Why the Punisher Is 'Daredevil's' Most Moral Character
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Why The Punisher Is ‘Daredevil’s’ Most Moral Character Yes, a murderous vigilante is the most moral character in Netflix’s ‘Daredevil.’ The Punisher, who murders dozens, if not hundreds, of people in the second season of Netflix’s “Daredevil,” is actually the most moral character on the show. Yes, the gun-wielding vigilante who kills instead of arrests his criminal adversaries is, in fact, the good guy here. He’s a better guy even than the title character himself. Why? Because he’s doing what’s necessary within the world he resides. The Punisher doesn’t exist within our universe. He lives in the comic book universe. In our reality, especially in America, law enforcement more or less effectively deals with outlaws and the criminal justice system more or less effectively punishes and often even rehabilitates them. In the comic book universe, the same can’t be said. Comic book police departments are generally completely corrupt with one or two courageous holdouts (that’s certainly true in Netflix’s “Daredevil”). Comic book prisons are just as corrupt and act more like hotels than penitentiaries (clearly that’s true in “Daredevil’s” second season). Helping “arrest” a comic book villain and send him to “prison” is simply an exercise in futility (something Daredevil learns, as literally all of the villains he helped put away in the first season are back again in the second—even the petty criminals). Daredevil Is a Coward The only moral thing to do to criminals who murder at will in a world where the government authorities are, at best, ineffective or, at worst, corrupt is stop them for good. Kill them. Make sure they can’t kill any innocent people ever again. The Only Thing Daredevil Doesn’t Do Is Finish the Job Daredevil, who’s willing to break every law and ethical rule on the road to putting villains in useless prisons but unwilling to go any further, willingly participates in a vicious cycle From TOKTopics.com that makes a mockery of justice. Allowing the revolving door of crime to continue ad infinitum is naive at best and immoral at worst. The Punisher realizes this and attempts to end the cycle instead. Entertainment value aside, though, he does what he must to alter his reality for the better. In our world, where the rule of law reigns and justice is far from dead, the Punisher’s tactics are immoral and appalling (so are Daredevil’s, for that matter), but in his world, where chaotic corruption reigns, his one-man revolution against the tyrannical rule of blood-soaked criminals is the most moral. http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/28/why-the-punisher-is-daredevils-most-moral- character/ 1. Does this writer believe that the Punisher is the most moral character because the writer is arguing from a consequentialist or a deontological point of view? Identify parts of the text to justify your choice. 2. Do you agree with the writer’s argument? From TOKTopics.com Mistaking the Punisher as Moral Is Frank Castle morally justified /inside the bounds of the world he is placed/ to be an ultraviolent vigilante? You have said yes -- because there is no system of justice to appeal to. In a world where the way government is executed is utterly corrupt and at the same time the mechanisms for gaining justice are utterly shrouded in unknowns (and may in fact be unobtainable), it seems to be your view that the individual is then morally obligated to take matters into his own hands. There is no way that's a philosophy which grew up in Western Civilization because our system of ethics is based on the Bible, not on some other system of thinking about the world where the individual is the chiefest judge of what's right. In our way of seeing it, the individual owes a moral duty to God in all things, including (and especially) justice. To that end, the individual is not tasked with deciding what is right and wrong and then carrying out the sentence -- even in the worst of circumstances. Even when the government is corrupt, the individual is not tasked to take up matters into his own hands. Now, this view of it also has some problems, the chief of which between guys like us is the American Revolution. How is it that we can justify the American Revolution if we abide by an ethic that says we owe a duty to the God-ordained order of things? Isn't Frank Castle like the Founding Fathers in that he is facing powers which, frankly, will never give him justice and never treat him with human dignity? The Founding Fathers would say it this way (in fact, they did): “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” And then further down they say: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and From TOKTopics.com transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” That last clause being the key difference between Frank Castle and Thomas Paine: Castle just wants to kill all of the criminals who have wronged him; the Founding Fathers want to rather throw off a corrupt government and put on a new one in which Despotism is removed and a "new guard" is provided. Frank Castle, frankly, is not a sufficient new guard. He's not really much better than those he is murdering for at least three reasons: he thinks his authority to do as he pleases is absolute; he thinks that the means he can or should use are completely justified by that authority; and he is not seeking to make others safe by any means at all but rather only to extract vengeance. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sokbd8 1. Does this writer believe that the Punisher is not a moral character because the writer is arguing from a consequentialist or a deontological point of view? Identify parts of the text to justify your choice. 2. Do you agree with the writer’s argument? From TOKTopics.com .