend could be so villainous pains him psychologically and physically. I shall discuss Gastmann’s deeds shortly. Bärlach learns from his doctor that he must undergo an operation within three days. “In vier Tagen wird ein neuer

Anfall kommen, Hans,’ sagte der Arzt, ‘und den wirst du nicht mehr überleben.’”182 Without an operation, Bärlach has four days. “Zwei Tage habe ich also noch Zeit. Zwei Tage. Und am

Morgen des dritten Tages wirst du mich operieren. Am Dienstagmorgen.”183 Bärlach is cutting it close, so to speak. He knows that he is an extremely limited chance to get Gastmann and his cause is more important than his own life. He knows in turn that if he gets the operation he has one year. He also learns that the way in which Gastmann is able to obtain the knowledge regarding his medical condition is by stealing the file from Bärlach’s doctor. This puts Bärlach in

180 Ibid., 72. 181Ibid. 182 Ibid., 89. 183 Ibid.

100 an extremely vulnerable position and he is courageous and also obsessive for his final efforts to foil Gastmann.

Cat and Mouse

Something also remarkable about Bärlach is simply his level of skill at detection. He almost has a chess-player’s precision with which he approaches detective work. He plays a game with

Tschanz the whole time, keeping his intentions close and out of the reach of Tschanz himself.

He also professes to care about nothing else in this investigation than figuring out who killed

Schmied. Gastmann seems to be Tschanz’ obsession, but this is not so with Bärlach, or at least as far as he tells Tschanz. When Tschanz brings extraneous information about Schmied’s fiancé into the discussion, Bärlach indicates that he is just not interested. Tschanz is puzzled; “Was Sie doch für ein Mensch sind, Kommissär Bärlach.”184 Tschanz does not understand. Bärlach reveals a glimpse into his own nature in the beginning of the story. “Ich bin ein groβer alter schwarzer

Kater, der gern Mäuse friβt.”185 This is Bärlach’s operating principle. He is a predatory cat lying in wait.

Think again here about Roger A. Crockett’s assertion that games are involved. In Justiz, the game was billiards and it was a metaphor for Kohler’s plans to manipulate what was real and what was possible, while at the same time lining up his enemies for destruction as one would line up a shot in billiards.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s characters are most often involved in some form of game, and understanding how and why they play is a big part of understanding the author. An old lady manipulates a town from the balcony of her hotel like a puppeteer playing

184 Durrenmattt 21 185 Ibid., 21.

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marionettes. One detective uses live bait to go fishing for a child killer, while another plays with a murderer like cat and mouse.186

Bärlach is letting the reader into his world and letting the reader know his underlying plan by telling this to Tschanz. Cat and mouse is Bärlach’s game. In this case, the hero, rather than the villain, is the cat. Bärlach has the superior mental ability to plan ahead in ways that the others cannot match.

The main portion of the plot centers around the fact that nobody in the story knows what is really going on besides Bärlach. Bärlach’s superior, Lutz, is convinced that Gastmann is squeaky clean. Gastmann seems such because he is so well-regarded in the community. After Bärlach and Tschanz arrive on the scene at Gastmann’s villa in rural Switzerland, they disrupt the party by shooting Gastmann’s dog, who had tried to attack Bärlach. The next day Gastmann’s lawyer,

Herr von Schwendi, who is also extremely well connected, arrives at Lutz’ place and forbids any further investigation of Gastmann, because of the level of influence and importance that

Gastmann’s guests have. In addition, Von Schwendi convinces Lutz again of Gastmann’s many medals and achievements as pointing to his impeccable character. Bärlach just plays along. He knows what is really going on but he has yet to amass all of his evidence. Lutz is being bullied by a man who is much more powerful and influential even than he himself. Crockett provides a good interpretation.

Switzerland has spawned the villains of both novels, and, more important, has facilitated their criminal careers. Gastmann, merely the final alias of a man whose real name is never revealed, returns as an old man to establish the base of his illegal empire

186 Roger A. Crockett, Understanding Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Collombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), ix.

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in the village of his birth, Lamboing. In reality it is less nostalgia that draws Gastmann to the hills above Lake Biel than the anonymity and privacy the native land affords him.187

While Crockett mentions two novels, here I am concerned with Der Richter und sein Henker.

This analysis reveals that even though, as the reader learns later, that Gastmann is a philanthropist in his town and pays the taxes for the entire village population, he really only cares about himself. He wants to conduct his business in private. Posing as a philanthropist helps facilitate his plans. Crockett continues,

Swiss bureaucrats ask no questions, especially when the answers threaten to be embarrassing. Von Schwendi, member of the national assembly and Gastmann’s attorney, is such a bureaucrat. He knows what Gastmann is doing, but keeps silent for three reasons. First, the deals are lucrative to his client, and thus indirectly to him; second, this is nothing unusual in Switzerland, where the right to privacy is so greatly revered; and finally, to expose Gastmann at this point would embarrass not only the Swiss government, but also some very powerful foreign governments whose diplomats are exploiting their immunity to consummate illicit deals.188

Thinking about the issue from this perspective, it becomes clear that Gastmann is so well- connected that he is above reproach. It is for this reason that Bärlach feels that it is his personal duty to see Gastmann go to prison or receive whatever justice is possible.

Bärlach vs. Tschanz vs. Gastmann

In this story there is a triangular interaction occurring between three figures—Bärlach,

Gastmann, and Tschanz. Bärlach has been, as mentioned before, chasing Gastmann for

187 Ibid., 35. 188 Ibid., 36.

103 decades. Tschanz, who is not so well educated and who does not have much hope of promotion, envied Schmied and killed him, to take over the Gastmann case that Schmied was working on undercover. If Tschanz can pull it off, he stands to gain greatly from the promotion.

Bärlach’s skill appears in how he negotiates this triangle.

Eventually, Bärlach decides that he must sentence Gastmann to death. They begin their final conversation when Bärlach enters a taxi being driven by Gastmann and his driver. Gastmann says, “Ich rate dir, das Spiel aufzugeben. Es wäre Zeit, deine Niederlage einzusehen.”189 Is it time for Bärlach to give up the game? Bärlach counters with, “unser Spiel… können wir nicht aufgeben. Du bist in jener Nacht in der Turkei schuldig geworden, weil du die Wette geboten hast, Gastmann, und ich, weil ich sie angenommen habe.”190 Thus the whole conflict is a type of game between them. Bärlach has been feeling guilt all along however, for not being able to stop Gastmann’s first crime, and perhaps enabling that first murder by taking on the bet in the first place. Gastmann responds, “Du glaubst immer noch, ich hätte den Schmied getötet?”191

Gastmann is missing the point. Bärlach knows he did not kill Schmied but does not care. “Ich habe keinen Augenblick daran geglaubt.’ Antwortete der Alte und fuhr dann fort, gleichgültig zusehend, wie der andere seine Pfeife in Brand steckte: ‘Es ist mir nicht gelungen, dich der

Verbrechen zu überführen, die du begangen hast, nun werde ich dich eben dessen überführen, das du nicht begangen hast.”192 Gastmann is truly startled by this manipulative tactic of framing him for Schmied’s murder, and threatens to kill Bärlach. Bärlach is unaffected however, and explains to Gastmann,

189 Dürrenmatt, 99. 190 Ibid. 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid., 99-100

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“Du irrst dich’” sagte Bärlach, der auf dem morgendlichen Platz stand, alt und leicht frierend. “Du wirst mich nicht töten. Ich bin der einzige, der dich kennt, und so bin ich auch der einzige, der dich richten kann. Ich habe dich gerichtet, Gastmann, ich habe dich zum Tode verurteilt. Du wirst den heutigen Tag nicht mehr überleben. Der Henker, den ich ausersehen habe, wird heute zu dir kommen. Er wird dich töten, den das müβ nun eben einmal in Gottes Namen getan werdern.”193

Bärlach is doing his best to fix a bad situation, but at this point, he is becoming a vigilante.

Bärlach knows by now that he will never catch Gastmann in a more conventional way, and that

Gastmann is responsible for a countless number of heinous crimes. Gastmann will never answer for those crimes unless somebody does something outside of the normal sense of protocol. He is simply too clever and too ruthless. The fact that Bärlach sets Tschanz up to be the executioner is something to consider for later with Kantian analysis. Here, however, it shows what a masterful detective he is. Roger A. Crockett says,

The justice ultimately meted out to Gastmann is flawed, because Bärlach has had to resort to extralegal means, to vigilante justice. His inability to win fairly proves the validity of Gastmann’s claim and discredits his own fanatical belief in the justice system, the same belief that underlies traditional detective fiction. Dürrenmatt’s trap, however, is a subtle one. It is quite possible, even probable, that the casual reader will miss the point, for Bärlach remains a brilliant detective throughout, exercising sovereign control over his investigation. He is clever enough to trick one murderer into eliminating another.194

Thus in one sense it is possible to valorize Bärlach for finally being able to mete out justice to his old foe. At the same time, one should keep in mind that this type of manipulation is not to be treated the same way in a Kantian frame. From a pragmatic perspective, however, Bärlach

193 Ibid., 100. 194 Crockett, 38.

105 has masterfully brought about the demise of a person who was profoundly selfish and extremely destructive. William Gillis provides some further analysis that helps Bärlach’s case as a conventional hero. Bärlach is trying to deal with forces that are much beyond his control. “If man wants justice, he must pursue it, but more often than not, the certain attainment of it is something that he must leave to Heaven. What literary form is better suited to that ‘message’ than the detective novel? It is the literary form in which the seeker of justice pursues the perpetrator of injustice.”195 Gillis is providing a theistic explanation of justice, and I included this type of argument in the beginning of chapter one. The important thing to consider is not whether a theistic or secular basis of analysis is called for, but that even if we strive for justice, it can ultimately be beyond our control. At the same time, Gillis believes that if we strive for justice, Heaven is on our side. I argue that Bärlach genuinely strives for justice throughout the whole story and from this perspective he is on the side of the Good. Gillis even argues that

Bärlach is almost an agent of the divine. “Dürrenmatt is saying, in effect, that Bärlach is the

Richter, but that the Henker is that combination of circumstances---or Chance. However you spell it, Chance or Tschanz, it is really something which is ultimately determined by God and the divine order of the universe.”196 Interpreting the story in this way makes Bärlach into a type of hero even despite the fact that Crockett believes he is a vigilante. A Kantian analysis will be helpful here.

195 William Gillis, “Dürrenmatt and the Detectives.” The German Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Jan. 1962): 71, accessed May 2, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/402308. 196 Gillis, 73.

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Bärlach and a Good Will

I will argue here that a Kantian reading of Bärlach provides a different perspective. Keep in mind before beginning that unlike Spät, Bärlach has passed the test regarding whether he is a more conventional hero or not. There are a few things to mention. Bärlach has what Kant describes as a good will. Kant says, “It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.”197 Kant is describing the general quality of that person whom we refer to as a good person. Kant continues,

Intelligence, wit, judgement, and any other talents of the mind we may care to name, or courage, resolution, and constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt good and desirable in many respects; but they can also be extremely bad and hurtful when the will is not good which has to make use of these gifts of nature, and which for this reason has the term ‘character’ applied to its peculiar quality.198 This part is important—many people can have gifts such as intelligence and wit, but if there is not a good will behind them then harm may come out of them and their usage. To conclude about a good will, “A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes—because of its fitness for attaining some proposed end: it is good through its willing alone-that is, good in itself.”199 This statement is also important. Again, to understand, think of this as describing the general term, a “good person.” That person is concerned with issues such as justice and a sense of welfare and well-being for other people. Bärlach fits this description. There are several reasons. One thing to consider is the way in which Bärlach has lived his life. For example, prior

197 Kant, Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Routledge, 1991), 59. 198 Ibid., 59. 199 Ibid., 60.

107 to the story, he has been chasing Gastmann for decades, but legitimately so. He has only pursued him through legal channels and has not acted as vigilante. Bärlach believes in the justice system and honors it as being valuable. One might get the impression throughout the story that he is doing his work as a detective simply because it is right. The greatest evidence is still that he has pursued Gastmann solely through legal channels. In addition, there is evidence of how Bärlach follows protocol. Even though he knows about Gastmann as being a criminal, he does not openly contradict his superior, Lutz, when Lutz tells him that Gastmann is clean. Lutz was warned off by von Schwendi and there is a lot of evidence and an alibi to back von

Schwendi’s assessment of Gastmann. Bärlach’s method, in terms of his back ground with

Gastmann and his suspicions of Tschanz, is to bide his time and let the evidence fall in place. At least, this seems be his method. I am putting forth the argument that Bärlach has, during his career, operated with a sense of duty toward the law, and even more so because of the monstrous nature of Gastmann and his crimes. The problem has always been that the longer

Bärlach takes to arrest Gastmann, the more Gastmann will kill and commit crimes. Bärlach has always known this.

Regarding Duty

One cannot bring in Kantian analysis of a detective without contrasting the idea of purely having a good will versus upholding duty. I will point to several current scholars who deal with the question of whether personal feelings are a better motivator than duty. What do recent scholars say about it? Henning Jensen provides some poignant arguments. He cites Barbara

Herman as saying, “Barbara Herman argues that his theory in fact does not require that we always set the motive of duty between our feelings and our response to others and that,

108 therefore, his theory neither prevents a personal response to others nor undermines integrity.”200 If this is the case, then it fits in with Bärlach’s proclivity towards taking justice personally. A person’s feelings do not always have to be repressed or subverted. Bärlach could be justified in having personal feelings associated with detective work. Herman argues further,

“a Kantian may accept that it is better in some cases that a morally worthy act not be done and may accept that it is rational in some cases to prefer an emotion-based action to the action done solely from duty.”201 This statement might seem contrary to Kantian theory at first, in that feelings can sometimes have moral worth separate from duty. Jensen quotes Herman as providing further defense of Kant from this perspective.

Her (Barbara Herman’s) emphasis on two features of Kant's theory would appear to be central to her clarification and defense of his theory. The first concerns the fact that good will is present not only in actions done from the motive of duty, but also in actions in which the motive of duty functions as a limiting condition, a negative condition which requires that an agent may not act unless his action is morally permissible in that it is not directed towards immoral ends. The second concerns the fact that good willing is present not only in actions done from the motive of duty, but also in those settled commitments which may not always be exhibited in overt actions, for example, in situations in which an agent's paralysis may prevent her from acting or in which she lacks the resources to help others.202 In terms of the first argument, Bärlach has spent his life pursuing justice and following the law.

He follows it not simply from duty but from a general sense of good will toward human kind. It was Bärlach, not Gastmann, at the bar in Turkey, who had faith in humanity and believed for most of his life that the justice system works. Bärlach is in a fight for the sake of humanity.

Jensen mentions, “when the right of humanity is pursued as an end, such a pursuit is motivated

200 Hennig Jensen, “Kant and Moral Integrity,” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 57, no. 2 (Oct. 1989): 194, accessed September 23, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4320071. 201 Ibid., 194. 202 Ibid.

109 by a sense of duty, especially a duty to oneself.”203 From this perspective Bärlach is pursuing his duty to humanity, he can still be thought of as a Kantian hero, despite adopting, as Crockett points out, vigilante justice. Jensen focuses the remainder of the article on people who have a problem with Kant’s focus on duty as a prime motivating factor. He asks,

In terms of Barbara Herman's question, can a Kantian accept that it is better in some cases that a morally worthy act not be done and that it is rational in some cases to prefer an emotion- based action to the action done solely from duty? For example, when an agent could help someone in need from a desire to help or from a sense of duty, is it better that she help from the emotion-based motive?204 Jensen claims that there are two types of emotion-based motives, first, acts performed from emotion-based motives, while the second would be morally permissible acts performed from emotion-based motives.205 Jensen is reminding us that a need to help someone simply from emotion-based motives has, as Kant would say, “has no moral worth.”206 He continues,

Although acting from motives such as love, compassion, or a desire to help may often produce right acts, their doing so is accidental rather than from a concern for rightness. Furthermore, there are situations in which, for example, acting from an inclination to help someone may involve the breaking of a previous promise or the neglecting of a greater good which might have been attained.207 Here is a good explanation as to why a good will alone is not always the best solution to a problem. Sometimes a person can unwittingly cause collateral harm without even having intended to do so. The Kantian acts from duty because a Kantian hero wishes to avoid unforeseen damage. “By contrast, Kant's view is that actions which have moral worth are

203 Ibid., 199. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid., 199-200. 206 Ibid., 200. 207 Ibid.

110 performed from a motive, the sense of duty, whose production of right actions is by intention rather than by accident.”208

The second type of emotion-based motive is described differently, however. This is the one based on morally permissible acts.

In the case of many or most of the actions which are motivated by love or compassion, the agent is not acting with a wanton unconcern for rightness, but, on the contrary, believes and is justified in believing that, although not done from duty, such actions are in accordance with duty, that is, in accordance with the moral law expressed in the categorical imperative. Such actions fall into the important category of the morally permissible, but not required.209 In general, what does this entail? Think of the idea that some actions done from love or compassion are okay so long as they are limited by that which is permissible. The standard for that which is permissible is found in the categorical imperative. If a person is upholding the categorical imperative, then actions performed from love or compassion do not cause unforeseen damage. In this way, a person can be a Kantian and still act out of emotional concerns. “In sum,” Jensen says, “an act of helping someone in need performed from the emotion-based motive of wanting to help is morally permissible when it is in accordance with the moral law.”210 Here there is a good blending of Kant’s traditional leanings towards acting from duty, combined with actual human feelings and the desire to do the right thing irrespective of ethical theory. However, only when the person is still constrained by the categorical imperative can that agent be called a Kantian. One may of course do what one thinks is right, especially if it is based in feelings of love or compassion, but one must watch out for causing accidental damage. From a Kantian perspective, we already know that the purpose

208 Ibid. 209 Ibid. 210 Ibid., 201.

111 of the categorical imperative itself is to prevent people from limiting each other’s freedom and rights, and building on this, to uphold the social contract. The ultimate goal, as always, is to have a commonwealth of people upholding a mutual social contract based in the categorical imperative. It allows for a Kingdom of Ends in which everyone is treated as an end in themselves. It is now time to continue with what Henning Jensen has to say.

On my account, I should prefer to maintain that a Kantian may accept that we are entitled to perform certain acts which are morally permissible and which are performed from emotion-based motives rather than from a sense of duty. Further, I should maintain that if an absolute preference were then to be contemplated, it is both rational and morally desirable that we should prefer an emotion-based morally permissible action to the same action done solely from duty.211 This line of argumentation would allow a good-willed person to act out of a sense of beneficence towards humanity, which is already commanded by Kant anyway, while at the same time remaining within the scope of duty. Considering this line of argumentation helps to understand Bärlach as a complex hero. He is very much concerned with duty, but throughout his career he has had personal motivations for being a good detective at the same time. At this point he has spent 40 years patiently trying to catch Gastmann and keeping him from harming other people. This motivation is centered both in duty and emotion-based motives. Now it is time to explore duty and benevolence further.

In W.H. Werkmeister’s Reflections on Kant’s Philosophy, George Schrader has written a chapter that discusses the relationship between duty and benevolence. Schrader wants to help the reader understand Kant by pointing out that individual people have different dispositions. Take

211 Jensen, 203.

112 the idea that some people are, for example naturally sociable, while others are shy.212 This may seem overly simplistic at first but it helps set up his argumentation.

Some take spontaneous delight in benevolent actions whereas others manifest no natural concern for their fellow men. It was, in fact, the highly contingent and variable nature of man as an empirical being that prompted Kant to place so much stress on the universality of rational will. We cannot, if we are at all realistic about human nature, expect that all men will show consideration for their neighbors from a kindly natural disposition. A good way to relate this contrast in the story is to contrast Bärlach with Tchanz. For whatever problems Bärlach may have, he has always acted out of an idea of the Good, of a benevolence towards humanity. It is for this reason that he has fought Gastmann within legal channels for the past forty years and why he made that bet about human nature in the first place. Tschanz, however, does not seem to be in possession of a natural proclivity towards any type of beneficence. He murdered Schmied to take over his career and his girlfriend. He may have become a Kommisar for good reasons, but he has not followed any sense of ethics since that point. He has acted out of jealousy and fear. Schrader points out, though, that Kant can be valuable because even someone who is not naturally kind or caring can still be a morally valorous person. Schrader continues,

Yet every man can, through the exercise of his rational will, treat his neighbor with respect—no matter how he may naturally feel toward him. Kant recognized that some men are blessed with a temperament which makes it relatively easy for them to abide by the canons of morality, whereas for others it is a struggle. We may lament the temperament which we have received from what Kant termed a ‘stepmotherly’, nature, but we can do our duty nonetheless. The contingent empirical order can be modified through moral volition to conform to the demands of the moral law.213

212 George Schrader. “The Constitutive Role of Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in Reflections on Kant’s Philosophy, ed. W.H. Werkmeister (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1975), 75. 213 Schrader, 75.

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Kant normally seems restrictive to those who do not agree with the deontological, or duty- based approach to moral conduct. I think, however, that Kant is providing people who are not inclined naturally towards compassion, with a way of doing what is called for from an ethical perspective anyway. Basically, we are given a formula for doing what is right whether we are naturally compassionate people or not. If a person always keeps in mind that one is to treat human beings with dignity and remember that they are not to be used as a means to an end, as one of the formulae of the categorical imperative states, that person can still be ethically virtuous. While Bärlach has an easier time with this than most, even some of the supporting cast can be elevated to a higher moral status in this way. Schrader would also like to point out, however, that inclination (feelings) and duty are not always in conflict.

Still the disparity between inclination and duty in Kant’s ethics should not be overdrawn. It is not the case, as some of his critics have averred, that moral volition requires an opposition between them. On the contrary, our inclinations often support that which duty requires. Indeed, Kant held that we have a direct duty to promote the happiness of others and an indirect duty to promote our own happiness precisely because happiness is conducive to the pursuit of moral duty.214 Schrader is simply trying to argue that it is okay to enjoy doing the right thing in this paragraph.

We do indeed have a duty toward helping others, and if this makes us happy, it further insures that we will uphold our duties to others. Not everyone, however, is of this inclination. Schrader is not judging people as good or bad in this way. Also, while Kant does mention evil in The

Metaphysics of Morals, he is mainly concerned with the process of becoming good again.215 He is merely saying that the universality of adhering to one’s maxim is a good protective

214 Schrader, 76. 215Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 191.

114 mechanism for doing what we should not be doing. Before continuing with the story, I would like to focus on one more Kantian scholar and what she has to say about duty and inclination.

Marcia Baron is an advocate of Kant’s ethics, but also understands people who might be discouraged by it. “Many who ally themselves with Kant’s ethics quietly dissent on one key matter: his emphasis on duty. Here, they suggest, he goes too far: he tries to subsume too much under duty and places too much value on acting from duty.”216 Keep in mind that Marcia

Baron is a fan of Kantian ethics. She is trying to show in her book how it can be made more palatable for a modern readership. It is very common for people to object to that aspect of

Kantian ethics. She states the main arguments against Kant as, “highlighting the clash between impartial morality, on the one hand, and, on the other, the claims of love, friendship, and other partial ties.”217 The problem here has been stated by the previous scholar as well, but in a different way. After all, someone who is not an ally of Kantian ethics would have, very reasonably, reservations as to why love and friendship are also important. Baron mentions a couple of main criticisms of Kant. One of them is the most common, in that “Kant sees too much value in acting from duty and too little value in acting from love, fellow feeling, sympathy, loyalty, and the like.”218 I have shown this in the previous scholars’ concerns, but stated differently. This is a difficult charge to defend against at times, and again, it is why some people do not approve of Kant’s ethical framework in the first place. Marcia Baron reformulates one of the main worries.

216 Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 1. 217 Ibid., 1. 218 Ibid., 2.

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Insofar as one acts from duty, this shows there to be something awry in one’s ‘natural affections.’ It shows one to lack, or to have to an insufficient degree, certain motives and dispositions which are crucial to realizing the great goods of love and friendship. A truly good person does not need the motive of duty. Anyone who needs it, or at least anyone who needs it often, must be lacking in affection for others.219 This restatement of the common worry associated with the deontological approach (again, deontological meaning based in duty) is actually quite compelling. Would we want a friend who always acts from duty rather than love and compassion? From a Kantian perspective, Baron wishes to emphasize that duty and friendship can go together. Her first and most obvious response is that if “one needs the motive of duty all the time, there is something missing in his character. Such a person is evidently quite cold and heartless, and thus incapable of loving others or being much of a friend.”220 It is actually quite difficult to imagine someone who always does every action from duty and no other motivation. This type of behavior, while in a sense morally permissible, is not optimal. In general, it would seem that love and friendship are necessary motivators. Baron argues further, however. “But the problem arises only if he too often needs the motive of duty to supply sufficient motivation to phone or visit or write or give a present to a friend or relative. It is no blemish on his character if he needs promptings of duty at times, for example, to visit a friend in a hospital or in prison, or to spend the afternoon babysitting a friend’s two-year old twins.”221 Thus it is okay to use duty as a motivation in friendship at certain times. Baron wants to emphasize, however, that the Kantian imperative toward duty should not simply be a backup plan. I have argued with the previous scholars in this section that duty tempers general feelings of good will or friendship so as to avoid unwittingly breaking promises or causing unforeseen harm. But is there a concrete example?

219 Ibid., 124. 220 Ibid., 125. 227 Ibid.

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Baron provides her example after formulating the main criticism from those who disagree with

Kant. “Acting from duty is second best; if we were better people, we would have no need for a sense of duty and would act from such motives as fellow feeling or a desire to help.”222 So not only do Kant’s opponents feel that duty is not always necessary, but also that if we were truly good people, duty would be second best. Truly good people would have no need of a secondary moral failsafe device. The problem is, however, as Schrader argues, not all of us have such a natural proclivity towards beneficent behavior. Kant was planning for this contingency as well.

Marcia Baron goes further and provides a dilemma that a person could run into who is both good-willed and Kantian. “What they do not notice is that sometimes there is a gap between the goodness of a desire and the rightness or wrongness of the act to which it inclines us.”223

She continues,

This is particularly clear in instances in which one’s special tie to a particular person is in conflict with duties of general beneficence…. Imagine someone whose child or dearest friend is hurt but clearly not in mortal danger, or very frightened and in need of reassurance (e.g. in a car accident); at the same time someone else, with no claim on his affections, is in need of emergency medical help. Imagine too that there is no one else at the scene who can fetch help, or otherwise render assistance. Although it would certainly not be wrong—far from it!—to feel like giving all of one’s attention to the badly shaken, frightened child, it would be wrong not to attend first to the other person.224 In this situation there is a compelling case for how duty can be more important than feelings of love or friendship. The stranger is in much more danger and only the protagonist of the story can render the necessary assistance. Keep in mind that the protagonist is not a bad person for having the inclination to want to help his own child. Thinking of it from a Kantian perspective,

222 Ibid., 126. 223 Ibid. 224 Ibid.

117 this is why acting from duty has the most moral worth. What our heart tells us is not wrong, but as rational beings we have greater duties.

Bärlach and Kantian Critiques

While Bärlach is a good detective, and is motivated by good will, he is not perfect as a Kantian.

For a Kantian, there can be any number of maxims that one chooses and adheres to. No maxim can be moral if it cannot be universalized. Thinking back on the concept of duty, Kant says that

“if duty is a concept which is to have meaning and real legislative authority for our actions, this can be expressed only in categorical imperatives and by no means in hypothetical ones.”225 So duty and the universalization of one’s maxim are related closely. I have already shown in the past few pages some of the objections to Kant, in that friendship and personal feelings can be equally as good motivators as duty. The ultimate conclusion is that one can do both, but that duty is still important to observe as per Marcia Baron’s car accident example. Another objection against Kant’s deontological or duty based approach to ethics and morality is that nobody is perfect and that people cannot live up to standards that should be universalized. The biggest argument that one hears is the idea of lying. How can I get through life, one may ask, without ever telling a lie, even to save myself or another person? The problem in this story in particular is that Bärlach lies on a few occasions and is at the same time in the capacity of an officer of the law. The first occasion seems harmless enough. He visits Schmied’s landlady in the beginning of the story looking for a file that was in Schmied’s possession. The reader learns later that it was

Schmied’s file on Gastmann. Bärlach lies in order to facilitate the ease of picking up the document. The conversation begins with, “Schmied muβte diese Nacht dienstlich verreisen….

225 Kant, 87.

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Ganz plötzlich muβte er gehen, und er hat mich gebeten, ihm nachzuschicken. Ich bitte Sie, mich in sein Zimmer zu fürhren, Frau Schönler.”226 Here there are two lies already. First, that

Schmied went on a business trip. Second, that he wanted Bärlach to pick something up. We know that Bärlach is there is collect a file that Schmied has been working on, and is doing so without official approval. The landlady becomes more curious. “Wo ist Herr Schmied denn?”227

Bärlach replies that he is “im Ausland.”228 This is of course a lie. One could make the argument that Bärlach is telling a minor lie. Maybe by “out of the country,” he means in the afterlife. He does not specify this, however, and so is lying by not telling the whole truth. Frau Schönler again stays curious and asks if he is in the tropics, whereby Bärlach replies that he is “in der

Höhe.” Frau Schönler responds with, “Mein Gott, im Himalaya,” to which Bärlach says, “So ungefähr.”229 In this case, when Bärlach allows Frau Schönler to think that Schmied is vacationing in the Himalayas, he lies by omission. He allows her to send her own imagination wherever it takes her. This tactic is not as drastic as saying that Schmied is on a business trip, but it is still lying by omission. Why does this matter, one may ask? There are two reasons, even beyond basic ideas about the categorical imperative. First, even though we see in countless crime stories that the police use misdirection to fool people, they rarely tell boldface lies. To do so violates the law and a detective is supposed to be a representative of those laws. Can one defend Bärlach’s lie from a Kantian perspective? As a conventional heroic figure there is no problem with it. He is telling small lies in order to avoid greater harm. From a Kantian perspective, things become less clear. Pablo Gilabert in fact addresses the problem of lying

226 Dürrenmatt, 10. 227 Ibid., 10. 228 Ibid., 10. 229 Ibid., 10.

119 directly Recall what he said earlier in this dissertation about positive duties overruling negative duties. If we have a duty to uphold the formula of humanity, we have a duty to help those in need.230 So again, this shows how Kant argues that one of our greatest duties is to help other people. Upholding the formula of humanity means making sure that we treat people as an end in themselves, by honoring their dignity as human beings. Gilabert takes things further. He quotes another Kantian scholar, Thomas Hill.

We should, according to Hill, interpret Kant's thesis that the duty of beneficence is imperfect as a claim about beneficence as a general policy or obligatory end, not as a claim about every circumstance in which beneficence might be practiced. There are, indeed, some cases in which assistance is strictly owed. But this does not change the fact that beneficence, as a general duty, is imperfect. Secondly, Hill argues that examples allegedly showing that imperfect duties of beneficence can trump perfect negative duties do not show anything of the sort. This is because perfect duties have "built-in exception clauses." Thus, for example, the duty not to lie does not have the simplistic structure "Never lie," but the more complex one "Never lie unless..." Hence, it makes sense to say that lying to save an innocent life does not violate the perfect duty not to lie, because that duty has built-in exceptions allowing for cases like this one. I agree with Hill on both counts.231 Gilabert deals a lot in his article with different categories of duty, as does Kant himself. The most important thing to consider here is that Kant scholars in recent times are making Kant’s deontological approach still viable without nullifying it. If we lie in order to save a life, we may be fudging things, but we are still being good Kantians because we are fulfilling the imperative to help others. This is again tricky, however, and probably not all Kant scholars would agree with it. Gilabert continues in his article with showing examples, of how positive duties, meaning things we should do, can trump negative duties, meaning things we should not do. Being a good

Kantian in these terms means having a dynamic system of operating principles whereby one

230 Gilabert, 397. 231Gilabert, 395.

120 follows the categorical imperative as best as one can, while at the same time understanding that one must do what one can to help people in need. Bärlach is violating his obligation not to lie, there is no doubt of this. Was his lying to the landlady justified? Bärlach may have felt that he was doing this to keep the folder from falling into the wrong hands. He has Gastmann as his opponent, and is in a race against time with Gastmann. Bärlach knows that the longer

Gastmann is permitted to continue with his behavior, the longer people are in danger. In this way, he is fulfilling his imperative toward beneficence.

Keep in mind that while I am working with a Kantian analysis of Bärlach and his conduct, I do not expect him to be perfect. What we do expect as Kantian readers is that he follows the law to which he has sworn fealty. In one way or another he has his duty toward setting an example as a representative of the legal system. The problem that presents itself again, however, is that

Bärlach becomes a vigilante. I personally believe that he has a good will, that his heart might be in the right place. Is this enough? Overall, Bärlach is a great conventional hero but this aspect of the story really hits Bärlach hard as a Kantian hero. Kant mentions that any maxim which does not qualify as being universal is contrary to morals.232 Morality is important to Bärlach, and I would argue that it is the main driving force behind his life. It is his motivating factor behind chasing Gastmann for forty years. Things become more complex as a result of framing

Gastmann for the murder of Schmied, and using Tschanz as his instrument of justice. Allen W.

Wood also states that we should not always hold ourselves to every action being scrutinized ad infinitum as to whether it can be universalized.

232 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 18.

121

Even more harmful and misleading, however, is the extremely common thought that Kant is recommending here that every decision we make in life should be prompted by asking ourselves whether some maxim or other can be willed as universal law. The thought ignores the fact that … the formula of universal law is only the first step in the process of formulating the supreme principle of morality, and consequently ignores Kant’s other richer, more definitive formulations of this principle. It does not consider that the formula of universal law provides only a negative test for maxims (a way of rejecting some as impermissible), but could never tell us in positive terms that we ought to follow any specific maxim.233 This is yet another interesting take on a theme that is arising. The formula of universal law tells us what not to do, but does not give any specifics as to what should be done. This is where the formula of humanity comes in and the imperative toward beneficence regarding humanity. By no means would a Kantian argue that negative duties are not important. These arguments are the result of a couple of hundreds of years of Kantian scholars trying to wrestle with some of the more difficult features of Kant’s ethical system. Keeping in mind that Kant was, overall, trying to ensure that there would be a commonwealth of people who would maintain peace and a reverence for human dignity by being able to adopt moral behavior that would not limit that of other people.

Bärlach further Evaluated

In light of what these scholars have said, it is necessary to further evaluate Bärlach. His major coup is to make Tschanz, who murdered Schmied, into his Henker, or hangman, and use him to destroy Gastmann. In addition, he openly tells Gastmann that he will die at the hands of an undisclosed assassin. Violating his own maxim of being a servant to the truth, he has manipulated two people into ruination. As an officer of the law, he does not have authorization to execute Gastmann, nor to instigate events leading to the possible suicide of Tschanz. It is

233 Allen W. Wood. "The Supreme Principle of Morality." The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy. ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 344.

122 interesting here to think again of what William Gillis said, that justice is ultimately out of the hands of humanity, that it is something either divine or otherworldly that frustrates and eludes us. Gillis claims that “Bärlach is the Richter, but that the Henker is that combination of circumstances—or Chance. However you spell it, Chance or Tschanz, it is really something which is ultimately determined by God and the divine order of the universe.”234 This interpretation and that of the other Dürrenmatt theorists might also motivate us to avoid judging Bärlach so harshly. He is dealing with forces outside of his own control. He was allowing

Schmied to go undercover and investigate Gastmann, but Tschanz took that away from him by killing Schmied out of jealousy. In this way justice escaped him. The main problem with Bärlach, from a Kantian perspective, is that he does in fact make Tschanz a means to an end. Even if he might have been justified from a non-Kantian perspective, he still breaking the formula of humanity, and thus doing his part to undermine the Kingdom of Ends. Bärlach is fulfilling his positive duty toward humanity by taking out Gastmann, but is at the same time ruining Tschanz in the process, which eventually leads to Tschanz committing suicide. Suicide is not acceptable for Kant, as has been discussed in the previous chapter. Causing someone to resort to such methods is just as problematic. As far as “ends” is defined, Kant gives the following description.

“For rational beings all stand under the law that each of them should treat himself and all others, never merely as a means, but always at the same time as an end in himself. But by doing so there arises a systematic union of rational beings under common objective laws—that is, a kingdom.”235 This is simply Kant’s version of the social contract. Thus Bärlach has committed several counter-productive acts. Mainly he has used two people as a means to an end. It is

234 Gillis, 73. 235 Kant., 95.

123 important to remember this because Bärlach is undermining the social contract. One cannot act in a just manner when one has done so. Kant builds on the ends principle to describe how his argument relates to human dignity.

Now morality is the only condition under which a rational being can be an end in himself; for only through this is it possible to be a law-making member in a kingdom of ends. Therefore morality, and humanity so far as it is capable of morality, is the only thing which has dignity. Skill and diligence in work have a market price; wit, lively imagination, and humour have a fancy price, but fidelity to promises and kindness based on principles have an intrinsic worth.236 There are two things to consider here. First that Bärlach has violated the dignity of both

Tschanz and Gastmann. But from a pragmatic perspective, they did too. Tschanz broke into

Bärlach’s office and tried to kill him, and of course Gastmann is so incredibly nihilistic and immoral that he is completely outside of any social contract that could exist. At least Tschanz makes an effort to stay on track. Gastmann, however, does not at all. Next consider Kant’s argument regarding the appropriate use of coercion.

On Coercion

Recall the previously stated universal principle of right, basically that right actions coexist with everyone’s freedom under universal law.237 The principle of right is another aspect of Kant’s social contract theory. This is where the categorical imperative helps in maintaining a healthy social contract, or union. We must act in such a way that we do not hinder the freedom of others. This is more complicated than it sounds because people will inevitably step on the freedoms of others. In this case, Kant authorizes the use of coercion.

236Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 96-97. 237 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 24.

124

Whatever is wrong is a hindrance or resistance to freedom. But coercion is a hindrance to freedom. Therefore, if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance, to freedom in accordance with universal laws (i.e. wrong), coercion that is opposed to this (as a hindering of a hindrance to freedom) is consistent with freedom in accordance with universal laws, that is, it is right.238 Who is authorized to use coercion and with what punishment? Is Bärlach justified in arranging the death of Gastmann?

While in general Kant allows the use of coercion, he does not endorse individual citizens to carry this out. This same problem was encountered in Justiz. Spät was a citizen, not a court of law. Even though Bärlach is a representative of the police force, he is not the ruler, nor is he a member of a court of law. Kant has several things to say about the administering of punishment. “The right to punish is the right a ruler has against a subject to inflict pain upon him because of having committed a crime. The head of state can therefore not be punished; one can only withdraw from his dominion.”239 Either way Bärlach does not apply here. He is not the ruler, first of all, and so is not authorized to administer the death sentence. In addition, not being the ruler, he is subject to penalty under the law. Only the ruler has this failsafe in place.

Kant also endorses trying crimes in court. “A transgression of public law that makes someone who commits it unfit to be a citizen is called a crime simply but it is also called a public crime, so the first (private crime) is brought before a civil court, the latter before a criminal court.”240

Kant gives examples of different crimes, but ones that should be tried in a criminal court include theft and robbery. Only the “law of retribution… applied by a court (not by your private

238 Ibid., 25. 239 Kant,105. 240 Ibid., 105.

125 judgement)—can specify definitely the quality and quantity of punishment.”241 Kant does mention that the penalty for murder is death.242 However much one might sympathize with

Bärlach, he simply does not have the authorization that a ruler via the court of law has to administer the death penalty. Does this make Bärlach a villain? It becomes a bit tricky here. Yes,

Bärlach violated the categorical imperative, and yes, he lied and orchestrated the ruination of two bad people outside of a court of law. There is no way around the fact that he did what he believed was right, and this is where duty comes into play for Bärlach. Keep in mind also what

Henning Jensen and the other scholars in this chapter said, that it is okay to act both from emotion and duty at the same time. Again, however, this act would optimally be limited by the categorical imperative. I have established at this point that Kantian morality is based in a sense of duty. Kant states, later in the “Doctrine of Virtue,” the second half of the Metaphysics of

Morals, a few things that shed a favorable light on Bärlach. Kant asks, what are the ends that are also duties? “They are one’s own perfection and the happiness of others.”243 One’s own perfection is extensive but one aspect of it follows thusly;

At the same time this duty includes the cultivation of one’s own will (moral cast of mind), so as to satisfy all the requirements of duty. (I) A human being has a duty to raise himself from the crude state of his nature, from his animality, more and more toward humanity, by which he alone is capable of setting himself ends; he has a duty to diminish his ignorance by instruction and to correct his errors.244 Bärlach, above all else, has a dedication to his craft, that of detection, and besides what he does at the end of the book, has adhered to the law throughout his career. Even in the face of framing Gastmann, he was at the same time making Gastmann answer for a lifetime of heinous

241 Ibid., 106. 242 Ibid., 107. 243 Ibid., 150. 244 Ibid., 151.

126 crime. Bärlach was absolutely raising himself from the crude state of nature and more toward humanity. It is this sense of duty toward humanity that caused him to continue hunting

Gastmann. To continue, Kant defines the happiness of others as follows; “When it comes to my promoting happiness as an end that is also a duty, this must therefore be the happiness of other human beings, whose end I thus make my own as well.”245 This is why pursuing the happiness of others is a positive duty and thus part of the command to be beneficent. Does

Bärlach achieve this even with having violated the categorical imperative? As a detective it has been his job to see to the welfare of the population by catching criminals. This is his way of ensuring the well-being of the commonwealth. It is his way of upholding the social contract.

There is no way around the fact that Gastmann and Tschanz have had their happiness taken away by Bärlach. But Kant says again, as previously stated, when someone begins violating the social contract by harming another, coercion is justified. The state is justified in punishing criminals. It is Bärlach’s job as detective, not to administer justice, but to apprehend such criminals and make sure that the court system administers the proper penalty. Thus there are a small hierarchy of needs and rights that are to be respected. Coercion is a last resort but when it is called for then it is in accordance with the categorical imperative. In fact, Bärlach punishes

Gastmann and Tschanz not because of his own happiness, but because of what can be interpreted from a Kantian perspective as a deontological view of crime. In the section on coercion, Kant mentions that punishment is not designed to exist for any other purpose than because someone has committed a crime. Personal feelings of vengeance do not come into play. It can be stated that Bärlach only committed the crimes that he did because he was dying

245 Ibid., 151.

127 and he knew that there was no other way to keep people safe from Gastmann. There is very little evidence that the motivating factor is revenge, and much more that the motivating factor is a sense of duty. It is important to consider that there are other factors in Bärlach’s actions beyond just simple revenge. A Kantian cannot fully excuse Bärlach. He has broken the social contract by using Tschanz and killing Gastmann indirectly. At the same time, he is fulfilling the positive duty of protecting humanity. It fits in with the caveat that Gilabert points out, stated by

Thomas Hill, that a perfect duty has built-in exceptions when it comes to the welfare of another.246 There are a couple of things here that I do not wish to deny. First, providing loopholes and exceptions is more difficult to defend from a purely logical perspective. Second, I do not wish to excuse Bärlach from his crimes. In rebuttal, however, it is the case that Bärlach is driven by duty, by a dedication to justice and his maxim, and also, that these exceptions are part of an attempt on behalf of a good deal of recent scholars to make the deontological approach to life more possible.

There is another factor to consider, and is also to be found within the “Doctrine of Virtue” in the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant points out that we have duties to ourselves in this section and the “first command of all duties to oneself” is to “know yourself.”247 Kant says,

The command is “know (scrutinize, fathom) yourself,” not in terms of your natural perfection (your fitness or unfitness for all sorts of discretionary or even commanded ends) but rather in terms of your moral perfection in relation to your duty. That is, know your heart—whether it is good or evil, whether the source of your actions is pure or impure, and what can be imputed to you as belonging originally to the substance of a human being or as derived (acquired or developed) and belonging to your moral condition.248

246 Gilabert, 395. 247 Kant, 191. 248 Ibid.

128

Kant is asking us to know what is in our heart and whether it is good or not. If not, there is always time and room for improvement. This is a starting place in one way or another for us to actually become moral people. Kant affirms this in the next part of the section;

Moral cognition of oneself, which seeks to penetrate into the depths (the abyss) of one’s heart which are quite difficult to fathom, is the beginning of all human wisdom. For in the case of a human being, the ultimate wisdom, which consists in the harmony of a human being’s will and its final end, requires him first to remove the obstacle within (an evil will actually present in him) and then to develop the original predisposition to a good will within him, which can never be lost. (Only the descent in to the hell of self- cognition can pave the way to godliness.)249 Has Bärlach has done this successfully? He knows himself well as a result of having been a detective for more than forty years. This means that he is aware of his views on humanity, as well as his own moral framework. It is now time to look at the text for further analysis.

At the end of the story when Tschanz confronts Bärlach and Bärlach reveals his plan to frame

Gastmann and use Tschanz, we learn that Bärlach had thought about what he was doing fully and was less than happy about it. Tschanz is desperate and thinks about killing Bärlach. “Der

Fall Schmied ist erledigt, ‘sagte der Alte durch die Dunkelheit des Raumes hindurch,’ Ich werde dich nicht verraten. Aber geh! Irgendwohin! Ich will dich nie mehr sehen. Es ist genug, daβ ich einen richtete. Geh! Geh!”250 Look closely at what he said—it is enough that I have judged one person. This is obviously open to interpretation. I think one could easily make the case that

Bärlach feels guilty about what he has done. Framing Gastmann was enough for him. He can only stand so much in terms of falling from grace. He is, at this point, fully cognizant of what he has done. He has entered the abyss of self-awareness. Evidence for this argument is that whenever he becomes incredibly upset, his stomach related illness appears with a vengeance,

249 Ibid, 191 250 Dürrenmatt, 117.

129 as when Gastmann visited Bärlach in his house. Recall that he rolled around the floor asking,

“Was ist der Mensch?”251 while in agonizing pain. It is almost as if his natural aversion to evil triggers a psychosomatic reaction that manifests itself in the form of a pain attack. Another section of the book that indicates Bärlach’s self-awareness has been mentioned earlier in the chapter, when he said that “Ich bin ein Groβer alter schwarzer Kater, der gern Mäuse friβt.”252

Having read the whole story, this statement can be viewed as a type of confession and a type of self-awareness. Bärlach is confessing to Tschanz exactly what he is up to in the future. Whether he says this to Tschanz as a confession prior to the fact, the reader cannot be entirely sure. The reader does know from the end of the story that Bärlach has been planning things extensively.

Either way, Bärlach knows himself here. He is fully aware of his own nature. There is another good example of his self-awareness when he and Gastmann speak for the last time. They speak about the bet that they made about the perfect crime. Having met and having developed an intense friendship in a bar in Turkey, their relationship had promise, until that bet, that no perfect crime could be committed. Until Gastmann murdered a man in front of Bärlach. Bärlach says, “Du bist in jener Nacht in der Turkei schuldig geworden, weil du die Wette geboten hast,

Gastmann, und ich, weil ich sie angenommen habe.”253 Bärlach reveals his own source of sin.

He never should have made that bet with Gastmann. He feels guilty and responsible for having done so. I argue that this guilt that Bärlach has been carrying around is part of him knowing his own heart. He did not commit the murder but he feels that he enabled it. In a way, he did. He is partially guilty for having created Gastmann as the person he now is. He has been shouldering

251 Ibid., 72. 252 Ibid., 21. 253 Ibid., 99.

130 this burden for decades. In an earlier conversation, Gastmann and Bärlach discuss the past.

Gastmann, in Bärlach’s house, asks Bärlach if he ever thought Gastmann could have pushed that man off of the bridge in Turkey. “Du dachtest nicht, daβ ich die einhalten würde,’ lachte der andere, ‘wie wir am andern Morgen mit schwerem Kopf in der öden Schenke erwachten, du auf einer morschen Bank und ich unter einem noch von Schnaps feuchten Tisch.”254 Gastmann thinks that Bärlach really never believed that Gastmann could murder someone in cold blood like that. Bärlach replies, “Ich dachte nicht…daβ diese Wette einzuhalten einem Menschen möglich wäre.255

Herein lies the fundamental difference between Gastmann and Bärlach. Gastmann is only concerned with himself and Bärlach is concerned with humanity. Bärlach is amazed that anyone could have pushed a man off of a bridge for no reason like Gastmann did. To this day Bärlach differs in this way. The chain of causality resulting from that bet is something to consider, however. If Bärlach had not bet that crime is not a sustainable exercise, would Gastmann have pushed that innocent person off of the bridge into the river? If one examines Gastmann more closely, the answer is that he might have done something equally as bad, but at another time and place. There is no doubting that Bärlach is causally related to that incident, however. Keep in mind, that while Bärlach violated the categorical imperative in his investigation, he did score well in Kant’s section on virtue. He knows his own heart, is self-aware, and makes his end that of the happiness of the others. It is difficult, as mentioned in the previous chapter, to apply terms like good and evil to a person, but Bärlach seems to be in the better end of the spectrum because he cares about justice, which is his maxim, and he is in possession of a good will, which

254 Ibid., 67. 255 Ibid., 67.

131 was mentioned by Kant as being good in an unqualified sense. In this way he is complicated as a

Kantian hero. He is flawed in his execution but behind it lies something beneficent. Now it is time to analyze Gastmann from the two perspectives of being a conventional villain and a

Kantian villain.

The Party at Gastmann’s House

Dürrenmatt creates a type of mystique associated with Gastmann even before we meet him for who he truly is. Tschanz and Bärlach arrive at Gastmann’s mansion at night. Tchanz claims that his investigations have led to this house and the man who owns it. When they first arrive at the scene, there is an elegant mansion and party commencing. “Er sah am Waldrand die Lichter von

Lamboing worauf er weiterschritt. Aufs neue änderte die Mauer ihre Richtung, nun nach

Westen. Die Hinterwand des Hauses war erleuchtet, aus einer Fensterreihe des ersten Stocks brach helles Licht. Er vernahm die Töne des Flügels, und wie er näher hinhorchte, stellte er fest, daβ jemand Bach spielte.”256 One may wonder why this scene can be construed as demonstrative of malice or evil intent in any way. After all, there is nothing wrong with a house party at night, which is well-lit and where Bach can be heard through the windows. This aspect of the scene represents one side of Gastmann’s personality. He is trying to project a type of refined sophistication. One possibility as to why might be that he grew up not just poor, but with nothing. He is perhaps trying to compensate for his past. We know from the rest of the book that this aspect of his personality is a front for the actual nihilistic aspect of his personality that is dominant in his decision-making processes. Dürrenmatt wants the reader to know this at this point in the novel, but he does so via symbolism and foreshadowing. Bärlach, as he is

256 Dürrenmatt, 32.

132 traversing the grounds, encounters a giant, scary, menacing dog. “Er sah, wie das Tier langsam, scheinbar zufällig, den Kopf wandte und ihn anstarrte. Die runden Augen blickten wie zwei helle, aber leere Flächen.”257 The empty eyes are supposed to convey a type of demonic quality to the dog. It turns its gaze on Bärlach and has no emotional anchor to which one can attach.

The eyes are just empty.

Das Unvermutete der Begegnung, die Mächtigkeit des Tieres und das Seltsame der Erscheinung lähmten ihn. Zwar verlieβ ihn die Kühle seiner Vernunft nicht, aber er hatte die Notwendigkeit des Handelns vergessen. Er sah nach dem Tier, unerschrocken, abergebannt. So hatte die Böse immer wieder in seinen Bann gezogen, das groβe Rätsel, das zu lösen ihn immer wieder aufs neue verlockte.258 There is a lot going on in this scene which is significant. First, there is the uncanny, menacing nature of the hound. It has such power and negative charisma, that Bärlach becomes paralyzed.

The dog is pure id, pure unconscious fury. This fury is not explosive, but rather cold, calm, taking its time. This dog encounter is symbolic of the other aspect of Gastmann’s personality.

The dog is a killer. The combination of the sophisticated house party and the dog attacking

Bärlach is representative of the contradictions present in Gastmann’s personality, and in turn, how Bärlach reacts. The narration reveals that Bärlach has always been fascinated by evil, from an observer’s perspective. He is drawn in by its spell, but still maintains his rationality. The fact that Gastmann can maintain a balance between operating in high society Swiss circles and being a killer for the fun of it shows how villainous he is and Dürrenmatt has done a good job of pointing it out with this scene as a type of metaphoric device. This passage in the story helps to show how to evaluate Gastmann as a villain from a conventional perspective. Even without a

Kantian analysis, this shows how different Gastmann is from Bärlach on a fundamental level.

257 Ibid., 33. 258 Ibid., 33.

133

Bärlach and Gastmann meet again

As readers, we first learn about Gastmann when he pays a visit to Bärlach at home. The two immediately recognize each other as though no time had passed—as though they were old friends. Bärlach comments on how Gastmann has changed his old name to Gastmann. It seems that Bärlach has seen the various transformations that Gastmann has undergone over the years. At the same time, the reader immediately perceives their hatred for each other. Bärlach wastes no time—“ Ich höre nie auf, dich zu verfolgen. Einmal wird es mir gelingen, deine

Verbrechen zu beweisen.”259 I have already discussed earlier in this chapter that Bärlach has been hunting Gastmann for decades, and that Gastmann pushed an innocent man to his death in the Bosphorus river. We know that they made a bet that night, once which Bärlach did not take seriously and which Gastmann most certainly did. Gastmann said, “Deine Biederkeit kam nie in Gefahr, versucht zu werden, doch deine Biederkeit versuchte mich. Ich hielt die kühne

Wette, in deiner Gegenwart ein Verbrechen zu begehen, ohne daβ du imstande sein würdest, mir dieses Verbrechen beweisen zu können.”260 It is this statement that reveals the villainous quality of Gastmann’s nature. He kept the crime in mind and waited to commit it out of a type of thought experiment. In addition, Bärlach’s “Biederkeit,” his highly moral nature, created a foil for Gastmann. That goodness alone was motivation enough for Gastmann to fall forever from grace and set down the path of crime and murder. Gastmann reveals more of his life. “Ich wurde ein immer besserer Verbrecher und du ein immer besserer Kriminalist: den Schritt

259 Dürrenmatt, 64. 260 Ibid., 67.

134 jedoch, den ich dir voraushatte, konntest du nie einholen…. Die Dummköpfe konntest du besiegen, aber ich besiegte dich.”261 Gastmann has obviously been viewing their interaction over the past few decades as a game, albeit a game which Gastmann has always won. He describes further:

So lebten wir denn. Du ein Leben unter deinen Vorgesetzten, in deinen Polizeirevieren und muffigen Amtsstuben, immer brav eine Sprosse um die andere auf der Leiter deiner bescheiden Erfolge erklimmernd dich mit Dieben und Fälschern herumschlagend, mit armen Schlukkern, die nie recht ins Leben kamen, und mit armseligen Mörderchen, wenn es hochkam, ich dagegen bald im Dunkeln, im Dickicht verlorener Groβstädte, bald im Lichte gläzender Positionen, ordenübersät, aus Übermut das Gute übend, wenn ich Lust dazu hatte, und wieder, aus einer anderen Laune heraus das Schlechte liebend. Welch ein abenteuerlicher Spaβ! Deine Sehnsucht war, mein Leben zu zerstören, und meine war es, mein Leben dir zum Trotz zu behaupten. Wahrlich, eine Nacht kettete uns für ewig zusammen!262 It seems that if one reads this monologue closely, one might notice that Gastmann’s villainous nature is fully revealed. This is a man without compassion or empathy. He torments Bärlach by committing crimes partially just to force Bärlach to follow his trail on an ongoing basis. The worst part, and the most powerful part of the monologue is that he does good for fun and only for that, not for the sake of goodness itself. At the same time, he commits evil acts on a whim.

To look at all of this as an adventure also indicates a type of disposition lacking in any type of empathy for anyone else. He is a bad man and is not worried about that fact. Besides, being so nihilistic, it seems that Gastmann’s greatest crime is simply to torture Bärlach over the course of their lifetimes, simply because Bärlach is a morally upright person and believed in the Good that night in Turkey. It is on surprise that the conversation causes Bärlach to have one of his

261 Ibid., 70. 262 Ibid., 70.

135 attacks, while he crawls around on the floor in agony, saying over and over again, “Was ist der

Mensch?”263

The Writer

The only thing that provides further insight into Gastmann’s villainous nature is a scene in which the two detectives are interviewing the writer, a writer who has been at several of

Gastmann’s parties and is somehow infatuated and enamored with Gastmann even though he knows how immoral the man is. Perhaps, rather than infatuation, the writer has more of a fascination, however. Bärlach and Tschanz are there at the writer’s house together. Both are concerned with narrowing down whether it was actually Gastmann who killed Schmied, although both have a secret. As stated before, it was Tschanz himself who killed Schmied, and we also know that Bärlach knows full well about what Gastmann is capable of. While Bärlach uses his old skill as a detective to gain the writer’s trust, Tschanz is blunt and impatient. Bärlach finally has to make the conversation shift from small talk before Tschanz ruins it. Bärlach asks,

“Ist Gastmann fähig, als Mörder in Frage Zu kommen?”264 The writer’s response is chilling. “Ich halte Gastmann zu jedem Verbrechen fähig….Doch bin ich überzeugt, daβ er den Mord an

Schmied nicht begangen hat.”265 The readership may also find it disturbing not because the writer is convinced that Gastmann could not have done it. Rather, it is that he is capable of every type of crime. The writer continues, “Was mich fasziniert, ist nicht so sehr seine

Kochkunst, obgleich ich mich nicht so leicht für etwas anderes mehr begeisterte, sondern die

Möglichkeit eines Menschen, der nun wirklich ein Nihilist ist…. Es ist immer atemraubend,

263 Ibid., 72. 264 Ibid., 81. 265 Ibid., 81.

136 einem Schlagwort in Wirklichkeit zu begegnen.”266 It may seem odd that the writer admits to being fascinated by Gastmann. Especially since the writer has just declared him a nihilist. This is just part of Gastmann’s charisma. He draws people in, just like the Swiss industrialists and the foreign politicians. The writer goes into even more specific details.

Vielleicht hat Gastmann mehr Gutes getan, als wir drei zusammen, die wir hier in diesem schiefen Zimmer sitzen…. Wenn ich ihne schlecht nenne, so darum, weil er das Gute ebenso au seiner Laune, aus einem Einfall tut wie das Schlechte, welches ich ihm zutraue. Er wird nie das Böse tun, um etwas zu erreichen, wie andere ihre Verbrechen begehen, um Geld zu besitzen, eine Frau zu erobern oder Macht zu gewinnen, er wird es tun, wenn es sinnlos ist, vielleicht, den bei ihm sind immer zwei Dinge möglich, das Schlechte und das Gute, und der Zufall entscheidet.267 This type of behavior is truly nihilistic if not diabolic. For someone to commit acts of good, in greater quantity than the average person, just in order to enhance his own pleasure and in turn to reinforce his devotion to evil, is as villainous as one can get. From a Kantian perspective, such behavior nullifies any good that Gastmann might have done. Keep in mind, however, Gastmann does not have a sense of duty associated with evil. What is important to Kant is the intention behind what one does. If one does good out of a sense of good will or beneficence, then one is on the right track, as Kant has mentioned that a good will is inherently good. Even if a person helps people because it makes the person feel better about herself or himself, then this is still on the right track, even if it does not have “moral worth,” since it is not done from duty.

Gastmann’s brand of philanthropy is different in that he only does good either as a type of experiment or adrenaline rush, or to fuel his other more secret, more villainous agendas. In this way, his intention is the opposite of that of a good Kantian hero. He intends that which is harmful to others and beneficial to himself. The writer continues, “kommen wir auf Gastmann

266 Ibid., 82. 267 Ibid., 82.

137 zurück, Kommissär, zu diesem einen ‘Pol des Bösen. Bei ihm ist das Böse nicht der Ausdruck einer Philosophie oder eines Triebes, sondern seiner Freiheit: der Freiheit des Nichts.”268 Here is a type of inverse of conventional morality. Gastmann does not adhere to any sort of credo, philosophy, or cause. He simply wants the freedom to exist in a moral vacuum, to exist in a type of void. A Kantian can interpret this moral vacuum as a state of nature. Remember that the only actual crime that it is possible to commit while a community dissolves into a state of nature is to perpetuate the state of nature. This of course makes him a very different villain than Kohler who at least had a notion of a cause. Gastmann seems to want freedom only to violate the freedom of everyone else. He is perhaps one of the most uniformly immoral of villains one might see in a detective novel, and yet so little is known about him. Only that night on the

Bosphorus with Bärlach gives us the reader a direct window into his soul. Kantian analysis might enhance our understanding of Gastmann’s villainy.

Gastmann as Kantian Villain

Just as I have evaluated Kohler as a villain using Kantian ideas, so can I evaluate Gastmann.

Recall one of the main arguments for why one could assert that Bärlach is good is that he possesses a good will. It is possible to classify Bärlach and Gastmann not merely as polar opposites but as truly inverse regarding this trait. Recall what Kant said in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: “It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.”269 Bärlach has such a will. It is what drove him to do his duty as a detective and to adhere to the side of law and

268 Ibid., 83. 269 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 59.

138 order. Even if Bärlach falls from Kantian style grace at the end of the book, he has always been motivated by a good will. The reader knows, however, from the scene in which Bärlach and

Tschanz are talking with the writer, that Gastmann is not in possession of a good will. In fact, he is a pure nihilist who does good and evil at the same time or in concordance simply on a whim.

He acts according to his own pleasure. Remember what Kant said about talents. To paraphrase,they are not inherently good and can be used for evil.270

Gastmann is cunning, witty, and charming, and the reader learns that he uses these traits to influence the world for his own pleasure. Something that is perplexing when first reading the story, and without having uncovered Gastmann’s true nature, is how he supports the community in the small town of Lamboing. This city, or town, is his home town. After having travelled the world, he returns to it. We learn in his conversation with Bärlach that Gastmann was born to a negligent young woman in Lamboing in the midst of poverty, and that he ran away one night to seek his own fortune. When he returns, he fails to keep a low profile. A local policeman who is being interviewed by Tschanz mentions that Gastmann seems to be the nicest and the most well-liked member of the canton in which Lamboing is located.271 In fact,

Gastmann tips extravagantly at restaurants and pays the taxes for the entire population of

Lamboing.272 Does he do this out of the goodness of his own heart? This is highly unlikely. In his conversation with Bärlach, he specifically mentions that he does good “wenn ich Lust dazu habe.”273 In a sense, he only pays taxes and helps people with extravagant tips out of a sense of vanity. Kant mentions after all that “a good will is not good because of what it effects or

270 Kant, 59. 271 Durrenmatt, 41. 272 Ibid. 273 Ibid., 70.

139 accomplishes…it is good through willing alone--that is, good in itself.”274 Two of the gifts that

Gastmann have been given are charm and the ability to feign a type of innate sophistication. He has convinced people that he must be clean because of all he has accomplished. He does not have a good will in the sense that he is only concerned with what it accomplishes. His state of being is calculated and part of an image that he projects for his own purposes. There are a myriad of reasons as to why Gastmann is a Kantian villain. The greatest is that he perpetuates and lives in a state of nature for the fun of it. He began this course of action with the bet in

Turkey. In addition, while we do not know his specific crimes, we know that he is capable of any and all crimes, according to the writer. If this is the case, he is using everyone around him who seems to be infatuated with him for his own purposes. He ensares von Schwendi, for example, convincing him that he is a good man. In addition, Gastmann torments Bärlach for whatever reason. These facts would lend evidence to the fact that he violates the formula of humanity. I will discuss this further.

Gastmann uses People

One of his protectors is the lawyer and well-connected politician, Von Schwendi, who, as was demonstrated earlier, browbeats Lutz into leaving Gastmann alone. Von Schwendi is convinced of Gastmann’s character for several reasons. When Tschanz asks about it, Von Schwendi replies,

“Sein hochvertreter Klient, knurrte der Oberst, besitze nun einmal das nötige menschliche

Format dazu. Als jahrelanger Gesandter Argentiniens in China genieβe er das Vertrauen der fremden Macht und als ehemaliger Verwaltungspräsident des Blechtrusts jenes der

274 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 60.

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Industriellen. Auβerdem wohne er in Lamboing.275 The thing is, it is all a lie. He is not from

Argentina and probably never was an ambassador, although we cannot be sure because he is a highly capable person. Von Schwendi has further information about him, in that he refused to be inducted into the French Academy. Again, we know from what the writer said that

Gastmann has accomplished more good than everyone in the room put together. We also learn that this is all vanity. One of the things that should alert the reader’s attention from a Kantian perspective is that Gastmann is using everyone for his own purposes. Recall the practical imperative, or the formula of humanity, one of the formulae of the categorical imperative on which the idea for the Kingdom of Ends is built. “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time an end.”276 Gastmann violates this imperative worse than any we have seen thus far. Kohler certainly used people, but at least he had a redeeming quality, that he wanted to get revenge for his daughter. Gastmann has no such excuse, and we know also that he violates this principle on a daily basis. The industrialists, the politicians, Von Schwendi, are all tools for the cultivation of his own vanity. It is important to consider the fact that more is at stake than people simply being seduced into being used for the purposes of evil. To violate the Commonwealth, or Kingdom of Ends, breaks down the social contract. People are no longer in a state of cooperation and rational decision making, but are in grave danger of being in a state of nature, where nothing is safe.

275 Durrenmatt, 53. 276 Kant, 91.

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A Question of Duty

One thing to consider is that duty is the basis of all of Kant’s moral apparatus. Kant says toward the beginning of the Metaphysics of Morals, “A deed is right or wrong in general insofar as it conforms with duty or is contrary to it. The duty itself in terms of its content or origin, may be of any kind.”277 How can one solve this conundrum? Kohler, again, had a sense of duty toward his daughter. Spät had a sense of duty toward justice in general. Bärlach as well. He did in fact use Tschanz to kill Gastmann and that is inexcusable. However, it is also the case that Bärlach is devoted to his detective work and to justice. This is proven by the fact that he values catching

Gastmann more than he values his own life, knowing that the deadline for his surgery is just days away. Gastmann is not devoted to anything except his own vanity and pleasure. I cannot just say that he fails at his duty. I must assert that he has no concept of duty at all. He is not eligible for even being considered to be within this spectrum of good and evil. Granted, ideas of good and evil, as stated in the previous chapter, differ depending on the person who uses those concepts. What we know about Gastmann, as stated before, is that he does good and evil on a whim. Doing good only as a thought experiment or a type of vain pleasure nullifies any sense of duty one has toward the act. This is why I restated the quotation from Kant above. Gastmann’s deeds are contrary to duty and thus wrong. Also, consider again that by being a nihilist and a murderer, Gastmann is perpetuating a microcosm of the state of nature, which is also immoral.

This is why the writer called him a nihilist. This is why Gastmann pushed the man off the bridge decades ago and drowned him in front of young Bärlach’s eyes. This is also why Gastmann chose to torment Bärlach for four decades. In turn, by not qualifying for being related to duty or

277 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 16.

142 lack thereof, Gastmann does not qualify for choosing his own categorical imperative. To choose one’s operating principle, or maxim, requires a few things, as we have seen before. First, one must choose a maxim that does not violate the rights of everyone else. In order to accomplish this it must be able to be universalized. Second, whether or not someone possesses a good will, duty and respect for the law will help a person adhere to one’s own maxim. There are even ways to excuse a good willed person who breaks his or her categorical imperative. As has been shown with the three main Kantian scholars earlier in this chapter, if a positive duty, such as saving a life, trumps a negative duty, such as not stealing or lying, that person can be redeemed from within a Kantian framework. Gastmann has neither of these abilities. Hence he violates the social contract altogether and enters into a state of nature. He has failed to enter a commonwealth or engage in a civil contract. Keep in mind what Kant said about this state in general. “Human beings do one another no wrong at all when they feud among themselves; for what holds for one holds in turn for the other, as if by mutual consent. But in general they do wrong in the highest degree by willing to be and remain in a condition that is not rightful, that is, in which no one is assured of what is his against violence.”278 Does Gastmann really exist in a state of nature, however? It helps to clarify, “It is true that the state of nature need not, just because it is natural, be a state of injustice , of dealing with one another only in terms of the degree of force each has. But it would still be a state devoid of justice in which when rights are in dispute, there would be no judge competent to render a verdict having rightful force.”279

Herein lies the secret to understanding Gastmann’s own brand of being in a state of nature. He does not cause all of society to break down. There is no judge that can capture or deter

278 Ibid., 86. 279 Ibid., 90.

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Gastmann. He does what he wants, when he wants. It is for this reason that he is not really above the law, but more in a type of juridical vacuum. One of the ways in which he perpetuates the state of nature is to seduce others into valorizing and protecting him. He has an ongoing shield from judgement in the form of people like Von Schwendi and the industrialists. Whether they think he is actually virtuous or not, he is profitable for them. Also, Gastmann damns

Bärlach by dragging him into his world and making Bärlach obsess over him. This is an aspect of

Gastmann’s vanity. True virtue is different than the kind which Gastmann cultivates. Remember that we have a duty to raise ourselves up from our animal nature to a type of humanity.280 This is another way in which Gastmann fails to be virtuous. He is not only unable to rise above his animal nature; he actually does not care. He also drags everyone else into his own world for his own pleasure. How can one compare Gastmann to Kohler? It seems that Gastmann is much more frightening and dangerous than Kohler was. Gastmann seems to radiate malevolence in ways that Kohler did not. Kohler had a purpose behind his actions. Even if he used people, even if he ruined Spät’s career, he still seemed to have motivations for what he was doing that made sense or could be sympathized with. Kohler had aspects of his personality that are somewhat understandable. He is not a good person, but might be considered a good father. Gastmann owes allegiance to nobody. He is almost a Faustian figure, a new Mephisto, in that he ruins lives merely for the fun of it. Mephisto was more than happy to tempt Faust, as was Gastmann to tempt those around him. The interesting thing here is that we already knew without Kantian analysis that Gastmann was bad. What changes is that we know he exists in a state of greatest moral vacuum, namely the Kantian state of nature. He perpetuates this evil willingly. Thus we

280 Ibid, 151.

144 can be sure that Gastmann is the most villainous of all. We can also find it terribly unfortunate that Bärlach, who has the potential to be a great Kantian hero, was dragged down with him.

The bet that the made with Gastmann was a bet with the devil. By becoming the Richter,

Bärlach lost that which he had been maintaining for forty years prior to the story, which is his sense of juridical fairness. Being a vigilante was not the best of choices. At the same time, he knew that Gastmann had to be stopped, and so sacrificed himself in the process. Either way,

Gastmann becomes even more villainous, both from a conventional standpoint and from a

Kantian perspective.

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Chapter 3: Onward to the Cold War

Introduction: How does Spy Fiction differ from detective fiction?

In the past two chapters I have focused on the narrative style of detective fiction. In all forms of detective fiction, there are heroes, usually the in the form of the police or the detectives. There are also villains who usually stand out in some way. In the Dürrenmatt texts there have been two villains who are exceedingly sophisticated, charismatic, and powerful in a socio-economic sense. The important thing to consider was that on one axis of measurement, Kohler and

Gastmann could be conventional villains. Then, I argued that Kohler actually had some justification for his actions, in terms of a sense of duty toward his daughter. At the same time,

Kohler violated too many aspects of the categorical imperative to qualify as a good Kantian.

Gastmann was much worse from a Kantian perspective, in that he was unconcerned with any standards of morality whatsoever, and ultimately existed in and perpetuated a Kantian state of nature. The fundamental aspects of the narrative go beyond the murder in question and solving the riddle of who killed whom and why. The heroes, however dysfunctional, embody the quest for justice. As I have shown in the works of Dürrenmatt scholars such as William Gillis, justice is often out of the reach of human beings. Luck, chance, and according to some scholars, divine favor is just as important in achieving justice. This is why Roger Crockett, focuses on the name

“Tschanz,” a character who embodies random chance. Conventional villains are selfish people who make use of those around them for their own ends. As I move on to spy fiction, things change. Instead of a hero chasing a villain, there are conflicting sides of the world engaged in conflicting ideologies, and there really are not heroes, nor villains, in any conventional sense of the word. There are opposing political causes, double agents who are betraying their friends

146 and colleagues for whatever reason, and most importantly, in the case of the included novels by John le Carré, a world in a state of war. The two novels in this chapter will be

Tinker,Tailor,Soldier,Spy, and Smiley’s People. Le Carré paints a fascinating picture in his introduction to the third book in his acclaimed Karla Trilogy, in which the protagonist, George

Smiley, of British Intelligence (the Circus) is pitted against Karla, of Russian intelligence,

(Moscow Center). The reader witnesses the war between the West and East in the form of

England’s MI6 vs. Russia’s KGB. Le Carré provides explanation in the following statement:

“Spying, in all its different forms, was after all what the cold war had for a battlefield, and the spies were its ground troops. Hot wars like Korea and Vietnam might come and go, but spying was a continuum.”281 In a sense, one can look at the Cold War as a type of world war which never went fully hot. By employing spies, both poles of the conflict were able to engage in warfare without creating a world war or hot war. This does not change the fact that people were scared to death of the possibility. A student of history need only recall the Cuban Missile

Crisis to understand why. It was this fear that fed the Cold War itself. Le Carré continues, “The obsession of the two great economic systems with each other’s identity, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses had produced by the 1970’s a state of mutual watchfulness and paranoia that seemed to know no bounds. Each side was ready to pay any sum, take any risk, tell any lie, to gain a seeming intelligence advantage over the other.”282 Both sides were terrified of the other.

Le Carré says further, “It is no wonder that, when the players were finally able to look at one another’ cards, it turned out that each had vastly exaggerated the other’s strategic

281 John le Carré, Smiley’s People (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), ix. 282 Ibid., ix.

147 capability.”283 This may be comforting in that another world war may have been less likely than was feared, but at the same time it is frightening that the intelligence war was more like the first World War, in which both sides occupied trenches and made very little overall progress toward “winning.” Le Carré provides even more scathing criticism of the “war between intelligence services,” between opposing Blocs, as “the most sterile, the least productive, and the most addictive all the games spies play, since it neither enlightens nor benefits the real world which gives them their daily bread, and turns the basically very simple trade of espionage into a never-ending maze of mirrors to which only the professionals are admitted, and nobody looks the wiser.”284 Thus what the reader might find here is an inner circle of soldiers fighting a war of which the civilians, namely, non-spies, might be completely unaware. The Cold War affected everyone, however. Arthur Hammond states,

Critics have argued that the Cold War was the guiding influence on all major forms of cultural and philosophical expression in the period. Tobin Siebers, defining the Cold War as ‘the story of our skepticism about endings, intentions, interpretations, and calculations concerning numbers, troop movements, weapons, negotiations, and claims to truth and falsehood’, charts its influence both on the styles and concerns of postmodernism and on the fascination with paradox, ambiguity, and indeterminacy exhibited by literary theories from New Criticism to poststructuralism.285 There is another thing to consider about the Cold War and espionage as well. John L. Cobbs mentions, “One thing le Carré repeatedly points out is that, although institutions may kill for power or pride or sport, people pay in suffering and death. Agents die more often than other people, and often more unpleasantly, but there are plenty of victims in the overt world too.”286

283 Ibid. 284 Ibid., x. 285 Arthur Hammond, “The Twilight of Utopia: British Dystopian Fictiona and the Cold War,” The Modern Language Review 106, no. 3 (July, 2011): 662, accessed May 29 , 2017 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/modelangrevi.106.3.0662. 286 John L. Cobbs, Understanding John Le Carré, (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 22.

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Thus it goes almost without saying how significant the Cold War was for shaping culture. I will show, especially in Smiley’s People, the type of collateral damage that occurs as a result of the conflict between the Circus and Moscow Centre. Is it possible yet, to make an overall evaluation as to whether this war was just or unjust? After all, if one side had not engaged in spycraft, the other side might have gained an unfair advantage. The interesting thing about Le Carré is that even though he is judgmental in the introduction to his book, he is really just telling a story that needed to be told. John L. Cobbs points out what sets Le Carrés spy fiction apart. “One moral distinction that is very clear in le Carré’s novels is that between individuals and institutions. If people hold to recognition of the value of human beings, and of love between them, then moral behavior is possible.”287 It is still my goal to determine the moral or immoral worth of the conduct of characters in genre fiction. As before, I will work with Kantian analysis.

A Kantian Introduction

As said before, spy fiction in general creates a type of moral grey area that is difficult to navigate from any perspective, let alone a Kantian one. Some things to consider are that Kant wants all nations to end the state of war and join together in a commonwealth. This is difficult to do when two nations are engaged in cold warfare. Kant describes the state of war in the

Metaphysics of Morals, but has an interesting take on spy craft in his discussion.

A state against which war is being waged is permitted to use any means of defense except those that would make its subjects unfit to be citizens, for it would then also make itself unfit to qualify, in accordance with the rights of nations, as a person in the relations of states (as one who would enjoy the same rights as others.) Means of defense that are not permitted include: using its own subjects as spies, using them or even foreigners as assassins, or poisoners (among whom so-called snipers who lie in

287 Ibid., 30.

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wait to ambush individuals, might well be classed); or using them merely for spreading false reports—in a word, using such underhanded means as would destroy trust requisite to establishing lasting peace in the future.288

There are a couple of things that I would like to consider here. In a state of war, as Kant says, all is permissible except those methods listed above. By being unfit to be citizens, he means a state forcing its own citizens to violate the Kingdom of Ends and in turn the categorical imperative.

Spying and poisoning cannot be universalized, because of the underhanded nature of such tactics. These tactics are problematic because they endanger lasting peace. Remember that the

Commonwealth, or Kingdom, is formed from and strengthened by people operating under the categorical imperative together. Kant’s wants to show in the “Doctrine of Right,” in the

Metaphysics of Morals, how nations themselves can leave the state of war and join a league of nations. The problem is that spying and assassinations undermine the potential for future relations between nations. The question is, can one still focus on these same issues in contemporary times? Burleigh T. Wilkins mentions that “Kant’s ultimate hope lay not in the formation of a single world government, but in a federation of states, a federation which would be furthered by states committed to what Kant called ‘republicanism,’ which corresponds roughly to what s we have come to call liberal democracy.”289 Expanding on that, Onora O’Neill interprets what Kant, and future neo-Kantians think is optimal, “Both Rawls and Kant advance what may be loosely called a semi-cosmopolitan view of just institutions: neither endorses a world state, but each thinks that justice requires more than can be delivered by the internal

288 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 117. 289 Burleigh T. Wilkins, “Kant on International Relations,” The Journal of Ethics 11, no. 2 (June 2007): 147, accessed September 23, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20728500.

150 institutions of states.”290 In the Cold War, there were a couple of main alliances between nations. In the West, there was NATO and its capitalist, liberal democracies, and then there was the East, including East Germany, the Soviet Union, and other nations beyond the Iron Curtain.

This was described in part as the Warsaw Pact. Wilkins mentions that while there was conflict between East and West, communist nations did not fight each other and liberal democracies did not fight each other despite the fact that there was conflict that did not lead to war between nations like China and the Soviet Union.291 The United Nations is an approximation of the type of cooperation that Kant and other Kantians are describing. Kant did not wish for a single nation, but a cooperation between different sovereign nations. But is spying as bad as

Kant says? Recall that le Carré claimed in the forward of his book that spies were the soldiers in an ongoing Cold War wherein hot wars appeared in passing. If the war of intelligence was not happening, would the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact have turned into a world war? Did it prevent a greater hot war from taking place? In terms of spying and assassination,

Kant is worried about trust being undermined; “in a word, using such underhanded means as would destroy the trust requisite to establishing a lasting peace in the future.”292The thing to consider is, even if the East and West were on opposite sides of a Cold War, this was better than a complete lack of alliances or nation-states at all. As Burleigh Wilkins mentions, “What

Kant wrote, however, was that all states are an improvement over the state of nature and that all states have a juridical equality which protects them from intervention by other states.”293

290 Onora O’Neill, “Bounded and Cosmopolitan Justice,” Review of International Studies 26, How Might We Live? Global Ethics in a New Century (Dec. 2000): 46, accessed September 23rd. 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097711. 291 Wilkins, 148. 292 Kant, 117. 293 Wilkins, 152.

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The Cold War sits on both sides of this argument. Even if there was espionage warfare occurring, the foundations for peace were there. The difficulty in evaluating spies from a

Kantian perspective is that Kant forbids spying. Le Carré himself mentioned that both sides of the conflict were paranoid and convinced that the other side had a greater capability to do harm than it really did. If spying created paranoia and paranoia perpetuated a state of war between the West and East, then one can see how spying would be problematic. It seems prudent here to discuss Kant’s ideas about the rights of nations to leave a state of war and enter a commonwealth. One ongoing theme in this chapter will be determining whether heroes such as George Smiley can qualify as Kantian figures even though spying is forbidden. Part of the solution to the problem is adapting Kant to an era that he might never have foreseen.

The Right of Nations

Kant distinguishes in all cases of politics between the state of nature, or war, and a state of peace. To begin:

However well-disposed and law abiding men might be, it still lies a priori in the rational idea of such a condition (one that is not rightful) that before a public lawful condition is established individual human beings, peoples, and states can never be secure against violence from one another, since each has its own right to do what seems right and good to it and not to be dependent upon another’s opinion about this. So, unless it wants to renounce any concepts any concepts of right, the first thing it has to resolve upon is the principle that it must leave the state of nature, in which each follows its own judgement, unite itself with all others (with which it cannot avoid interacting), subject itself to a public lawful external coercion, and so enter into a condition in which it what is to be recognized as belonging to it is determined by law and is allotted to it by adequate power (not its own but an external power); that is, it ought above all else to enter a civil condition.294

294 Kant, 89-90.

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In interpreting this quotation, one should look at nations as corporeal beings with the same rights as human beings, as they too should be part of a commonwealth, or Kingdom of Ends. If you can’t help being around each other and sharing space with each other, you should enter into a situation where everyone’s own freedom is not compromised. In order to avoid conflict based on shared space and borders, nations need to enter a state of peace and create a cosmopolitan commonwealth. Although nations are allowed to defend themselves, a state of war is not optimal. It approaches a state of nature, which is an inherently amoral state. But to perpetuate the state of nature, or in the nations case, a state of war, does wrong and harm in the utmost. Essentially, avoiding entering a league of nations is a crime that outweighs what happens within the finite space of war itself. The subset of permissible acts made in self- defense has less gravity than the imperative to join together in a commonwealth. In this chapter I will be relating these issues to how the Cold War is portrayed in le Carré’s spy fiction.

One easy option is to think of the United Nations, which rose from the ashes and conflict of

World War II. The hope was that by coming together in a league of nations, future war on such a scale could be avoided. The problem is that nations were polarized into NATO and the

Warsaw Pact, whose end result was to cause the Cold War. This however, is not the ultimate form of progress from a Kantian perspective. They were justified in attempting to form alliances with nations similar to themselves, but creating two political giants just perpetuated the state of war/ state of nature to critical levels.

The final thing to consider before I begin the analysis of the story is the presence of double agents and spies within spy organizations. As always, duty and reverence for duty is going to be a significant factor in the discussion. I interpret moral grey areas in the story and in the spy

153 fiction genre itself due to the nature of spy craft in general. For example, one of the characters in the story, Peter Guillam, is in charge of the scalphunters, or the assassination and sabotage branch of the Circus (MI6). At the same time, he is one of the more sympathetic characters in the story. It is easy to care about him despite the fact that he is or was in charge of assassins.

Such themes are present throughout the two novels in this chapter. As John L. Cobbs indicates,

“A willingness to kill is almost a prerequisite for spying, and Smiley’s discomfort about his part in the deaths of Dieter Frey and Bill Haydon may be interpreted as conscience by the reader but is surely weakness by the standards of a hard-shelled intelligence professional like Karla.”295

Most of the key figures present in the story, good or bad, hero or adversary, have a cause and a duty to that cause that is somehow related to politics and the citizenship associated with that country. I shall argue later that this is in question regarding the main double-agent, or mole, Bill

Haydon who has betrayed the whole Circus and all of his friends. In the case of Tinker, Tailor,

Soldier, Spy, the main players are the U.S., the Soviet Union, and then England allied with the west, trying to negotiate treacherous territory. I will be examining whether all of the characters in the story are all deontological in their approach, and that makes them all Kantian. Hence it will make it all the more difficult to determine, objectively, who are the heroes and who are the villains from a Kantian standpoint. From an objective or conventional standpoint, being a double agent is frowned upon and is downright dastardly when it comes to the betrayal of one’s colleagues. Given that the main plot device in the story of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy involves the discovery and capture of a mole, or sleeper agent working in the British

Intelligence Service for the KGB, or Moscow Centre, it is easy to feel a sense of distaste towards

295 Cobbs, 22.

154 him. It is important to remember the influence that institutions have on individuals on each side of the Cold War. John Cobbs mentions,

Le Carré (maintains) that individual human minds and lives are shaped by the political forces that act upon them…..On both sides of the divide individuals struggle to be themselves despite the dispassionate power of the institutions that mold them working relentlessly either to dehumanize them or to crush them. Those institutions are the monolithic concepts of organization which shape our world.296 This aspect of le Carré’s work is important to understand. The reader is shown the conflicts between people who are enemies but each of whom are devoted in one way or another to whichever monolith they are aligned with. Even though I will consider the characters from a

Kantian, deontological perspective, John Cobbs does try to remind the reader that le Carré despised traitors. Cobbs describes a real-life double agent in British intelligence who defected to Russia, named Kim Philby, in 1963. Cobbs says that le Carré can be quoted as having a loathing for him.297 I can draw parallels, as Cobbs does, between the real traitor and the double-agent in the story, Bill Haydon.298 In this way one can contrast conventional ideas of Bill

Haydon as a villain versus Kantian ideas.

Plot Summary

The key feature of the whole story centers around the supposed presence of a mole, or a sleeper agent planted in MI6, the British Intelligence agency, which le Carré calls the Circus. The reader learns of the presence of the mole in different ways. The first way happens before the story begins, in involving Control, the name for the head of the Circus, and George Smiley, his

296 Ibid., 23. 297 Ibid.,26. 298 Ibid., 103.

155 deputy. Control is convinced that there is a mole, a double agent, somewhere in the upper echelons of the Circus. He is certain that it is one of the top five. The possibilities are George

Smiley himself, Toby Esterhase, a Hungarian who is in charge of the lamplighters, (surveillance and espionage), Roy Bland, Bill Haydon, who is a type of renaissance man, as well as Percy

Alleline, who is always at odds with Control. Control secretly assigns Jim Prideaux, an expert in the Czech language and culture, to a project called Operation Testify. Control makes Prideaux aware of the presence of a mole and tells him to report to nobody but Control himself. They come up with a series of code-words. They take an old English kids’ song, “Tinker, Tailor,

Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief,” and use it to label each of the top

Circus members. George Smiley is suspected just like the rest and is labeled “Beggar Man.” The mission is to infiltrate Czechoslovakia (this is during the height of the Cold War in the seventies), and pick up a Czech general who would provide Prideaux with information on who the mole might actually be. All Prideaux has to do is send one word back to Control—the name of the nursery rhyme which coincides with the corresponding traitor. The problem is that the whole thing goes wrong. The Russian and Czech authorities are already waiting for Prideaux, and while he is trying to escape, he is shot in the back. Eventually he is tortured for information for quite a while, having been moved from prison to prison, until at the very end he reveals

Control’s plan. The interesting thing is that they are already aware of everything is going to say before he even says it. He is then sent back to England and retired, wanting to get out of the spy business completely. The plan has gone so poorly that Control is ousted, along with Smiley, and the other members of the top group take over. What does not add up, however, is why the

Russians and Czechs are waiting for Jim and why they already know about what he has to tell

156 them. Also, why is Jim silenced and dismissed, and paid off by Toby Esterhase when he comes back? The case seems to be closed, until a year later, Ricki Tarr, an agent stationed in Hong

Kong, flees to England to meet with George Smiley, Peter Guillam, and the minister overseeing the Circus, Oliver Lacon. Ricky trusts Smiley, and Peter Guillam is his handler. To explain,

Guillam is the head of the scalp-hunters, who are the assassins, burglars, and overall unpleasant aspect of the service. Ricki Tarr is one of the scalp-hunters, and has learned from information that he obtained from a Russian intelligence agent who fell in love with him, that there is indeed a mole in the Circus, that it is in fact an upper echelon member, and that everyone is in danger. At that point Oliver Lacon recruits Smiley to investigate and uncover the mole, financing Smiley independently of the Circus itself. There may be a possibility that the mole is also related to Merlin from Project Witchcraft, who provides fantastic intelligence to the Circus while acting as a double agent sending back miniscule information to Moscow. Due to the sheer volume and quality of the intel, anyone who inquires about it is given a gag order, and Ricki Tarr is also ordered to shut up and is put on the black list. George Smiley conducts investigation on his own with the help of other Circus members and former members, and learns that there is indeed a mole, run by Karla, his nemesis in Moscow Centre. Karla is a formidable adversary and is in many ways the equivalent of Smiley on the Russian side. Smiley has crossed paths with him before. The mole is codenamed “Gerald” by Tarr. Colonel Polyakov, a Russian diplomat, is

Gerald’s direct handler and so when we learn that the mole and Merlin, a source of vast amounts of information and intel, are the same, we know that Polyakov is a triple agent—a

Soviet agent claiming to be a double agent for the Circus, who is actually in truth working for

Karla and using Merlin to spy from within the Circus. Those who were so fanatical about making

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Merlin untouchable, due to his reliability as a source of intelligence, are equally as shocked to learn that Merlin is actually the combination of Polyakov the triple agent, and Bill Haydon as

Gerald. Bill Haydon is the right- hand man to Percy Alleline, who had ousted Control from the position as head of the Circus and was the biggest proponent of Merlin’s importance to British intelligence. At the end of the story we learn that Bill Haydon has always loved England but hates the United States, and felt that he could support the socialist cause and specifically

Russia, while at the same time not harming England. The problem is that he sent his friend and former lover, Jim Prideaux, into a trap in Czechoslovakia, knowing full well that he would be in danger. In fact, the mission is a fake and Prideaux has suffered needlessly. It is discovered at the very end of the story that before Bill Haydon can be sent back to Russia to start a new life in exchange for British spies in a captured state, that someone has broken his neck when the guards were not watching. The reader is not shown for sure, but it could be Jim Prideaux, who has the skills and the motive to kill Haydon. In the mini-series on BBC the viewer actually sees this scene taking place.299 At this point I shall delve deeper into the story by examining each of the major characters.

George Smiley as an excellent Spy

Evaluating Smiley first from a non-Kantian perspective brings out what is distinct about Smiley and others as Kantian heroes or villains. The goal is to show how a Kantian perspective enhances and reshapes how one can view heroism or villainy. The important thing to consider about George Smiley and the lead members of the Circus in general is that James Bond style

299 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, directed by John Irvin, (Orginally Aired 1979, on the BBC. DVD, 2003, BBC Worldwide Ltd.)

158 espionage does not occur here. One gets the impression throughout the “Karla Trilogy” that

Smiley is one of the best spies in the Circus and it is mostly because he is dedicated, patient, and cerebral. Hand to hand combat and guns are left up to two branches of the Circus. The first is the baby-sitters. They are the body-guards who provide the actual muscle needed when spies are in potential danger. The resident baby-sitter in the story is Fawn, who is an expert in martial arts and protects Smiley, Guillam, and Lacon, but does not play much of a role beyond that. The second group of operatives who use guns and cloak and dagger type tactics are the scalp- hunters. They engage in sabotage, assassination, and burglary. Another main group is the lamplighters, who do the main work of surveillance, bugging rooms, and the like. Each of these groups are run by top members of the Circus. George Smiley does not run any of these groups.

He uses his intellect and his training for his spycraft. One of the things that make him classic upper echelon material is that he is a scholar. The reader is shown in the beginning of the story how he is a Grimmelshausen scholar, and has always used his studies in German literature as a way of keeping himself grounded.300 Somehow Smiley is not satisfied. After the miserable failure of Operation Testify and Control being ousted as a result, Smiley has been forced into retirement. He is bored beyond belief. One learns throughout the course of the trilogy that the top Circus operatives were mostly all recruited from Oxford, including Smiley. Before having been recruited, Smiley would have wished to be an academic, or at least a full-time scholar of

German literature. It is shown a bit later in the story though, that this is not enough. He is dedicated to his work more than anything. After having spent a year in exile, Smiley realizes he is miserable. He is very much an intellectual, but he prefers to use his intellect for spying. Mark

300 John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) pg. 20 is the first mention of Grimmelshausen.

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Fisher notes an important characteristic that spies possess in general. “It is clear that Smiley is driven—driven by something which will not allow him to ever recline into happy retirement any more than he could settle into the pleasures of conjugal life, were they available to him.”301

Smiley, even though he is growing old and is close to retirement age, simply cannot manage it.

He has, as mentioned in the quotation, equally as many problems with his marriage. He cares about his wife but he often puts his career first.

One of the important things to consider is the fact that he has lived a lifetime by his wits and his considerable memory. He is a very intelligent person and has been trained to watch his back at all times. A spy is conditioned to be careful and to observe her or his surroundings to a fault. He cannot go back to his days of being an intellectual student at Oxford without having the thrill of espionage to channel his mental faculties. How is Smiley Kantian in this instance? There is of course evidence that he is dedicated to his job. He is driven, he has committed all of his mental resources to his craft. Mark Fisher places the spy in an amoral state of being. “It is the beyond- good-and-evil agent, the one who acts without performing complex moral calculations, the one cannot belong to the “normal” world, who allows ordinary folk to sleep easily.”302 Here then, if I were to leave interpretation here, the spy is not a good Kantian. The spy might support a cause, but does not allow moral judgements to enter into practice. That is left to the civilians. Fisher continues, “Yet duty is only the pretext; there is also the matter of the deep libidinal lure of this no-man’s-land for outsiders like Leamas and Smiley. Like writers, they listen and observe; like

301 Mark Fisher, “The Smiley Factor,” The Film Quarterly 65, no.2 (Winter 2011): 39, accessed February 28th 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/fq.2011.65.2.37. 302 Ibid., 40.

160 actors, they play parts.”303 This part of Fisher’s argument would be contrary to Kant’s deontological definition of moral behavior, that which is governed by duty. If duty is only a pretext, then there is no room for Kantian morality. Fisher concludes with this argument, “But, for spies, there are no limits to these roles; one cannot simply step out of them and return to the warm, because everything—including inner life itself, all its wounds and private shames— starts to feel like cover, a series of props.”304 This argument indicates that not only do spies care very little internally about duty, they are false to the core and have no real identity of their own besides what spycraft could give them. This argument is strong and difficult to argue against.

John Cobbs is helpful in this case. Mark Fisher’s was not just discussing Smiley, but also other spies in Le Carré’s world. One of them includes Alec Leamas, from the Spy who in Came in from the Cold. Cobbs thinks that Smiley is different than Leamas or other spies for a significant reason. “What distinguishes Smiley from all his fictional forebears, and from virtually every other important character in detective and spy fiction, is his ability to love.”305 Cobbs contrasts him especially with James Bond, who only treats those around him as assets and feels pure eros for the women in his life. Cobbs maintains that “at Smiley’s core lies his devotion to his unfaithful wife, Ann. Further, he is highly sensitive to love in others, particularly his enemies. It is he who understands and respects the attraction of Else Fennan to Dieter Frey, sympathizes with and helps Liz Gold when she is grieving for the lost Leamas, and feels that Bill Haydon’s

‘unforgiveable crime is hurting Ann.”306 To clarify, the first two examples are from other Smiley stories, but in the case of his wife, Ann, there is much to consider. Bill Haydon seduced and

303 Ibid., 40. 304 Ibid. 305 Cobbs, 95. 306 Ibid.

161 made love to Smiley’s wife on Karla's orders. Instead of hating Bill for betraying the Circus to

Russia as a mole, or double-agent, Smiley worries about his wife. Not only that, but he is unable to feel any sort of lasting anger or hatred towards Bill Haydon at all. There are a few ways in which Smiley is a good Kantian in this interpretation.

The first thing that must be said is Kant’s definition of right and wrong in the doctrine of right.

“A deed is right or wrong insofar as it conforms with duty or is contrary to it.”307 I have introduced this qualification earlier in this dissertation, but it is a good test. Does Smiley act out of duty? In this case, the answer is very strongly yes. First of all, even though he is bored with civilian life, he knows that when Oliver Lacon asks him to come out of retirement to spy on his fellow Circus operatives to find the mole, he is inheriting a big mess and a dangerous situation.

Second, even though Smiley feels betrayed when Bill Haydon, his old friend, is revealed as the mole, Smiley does not seek out a type of vengeance. He protects Bill from harm, makes sure he is safe in the interrogation facility, listens to him, and carries out his last wishes without protest.

As Mark Fisher mentions, “Anger is one of the emotions that Smiley feels at the moment of

Haydon’s exposure, but it is not the dominant one.”308 Fisher does not interpret Smiley from a

Kantian perspective. He rather interprets him from a perspective of repressed emotions. John

Cobbs presents a different picture in that Smiley is one of the few spies who can love. In fact, another way in which Smiley displays being Kantian at the end of the novel is by protecting

Haydon from the other Circus members, like Peter Guillam, from harming him physically. Bill

Haydon is, from the non-Kantian perspective, a proper villain. Cobbs mentions that he is

“unequivocally the dragon, the villain, the Antichrist, and Archimago. He is Smiley’s foil in every

307 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 16. 308 Fisher, 39.

162 way.”309 By suppressing his emotions, Smiley is being a good Kantian. Cobbs comments,

“Guillam’s anger, when Bill Haydon is caught, when Smiley has to caution him not to kill Haydon in his rage, derives from Guillam’s long admiration of Bill as the ‘the torch-bearer for a certain kind of antiquated romanticism.”310 The important point is that Smiley has a lot more reason to feel betrayed than Guillam. Haydon slept with Smiley’s wife on Karla’s orders. He indirectly caused the fall of Control and led to Smiley’s temporary exile from the Circus. To protect

Haydon from harm is no easy feat in terms of the type of moral strength required. Kantian duty definitely factors in here. There is a passage in the story which shows how Smiley honors the humanity within Bill Haydon, which is one of Kant’s main imperatives. When Smiley first discovers Haydon as the mole, he says,

Then for a moment, one part of Smiley broke into open revolt against the other. The wave of angry doubt that had swept over him in Lacon’s garden, and that ever since had pulled against his progress like a worrying tide, drive him to now on to the rocks of despair, and then to mutiny: I refuse. Nothing is worth the destruction of another human being. Somewhere the path of pain and betrayal must end.311

Smiley could absolutely ruin Bill Haydon, send him away to torture and prison forever but he does not. He does not listen to his anger, he merely protects Bill out of human dignity. I have quoted from Kant in this dissertation, listing the categorical imperative before, but it is worth examining a rephrasing of it from the beginning of the Metaphysics of Morals. “A categorical imperative is one that represents an action objectively necessary and makes it necessary not indirectly, through the representation of some end that can be attained by the action, but

309 Cobbs, 101. 310 Ibid. 311 Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 356.

163 through the mere representation of this action itself (its form), and hence directly.”312 I have already provided the formula of universal law, which is one of the more classic ways of describing the categorical imperative. This description helps in interpreting this scene, because

Smiley is carrying out his duty towards Bill as a human being, duty being central to the categorical imperative, without any gain or, as Kant says, end that can be attained. The action of saving Bill is one of duty alone.

Smiley has nothing to gain by protecting Haydon from much worse treatment than he could have otherwise received. Since he has nothing to gain, there is no other motivation besides duty to the humanity in Bill. He does not want another life to be ruined. Smiley is being kind here because even in Kant’s mind, high treason is punishable by death.313 Another Kantian issue to consider also relates to this scene. During that scene at the end of the story, when Smiley and his team discover at Merlin’s safe house that Bill Haydon is the mole, Smiley very quickly and profoundly examines his life and his feelings toward his job in general.

Thus Smiley felt not only disgust, but, despite all that the moment meant to him, a surge of resentment against the institutions he was supposed to be protecting: ‘The social contract cuts both ways, you know,’ said Lacon. The Minister’s lolling mendacity, Lacon’s tight-lipped moral complacency, the bludgeoning greed of Percy Alleline: such men invalidated any contract—why should anyone be loyal to them?314 Kant asks that we know our heart, and whether it is good or evil.315 “Moral cognition of oneself, which seeks to penetrate into the depths (the abyss) of one’s heart which are quite difficult to fathom, is the beginning of all human wisdom.”316 This leads to the ultimate change from evil to

312 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 15. 313 Ibid 96. 314 Le Carré, 356-357. 315 Kant, 191. 316 Ibid.

164 good that Kant wants all of us to capable of. Smiley is plunged directly into the abyss of his heart and forced to question everything as a result of this quest to find the mole. He is Kantian because he is exploring his heart and he does indeed seek a higher moral ground in stopping any more killing from happening.

Establishing Karla

Smiley meets his match, however, in every respect, in Karla, his equivalent in Moscow Centre, or the KGB. However skilled Smiley is, he cannot crack Karla. The reader learns later that Karla is an extremely high-ranking operative in Moscow center. When Smiley first meets Karla, Smiley would have had no idea that Karla would become his future nemesis and be in charge of a spy network in western Europe. When Karla is captured, years before the current story starts,

Smiley gives his offer, “Come to the West and we can give you, within reason, a decent life.

After questioning, at which you are expected to cooperate, we can help you to a new start, a new name, seclusion, a certain amount of money. On the other hand, you can go home and I suppose they’ll shoot you or send you to a camp. Last month they sent Bykov, Shur, and

Muranov. Now why don’t you tell me your real name?”317 As Smiley continues to relate the story to Peter Guillam, one of the top-ranking Circus members who is helping Smiley find the mole, he indicates how tough Karla is. Karla remains silent throughout the whole interrogation.

Smiley describes how the heat in the prison in India is getting to him and how he is sweating like crazy. Karla does not seem to be suffering as much, even though he is unshaven, tired, and manacled. Smiley notices that Karla also manages to sit perfectly still. He does not fidget, he does not shift around, he is like a stone. This unnerves Smiley a lot. Smiley relates to Guillam

317 Le Carré, 213.

165 that at that moment he felt “that the entire responsibility of fighting the cold war had landed on my shoulders.”318 Mark Fisher describes this scene in the story.

When Smiley recounts the meeting with Karla to his younger protégé Peter Guillam, he reproaches himself for having talked too much on that memorable occasion in an Indian jail cell. Karla wins the encounter by never speaking, by becoming the blank screen that Smiley cannot on this occasion become—which makes it all the easier for Smiley to fall into the trap of projecting his own anxieties and preoccupations onto the impassive Karla.319 This proves that in that instance, Karla is the better spy. Smiley is actually compromising himself by trying to empathize with Karla.

In the novel, Smiley affects to disdain the psychoanalytic language of “projection” but, tellingly, he cannot resist using this language to describe himself; appropriately, for in the normal run of things Smiley’s art consists in cultivating a particular kind of silence— not the mere absence of chatter, but the authoritative, probing silence of the psychoanalyst.320 Smiley is extremely tough on himself and never forgives himself for his failure to get Karla to defect. Going along with Fisher’s description of the scene, Smiley can only look at the silent

Karla as a mirror for his insecurities. Le Carré is creating two poles, representing two causes, each unmovable in their own way. In a sense, polar relationships are a large part of le Carré’s project. John Cobbs says, “Every Le Carré novel is about people divided against each other and themselves in one way or another. Most obviously, these divisions are political, and the East-

West confrontation is the basis of le Carré’s books.”321 I have already discussed the division between Haydon and the rest of the Circus. The division between Karla and Smiley, however, represents not only a division between two spies, but between nations on either side of the

318 Kant, 214. 319 Fisher, 38. 320 Ibid. 321 Cobbs, 20.

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East-West conflict. The battle between Karla and Smiley is really at the heart of the story and is concluded in the third book. As Cobbs says,

These works, which conclude with Smiley’s ambivalent triumph in the last volume of The Quest for Karla in 1980, present a bleak picture of stalemate between the two major blocs, like trench warfare of World War I, with intense concentrations of effort being expended to produce relatively minor overall shifts in power. The fight between Karla and Smiley begins in the jail in India without Smiley even realizing it.

The fate of the East and West, if embodied by their spy communities, hangs on the struggle between these two spies. Cobbs describes the situation like trench warfare. A lot of energy is expended and little is gained. He also mentions, “Most of the energy of the intelligence apparatus of both sides, in fact, seems to go into struggling with each other.”322 This seems like a colossal waste of energy. The problem is that each side worries that if it does not match the effort of the other, it will falter. The entire story in this first novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, is about defending the Circus from the presence of an unnamed mole. In the conclusion of the story, the battle takes place directly between Karla and Smiley as heads of their respective operations. Cobbs says though, that “one moral distinction that is very clear in le Carré’s novels is that between individuals and institutions. If people hold to recognition of the value of human beings, and of love between them, then moral behavior is possible.”323 This is what sets Smiley apart from Karla. Smiley not only cares about his wife and his friends, but he also cares about humanity in general. Both men care about their respective institutions, however, and Karla perhaps even more so. In the interrogation of Karla in the Indian prison, it is shown how

Smiley’s veneration of humanity causes him to offer Karla a new life. The reader learns in the

322 Ibid., 21. 323 Ibid., 30.

167 story that Smiley is genuinely distressed that Karla is silent and will not accept his offer. Smiley says, “I wanted him terribly to stay… I had really set myself to keep him, to remake his life—if possible to set him up again with his wife in idyllic circumstances. To make him free, to get him out of the war for good.”324 Smiley cares about Karla because Karla is a human being. He is fulfilling his Kantian duty to beneficence toward humanity by doing so. Kant provides a good definition. “To be beneficent, that is, to promote according to one’s means the happiness of others in need, without hoping for something in return, is everyone’s duty.”325 Smiley demonstrates this beneficence not only toward Bill Haydon as mentioned before, but also toward Karla in the sense that he wants to keep Karla from being exiled back to Moscow and most likely being shot or purged. He has nothing to gain from protecting Bill, and ultimately, the fact that he tries to empathize with and treat Karla with dignity is evidence of this as well. Keep in mind again that there is a conflict not only between two spies, but between two institutions.

Karla demonstrates his dedication to Moscow Centre in the prison.

The only thing that Karla does is, when Smiley offers Karla one of his favorite cigarettes, and his lighter, Karla takes both, after hesitating. He takes permanent possession of Smiley’s lighter, and somehow this creates a type of connection between them. The lighter was a gift to Smiley from his wife Ann, and written upon it is, “To George from Ann with all my love.” 326 Smiley makes a final plea, a final appeal to reason to Karla.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘we’re getting to be old men, and we’ve spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another’s systems. I can see through the Eastern values just as you

324 Le Carré, 217-218. 325 Kant, 202. 326 Le Carré, 217.

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can see through our Western ones. Both of us, I am sure, have experienced ad nauseum the technical satisfactions of this wretched war.’327 After a lifetime of fighting the Cold War, capitalism vs. communism no longer has the same meaning to Smiley. As le Carré mentioned, the spies are the soldiers of the war, but nobody knows their name or has seen their medals. At the same time, this makes spies on either side more similar to each other than they are to the civilians of their respective nations. All of this becomes apparent in the conversation in the Indian prison between the two men. Smiley learns later that Karla gets the job of his superior, who is shot, and then is given the reigns of resurrecting his old network. Mark Fisher argues that there is more in common between Smiley and Karla than what might seem apparent.

Yet, ironically, what Smiley and Karla have in common is their inhumanity, their exile from any sort of “normal” world of human passions. When they meet in Delhi, Smiley is baffled, frustrated but also fascinated by Karla’s refusal of the appeal, unable to fathom a commitment to an abstract ideology, especially when—in Smiley’s view—it has self- evidently failed.328 Along this line of argumentation, it is understandable that Smiley has ceased to believe in ideology as much as Karla. How does this help to evaluate Karla from a Kantian perspective?

Karla seems, from a traditional perspective, like a typical villain. The reader knows that he has ruined the lives of people in the Circus by pulling strings and creating misinformation. He ordered Bill Haydon to sleep with Ann, Smiley’s wife. John Cobb creates a comparison of Karla to Smiley.

Conversely, it is simply impossible to imagine in John le Carré’s world a comparable Russian spy, one filled with compassion, reservation, and fundamental human decency. In fact, Smiley’s greatest ‘error’ as he recounts it in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,Spy, is in

327 Ibid., 219. 328 Fisher, 40.

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assuming, even temporarily, that his Russian counterpart, Karla, may have even a modicum of humanity.329 This again seems to be a good argument as to why it is difficult to sympathize or empathize with Karla. Does this make him an immoral or “bad” person though? In fact, as has already been indicated, the reader is simply dealing with two very good spies on opposite sides of two parts of the world and two ideologies. It will now be helpful to think of Karla in Kantian terms.

Karla, like any good spy, is a bit of a paradox. His most pronounced Kantian trait is duty. In fact,

Karla’s sense of duty is probably greater than most people on the Circus staff. Smiley of course feels a sense of duty, but has been shown to question his loyalty as is portrayed in the scene at the end of the story where Smiley questions his whole identity once he discovers that Bill

Haydon is the mole. Jim Prideaux quits the Circus completely and runs away to teach French at a boarding school as a result of what happened to him in Czechoslovakia. Toby Esterhase might be loyal but he is also a bit of a social climber. Karla, on the other hand, is so dedicated to

Russia that he beats Smiley’s interrogation by staying silent the whole time, and declining any offer to defect. Karla had to have known that, given all of the purges that have happened in

Moscow Centre, he could be next. There is no guarantee that he would not have been shot upon returning home. Smiley worries genuinely about the fact that Karla could also simply be shot out of punitive measures upon returning to Moscow from captivity. The reader also learns in Smiley’s People, that Karla once had a wife and daughter, but exiled his wife, because she was not dedicated enough to the cause. This level of duty is commendable from a Kantian perspective because Karla, more than just about anyone else, is fanatically loyal to the Soviet

Union and in turn to Moscow Centre. Recall what Kant wrote, that “a deed is right or wrong in

329 Cobbs, 118.

170 general insofar as it conforms with duty or is contrary to it.”330 It may sound strange to use such a simple argument to justify what Karla has done, but what little the reader has seen of Karla, that he is driven by loyalty to Russia, shows that he has been acting out of duty. Again, it would have been easy to defect and for all Smiley knows, he may have had a better quality of life.

Karla risks life and much else to go back. On the other side of the argument, is of course the formula of humanity. As I mentioned, this is the second formula which mandates that people be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to an end.331 In this case, Karla fails at being a good Kantian. He violates the formula of humanity by manipulating members of the

Circus. By ordering Bill Haydon to betray Smiley directly, in terms of seducing Ann, and also to betray Jim Prideaux, who is captured, tortured, and crippled for the rest of his life, I would say that Karla is ruthless in conventional terms. He ruins the lives of quite a few people. The ultimate question is, was it all worth it, and this is difficult to answer. The final axis for evaluating Karla in this novel has to do with deceit. Obviously, Karla orders people to lie on drastic levels. Kant is famous for mentioning that lying is not permissible and not only because it is a behavior that cannot be universalized. In the “Doctrine of Virtue” in the Metaphysics of

Morals, Kant discusses how doing so violates one’s duty to oneself as a moral being.332 Hence lying not only violates the formula of universal law and in turn the categorical imperative but also if it violates a duty to oneself as an honorable being, it violates the formula of humanity. If one adheres strictly to Kant, then this violation would doom any spy from being a perfect

Kantian hero. The thing to consider is that Kant mainly provides negative duties, meaning ones

330 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 16. 331 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 91. 332 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 175.

171 that determine what we should not do. Several more recent Kant scholars are focusing a lot on positive duties, or what one can do, for example to help another person. I have introduced these scholars in my previous chapters, but it is worth bringing up again for clarification. I mentioned before the example that Pablo Gilabert brought up, which was argued by David

Cummiskey. He talks about a “perfect negative duty that is overridden by a basic positive duty.”333 Again, a negative duty is a duty not to do something, and a positive duty is that which demands action. Cummiskey continues, “You have a duty not to steal property from others.”334

This is a negative duty. He gives the example in which a car crash has occurred, and a person needs immediate medical care, but the only available care belongs to someone else who will not loan the car. In this case, the positive duty might lead to stealing it. “Here the fulfillment of a stringent positive duty trumps the requirements of a negative duty.”335 Gilabert points out lying as having the same spectrum of moral significance. Gilabert mentions that Thomas Hill disagrees with Cummisky in certain respects in terms of interpreting Kant’s duty toward helping people, or beneficence, in terms of whether it is perfect or imperfect, but that perfect duties, such as the duty not to steal or lie,

…do have built-in exception clauses. Thus, for example, the duty not to lie does not have the simplistic structure "Never lie," but the more complex one "Never lie unless..." Hence, it makes sense to say that lying to save an innocent life does not violate the perfect duty not to lie, because that duty has built-in exceptions allowing for cases like this one.336 The best way to tie this passage into Karla is that Gilabert is writing above all about the duty toward beneficence, or helping people. It may sound strange, but despite how manipulative

333 Pablo Gilabert, “Kant and the Claims of the Poor,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81, no.2 (September 2010): 394, accessed September 23rd, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20779568. 334 Ibid.,394. 335 Ibid., 395. 336 Ibid.

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Karla has been, despite the fact that he has caused harm to the Circus, he is doing it all for the good of his own country and his own Moscow Centre. Le Carré does not provide a whole lot of psychological insight into Karla in this first book, although he provides more in the third book of the trilogy, Smiley’s People. I think however, that once a person sees the behavior of Karla, it is easy to say that he acts selflessly out of duty towards Moscow Centre and in turn acts out of beneficence toward its people. Does this make him a good Kantian, if one thinks of the idea of

“never lie, unless…?” There is a bit of a paradox, because although he clearly qualifies on the axis of duty, he does violate the formula of humanity, by causing the members of the Circus to exist in state of distrust and to fight each other. This is the paradox of the spy.

Smiley as a Kantian Hero

At this point I have already evaluated Smiley and Karla from a Kantian perspective. There always seems to be paradox. As stated earlier, the main argument in favor of the main characters, be they Smiley or Karla, as being Kantians is that they perform their actions out of duty. I do need to state here that not everyone agrees with me. It is worth stating again what

Mark Fisher says, “It is the beyond-good-and-evil agent, the one who acts without performing complex moral calculations, the one cannot belong to the “normal” world, who allows ordinary folk to sleep easily. Yet duty is only the pretext; there is also the matter of the deep libidinal lure of this no-man’s-land for outsiders like Leamas and Smiley.”337 So Fisher believes that duty is a pretext. It may very well be the case that Smiley and the others gain some sort of

337 Fisher, 40.

173 satisfaction from their job other than from duty. After all, Fisher does comment on how Smiley is restless and not content during his forced retirement. Think again of how Hennig Jensen interprets Kant,

Although acting from motives such as love, compassion, or a desire to help may often produce right acts, their doing so is accidental rather than from a concern for rightness. Furthermore, there are situations in which, for example, acting from an inclination to help someone may involve the breaking of a previous promise or the neglecting of a greater good which might have been attained.338 Of course everyone can be in danger of acting solely out of inclination and not from duty. I have already provided passages where Smiley demonstrates his devotion to duty, such as voluntarily inheriting a mess and cleaning it up, or protecting Bill Haydon from bodily harm simply because he has that right as a human being, or by trying to help Karla. In general, it is shown how Smiley faces a lot of emotional stress that can only be mitigated by duty. Karla is depicted in the third book as being a doppelganger of Smiley, and really is just his equivalent on the other side of the conflict, and thus is driven by duty as well. As John Cobbs says, “Smiley and Karla are doppelgängers—alter egos—one mind shaped by the East, the other by the West, but both the product of systems of thought and social organization that are not dissimilar, in that each exercises a tyranny over the individuals in its grasp.”339 Smiley and Karla should actually be commended if one were to base the qualification solely on duty. As shown before, however, another axis of measurement is the formula of humanity, whereby people should be treated not as a means to end but as an end in themselves.340 Smiley is in charge of operations such as sending Peter Guillam into the Circus to steal a file and thus places him in danger. He also

338 Jensen, 200. 339 Cobbs, 23. 340 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 91.

174 brings up the past with Jim Prideaux and causes him emotional distress. The thing is that Smiley cares more about people than some might think, as demonstrated by the fact that he treats both Karla and Bill Haydon very well in this story. The only other thing to consider is again, what

I mentioned earlier in this chapter, in that spies themselves are problematic. One problem is that they cannot avoid using people as a means to an end. This is a mark against them, in that I do not wish to justify violating the formula of humanity under any circumstances. Kant says, as stated earlier, that spies are in forbidden territory, along with assassins and poisoners, because they undermine the trust that is “necessary for establishing a lasting peace in the future.”341

Onora O’Neill explains Kant’s cosmopolitan goal,

For Kant a just world is one in which cosmopolitan principles of justice are realistically institutionalized, and this will be a world in which boundaries are not absent, but also one in which there are further institutional structures which support international justice between states and cosmopolitan justice for people when they interact across borders.342 If one looks at the geography of the Cold War, then one can deduce that this goal was only partially realized. The western powers, NATO, were allied with each other and the Eastern powers, the Warsaw Pact, were allied with each other, but there was conflict overall between the two monolithic political structures. From a Kantian perspective, spying might have undermined this trust. As Le Carré himself says in the introduction to Smiley’s People,

Spying, in all its different forms, was after all what the cold war had for a battlefield, and the spies were its ground troops….The obsession of the two great economic systems with each other’s identity, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses had produced by the 1970’s a state of mutual watchfulness and paranoia that seemed to know no bounds.343

341 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 117. 342 Onora O’Neill, 59. 343 Le Carré, Smiley’s People, xi.

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So not only did spying undermine trust, as per Kant’s warning, but it also became a type of warfare. The main counter-argument, which I stated earlier, is that spies have a sense of duty to their institution, as well as toward their country and sometimes its population, and thus can qualify them as being evaluated on a Kantian level. It is perhaps more difficult to evaluate them as being heroes, than it is to evaluate detectives in the same way. I would say, however, that

Smiley, in the case of this first novel, can be thought of as a Kantian hero because of his ability to feel compassion which in turn fuels his ability to venerate what Kant’s formula of humanity is based on.

Further Kantian Analysis

There is another way to evaluate both Smiley and Karla as top spies. Recall what I presented in the previous chapter regarding Bärlach. Kant mentions that a good will is one of the only things that are good without qualification, that it is good in itself. 344

As stated before, spies lie, spread misinformation, and put people in danger. This does not, however, change two things. First, that spies in this story are trying to save their country and thus save the people who live in it. Intelligence workers put themselves regularly in harm’s way for little pay and no real fame or significant recognition. Smiley puts himself in danger throughout the “Karla Trilogy” equally as much as any other operatives, and does so out of a sense of duty, which is morally worthwhile according to Kant. Think again of the scene in the prison in India. Smiley demonstrates his sense of empathy towards people in general. He is telling Peter Guillam about meeting Karla. “They brought him manacled, which seemed silly

344 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 59.

176 because he was so slight. I asked them to free his hands and when they did, he put them on the table in front of him and watched the blood come back. It must have been painful but he did not comment on it.”345 Empathy, I would argue, is a good component of a good will. Empathy allows a person to experience compassion and in turn treat people with dignity, which is a major component of what it is to be a human being. Smiley is empathizing even though he is not required to do so. This is part of having a good will. Kant has an interesting statement regarding compassion in general in the following:

There is no one, not even the most hardened scoundrel—provided only he is accustomed to use reason in other ways—who, when presented with examples of honesty in purpose, of faithfulness to good maxims, or sympathy, and of kindness towards all (even when these are bound up with great sacrifices of advantage and comfort), does not wish that he too might be a man of like spirit. He is unable to realise such an aim in his own person—though only on account of his desires and impulses; but yet at the same time he wishes to be free from these inclinations, which are a burden to himself.346 Smiley seems to conduct himself in this way. He essentially tries to win people over by exercising good will. Even if Smiley fails, even if Kant is being too naïve here, this is the way in which Smiley functions. It is not certain, however, if Smiley is successful at all in convincing people of his views and values. Another issue to consider is Karla. Karla is a Kantian because he is driven by duty, to a huge degree. Karla is difficult for Smiley to convert because he does not want to betray his country. It is easy for a western audience to favor capitalism and democracy, but at the time, it would have been equally as reasonable from Karla’s perspective to believe in what the Soviet Union had to offer, including its economic system. It is easy to say that Smiley has a good will, because he is a kind person and duty is important to him. The problem with

345 Le Carré, Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 211. 346Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,115.

177 evaluating Karla is that in the first book the reader just does not know enough about him to make that judgment. It seems that he is “bad” because he enables and asks Bill Haydon to betray his friends as part of the intelligence war. At the same time, he is dedicated to his country, as has been shown.

Duty towards friends

There is a bit of a contradiction or even a conflict of interest at the end of the story, when

Smiley finds out that his friend, Bill Haydon is the mole. Bill was a central figure in everyone’s lives and was a role model for Peter Guillam. Smiley becomes extremely emotional and questions his own relationship to his job and his cause. Smiley, Peter Guillam, and a policeman,

Mendel are at the safe house observing the front door and listening in via the surveillance system. Whoever comes into the front door with Polyakov is Gerald, the codename for the mole. Smiley has planned for everything, including getting Ricki Tarr to send a telegram to Percy

Alleline warning him of what was happening. Upon hearing Bill Haydon’s voice, who again has been a friend and inspiration to all, the narrator says the following. “With a feeling of utter disbelief, Smiley listened to the familiar voice reading aloud the very telegram that Smiley himself had drafted for Tarr’s use only forty-eight hours ago.”347 Smiley hears Bill Haydon’s voice asking for a Scotch from Polyakov. The fact is, Smiley had the telegram sent from the embassy in Paris directly to Percy Alleline. So if Bill Haydon had known about the message, he would have been eavesdropping on internal intelligence. Even though Smiley feels anger, he starts questioning his own loyalty to the Circus and ultimately his country by feeling mutinous and wanting to protect Haydon, who has caused untold pain and destruction by being a mole

347 Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 356.

178 for so long. As I stated earlier, Smiley wants to protect people from hurting or lashing out against Bill Haydon because he wants the pain to stop. He understands that Haydon has rights.

In saying that somewhere the path of pain and betrayal must end, he can be interpreted as being in agreement with one of the points in Kant’s “Doctrine of Right.”

It can be said that establishing universal and lasting peace constitutes not merely a part of the doctrine of right, but rather the final end of the doctrine of right, within the limits of reason alone, for the condition of peace is the only condition in which what is mine is yours and what is yours is secured under laws for a multitude of human beings living in proximity to one another and therefore under a constitution.”348 The fact that Smiley wishes for an end to the pain, and that his friend be spared a public shaming or execution, and that Bill has rights as a member of the Circus, shows Smiley’s understanding of the importance of humanity in general, which as Kant says, has dignity. “Every human being has a legitimate claim to respect from his fellow human beings and is in turn bound to respect every other. Humanity itself is a dignity; for a human being cannot be used merely as a means by any human being….but must always be used at the same time as an end.”349 He wishes for no more killing, no more shaming, no more torture, etc. He is respecting

Haydon’s dignity. In addition to protecting his friend and honoring Haydon as a human being,

Smiley is, from a Kantian perspective, trying to recreate a type of social contract. Smiley allows

Haydon to be taken to the interrogation center, without torture, and also to be sent back to the

Soviet Union peaceably in exchange for English prisoners. One may ask if Smiley is making

Haydon into a means to an end by allowing him to be interrogated. The problem is that Smiley has done all he can to protect Haydon. The Circus could have done much worse to him. Smiley himself is not in charge of the interrogation process, but Haydon does want to talk with Smiley

348 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 123. 349 Ibid., 209.

179 because he trusts him. In this way, Smiley is still valuing Haydon’s dignity. The Circus up until now has been placed in a Kantian state of nature. Recall that a state of nature for Kant is a state without distributive justice.350 This means that all people are in danger until the social contract is reestablished. The Circus has been made into a mess that is dangerous for everybody. In this case, fixing it means when Karla’s influence is broken, when Bill Haydon is successfully traded back, and when people can start to trust each other again and get on with their lives. As Kant says, “From private right in the state of nature there proceeds the postulate of public right: when you cannot avoid living side by side with others, you ought to leave the state of nature and proceed with them into a rightful condition, that is, a condition of distributive justice.”351

Smiley knows what he must do to reestablish the internal social contract and give a sense of stability to the Circus. Haydon must be forgiven and the house must be cleaned. Smiley in general has fulfilled his duties of right.

Kingdom of Ends

I have already tried to show how Smiley is a Kantian hero in several ways. There are a few more things to consider, however, regarding the formula of humanity and the Kingdom of Ends, which, as stated before, is based on the principle that nobody is to be used as a means to an end. I have also touched on the issue that spies sometimes put other people in jeopardy. High level spies like Smiley make a career of turning people into assets. This is demonstated throughout the “Karla Trilogy.” For example, Smiley must use Peter Guillam as an asset. He orders Guillam to enter the Circus archives and steal the Operation Testify file, while replacing

350 Ibid., 85. 351 Ibid., 86.

180 it with another dummy file. While the theft is in process, Guillam recalls something that Smiley said, “Peter, if you have the smallest reservation, you really mustn’t go ahead with it. Nothing is as important as that.”352 Smiley has ordered Guillam to steal. He has placed Guillam in danger.

At the same time, we know that Smiley cares more about Guillam than the operation itself, given Smiley’s instructions to bail if things become dangerous. Herein lies the difficulty with espionage. Smiley cannot do everything himself. Is he violating the formula of humanity? The simplest answer is that, while Smiley is asking Peter to steal the file, he is not forcing him to and asks him in addition to run if there is danger. This, in my opinion means that Smiley cares enough about Guillam to make his safety the top priority. None of the people who are on the case are being forced to solve it. In addition, Smiley is also being ordered by Lacon,

Furthermore, both Smiley and Peter have, in this case, free will. If Peter had not wished to go through with the theft, he could have declined. What about when he sent Ricki Tarr into Paris to hold up one of the diplomatic staff at gunpoint? The mission is crucial. Tarr needs to help send a message to Percy Alleline to help catch the mole. The diplomatic staff member,

Mackelvore, tells Ricki how much danger he is in. “The whole service is looking for you—you know that, don’t you? They’ll skin you alive if they find you. We’re supposed to do blood- curdling things to you on sight.”353 There are a couple of reasons for this. The main one is that

Percy Alleline called a meeting of the major staff members declaring Tarr to be dangerous and essentially blacklisted because of his consorting with a Russian spy and thus obtaining the information on Gerald, thus spreading it around to Guillam, Smiley, and Lacon. The heads of staff, Percy above all, found it to be absolutely punishable by extreme measures if Guillam had

352 Le Carré, 178. 353 Ibid., 340.

181 any more contact with Tarr. The fact that Tarr would make such accusations places the whole of

Merlin and Operation Witchcraft, the source of intelligence that is so dear to the group, in danger. Percy is so blinded by the usefulness of Merlin’s intelligence, that to insist that a mole is involved is heresy of the worst kind. Looking back at the idea of the Kingdom of Ends, how can one evaluate Smiley sending Ricki Tarr into the hornet’s nest, so to speak? Sending Ricki in in this way was even more dangerous than what Peter had to do. Again though, Tarr is his own agent with his own sense of free will, personal responsibility, and dedication to the Circus. In conventional terms, Smiley is doing his job and doing it well. But from a Kantian standpoint, he has put one of friends in extreme danger, and has used him as a means to an end. Such action is the nature of his profession. The best way to answer is to bring back the idea of the state of nature. Given that right now the two institutions are in a state of war, Kant says, as has been discussed earlier, that individuals do no harm by defending themselves within that state, but that they do harm in the utmost by perpetuating the state of nature. Smiley is doing his job by trying to return the Circus to a state outside of the state of nature. One difficult question to ask is, would it have been better from a Kantian perspective if he had stayed retired? Should he really give up his profession as a spy, and live in a state of peace? One thing to consider is that

Lacon essentially begged Smiley to come back and fix everything. Smiley had been kicked out.

He reaches his final crisis of conscience when he sees the destruction that Bill Haydon has wrought on the Circus and on himself. By retiring again, Smiley can, from a certain perspective, be a good Kantian. The best thing to consider, though, is that Smiley is needed. Even on a smaller level, his friends need him and the Circus needs him. I think in this way it is possible to return to the argument from beneficence. “Benevolence is satisfaction in the happiness (well-

182 being) of others; but beneficence is the maxim of making other’s happiness one’s end, and the duty to it consists in the subject’s being constrained by his reason to adopt this maxim as a universal law.”354 Smiley, by rejoining the Circus is trying to ensure the well-being of his former friends and colleagues. He is trying to save them from danger. Each person that Smiley asked to perform an operation had free will and were operating under the same principle. Even if Smiley is also acting out of beneficence toward England, what is more important is that he is trying to save his friends.

Bill Haydon as antagonist

When thinking of different sides of the Cold War one is no longer dealing with conventional ideas of good vs. evil. Smiley might be a kinder, more empathetic person than Karla, but that analysis is not so helpful in determining the ultimate Kantian nature of the characters in the story. Bill Haydon is technically the villain, because he is a double agent, or mole, and stands in opposition to the heroes, the loyal members of the Circus including George Smiley and Peter

Guillam. From a conventional standpoint, one can safely call him the antagonist. It seems that the best course of action is to evaluate him solely from that standpoint, in terms of the harm that he has caused, and then try to understand him better by viewing him through a Kantian lens. One thing to think about is that Le Carré absolutely despised double-agents and traitors. I have stated earlier, that John Cobbs mentions that Bill Haydon was based on an actual double- agent within MI6, Kim Philby, who defected to the Russians after being caught spying on his

354 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 201.

183 own agency. He was also based partially on other traitors as well. Cobbs quotes Le Carré as having said, regarding Philby, that he had a “profound loathing for the man.”355 Furthermore,

Le Carré said, “He was a traitor and a murderer. He did betray people who died horribly in consequence of that.”356 Given this feeling that Le Carré had toward double-agents, and that

Bill Haydon was based on them, it is quite reasonable to say that Bill Haydon is the villain from a conventional perspective.

The biggest tragedy that Bill Haydon created was Operation Testify. This was the mission in which Jim Prideaux, the expert in the Czech language and Czech intelligence, was sent to the area near Prague to pick up a defecting general and gain intel from him. The ultimate goal was to determine who the mole was, and this all came from Control, who was certain that there was a mole present in the Circus. The problem is that the whole mission was a fake. When

Smiley is interrogating Bill Haydon after he has been identified and captured, Bill confesses how close Control had come to finding the presence of the mole.

The reader knows that Operation Testify was the mission that Jim was sent on. Merlin was the codename for the source of intelligence that would lead the greedy members of Circus management ultimately to the doom of the Circus itself. Haydon and Karla worked together on

Testify. What has Haydon done specifically to be a villain? First, the Russians and the Czechs were aware of Jim’s arrival from the beginning.357 They subjected Jim to torture over and over again, even though they were not interested in most of the intel he provided, because they were already aware of it before he had even arrived. The only thing, according to Jim, that they

355 Cobbs, 106. 356 Ibid. 357 Le Carré, 244

184 were interested in was Control’s theory on the presence of a mole.358 The torture, as Jim briefly describes it, was done with electricity. He had hoped that he would “go dotty,” or go insane, but they were skilled enough to balance the torture and move him around so that he could keep his wits.359 His final interrogator was a man resembling Karla’s description, in possession of Smiley’s lighter, which he obtained from Smiley back in Delhi. He knew so much about the inner workings and details about the Circus that it almost seemed pointless to interrogate Jim in the first place. The inescapable fact is that Bill sent Jim into this, knowing what would happen. Bill and Jim were friends and most likely, lovers while they had been at Oxford together. It is apparent that Bill is loyal to a cause, but I put forth the question, is it ever justified to send one’s friend and lover into a deathtrap such as that? Is it at all justifiable? One thing that one can be certain of is that Smiley would not have done the same thing. The problem is, nobody has any idea that Bill is operating behind the scenes in this way. In fact, his charisma and general “likeability” are so powerful that both Smiley and Peter Guillam are devastated when they learn that Bill is the mole. Haydon has done a masterful job of getting everyone to love him while at the same time stabbing them in the back. Perhaps the worst crime that Haydon committed was his motivation for getting his friend Jim back from the oblivion of Russian and Czech prison. While Smiley is interrogating Bill, he asks why he brought

Jim back, if it was for friendship or “because he was harmless and you (Bill) held all the cards.”360 Bill gives Smiley the truth. As he says, “As long as Jim was in a Czech prison (he didn’t say Russian), people would agitate for him and see him as some sort of key. But once he was

358 Ibid., 305. 359 Ibid., 306. 360 Ibid., 374.

185 back, everyone in Whitehall would conspire to keep him quiet; that was the way with repatriations.”361 This reason is perhaps the biggest insult to Jim and his friendship than the false mission and scenario itself.

One thing to consider is that Bill Haydon dies at the end of the story by having his neck snapped in half. There are very few people who would have the skill or motivation to sneak up onto the grounds and do this to Bill. The reader does know that at ten-thirty in the evening Haydon complained of “sleeplessness and nausea” asking for some fresh air.362 The guards were not concerned and let him go out onto the grounds by himself. It was not certain how, but he may have intercepted a message in his dry-cleaning, scheduling a meeting with somebody. In the mini-series, Haydon speaks with Jim Prideaux and reveals everything to him that he told Smiley.

Jim then promptly snaps his neck. The mini-series was a BBC production starring Alec Guinness as Smiley, airing on television in 1979.363 Upon watching it, one is able to see that the mini- series is quite faithful to the book format. However, Jim Prideaux killing Bill Haydon does not happen as definitively in the book. The audience and readership does know that none of the other Circus top hierarchy had any reason to kill Haydon at all. Nor did any of them have the martial arts knowledge to kill a person in this way. Only scalp-hunters like Ricki Tarr had such knowledge, and he had no emotional stake in this fight. Moreover, all of the Circus knew that if they could trade Haydon to Karla, they could salvage their spy networks and gain some POW’s in return. The list then becomes very narrow, and Jim Prideaux is at the top. The reader knows that he has stealth and martial arts knowledge from reading his account of his time in

361 Ibid., 374. 362 Ibid., 376. 363 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, directed by John Irvin ( aired between 10th September to 22nd October 1979, BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2003) DVD

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Czechoslovakia. It would make sense that Jim, having learned somehow of Bill’s betrayal, would kill him. As far as the book goes, however, we do not know this either way. This type of revenge is not permissible in a Kantian sense and thus eliminates Jim from being a Kantian hero, but it is at the same time emotionally compelling, if one decides to think of Haydon as such a villain.

The problem is, Bill is not so much of a cold-hearted villain. It is necessary to conclude the analysis of Bill by understanding where he is coming from.

Bill Haydon as Kantian Figure

It is in the case of Bill Haydon that the Kantian approach to good and evil becomes so interesting. It is known how much harm Bill has done. He has destroyed lives and shattered dreams. He is, at the same time, equally as dedicated to his cause as perhaps any other members of the Circus. I must provide evidence, before creating an argument for this, that really the only way to make such a claim is from a Kantian perspective. John Cobbs perceives

Bill Haydon quite differently. Cobbs says that Smiley senses that “Haydon’s treachery derives not from mendacity or venality or even a sense of commitment to any morality or ideology but, rather, from an egotistical love of theatrics and self-promotion.”364 Cobbs also points out a passage that is quite incriminating. “Bill had loved it, too. Smiley didn’t doubt that for a moment. Standing at the middle of a secret stage, playing a world against world, hero and playwright in one: oh, Bill had loved that alright.”365 From this perspective, Bill’s betrayal was more about vanity than dedication to a cause. There is more to be said, however. Haydon,

364 Cobbs, 103. 365 Le Carré, 379.

187 despite being a mole, believes in the once grand state of England as a world power, and also the Soviet Union as the best viable option for how the world needs to be directed. Haydon has no ill will toward England, or the Circus. He comes from a place of shattered dreams associated with the sudden lack of relevance of England in the global infrastructure.366 As Mark Fisher points out,

The narrative is suffused with what Paul Gilroy has called “postcolonial melancholia” (Postcolonial Melancholia, Columbia University Press, 2006). Smiley, Haydon, and their contemporaries—notably Jim Prideaux, the former head of the “scalphunters” section, shot in the bungled operation that ultimately leads to the mole being uncovered, and Connie Sachs, the head of intelligence, dismissed when she comes uncomfortably close to the truth—have watched all the expectations born of imperial privilege slowly disappearing.367

This may explain part of the problem. Quite a few members of the Circus were recruited from elite circles such as Oxford. They came from the privileged classes and from World War II, when

Britain had a major role in world affairs. This decline of England’s relevance is actually a significant source of distress for people like Haydon. Haydon is not alone, however. Control also had a problem with the growing concern of American influence. According to Mark Fisher,

“Postcolonial melancholia is fed more by hostility toward the U.S. than it is by fear of the

Soviets—Haydon and Smiley’s boss, the irascible Control, are united in their loathing of

Americans.”368 This is interesting to consider because Control, before dying, was the very person who was trying to save the Circus and find the mole. I could extrapolate from this quotation above that even though the Circus is allied with the Americans, certain members of

366 Le Carré, 356. 367 Fisher, 37. 368 Ibid.

188 the Circus itself feel less than comfortable with this relationship, partially because the U.S. made England less relevant, and partially because the Americans could become a problem in terms of becoming a monolithic power. Another issue to consider is class warfare. Le Carré, in writing this novel, was concerned with class more than a reader might initially surmise. As John

Cobbs indicates,

Le Carré’s rootless childhood gave him the chance to observe the full spectrum of British society and to feel comfortable, if defensive, moving from one segment of it to another. This background of wandering—often scrambling between jet sets and demimondes, gave Le Carré a grasp of class warfare which he would never forget as a writer, and he always remembered, almost like a Marxist, that class was the basis of the Cold War.369

This aspect of Le Carré’s personal views can clue a person in. Kim Philby, one of the traitors upon whom Haydon was based, was also an aristocrat. The paradox here is that real-life aristocrat traitors sympathized with the Marxist monolithic power. In the next section, however, it Haydon’s motivations become apparent.

Haydon’s Conversation with Smiley

It is important to think about the conversation between Haydon and Smiley at the end of the novel. Haydon begins, “We live in an age where only fundamental issues matter… The United

States is no longer capable of sustaining its own revolution… The political posture of the United

Kingdom is without relevance or moral viability in world affairs…”370 It seems that Bill perhaps would have believed in the cause of the U.S. if it had not turned into the capitalist economy that it did. Bill mentions that next, “In capitalist America economic repression of the masses is

369 Cobbs, 6. 370 Le Carré, 367.

189 institutionalized to a point which not even Lenin could have foreseen.”371 Here the reader receives a very stark picture of Bill’ ideology. He is a dedicated socialist and the United States is in opposition to his viewpoints. Bill also reveals further motivation; “The cold war began in 1917 but the bitterest struggles lie ahead of us, as America’s death-bed paranoia drives her to greater excesses abroad.”372 A question that can be asked is whether he is referring to the U.S. initiative to invade Vietnam and before that, Korea. Vietnam was unpopular to many people all over the world, but it would have especially been so to Bill Haydon, who is on the front lines of the Cold War. As stated earlier in the chapter, Kant was against espionage in general. One of the reasons was that espionage undermines trust and threatens a lasting peace. Bill Haydon calls this process paranoia, and he does so for logical reasons. NATO and the Soviet Union with the Warsaw Pact have built up stockpiles of world-destroying nuclear weapons and for that reason refuse to engage each other directly, while at the same time building tension, fear and paranoia around the globe. Again, many people were convinced that World War Three would break out as a result of incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Haydon seems to be repulsed by this process. As the narrator continues to relate, “He spoke not of the decline of the West, but of its death by greed and constipation. He hated America very deeply, he said, and Smiley supposed he did.”373 So it seems that Haydon is dedicated to his own cause. How did he choose the Soviet Union as s state? In terms of loyalty toward an institution, by being loyal to Karla, this means being loyal to Moscow Centre, which again is le Carré’s term for the KGB. This would be similar to asking, why did Smiley choose the Circus? After all, Smiley sometimes questions the

371 Ibid., 367. 372 Ibid. 373 Ibid.

190 ideology of the capitalist model, but stays loyal to England and to the Circus. Haydon started at

Oxford, as did most of Circus management, and during that time was at war with the Germans.

According to the narration,

For a while, after ’45, he said, he had remained content with Britain’s part in the world, till gradually it dawned on him just how trivial this was. How and when was a mystery. In the historical mayhem of his own lifetime he could point to no one occasion; simply he knew that if England were out of the game, the price of fish would not be altered by a farthing. He had often wondered which side he would be on if the test ever came; after prolonged reflection he had finally to admit that if either monolith had to win the day, he would prefer it to be the East.374 Beyond that, Haydon mentioned that it was only a matter of time ‘before he put his efforts where his convictions lay.”375 It seems that Haydon has an immense sense of duty. In fact, the reader learns that Haydon has secretly acquired a series of high honors and high-ranking medals from the Soviet Union, including being granted citizenship. He also mentions that he tried to advance the Soviet cause over the Americans, while at the same time avoiding giving the Russians anything that would be hurtful to England. Here there is evidence that Haydon acts out of a sense of duty, and perhaps more so than some of the other Circus operatives.

Toby Esterhase and Percy Alleline, for example, while somewhat dedicated, also are very concerned with their careers and with gaining power and prestige within the Circus. It is this pride and vanity that make them so susceptible to Merlin and in turn to Gerald. For people like

Ricki Tarr, the Circus is a way to live an exciting life by travelling around and living in a constant state of adrenaline. Oliver Lacon, the minister and governmental attaché, cares about England in general but is happy to dump all responsibility in the laps of Smiley and Peter Guillam, while pursuing his own career. Smiley himself undergoes a crisis of faith twice, once while

374 Ibid. 375 Ibid., 368.

191 interrogating Karla, second upon discovering Bill as the traitor. Bill Haydon, on the other hand, has had enough faith in his institution to carry him through since the mid-1950’s, alone in his own department, fighting behind the scenes for the enemy. There is no over-emphasizing the fact that he is a good Kantian in this way. Duty to the Soviet Union and to socialism or communism in general are his motivating factors. Remember that Kant mentions that an action is morally valuable if it is done from duty. If this alone were the main concern, he could even qualify as a Kantian hero. After all, I have asserted that Smiley is a Kantian hero. The problem is everything else. Where I can justify Smiley acting as a spy, because he is protecting people and doing his duty to the people he cares about, Bill Haydon has very little compassion for anybody but himself and the institution that he believes in. In fact, he violates another aspect of Kantian philosophy, namely the “duties of right.” Kant wants us to be honorable human beings, not to wrong anyone, and enter into a society where everyone can keep what is his.376 Haydon does harm to people on a consistent basis, to a huge degree, especially to his best friend, Jim

Prideaux. A couple of things to think of are the formula of humanity, by which a person does not treat other people as a means to an end, and also the duty toward beneficence. Haydon is a bit different from Smiley in this case. While Smiley asks his operatives of their own free will to put themselves in danger, he is always looking out for their safety. He makes sure that Peter

Guillam is safe in the Circus headquarters and he also tries to help bring Ricki Tarr’s reputation back to normal, by allowing him to participate in the mole hunt, and protecting him in a safe house. Bill Haydon has protected nobody within the Circus. He put his best friend and lover’s

(Jim Prideaux’s) life in danger in Czechoslovakia, knowing he would be tortured brutally for

376 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 29.

192 weeks and moved from prison to prison behind the Iron Curtain, with little hope of release. He also caused the forced retirement of George Smiley, Control, and Connie Sachs, a brilliant intelligence officer and researcher, so he could cover his tracks. In addition, he slept with

Smiley’s wife Ann simply to manipulate Smiley without any real love toward Ann. These things violate the practical imperative, or the formula of humanity, much worse than anything Smiley has done. Also important is Kant’s imperative to avoid living in the state of nature, where nothing is certain. Bill Haydon arguably perpetuates the state of nature by creating an instability within in the Circus itself, turning it into a snake eating its own tail. Recall what was discussed earlier. A state of nature is one in which there is no distributive justice.377 Distributive justice occurs successfully when people who are living side by side leave the state of nature and proceed into a rightful condition.378 In this case, that means a social contract. In the state of nature, humans do each other no wrong when they feud while in the state of nature. “But in general, they do wrong in the highest degree by willing to be and to remain in a condition that is not rightful, that is, in which no one is assured of what is his against violence.”379 Bill Haydon is perpetuating the state of nature by what he is doing, in the sense that he is violating the social contract between himself and his country and also himself and his friends. This is what makes him different than Smiley. He gets top marks for being dedicated to his cause and his chosen institution. He could have chosen another way, however, including activism and diplomacy. The question to ask is, what is the final verdict on Bill Haydon? I would say that the verdict is “fifty-fifty.” He is a supreme Kantian hero when it comes to his adherence to duty and

377 Kant,85. 378 Ibid. 379 Ibid., 86.

193 to his own sense of justice and what is right, in a grand and broader sense. This type of moral stance would be fine for a consequentialist or utilitarian, where in some way or another the greatest good for the greatest number is important. Kant, however, tends to favor the individual, and in this way Haydon fails, by violating his friendships. He is not really a Kantian hero or villain, and such is the nature of the Cold War. In the same way, it is not easy to attribute concepts like good or evil to him. What about Karla?

What is known about Karla?

In this first novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, there is not a whole lot of information about Karla.

The reader knows that he is a high-ranking Moscow Centre operative, that he has survived purges and, in spite of purges, risen through the ranks. The reader knows that he is very good at his job. Throughout the whole trilogy, Karla is set up as Smiley’s nemesis. I have already evaluated Karla earlier in the chapter, but is there more to say? The reader knows from Smiley’s conversation with Ricki Tarr, that he has been recruiting and cultivating agents since before

World War II. “Most of the English moles were recruited by Karla before the war and came from the higher bourgeoisie, even aristocrats and nobles who were disgusted with their origins, and become secretly fanatic, much more fanatic than their working-class English comrades….”380

Karla is a powerful figure because he inspires fanaticism in very powerful people. Keep in mind that Smiley is the same way. He recruited Ricki Tarr, Toby Esterhase, and many more operatives, all of whom are loyal to the Circus. In this way, Smiley and Karla are similar. One thing to consider though is that Smiley does not train moles. What he does do, however, is recruit enemy agents for defection, which is perhaps another side of the coin. So far, while

380 Le Carre, 62.

194 planting moles is harmful and destructive to the opposite side, Karla is really just doing his job.

Remember what John Cobbs said, that as le Carré portrays it, “individual human minds are shaped by the political forces that act upon them. There are, to be sure, powerful correspondences between psychologies that produce dramatic similarities in behavior. Hence,

Smiley and Karla are doppelgängers—alter egos—one mind shaped by the East, the other by the West.”381 Cobbs argues further that the two systems of thought are not that dissimilar.382

Both spies do their jobs and have a sense of dedication that I interpret as Kantian. Karla himself is a fanatic. When Guillam asks, Smiley answers, “Karla once made a marriage with a girl in

Leningrad, a student. She killed herself when he was sent to Siberia.”383 Guillam is discouraged, in that he thinks this makes Karla “fireproof.”384 Why does Karla target Smiley specifically in terms of ordering Bill Haydon to sleep with Ann? According to Bill, Karla thought that Smiley was the greatest threat to uncovering the mole. This tactic is cruel, but again demonstrates the fact that Karla is doing his job. Staying this dedicated after surviving purges and being sent to

Siberia is commendable. Duty, however, must also be related to the categorical imperative.

Does he have a maxim and in turn can it be universalized? This is a difficult question to answer, as with all espionage situations. He lies and he cheats. I have already established, however, as according to scholars like Pablo Gilabert, that sometimes lying can be done if it fulfills the duty toward beneficence or someone in need. Is Karla beneficent? Again, the reader at this point does not know enough about Karla to answer this question. The reader knows that he is fanatically dedicated and also ruthless. Thus he is Kantian in his sense of duty. Does Karla exist

381 Cobbs, 23. 382 Ibid. 383 Le Carré, 222. 384 Ibid.

195 in state of nature or a state of war? I do not think he exists in a state of nature because he exists as a loyal citizen within Moscow. There was, however, historically a state of war between

NATO and the Warsaw Pact. One thing to consider though, is that le Carré mentioned that the spies were on the front lines of the Cold War. 385 Kant treats nations just like individuals. Just as individuals are obligated to leave the state of nature and enter into a civil condition, or contract, so are nations. Karla is a double-edged sword. He is protecting his own nation and its people by doing what he does. At the same time, by being an active participant in the Cold War, he is perpetuating the state of nature and this is wrong. I think, though, that this is equally as much the responsibility of the institution and the country as it is the individual. It is the same with Smiley. Both people of course have free will, but in acting out of duty, they are still

Kantian. What does Kant say specifically about war?

The greatest difficulty in the right of nations has to do precisely with right during a war, it is difficult even to form a concept of this or to think of law in this lawless state without contradicting oneself. Right during a war would, then, have to be the waging of war in accordance with principles that always leave open the possibility of leaving the state of nature among states (in external relation to one another) and entering into a rightful condition.”386 Hence, as long as war is temporary, and has as its ultimate end a “rightful condition,” meaning a contract of peace between nations, then this is permissible. Remember that Kant says that a state engaged in a war is permitted to use any means to defend itself except the ones that he has forbidden. We already know that several of them are related to espionage in general. The problem is the razor’s edge of acceptable behavior that occurred during the Cold War. If one thinks of Smiley and Karla as soldiers, then it would be helpful to look at Kant in a new way. If

385 Le Carre, Smiley’s People, xi. 386 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 117.

196 governments had not employed spies as front-line troops, more hot wars might have broken out. Having both sides spy on each other and invest large amounts of money into countering each other in this way could be said to create a tenuous balance which kept both sides at bay.

This obsession, as le Carré calls it, expended most of the energy of both sides. In turn, they

“vastly exaggerated the other’s strategic capability.”387 John Cobbs was quoted earlier in the chapter as having this be a type of trench-warfare.388 If both sides left the capability for peace and entering into a civil condition, which ended up happening, then spies and the intelligence war might just fit into the “any means of defense” category. At this point, how can one compare the two main figures in the story, namely, Smiley and Karla? Both are dedicated, both act out of a sense of duty. Karla seems to have less emotional attachment to other people, but again the reader cannot really know that until the third book. Smiley seems more compassionate, and according to John Cobbs differs from many spies in his capacity to love.389

It might not be possible to say the same thing about Karla. One can, however, say that both are

Kantian figures. Where this comparison differs from previous discussions of Dürrenmatt is that heroism and villainy play less of a factor, as do good vs. evil. Those of us who grew up in the

United States during the Cold War were conditioned to believe that the Soviet government was an evil organization. The problem is that they felt the same way about us. This is why it is important to understand that most of the main characters in this first book of the “Karla

Trilogy” had an allegiance of some sort, to an institution, whether it be the Circus or Moscow

Centre, as well as to an ideology, whatever that ideology may be. Before passing final

387 Le Carré, Smiley’s People, ix. 388 Cobbs, 20. 389 Ibid., 95.

197 judgement on Smiley and Karla as Kantian figures, however, it is necessary to take a look at the final book in the Karla trilogy, Smiley’s People.

Plot Summary of Smiley’s People

John Cobbs mentions the importance of this book regarding the “Karla Trilogy.” He mentions that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy had a “deliberate lack of closure.”390 This would mean the unsettled rivalry between Smiley and Karla. The new book resolves the “Quest for Karla.”391

Cobbs asks the question, who are Smiley’s People?

One subset of them, of course, is the collection of ragtag cast-offs and hangers-on of the Circus whom Smiley uses as he did in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Connie Sachs, Peter Guillam, and retired Inspector Mendel. Beyond them are the motly international flotsam and jetsam the Circus who are alternately Karla’s victims and his bane: the murdered General Vladimir, his emissary Leipzig, his pathetic petitioner Maria Ostrakova, and, beyond these declared allies, finally even the loveless diplomat Grigoirev, whom Smiley coerces. 392 The value of this quotation is to understand that Smiley is actually the center of the story now.

He is in charge of the operation and it is up to him to figure out how to accomplish it. At this point it is valuable to describe the plot.

The first part of the story centers around Maria Ostrakova, a Russian expat who is living in

Paris as a factory worker. Very early on the novel, she is approached by a man with a thick

Russian accent who insists that they go to a nearby café, and who seems to know who she is and all about her history. Maria knows immediately that he is a Russian government agent. The man immediately asks her if people know that she has lived an immoral life in Russia. The man asks her about her old husband, who fled to Paris, and who the man calls a traitor for that

390 Cobbs, 138. 391 Ibid. 392 Ibid., 139.

198 reason. He also begins to tell her life story, and how she was sent to five years’ detention in a labor camp as a result of her husband’s defection, and how she was then released with the death of Stalin. She then applied to move to Paris because her husband had cancer. Before she left, she had a love affair with a man named Glikman. She had a daughter with Glikman and then at that point filed for a visa to travel to Paris and be with her dying husband. Glikman encouraged Maria to go to Paris and leave the daughter Alexandra, because both of them would be going to prison again anyway. The reader learns that the child grew up in orphanages and had several run-ins with the Soviet legal system because of her lack of ability to fit in. The man, who the reader later learns is named Kirov, offers her the possibility of sending the daughter Alexandra to live with Maria in France. Not knowing whether the girl was real or not at this point, nor whom to trust, Maria remembers that her husband worked with a man named the “General,” or “Vladimir,” who was also an expat and a defector as well as a member of an

émigré cell. He could help her. The general gets her letter and says that she can trust nobody, until she speaks with a friend of the General, who we later learn is named Otto Leipzig. They will help her. Skipping ahead in the plot, the reader learns that the girl is not real, and that it is all a plot to create a false identity, a fake passport for some other person. The General arranges a pick-up of a photograph, using the son of an old friend to obtain said photograph which has compromising images of Leipzig together with Kirov. This film could end the career of Kirov and thus reach up the chain toward Karla, who the reader eventually learns concocted the plan to hire Kirov to seek out Maria Ostrakova and create the fake identity of whomever this girl is.

Besides working for the émigré group from Estonia, the General is also an agent for the Circus, and his handler or vicar is George Smiley. He finally arranges a meeting at night with a newer

199 employee of the Circus and is shot in the face. Smiley is sent to identify the body and it is at this point that Smiley enters the picture. Something that is puzzling to the current Circus staff is that

Vladimir insisted on meeting via Moscow rules, and this meant classic Cold War tactics. Also, he said, “it concerns the Sandman,” meaning, it concerns Karla. The travesty is that nobody believed him and also nobody bothered to contact Smiley until it was too late. Smiley is then sent on a quest to clean things up. Smiley is ordered by Lacon not to investigate to the bottom of the matter, but rather to put things neatly back where they were. Smiley at this point decides independently to investigate on his own. Smiley follows leads starting with old assets in

England, eventually trying to find Otto Leipzig in Hamburg. He also speaks with his old friend,

Connie Sachs, who tells him about Kirov. Apparently, Kirov was not a professional spy. He was an amateur somehow recruited by Karla. Karla is getting sloppy in hiring Kirov and also trying to kill Maria Ostrakova. The reader learns from Connie that Karla fell in love once with a young woman during the war, took her back to Russia, and eventually had her killed. She apparently went against revolutionary ideas. In addition, Karla had a daughter with her. Her name was

Tatiana and she was a problem child. She was sent from institution to institution. The reader learns also later on that Karla has been funneling money unofficially to keep the daughter safe in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. This seems like a change in Karla. Where he was ruthless in the first book, now he has the burden of human attachment. Putting his career and life in danger by stealing from Moscow Centre in order to protect his daughter is a radical shift. In Kantian terms it becomes interesting because he is fulfilling his duty toward beneficence to its fullest by risking everything to protect his daughter. It also shifts his maxim and the duty he has to it. He is now stealing from Moscow Centre, and that is a crime. This seems to paint him in a bad light,

200 in terms of his Kantian duty. On the other hand, as Pablo Gilabert pointed out, positive duties toward beneficence can overrule negative duties toward not doing something, in this case stealing. There is simply a conflict of Kantian imperatives here. Duty toward his daughter versus duty toward Moscow Centre. By risking his life, Karla is showing how he can change. He is becoming a better person conventionally, and perhaps from a Kantian perspective as well. It takes a huge amount of a sense of duty to put himself in such danger as that. Also, there are more problems in that a major operation takes place organized by Smiley. Smiley will use blackmail and other forms of leverage to take advantage of Karla’s love for his daughter and get him to defect. This is unacceptable from a Kantian standpoint, and shows how Smiley is changing.

Smiley is Changing

It is during this conversation with Connie that Smiley is really seen as changing. His change is a major theme in the book. He has to become more and more like Karla, meaning more ruthless, and also cutting away friendships so as to be better at pursuing his adversary. He does this because he feels that in so doing he has a better chance of catching Karla, which again involves taking advantage of Karla’s love for his daughter. John Cobbs comments on the conversation between Smiley and Connie, which takes place at her secluded house. “Here, in chapter 14,

Smiley again unlocks Connie’s ‘wordhoard,’ flattering, coaxing, wheedling, the information buried in her prodigious memory. This is a seduction scene, parallel to the one in Tinker, Tailor,

Soldier, Spy, in which he does the same. But there Smiley was kinder, less calculating, and less

201 defensive.”393 It can be inferred from this that Smiley is simply using Connie as an asset for information, rather than being her friend, as he once was. John Cobbs continues further,

The Connie/George scene in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a sentimental set piece between old friends, but this is an ugly exploitation of a sick woman. As the depressed, shaky Connie flirts with him, Smiley finally loses patience and yells angrily with her….The formerly saintly George who comforted Connie in their exile in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy now ‘works’ the sick old woman as he might interrogate a suspect.394 This small difference between the two scenes in each book demonstrates how Smiley is changing. By treating one of his oldest friends like an interrogation suspect, he is cutting his ties to humanity. Recall that one of the things quoted earlier from John Cobbs is that what sets

Smiley apart from other spies is his capacity for compassion and love. It is what used to redeem him as a person. This has changed in more ways than just with Connie. Smiley will, before he begins to hunt down Karla, cut Ann out of his life as well. John Cobbs comments well on this matter,

Indeed, the saintly Smiley—as much a symbol of Christian humanity as Faulkner’s Ike McCaslin—has not only aged but hardened. It is not only Connie he rejects but the faithless Ann. In previous novels Ann was the final nonnegotiable bedrock of Smiley’s humanity. His endless willingness to forgive her infidelities made her the symbol of a charity that rendered Smiley sometimes fatuous but also demonstrated his essential decency, with a willingness to forgive and turn the other cheek which sometimes bordered on the grotesque.395 I am not making a theist argument about Smiley, and I don’t think Cobbs is either. But in referencing “Christian humanity,” while describing Smiley, it makes sense that he would use the famous phrase, “turn the other cheek,” which is a Christian commandment. Either way, the point is that Smiley was at one point, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a compassionate person, as

393 Cobbs, 146. 394 Cobbs, 146. 395 Cobbs, 146.

202 measured by his affection for and forgiveness towards Ann. In the third book, the situation reverses in that where Bill Haydon cheated with Ann, and Smiley forgave her anyway, now in this book he cuts her off despite her asking for reconciliation. So according to John Cobbs, as

“Karla has weakened, Smiley has grown stronger, at least in terms of effectiveness, if not character….A new, harder Smiley is manifest not only in his willingness to use Karla’s love for his daughter to track and trap him but also in the totality of his focus on his mission to destroy

Karla.”396 At this point, the question becomes, what are Smiley’s motivations for tracking down

Karla like this? Again, it is interesting to provide Kantian analysis here. Smiley is violating the practical imperative or the formula of humanity by harassing Connie in this way. He does not even make a pretense of friendship. What about by cutting Ann out of his life? One way of interpreting it is that he is performing his duty towards Ann by protecting her, and in many ways, that might be the case. It is not easy for Smiley to cut her out.

She was all he wanted, she was nothing, she reminded him of someone he had once known long ago; she was remote to him, he knew her entirely. He saw the gravity in her face and one minute wondered that he ever could have taken it for profundity; the next, he despised her dependence on him, and wanted only to be free of her. He wanted to call out ‘Come back’ but he didn’t do it; he didn’t even put out a hand to stop her from slipping away.397 In interpreting this scene where Smiley goes back to Ann’s house to let her go, it seems there is more to it than protecting her. He really is trying to modify himself in such a way that he has no more human attachments. Only then can he dedicate himself to Karla. Is this Kantian duty?

Obviously there is a huge emotional content. Revenge has to factor in here somehow, against a

396 Cobbs, 142. 397 Le Carré, Smiley’ People, 303.

203 man who has destroyed everything around Smiley. Henning Jensen’s analysis is helpful here.

Again, he provides Barbara Herman’s argumentation.

Barbara Herman argues that his theory in fact does not require that we always set the motive of duty between our feelings and our response to others and that, therefore, his theory neither prevents a personal response to others nor undermines integrity. Further, she argues that, like Williams, a Kantian may accept that it is better in some cases that a morally worthy act not be done and may accept that it is rational in some cases to prefer an emotion-based action to the action done solely from duty.398 This does not reveal much at first, other than that it might be okay to act from emotion and not just duty alone. Jensen continues with Barbara Herman’s argumentation, “good will may be present in commitments, not only in overt actions done from duty.”399 The focus of Jensen’s article then is about the interplay between a good will and duty. A good will is, as seen before, an inherently good thing, and scholars like Barbara Herman attribute a lot to this. Jensen interprets her arguments regarding emotional responses to duty-based actions further.

On the view which she defends, the Kantian retains integrity by allowing the sense of duty to defer to emotion-based acts. On the more important view which really follows from her arguments, the Kantian would retain integrity by insisting that, where both motives are available, the motive of duty itself has as an end the promotion of morally permissible actions from emotion-based motives. The key issue here to understand is that emotion-based motives can be in accordance with

Kantian principles if the actions are morally permissible. Is it morally permissible for Smiley to bring about the destruction of Karla by using his daughter as leverage against him? In a sense, a person could argue that Smiley has a duty toward catching Karla, but I do not think I can make a

Kantian argument in favor of this, especially since Smiley will use Karla’s daughter as a means to an end to catch him. The problem that Jensen states is, again asked by Barbara Herman, “can a

398 Jensen, 194. 399 Jensen, 195.

204

Kantian accept that it is better in some cases that a morally worthy act not be done and that it is rational in some cases to prefer an emotion- based action to the action done solely from duty?”400 This question is valid, but can lead to danger from a Kantian perspective. Jensen explores further, and I will quote this again,

Although acting from motives such as love, compassion, or a desire to help may often produce right acts, their doing so is accidental rather than from a concern for rightness. Furthermore, there are situations in which, for example, acting from an inclination to help someone may involve the breaking of a previous promise or the neglecting of a greater good which might have been attained.401 I mentioned this in the previous chapter, but it is worth examining again. In a lot of cases, good can come out of trying to help someone out of love or compassion. But collateral damage may occur. In the case of Smiley, it is even worse because he is not acting out of love or compassion.

By using Tatiana to get to Karla, he is simply going to be violating the formula of humanity without any real merit. Jensen concludes, “therefore, an act of helping someone in need performed from the emotion-based motive of wanting to help is morally permissible when it is in accordance with the moral law.”402 Smiley is trying to help Maria Ostrakova, who was tracked down by Karla and almost killed. He has seen the death and destruction that Karla has caused.

But hurting Tatiana by cutting off her supply of money is inexcusable from a Kantian perspective. There is one other Kantian point to consider. The issue of coercion. This is tricky because normally governments are the agencies which render coercion. I have discussed this in the previous chapters, but the important thing to remember about it is that, while coercion itself is a hindrance to freedom, “if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance to freedom in

400 Jensen, 199. 401 Jensen, 200. 402 Jensen, 201.

205 accordance with universal laws (i.e. wrong) coercion that is opposed to this (as a hindering of a hindrance to freedom) is consistent with freedom in accordance with universal laws, that is, it is right.”403 I am working with this argument because Karla himself has hindered the freedom of quite a few people. He has hurt people to a huge degree and Smiley has been asked to clean up the mess in this book and previous ones. Karla, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, caused pain in one way or another to several people. Also, there is no governmental agency that can seek retribution, because Karla is in the intelligence war and is valuable to Moscow Centre. In an ultimate sense, the only person who can bring Karla to justice, from the perspective of the

Circus, is Smiley. This is why Smiley has made himself colder and more brutal, but at the same time, this is why he is not as good of a Kantian as in the first book.

Smiley Pursues Karla

Along the trail that Smiley pursues, he sees more and more collateral damage caused by Karla.

For example, Smiley, in pursuing the trail, tries to find Otto Leipzig who helped Maria.

Unfortunately, once he reaches his boat, in the middle of a campground for anarchists and punks, he discovers Otto’s body. He has been tortured and killed. It is pretty obvious that this is part of a pattern of amateur killings by hirelings of Karla. Smiley finds a postcard that Otto had hidden, part of the puzzle, and he must escape. The clues lead Smiley further down the trail.

The reader also learns that Karla is paying yet another untrained agent, named Grigoriev, who is stationed in Bern, 10,000 dollars a month. This is what I mentioned earlier, that Karla is diverting funds for the protection of his daughter. Saul Enderby, the new head of the Circus, grants Smiley leave to pursue Karla, burn him, and get him to defect. He can give Smiley money,

403 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 25.

206 but it must be deniable, off the books, and independently operated by Smiley. Smiley and his team seek out Grigoriev. They are able to bully him, via blackmail, into revealing that he has a false identity, that he is misusing funds at a Swiss bank, and that the money Karla is sending him is designed to pay the housing fee for his daughter, Tatiana, at a Swiss psychiatric hospital in the country outside of Bern. Things become tense, because Smiley knows he now has evidence to condemn Karla, that Karla’s enemies would crush him if found out. Grigoriev is let loose, and offered a defection package, but knows that if he reveals anything, Karla would also destroy him, and he would lose his offer. Smiley also writes Karla a letter, giving him an offer to defect.

Karla, if he accepts, will cross a bridge from East Berlin to West Berlin, and will be picked up by

Smiley and Guillam. They wait at a Turkish café for hours and Karla finally crosses. Everybody is thrilled and jubilant, congratulating Smiley. Only Smiley fails to be amused. He knows that, while he has destroyed his adversary, Karla’s crime was to go out of his way to protect his daughter. In this way it is an empty victory for Smiley. Smiley himself feels empty but from a

Kantian perspective, he actions were immoral as well. He ruined the lives of Grigoriev, Karla, and Tatiana. These actions all violate the formula of humanity. Smiley was, without any sense of restraint, using anybody in his way as a means to an end, which violates intrinsic human dignity.

Does Smiley qualify on the axis of duty? This is open to interpretation. He did his duty as asked by the Circus. He stopped a person who had been a major threat to the Circus for years. John

Cobbs argues though that one should still not reach the conclusion that Smiley has completely fallen to Karla’s level. He lists Karla’s crimes in the third book: “the shameless manipulation of

Maria Ostrakova, (who would surely be assassinated by Kirov), the brutal slaughter of Vladimir; the matter—of—fact disposal of Tatiana’s mother because she was ‘inconvenient,’ and the

207 whole panoply of terroristic mechanics which characterizes the grim world Moscow Centre.”404

Cobbs mentions that his most venomous act is to throw the lighter on the ground at Smiley’s feet which he stole from Smiley in the prison in India all of those years ago.405 He says further that it would be impossible to imagine Smiley doing all of those 406things. From this perspective,

Smiley is still not as bad as Karla. At least from a conventional perspective. Smiley has merely fallen enough to use people as a means to an end, which is bad from a Kantian perspective, but

Karla has carried out assassinations and worse, which are another of Kant’s forbidden tactics, in the same paragraph that mentions how spying itself is unacceptable.

What has changed?

One major issue to consider in the third book in the trilogy is the interplay between change and stasis. One is faced with the questions of, what has changed regarding the institutions of the

Circus and Moscow Centre? The narration is still in the Cold War, and still depicts a rivalry between Karla and Smiley. The thing is that the story takes place years later than in Tinker,

Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Smiley is old now, and has retired yet again, this time hopefully for good. In the second book, the Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley, as temporary head of the Circus, having succeeded Percy Alleline, went on a quest to track down leads on the destruction that Bill

Haydon and Karla had caused. They end up in China and Southeast Asia, and follow leads regarding paper trails for Karla’s financing of moles and Moscow Centre operations. I am not as concerned with this story, as most of it takes place outside of Europe and Circus territory. The

404 Cobbs, 149. 405 Cobbs, 149. 406 Kant, 117.

208 story is more of a bridge between the first and third works. By the time the third book takes place, it is years later. I have already discussed to an extent how Smiley and Karla have changed. Now it is good to explore how the institution has changed.

How the Institution has Changed

It becomes very apparent in this novel that time has moved on and that Smiley, while having gotten older and more cynical, is still part of the older world. The first glimpse of this occurs during the briefing that Smiley receives about the assassination of Vladimir. Even in the beginning of the scene where Smiley discusses Vladimir’s death with Lacon and his assistants, they emphasize that Vladimir was shelved. They call him an “extinct case of purely historic concern.”407 This is one of the main themes in the story. Even though Vladimir carries the means for Karla’s destruction, nobody seems to care. In fact, nobody believes Smiley at all that

Vladimir was still a reliable source and should have been listened to instead of shelved. The reader learns that when Saul Enderby took over, “far-reaching,” changes in intelligence took place, as a result of a “newly formed cabinet.”408 A new committee was formed to create external control to the Circus. Lacon is very pained about it, mentioning freedom of information, open hearings, and so on.409 In addition, budget cuts were enacted. Included were new reform policies outlawing traditional means of surveillance, blackmail, and other formerly useful tools of intelligence warfare.410 Also off the list are “stimulated defections” and

émigrés.411 In a similar vein, counter-intelligence measures such as creating double agents was

407 Le Carré, 48. 408 Ibid., 52. 409 Ibid., 53. 410 Ibid., 55. 411 Ibid., 55.

209 forbidden. But when Smiley mentions that Haydon might have almost discovered Vladimir, another person in the room, Strickland, says something that gives us a general idea of how the

Circus is progressing. “Bill Haydon this, Bill Haydon that… Haydon’s dead dammit… so’s that whole era.”412 Lacon, who was there during the whole Haydon crisis, responds with, “We are pragmatists, George. We adapt. We are not keepers of some sacred flame. I ask you, I commend you, to remember this!”413 There is an interesting contradiction when a person looks at these changes from a Kantian perspective. Smiley seems to be upset in the conversation, perhaps because people do not acknowledge the worth of old spies like Vladimir. All of the changes that are being made, however, are designed to approve relations with other nations, including the other side of the conflict, the Soviet Union. In fact, forbidding some of these former methods of espionage allows peace to grow where before, spying undermined peace and created paranoia on both sides. This is directly in line with Kant’s desire for an international peace. Burleigh T. Wilkins reminds us that we should always act as if universal peace were possible.414 Wilkins continues, “Kant's ultimate hope lay not in the formation of a single world government, but in a federation of states, a federation which would be furthered by states committed to what Kant called ‘republicanism,’ which corresponds with what we have come to call liberal democracy.”415 There are a few things to consider here. One is, that the Soviet Union was not necessarily a liberal democracy. The thing is that there is always the potential for that.

If intelligence agencies like the Circus give up classic Cold War spying techniques that undermine trust and perpetuate war, it is irrelevant what sort of government Russia has or has

412 Ibid., 59. 413 Ibid., 59. 414 Wilkins, 147. 415 Ibid., 148.

210 had in the past. Both sides must agree to join in a federation. Either way, despite Smiley feeling upset about the Circus’ treatment of Vladimir, the Circus is, from a Kantian perspective, working towards peace among nations by adopting a newer more progressive espionage policy.

Lacon’s largest concern, however, is not to make waves with the Wise Men, of the committee of overseers, and to show that Vladimir was not their fault, that they really had nothing more to do with Vladimir at all. Lacon holds Smiley to a double standard, however. He asks that Smiley investigate, so that a scandal can be averted. He insists that in this case, Smiley has a duty to the Circus, even though he has retired, this time for good. In this case, Lacon can be faulted. He is using Smiley as a means to an end. All Lacon wants Smiley to do is clean things up. He is not concerned with actual results other than that. Lacon even mentions the idea of duty. One question to ask is, does Smiley have a duty toward the Circus? I would argue that he does not.

He is retired, seemingly for good. He has been mistreated, and really is just there to clean up a mess that Lacon created by trying to please his superiors. Even if his superiors have the right idea for trying to be progressive regarding spycraft, Lacon is also concerned with his own well- being. From a Kantian perspective, at least in this case, Lacon is violating a Kantian imperative by using Smiley in this way. On the one hand, denying that Smiley’s way is valuable, and on the other, using Smiley to clean up an uncomfortable mess. I interpret Smiley as still being a better

Kantian than the others. He is genuinely concerned for Vladimir and acts out of duty toward his friends, and, eventually toward the Circus, even though the Circus does not seem to care about

Smiley himself. Lacon, who gives Smiley the assignment, is mainly just concerned with pleasing his superiors. He is, again, using Smiley as a means to an end. In this way, Lacon is almost abusing Smiley. He is asking Smiley to leave retirement, he is asking him to clean up a mess

211 which was not his fault, and in addition he is asking Smiley to avoid doing what he was trained to do, which is to follow leads and conduct investigation to the fullest extent. John Cobbs mentions, that, “It is not only George Smiley to whom le Carré seems to be saying goodbye in this novel but perhaps the Cold War as well.”416 Cobbs continues, “By this point Smiley’s people, and their enemies too, are old—all tired and suckled in creeds outworn. The past rises up for a final time here and lays its ghosts to rest in a present that hangs on the brink of perestroika, although none of the characters are prescient enough to know it.”417

This insight is significant and fits in with one of the themes in the story. Everyone is getting old and being passed by. From this perspective, it may even be questionable that Smiley goes on this quest at all. Vladmir’s murder is a good starting reason, and then the trail that continues compels Smiley further and further toward catching Karla. Again though, a question to consider is, does Smiley hunt Karla out of duty to the Circus, or for personal reasons, or perhaps, because of duty toward all of the people whom Karla has hurt? I am not sure that it is completely clear in the story. Most likely it is a combination of all of these factors.

At the End

At the end of the story, the reader witnesses Peter Guillam and Smiley thinking back on the role that the Berlin Wall once served. The two of them are waiting in a Turkish café at the end of the story, for Karla to show up crossing a minor bridge. The narrator relates Guillam thinking to himself,

416 Cobbs, 144. 417 Ibid., 145.

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He had known Berlin when it was the world capital of the cold war, when every crossing from East to West had the tenseness of a major surgical operation. He remembered how on nights like these, clusters of Berlin policemen and Allied soldiers used to gather under the arc lights, stamping their feet, cursing the cold….. He remembered how the tanks waited, growling to keep their engines warm, their gun barrels picking targets on the other side, feigning strength.418

Guillam also remembers agents running to the nearest and latest escape root, some of them having been shot along the way. Things have changed, however. “But after tonight, he knew that he would remember it only like this: so dark you wanted to take a torch with you into the street, so still you could have heard the cocking of the rifle from the river.”419 In this scene, as the darkness and the gloom are described, Karla makes his way slowly across the bridge. There are no alarms, no machine gun fire. It is if that time was past. Again, this level of change on a national and institutional level points to a type of change that Kant would have approved of. All of the old ways of espionage that are being cast aside are perhaps better when gone. It is just the means of manipulating Smiley into being used for the upper management’s purposes that is not Kantian. Smiley is left on his own and is basically a PR instrument. Lacon mentions Smiley having a duty. Smiley has always been loyal to the institution, but the problem is that the institution has left him and Vladimir behind. The narrator describes Smiley’s internal monologue,

All his professional life, he had listened to similar verbal antics signaling supposedly great changes in Whitehall doctrine; signaling restraint, self-denial, always another reason for doing nothing. He had watched Whitehall’s skirts go up, and come down again, her belts being tightened, loosened, tightened. He had been the witness, or victim—or even reluctant prophet—of such spurious cults as literalism, parallelism,

418 Le Carré, 388. 419 Ibid.

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separatism, operational devolution, and now, if he remembered Lacon’s most recent meanderings correctly, of integration. 420 From Smiley’s perspective, trends in the way that espionage is conducted and how the Circus is run represent simply just that, fads that gain and then lose popularity over time. Smiley then realizes how alone he is, how he had sacrificed himself for his beliefs and his duty to the Circus.

He had foreborne, hoping others would forebear, and they had not. He had toiled in back rooms while shallower men held the stage. They held it still. Even five years ago, he would have never admitted to such sentiments. But today, peering calmly into his own heart, Smiley knew he was unled, and perhaps unleadable; that the only restraints on him were those of his own reason, and his own humanity. As with his marriage, so with his sense of service. I invested my life in institutions—he thought without rancor—and all I am left with is myself. And with Karla, he thought, with my black Grail.”421

Smiley is now having a crisis of faith. He is realizing that perhaps he has been used for his whole life without his own sense of loyalty and duty matched by the Circus management. In this way, it can make sense that Smiley does not see progress. He sees just another fad during which good spies die at the expense of making upper management happy. There is more Kantian analysis to be done. I have stated earlier that progress towards peace between nations is

Kantian. I have also stated that using Smiley as a means to an end is not Kantian. How is the

Circus management accountable in this way, including Lacon and the Wise Men (upper division)? At the beginning of the story already, the Circus allowed the death of Vladimir to occur because they refused to connect him with Smiley. The reason is that he was considered obsolete. Also, even though they created the mess, they want Smiley to clean it up, but without all of the necessary resources. They are using people as a means to an end while at the same

420 Le Carré, 161. 421 Ibid., 162.

214 time preaching about progress. This behavior of using people in this way cannot be universalized and so it violates the universal principle of right, which is of course based in the categorical imperative. Smiley has been loyal all the way up until now, when he realizes that he has invested all of his life in institutions, and all he is left with is himself and Karla.422 This explains perhaps why Smiley feels the need to go after Karla to the full extent that he does.

Nobody else seems to care about him or people like Vladimir, and he does now want that death to be in vain.

Smiley’s World is Changing

The reader is shown more and more how Smiley’s world is falling down around him as he undergoes his investigation and interviews his sources. Each one of them meets him with hostility and insists that he give up, and that in some way is just too old to be doing this. Smiley visits Vladimir’s nephew, William, and his wife, Stella, to try to put together a chain of events that will lead him down Vladimir’s trail. William is willing to help Smiley and says over and over again that he loves Vladimir like a father and would do anything for him. Stella, on the other hand, wants Smiley out of their lives for good. For her, given that they are trying to start a family, their role in the Cold War is over. Smiley continues to question them, even though the baby is crying and Stella is upset. Stella says, “You’re out of date…. Whatever it is you’re doing, sooner or later one side or the other will have to stop. You’re like the Group.”423 The Group refers to the émigré group in Paris that Smiley was in charge of, which gathered intelligence for the Circus from Balkan sources. William, who is much younger and more impressionable than

422 Ibid. 423 Ibid., 122.

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Vladimir, participated at times as well. This scene is another example of how the world has passed Smiley by. For Stella and ultimately for William, the Cold War is over. The ongoing battle with Moscow Centre is over. Smiley is an unpleasant ghost from the past for them. Is

Smiley acting out of Kantian duty, or personal feelings? Keep in mind what Henning Jensen pointed out, that acting from personal feelings can be okay for a Kantian as long as the actions are morally permissible. As always, the paradox is there, as to whether what Smiley is doing is morally permissible or not. Smiley might be fulfilling a duty toward beneficence by catching

Karla, but he also may not be. He may have more selfish motives than that. This is what makes the third book in the trilogy so different. Even Kantian analysis can just lead to more questions about duty versus personal feelings.

Connie, whom Smiley seeks out for knowledge regarding Karla and Kirov, has also noticed that everything is changing. She does not know where the lines are anymore. As she says, “It’s not a shooting war anymore, George…. That’s the trouble. It’s grey. Half-angels fighting half-devils.

No one knows where the lines are. No bang-bangs.”424 Although it is not entirely clear what

Connie means, one way of interpreting her comment is that she is referring to changing values and allegiances within the Cold War. One cannot spot the “good guys and bad guys” in the same way as in the past. At the end of their conversation, after Connie provided a personal history of Karla’s life and his child and mistress, the reader gains a glimpse into Smiley’s being.

Connie says, “That’s what you’re after, I’ve got it! Who killed Vladimir and why! I saw it in your ugly face the moment you walked in. I couldn’t place it, now I can. You’ve got your Karla look!

Vladi had opened up the vein again, so Karla had him killed! That’s your banner, George. I can

424 Ibid., 214.

216 see you marching. Take me with you, George, for God’s sake!”425 Connie goes on to say that they called Smiley and Karla the twin cities, “two halves of the same apple.”426 I have quoted

John Cobbs earlier as mentioning that Karla and Smiley are “doppelgängers.”427 As also said before, both spies were devoted to an institution. What has changed is how the two men relate to the institution. The institutions have left them behind and they each have their own priorities. Connie comments on this to Smiley as well. “Drop it, George. Karla’s beaten you all ends up. He foxed you, he made a fool of your time. Our time.”428 She continues, “Go home,

George. Karla won’t give you back your past. Be like the old fool here. Get yourself a bit of love and wait for Armageddon.”429 Even Connie, who is thrilled at the prospect of coming out of retirement at first, realizes that Smiley is on a personal crusade to get Karla. The institution to which he devoted himself may have left him behind, but he has still held on the past.

Smiley shows how the past has shaped him and how he clings to it in other ways. When he enters Germany to begin gathering intelligence and to find his lead, Otto Leipzig, he thinks about being an operative in Germany during the Cold War, which was from his perspective, the center of his universe. He arrives in Hamburg and checks into a hotel as Mr. Standfast. Smiley is depicted by the narrator as he reminisces,

Germany was his second nature, even his second soul. In his youth, her literature had been his passion and his discipline. He could put on her language like a uniform and speak with its boldness. Yet he sensed danger in every step he took, for Smiley as a

425 Ibid., 218. 426 Ibid. 427Cobbs, 23. 428 Le Carré, 219. 429 Ibid.

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young man had spent half the war here in the lonely terror of the spy, and the awareness of being on enemy territory was lodged in him for good.430 Smiley again is not really stuck in the past, but is still very much driven and informed by the past. For a long time, he has been an administrator in the Circus, a handler, and a vicar. As he is now entering into danger, he is entering his mode of being a field agent. It is in this way that

Smiley has not changed. In this way he has not left the Circus behind. Smiley could be interpreted here from a Kantian perspective as well. Even though he said to himself in an earlier quotation that he is now alone and feels left behind, he has devoted his entire life to an institution. His abilities demonstrate this. Also, think about the fact that in the first book, it is mentioned briefly that all he had really wanted was to have a peaceful life and read

Grimmelshausen. Despite this desire for academic pursuit, he has come out of retirement yet again. In the first book, it seemed to be the case that he was glad to be called back. This time, not as much.

As he is flying back to England, after having obtained the incriminating evidence regarding

Karla, the narrator shows him reflecting on how he feels about this final struggle.

The dash through Schleswig-Holstein had given him the swiftness of revived youth, but now, in the anti-climax of escape, he was assailed by the incurable indifference of age. With death so close, he thought, so ever-present, what is the point of struggling any longer? He thought of Karla again, and of his absolutism, which at least gave point to the perpetual chaos that was life’s condition; point to violence, and to death; of Karla for whom killing had never been more than the necessary adjunct of a grand design.431

430 Ibid., 221. 431 Ibid., 260.

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It still seems to be the case that there is a difference between Karla and Smiley. Karla has always killed as he thought necessary. Smiley has not. Smiley is and has been a good Kantian for this reason. He has always sought the more peaceable solution. Karla has always been ruthless and has had no problem with killing. This is why Vladimir called him the Sandman. Those who cross him end up dead. In this novel, we have seen Vladimir shot in the face, Maria Ostrokova barely evading an assassination attempt, and Otto Leipzig being tortured and killed in his own boat. Smiley knows that he himself could never be that ruthless. In addition, he has too many personal attachments, such as his wife Ann. Karla killed his own wife by sending her to a camp, and then put his daughter in a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland. Smiley is at odds. “How can I win? He asked himself; alone, restrained by doubt and a sense of decency—how can any of us—against this remorseless fusillade?”432 That is the problem. In every other way Smiley has stayed the same. He no longer has that luxury, however. He has learned more though. Smiley remembers a promise he once made, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. “Karla is not fireproof.

Because he’s a fanatic. And one day, if I have anything to do with it, that lack of moderation will be his downfall.”433 This is Smiley’s initial resolution to bring down Karla. I have posed the question earlier, as to whether Smiley’s motivations Kantian or not, and it seems that if one looks at it from the perspective of a life-long quest to catch Karla, there may very well be a sense of Kantian duty involved. Even though Saul Enderby gives Smiley the authorization to the pursue Karla, he says something that indicates that Smiley really is on his own. The older guard, like Saul Enderby and George Smiley, just want to settle old scores. Smiley’s realization that he

432 Ibid. 433 Ibid.

219 is no longer supporting and supported by an institution comes when he is researching Karla at the Circus archives late one night.

He read all night, he hardly stirred. He read as far into his own past as into Karla’s, and sometimes it seemed to him that the one life was merely the compliment to the other; that they were causes of the same incurable malady. He wondered, as so often before, how he would have turned out if he had had Karla’s childhood, had been fired in the same kilns of revolutionary upheaval. He tried but, as so often before, failed to resist his own fascination at the sheer scale of the Russian suffering, its careless savagery, its flights of heroism. He felt small in the face of it, and soft by comparison, even though he did not consider his own life wanting in its pains.434

In this case, Smiley is not just trying to humanize Karla, or empathize with him. He is most likely referring to the Cold War itself. It is the Cold War and its battlefield, which for Smiley and Karla has been played out along the East-West German border, that shaped them and necessitated who they are. They were both forged in World War II as well. But there is more. Being a spy changes a person until he or she cannot fit in with civilians anymore. Part of one’s being is taken away by the Cold War. Karla survived countless purgings and back-stabbing, as well as the death of his mistress and the loss of a daughter, due to ideological tyranny. Smiley has been programmed with clandestine behavioral traits and an inherent sense of paranoia as a result of his days as an operative in Germany. In addition, they have been directly at odds with each other ever since Smiley first asked Karla to defect in Delhi. Smiley is reaching a conclusion that is ever-emerging. Both men have belonged to opposing institutions, but that is mainly to do with who was born in which country. Smiley wonders if he would have been as ruthless as Karla if he had been born into the painful upheaval of revolution and purging.

434 Ibid., 298.

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More on Spying

There is another way to apply Kant’s prohibition on spying here. It has already been examined that espionage is not Kantian because it undermines trust between two nations that could at some point enter into an agreement of peace. Another reason is that the state is violating the formula of humanity, by endorsing the training of spies. Kant is most likely referring to the fact that the state would be forcing its covert operatives to violate the categorical imperative. Spies are asked to violate their ability to universalize a maxim and also are ordered to use people as a means to an end. The thing that this third book in the trilogy makes clear, however, is that the spies themselves suffer. They are used and then eventually cast out. They can never unlearn what they have learned. In this way, irrespective of what harm the spies may cause, from a

Kantian perspective, they themselves suffer equally as much.

As previously mentioned, Smiley felt that he had to change in order to catch Karla. The most significant aspect of Smiley’s newly found ruthlessness it the collateral damage that he causes.

In order to get to Karla, Smiley must go through a series of contacts, beginning with Grigoriev.

He is the first victim. Smiley has the lamplighters observe Grigoriev so as to unlock the tools to burn him via blackmail. They discover that he is being paid large sums of money by Karla, that he has a fake Swiss identity, that he is misappropriating funds, and that he is having an affair with a secretary. All of these things are enough to burn Grigoriev. He is the first in the chain to be sacrificed. Next is Tatiana, or Alexandra, Karla’s daughter who is being housed in a Swiss psychiatric hospital outside of Bern for large sums of money. By burning Griogoriev and giving him a defection offer, the money will stop flowing. This means that harm will come to Tatiana

Finally, at the end of the chain, there is Karla. Smiley puts Karla into an inescapable situation by

221 threatening to go public with the laundry list of Karla’s mistakes, including killing multiple people and stealing government funds to pay for a daughter in a Swiss hospital. Even though

Smiley offers Karla a defection package, he knows that he has ruined Karla’s life, as well as that of Tatiana. It is easy enough to evaluate this series of events from a Kantian perspective. What

Smiley has done from a Kantian perspective is unacceptable. From a conventional standpoint, or from the standpoint of a conventional spy protagonist, Smiley has performed well. From a

Kantian perspective, he has ruined the lives of multiple people. Perhaps the ruination of Karla can be excused, but hurting Grigoriev and Tatiana cannot. They were essentially innocent bystanders. Granted, Grigoriev was corrupt, but not really a “bad guy.” Smiley has violated the formula of humanity drastically. He has used people as a means to an end and thus undermined their dignity as humans and quite simply their lives as well.

Smiley’s Dedication

Smiley realizes that he has dedicated the remainder of his life simply to destroy one man. He realizes that by becoming ruthless, by burning Grigoriev, cutting Ann out of his life, and more, he has become the same as Karla, just as Connie said. As Smiley and the others wait for Karla on the bridge connecting East and West Berlin, Smiley thinks to himself.

Like Guillam, Smiley had seen it all before. He looked across the river into the darkness again, and an unholy vertigo seized him as the very evil he had fought against seemed to reach out and possess him and claim him despite his striving, calling him a traitor also; mocking him, yet at the same time applauding his betrayal. On Karla descended the curse of Smiley’s compassion; on Smiley the curse of Karla’s fanaticism. I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his. We have crossed each other’s frontiers, we are the no-men of this no-man’s-land.435

435 Le Carré, 395.

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Smiley and Karla have been cemented together. Smiley is expressing the idea that he has given up everything that might have at one point made him a good person. In being loyal to the institution that is England, the West, and the Circus, Smiley has always predicated his identity on the fact that he has avoided the brutality that he has perceived as being used by Moscow

Centre. This is no longer the case though. Smiley showed Karla compassion in the prison in

Delhi, and in his mind that carried over to make Karla vulnerable. Karla’s only crime, in the third novel was caring for a daughter. This is why Smiley reacted at the end the way he did. After

Karla has crossed the bridge and been taken into custody, Guillam says, “George, you won.”436

In response, Smiley remarks, “Did I?,” followed by, “Yes. Yes, well I suppose I did.”437 Smiley knows that he has sacrificed his own sense of humanity to achieve this goal. As John Cobbs mentions, “This new Smiley cuts away the human attachments that handicapped him in the past but also kept him from the amoral coldness and brutality of his profession.”438 This Smiley is in stark contrast with the Smiley of the first book. Recall what Mark Fisher described, “It is the beyond-good-and-evil agent, the one who acts without performing complex moral calculations, the one cannot belong to the “normal” world, who allows ordinary folk to sleep easily.439

I used John Cobbs argument regarding Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, to counter Mark

Fisher’s description, stating that what set Smiley apart was his capacity to love. After everything that Smiley has done in this book, it is not anywhere near as easy to support this claim.

436 Ibid., 398. 437 Ibid. 438 Cobbs, 148. 439 Fisher, 40.

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Karla has perhaps not changed as dramatically as Smiley has. He still has the same tactics as before, in that he is ruthless. He has Kirov, Vladmir, and Otto Leipzig killed. We learned from

Connie Sachs that he had his mistress sent to a prison camp, where she died, presumably for thinking contrary to communist ideology. Karla has always been devoted to the institution of

Moscow Centre. His fall from grace takes the form of compassion for his daughter. He knows that he cannot protect her from the Soviet system, so he sends her away. The thing to consider is that both he and Smiley have gravitated at this final point away from their devotion to their institutions and toward personal goals. On Smiley’s side this is the destruction of Karla, and on

Karla’s side, it is the well-being of his daughter.

More Kantian Conclusions

What are the final conclusions that can be drawn regarding this third book? One has to keep in mind that duty-based ethics are the basis of the Kantian ethical system. In what way do Karla and Smiley have duty as the center of their operative principle? Do they follow the categorical imperative, meaning, can they justifiably universalize their behavior? I will begin with Smiley. In this story, Smiley engages in duty in several forms. First, he pursues a duty to Vladimir.

Everyone else criticizes Vladmir, and assumes that the former general has gone crazy, or is simply bored from inactivity and craving attention. Smiley knows better, however. He knows that Vladimir was not shot in the face for nothing. It is this duty that propels him down the path toward the end of the story. In this way I would argue that Smiley has a duty toward this friend.

What about toward his wife, Ann? Smiley breaks up with Ann for good before he leaves England to pursue Karla. He has been in love with her all along and has put up with her frequent infidelity. The problem here is, that as stated before, his reasons are not black and white. He

224 may have been trying to protect her, which could be interpreted as Kantian, but he also may have simply felt that he needed to lose that which made him attached. One could also interpret this as Kantian, in that Smiley wanted all aspects of his life to leave his sphere of experience, so that he could do his job. This is a bit tricky, however, because again, I have shown how it is love that distinguished him from other spies. In this way, Smiley is not quite fully Kantian but not anti-Kantian either. It all depends on how one defines the nature of Smiley’s duty. What about his duty to the Circus? When Lacon says that Smiley has a duty and a loyalty, presumably to the

Circus, the narrator describes, “Duty to what, Smiley wondered, with that part of himself which sometimes seemed to be a spectator to the rest. Loyalty to whom?”440 In the first book, it would have been unlikely for Smiley to feel cynicism like that. But after having been used by the

Circus, specifically cast aside and then brought back in to clean up other people’s messes, he can only feel a sense of loss and disconnection. So he may be acting out of a sense of duty toward his own cause, his own Circus. In his own days in the Circus, Karla was the greatest threat to life and well-being. Smiley has not really been able to leave those days behind. While he has no sense of duty toward the current Circus administration, he does feel a sense of duty to the previous administration, and thus, by pursuing Karla, he is acting out of his own sense of duty. I have said before that the fact that Smiley and Karla are so old, and that the Circus has moved on, can lead to the question as to why it is still worth the trouble. At the same time,

Smiley would not pursue this quest if duty to his old friends and all of the people whom Karla has hurt were not a factor. Of course, as said before, acting out of duty makes one in agreement with Kantian principles. As far as whether he is adhering to a maxim, it is good to

440 Ibid., 69.

225 consider analysis regarding Spät in the first chapter. On the one hand, Smiley has violated the formula of humanity by treating Grigoriev and Karla’s daughter as a means to an end. He has taken away their value and dignity by doing so. It is in this way that Smiley changes from the first novel. He is willing to use people to achieve his goals. At the same time, he is pursuing justice as his cause, in the same way that Spät did, and with equally as much dedication. Smiley has been oppressed by Karla and wounded by Karla’s tactics since the beginning. He has thought of Karla as unnecessarily unfair and ruthless all along. Does this justify his behavior, however? Another question, can Smiley qualify as a Kantian hero? I would say that he is without a doubt a conventional hero in this book. He has acted with bravery and with integrity.

As far as being a Kantian hero, things are not so simple. The only recourse is to think that his maxim is justice. Also, it is good to consider overall his service to the Circus.

The Circus

Can the Circus itself be thought of as a Kantian entity? This is where one must really consider the idea of competing institutions. The biggest obstacle, among many, is that spying is not

Kantian, because it undermines trust. If warring nations cannot eventually enter into a peace agreement, then something needs to be changed. It has been shown, however, in the third book, that the Circus has been, as of about 1979 or so, in the process of changing, so as to work in a global environment where trust can be built between NATO and the eastern states of the

Warsaw Pact. In this way the Circus has been in a process of becoming more Kantian, in terms of Kant’s political stance that nations, just like people, should come together in a type of social contract. Another question is duty. Does the Circus fulfill its duty towards its operatives? Does it even have such duty? This is again where spycraft cuts both ways. The spies have a duty toward

226 defending and running the organization, but the management would have to uphold duties as well to qualify as Kantian. In the first book, Smiley was put in charge and in turn, tried his best to ensure the safety of his operatives. He was trying to fulfill his duty of beneficence toward people by allowing them to participate of their own free will. This was not a problem, because it is pretty obvious in the book that everyone wanted to catch the mole. In the third book, Smiley is no longer in charge, although he does work side by side with Toby Esterhase, in charge of surveillance, and Peter Guillam, an old friend. In this case, though, the Circus put everyone in danger by putting the operation off the books and officially denying responsibility. Saul

Enderby, discussing what Smiley has on Karla, mentions that he wants Karla by all means, that he will help provide funding secretly and off the books, but that Smiley is alone in terms of how to conduct the operation. Enderby makes his intentions clear, “If the ploy aborts and there’s a scandal, I’m not going to have people telling me I should have staked you out. I’ll say I suspected you might be slipping the leash on the Vladimir thing and I decided to have you checked in case. I’ll say the whole catastrophe was a ludicrous piece of private enterprise by a senile spy who’s lost his marbles.”441 Here it should be pretty obvious that, even though Saul

Enderby helps Smiley by giving him secret funding, by not endorsing him officially, he puts

Smiley and all of the others in extreme danger. In this way again, the Circus fails to meet

Kantian standards. If, by chance, Smiley and the others were caught, they would have no protective mechanism. They are being used as a means to an end.

Another question to ask is, did the Cold War justify spycraft? Any answer would partially be speculation. Kant scholars such as Pablo Gilabert have pointed out that there are exceptions to

441 Le Carré, 291.

227 perfect duties if helping someone is involved. In this way a positive duty can outweigh a negative one.442 At the same time, think of John Cobbs, argument, that all that was happening was a type of trench warfare whereby little progress was made on either side, and yet huge expenses were made and huge amounts of resources were consumed.443 It makes the whole process seem almost pointless. The main redeeming factor would be if this massive expenditure of resources in the espionage business allowed the Cold War to continue but kept an even worse world hot war to occur. The goal should be the end of the Cold War, but at the same time, it is permissible for each side, in this case the Circus and Moscow Centre, to defend themselves against each other. Keep in mind what Kant argues regarding the state of war.

When states are warring with each other they do no wrong, in the sense that a state of war, or a state of nature is amoral and has no justice or set of laws by which to judge. What is immoral is to remain in a state of war or state of nature.444 Both sides can be faulted in this way. Only by ending the Cold War could either side be considered Kantian. History shows, however, the vast amount of paranoia and mistrust that had to be overcome.

The interesting thing to consider is how a Kantian reading of things changes an interpretation of

Karla. Karla is known historically in the books for his ruthlessness, including killing those who fail him, including the love of his life. What has changed is that he has taken on a duty toward his daughter, Tatiana. There is a reason why he puts her away in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. He was only able to protect her so much while in Russia. She was not made aware of the true nature of her mother and father, and was only vaguely aware of the fact that her father was

442 Gilabert, 395. 443 Cobbs, 20. 444 Kant, 86.

228 extremely powerful. As a result of officially immoral social behavior, meaning hanging out with intellectuals, counter-revolutionaries, and having a significant amount of casual sex, she was put in jails, as well as developing a type of schizophrenia. Karla knew that his daughter was doomed, even though he did everything he could to protect her. The only option for her own safety was to get her out of the country. This type of protective behavior is exemplary in a

Kantian sense. Karla has put himself at risk to make his own daughter part of the Kingdom of

Ends, in the sense that she is an end in herself, rather than a means to an end. He has protected her because she deserved to be liberated from the mess that he created for her in the first place. Does this make him a Kantian hero? This is a difficult question to answer. He has violated the dignity of human beings for decades. However, just like Smiley, he did his work in the name of his institution. His duty toward his daughter, however, has elevated him beyond the status of a villain. There is a good chance, however, that in the story of the Cold War, heroes and villains are relativistic terms. Moscow Centre under Karla has done some bad things. The Circus has as well, though. In this way, the only course left is to do away with conventional notions of good and evil and look at the Cold War itself as a clash of cultures. In general, people who grew up in the West were taught that Soviet government was oppressive, tyrannical, and fickle, purging intellectuals and stifling free thought. While some of this may be true, the people themselves were no different than Westerners. On the other hand, the West did some bad things too. Even though the West felt it their duty to fight communism, some of the governments they propped up in their quest for world justice were worse than the communist opposition. World War II was a much clearer war of good and evil. The Nazis needed to be stopped and the Allies were the people to do so. By the time Vietnam came around, this was no longer the case. It seems

229 then, that one can look at the “Karla trilogy” as a microcosm for how things became morally ambiguous during the Cold War. Nothing could ever be called purely good or purely evil. As

Connie Sachs mentioned in her conversation with George Smiley, it was a bunch of half-angels fighting with half-devils.

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Conclusion

Throughout this project, I have been trying to examine, at the root of everything, the ways in which heroes and villains are portrayed in spy and detective fiction, specifically, that of John le

Carré and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. I have also learned quite a bit in the process. In determining what has been learned, it might be good to start with how the portrayal of each main character was altered by Kantian analysis. Spät, it turns out, is a good Kantian hero in many ways because of how he measures on the scale of duty. His whole state of being, in the novel, is driven by his pursuit of justice. It makes sense, if one recalls what was stated in chapter one, by William

Gillis. “In many of his works Dürrenmatt is concerned directly or indirectly with an almost obsessive idea: justice.”445 Spät and Bärlach are both obviously extremely concerned with justice. Spät sacrifices his sanity and sense of mental well-being in its pursuit, and Bärlach sacrifices his chance at physical health. In this way both of them fulfill their duty to a sense of justice. Spät is in grave danger of going against all of his principles, Kantian or otherwise, by almost assassinating Kohler, but he does not go through with it. His inner integrity does not allow it. Thus he regains his sense of morality. Bärlach also wavers to an extent by engaging in what Roger A. Crockett described as vigilante justice. 446 Which involves making use of Tschanz as his “Henker,” to act as “Richter” and kill Gastmann. Obviously from a Kantian perspective,

Bärlach violated Tschanz’ humanity and thus the formula of humanity by doing this. At the same time, while Bärlach could be faulted in this way, he is fulfilling his duty towards the beneficence of humanity by taking Gastmann out, who has caused untold destruction. This is

445 William Gillis, “Dürrenmatt and the Detectives,” The German Quarterly 35, no.1 (January 1962): 71, accessed May 2nd, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/402308. 446 Roger A. Crockett, Understanding Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 38.

231 the problem with complex genre fiction. Both from a conventional analysis and a Kantian perspective, nobody is perfect, but each person is highlighted by the two means of evaluation in different ways. Bärlach’s Kantian crime is vigilante justice and Spät’s is really just self- destruction, which also violates him being obligated to treat himself as an end in himself. Both heroes qualify in many ways as Kantians but also err greatly. Overall, however, they are very much Kantian heroes in comparison with the villains.

A unifying theme in Dürrenmatt’s works in general is that justice is outside the sphere of mortals. William Gillis states, “If man wants justice, he must pursue it, but more often than not, the certain attainment of it is something he must leave to Heaven.”447 I showed in the previous chapters how Gillis is not the only scholar to have a theist interpretation of Dürrenmatt. Edward

Diller says the following:

Dürrenmatt has insisted on occasion that he regards the world as chaos, as an incomprehensible mass of forces acting upon man in unpredictable ways. As a result, men are not masters of their fate; and all their relentless activity and fanatic insistence on improving society only compound the confusion of existence and expose their own impotence. Men cannot save the world, or even themselves for that matter, . . . that is God's prerogative! And on pursuing the matter further, we conclude that the underlying assumptions of Diirrenmatt's ontology are best comprehended within the framework of Calvinistic theology.448 Not all Dürrenmatt scholars agree that he had a conscious, purposeful, Calvinist or even theist slant to his writing, or at least, not for his whole career. Olivia G. Gabor-Peirce argues that there was just as much atheism as theism in Dürrenmatt’s thinking, that he had his own brand of

447 Gillis, 71 448 Edward Diller, “Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Chaos and Calvinism,” Monatshefte 63, no. 1 (Spring 1971): 28, accessed September 23, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30156508.

232 theological thought.449 She claims, also, that “a divine presence can be traced throughout many of Dürrenmatt's works at the points of negation and contradiction and, paradoxically, at the points in his works where hope ceases to exist.”450 So essentially Dürrenmatt, from this perspective, was part atheist, part theist. This quandary as to whether Dürrenmatt had Calvinist motivations for part of his career can make things more confusing. Whether atheist or Calvinist, justice is partially outside the realm of human experience. No matter how hard one tries in that universe, one has to leave part of it to fate, random chance, or God, or the divine, depending on how one’s belief system is oriented. In this way, Spät and Bärlach are being made into vehicles for a more abstract concept of justice that is beyond their own personal experience. In the case of Bärlach, as has been shown, his quest is taken away from him by Tschanz, who murdered Schmied, and then it is given back to him by Bärlach making use of Tschanz’ own greed for glory. This type of divine interpretation of justice does not necessarily nullify the

Kantian analysis. If one compares Kantian ethics with systems of ethics such as Calvinist or protestant ethics, there is a lot of compatibility, in the sense that human dignity, duty, and beneficence are important. Either way, it shows that Bärlach and Spät are human. I think that if there is anything a person can learn from current Kantian scholars, it is that we are not perfect, but if we fulfill our duty toward humanity then we can still qualify as Kantian. This is why it is important to think about what Pablo Gilabert discussed, that positive duties can outweigh negative ones.

449 Olivia G. Gabor-Peirce, “Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Divine Traces in the Work of an Atheist,” Religion and Literature 39, no.1 (Spring, 2007): 79, accessed September 23rd 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060055. 450 Olivia G. Gabor-Peirce, 80.

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Oddly enough, if one examines Bärlach taking down Gastmann, one can see that Bärlach is helping lots of people by doing so. Again, this becomes difficult in Kantian analysis. If a person holds Bärlach completely accountable from a Kantian perspective, he is not upholding the categorical imperative, because killing cannot be universalized. Thus while Spät might be more favorable from a Kantian perspective, in terms of the fact that he has such a sense of duty to justice, Bärlach might be more favorable from a conventional perspective, meaning a traditional viewpoint toward detective work. This is okay, however. My task in this dissertation has been to test the idea that heroes of genre fiction can be reevaluated by Kantian analysis, and I have done so. Something I would like to address in this conclusion, is the idea of good vs. evil.

I have minimized using these terms because there is not a huge philosophical consensus on their definition. In addition, while Kant does mention the term briefly in the Metaphysics of

Morals of, in his command to “know yourself,” he is mainly referring to evil in terms of an evil will versus a good will.451 Kant always leaves room for improvement. By being a good Kantian, one can become good in general. This is why good and evil are more speculative in nature when discussing Kant. It would be valuable at this point to speculate, however, as to how they might be applied here. If one looks at Der Richter und sein Henker from the perspective of good and evil, one gains especially an insight into this dichotomy. Roger Crockett describes,

The combatants for their part take on allegorical properties as personifications of good and evil. Here, an honorable, principled man who has dedicated his life to bringing criminals to justice through legal means, there, two villains for whom life is a game without a rule book—biologically human, but extremely soulless, or at least lacking any semblance of a conscience. One villain commits crimes on a whim, the other tortures as

451 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 191

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an expression of nihilistic freedom. Such a fight cannot possibly be fair, neither fight can be won by the book.452

The honorable, principled man refers to Bärlach, and the villain who commits crimes on a whim is Gastmann. The second villain is from the sequel to this book. One knows from the story that

Gastmann is capable of any and all crimes, that he commits acts of good and evil on a whim. If one were to have the term evil as a descriptor, especially within the sphere of detective fiction,

Gastmann is as evil as it gets. In turn, genre fiction paints Bärlach as being the personification of good. Even Crockett, who describes the two as being two poles of good and evil, does point out that Bärlach “compromises his philosophical position in order to win the physical struggle.”453

Despite any argument that I can create regarding how Bärlach was doing his duty, that he was acting out of the duty of beneficence toward humanity, Bärlach really did compromise his principles, which decreases his capacity to be a Kantian hero, but does not eliminate it. I am not trying to make everything completely on one side or the other. Gastmann is evil personified both from a Kantian perspective, due to the fact that he violates the freedom and dignity of whomever he wishes, whenever he wants, but also from a conventional perspective, because he is a fraud and a greedy murderer. This dichotomy is tricky, however, due to the factors just mentioned regarding Gastmann’s unpredictable behavior and Bärlach’s compromising of his own principles. This is a good reason why justice is outside of the reach of human kind, from the perspective of Dürrenmatt, if one agrees with the scholarship.

452 Crockett, 39. 453 Ibid.

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In terms of rehashing le Carré, it seems that the three most important characters are Smiley,

Bill Haydon, and Karla. I have already demonstrated the evolution of Smiley, whereby Smiley begins the “Karla Trilogy” as a lot less jaded, but by the third book he loses his sense of identity, his attachment to the institution that is the Circus, and even cannot enjoy his victory in catching

Karla at the end of the story. He also learns to cut loose the ties to people he cares about in order to become more ruthless, more like Karla. In this way, Smiley devolves in a Kantian sense, from the perspective of adhering to a maxim of not harming people, specifically again, the formula of humanity. It is not necessary to re-discuss all of the material, except to mention that, in my opinion, Smiley is one of the greatest conventional heroes in this dissertation, as well as in spy fiction. This of course has been stated by John Cobbs, in terms of the level of popularity that Smiley has in pop culture. Whether Smiley loses some of his principles, he still meets a lot of Kantian qualifications, especially a sense of duty. From a more conventional perspective, however, he is fantastic. He is a brilliant detective and spy, he cares about his colleagues and operatives, he is intelligent, and by the third book, has to go covertly into Germany to retrieve evidence, and is constantly in danger from Karla and from the police. He is very good at covering his tracks and it makes for a good story. From a conventional standpoint, the battle between Smiley and Karla is classic heroic fiction. From a Kantian perspective things are different. Karla is perhaps even more dedicated that Smiley, and fulfills his Kantian duty toward his daughter by risking his own well-being, especially exposing himself to potential grasp of a myriad number of enemies. He acts out of a supreme sense of duty to Moscow Centre and his daughter in the third book. Bill Haydon, however vain and narcissistic he seems, is also acting out of duty toward an ideology, specifically toward Marxism. The interesting thing here is that if

236 one looks at the interaction between the characters from a non-Kantian perspective, Smiley represents the heroic and the good, and Karla the villainous, while Haydon evokes a type of visceral reaction that could make a person lose all sympathy for Haydon and declare him to be evil. After all, there is nothing worse than a traitor. To be a traitor is to betray everyone who works with a person and relies on that person, and also it involves some of the most destructive type of lying of which a person is capable. In terms of the theme in this conclusion of good and evil, it seems that both Smiley and Karla are good in their own way. I know that this is a difficult statement for some readers to hear. Karla, for example, kills anyone who is a problem and is of course, much more ruthless than Smiley. So, in comparison with Smiley, Karla is more on the immoral side of things. One cannot discount, however, that Karla is dedicated to his institution.

From a conventional standpoint, this is not excusable, but from a Kantian perspective it is, at least a bit more. One question that must be asked is, if Karla and Smiley exist in a type of state of nature that is perpetuated by the fact that they are working for two warring institutions, are they in turn immoral? Remember that what one does in a state of nature is not of a moral nature. What is immoral is to perpetuate a state of nature. I do not think that individual spies can be faulted for this. This crime must be attributable to the institutions. Smiley has been working toward eliminating a state of nature by trying to restore order in the Circus. Karla has been acting out of duty to Moscow Centre. Within their own societies, they are not operating ina state of nature at all. Only when one looks at the global picture, the Cold War itself, does a state of nature unfold. In this way, we can look at NATO and the Warsaw Pact as agents in their own right, and they in turn, can be blamed. This is why it is so difficult to be strict with Kantian analysis, as well as with conventional ideas of good and evil, in this previous third chapter. The

237 important thing to consider, which I touched on briefly, is that institutions and ideology replace good and evil in the spy world. This is another reason in my opinion why Kant opposes espionage. Unfortunately, he only specifies briefly why, specifically that it undermines trust. I imagine that no one in the Enlightenment could have foreseen a war that was based on two world powers, divided by the East and the West, fought by spies and intelligence agencies. I would be curious to hear what Kant would have to say. Would spying be justified from this perspective? Kant does mention that a state against which war is being waged is permitted to use any means of defense except certain measure such as spying454 It would be worth asking

Kant about this if he were around. We have seen how some scholars allow for certain types of duties to be favored over others. It is simply impossible to know and is speculation as to what

Kant would say about the Cold War. What is clear is that good and evil, while fitting for detective novels, do not apply as easily to stories based on countries and their respective institutions. Whatever problem a Westerner may have had with the Soviet Union, it is important to remember that the average citizens of both cultures were human beings, who learned to think in terms of a war that threatened both sides.

Another question that has interested me as a result of writing this dissertation is the idea of perfection. I am referring to the problem that many people have with Kant, in that it seems a person has to be perfect in order to be a good Kantian. In fact, Kant addresses this question. “It is a human being’s duty to strive for perfection, but not to reach it (in this life), and his compliance with this duty can, accordingly, consist only in continual progress.”455 It seems then that one may rule out the necessity to be perfect. Even Kant is not asking for that. He just wants

454 Kant, 117. 455 Ibid.,196.

238 a person to get better over time. It seems as well that the heroes in the stories of this dissertation do that with much more intention and success than the villains. Allen W. Wood tries to clear up a misconception as well. He says that what is misleading is “the extremely common thought that Kant is recommending here that every decision we make in life should be prompted by asking ourselves whether some maxim or other can be willed as universal law.”456

Wood argues that the formula of universal law is only the beginning. I have tried to show in this dissertation that there are other means of evaluating heroes and villains on a Kantian scale besides simply the formula of universal law. The categorical imperative whereby my maxim has to be able to be universalized, really is only the beginning. While it is all tied together in a concentric type of geometry, separating the formulae of the categorical imperative is helpful. If it is possible to understand that a hero is flawed but strives toward his or her duty to humanity in one way or another, then that person is on the right path.

In concluding this project, I hope to have shown several things. First, that genre fiction can be a viable source of academic discourse. Spy fiction and detective fiction are not just popular. They resonate with the human experience in ways that make them unique. The Cold War created a huge body of literature and film, and not all of it was “high-culture.” Writers like le Carré carried spy fiction into the realm of political and philosophical discussion that was necessary at the time and still relevant for today. As I mentioned before, one can still learn from wars such as

World War II, and the Cold War is no different. Detective fiction from the same era touches on the aspects of the human condition that are equally as compelling, and Dürrenmatt specifically has created several masterpieces of detective fiction that are sources of philosophical

456 Allen W. Wood, "The Supreme Principle of Morality," The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy. ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 344.

239 discussion as well. By focusing on these two authors, a person can see how fiction of these types is so powerful. I also hope to have shown that Kant is more adaptable than some people are aware of. Kant is, in my opinion, still relevant and the scholars I have quoted have created evidence of this. As the world continues to evolve, the Kantian model of how states can create peace between themselves, using a social contract based on human dignity, is important. I also wish to have shown how Kant is not oppressive and that anyone can be a good Kantian without compromising one’s own freedom. As time progresses, I am certain that genre fiction will continue to evolve but spy fiction and detective fiction will adapt and grow as well. Kant will not cease to be relevant, but scholarship will also evolve, as it has in the last few decades.

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Bibliography Main Literary/ Filmic Sources: Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. Der Richter und sein Henker. Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1985.

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. Justiz. Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1985

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. The Execution of Justice. Translated by John E. Woods. London: Pan books, 1990.

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