As I mentioned at the end of the Part 2, the Joker leaves Batman a broken bat. We encounter the full scope of this damage early on in The Dark Knight Rises, when Belle….err, Anne Hathaway snoops around a derelict wing of the rebuilt Wayne manor and encounters a very Beast looking Bruce Wayne, complete with scraggly beard and posh evening gown. He’s able to stop her from getting to the catnip, but before she nimbly bounds out the window she’s able to rake him over the coals with this memorable razz:

There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.

Ouch. Catwoman’s censure of Bruce gets our blood boiling because of how unfair and undeserved it is. Maybe you had a similar reaction to the guy in my theater who couldn’t refrain from shouting, “Bitch, you don’t even KNOW!!!” at the screen. Though he’s effectively and dutifully maintained the billionaire-Playboy facade, Bruce has in reality been doing anything but living large in the recent past. In fact, being Batman requires an intense attention and devotion to asceticism, requiring Bruce to forego worldly comforts, basic human needs such as sleep, and even relationships with people he loves. In fact, in the most extreme case, he had to let go of the life of someone he loved in order to be Batman – to be the hero Gotham needs.

The problem is, things just keep getting worse and more unfair. In addition to Rachel being dead and this hot cat-thief woman calling him out, there’s a new basket case in town, and he appears to be especially dangerous. In fact, he puts Commissioner Gordon in the hospital. Gordon, being a huge Batman fanboy, wants Batman to come back, but Bruce tells him that Batman just might not exist anymore. He’s caught in a catch-22, because on the one hand, he’s sort of lost his faith in his ability to save Gotham. His old frienemy Ra’s Al Gul taunts him in a flashback. “You used all the tools I taught you… for a city that was corrupt, and a victory based on a lie.” On the other hand, he doesn’t really have anything left to live for as Bruce:

Alfred: And that’s the problem. You hung up your cape and your cowl, but you didn’t move on, you never went to find a life, to find someone…

Bruce: Alfred… I did find someone.

Alfred: I know, and you lost her. But that’s all part of living, sir. But you’re not living. You’re just waiting, hoping for things to go bad again.

He decides to get back into the game, of course, so the show can go on. Almost as quickly as he’s back in, however, Bane puts him back out with a spine-crushing “finish him!” move. Instead of letting Bruce die, Bane brings him to the prison/hell-pit thing where he once lived and forces him to watch Gotham’s destruction before he dies:

So, as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive so that you can watch them clamoring over each other to “stay in the sun.” You can watch me torture an entire city and when you have truly understood the depth of your failure, we will fulfill Ra’s al Ghul’s destiny… We will destroy Gotham and then, when it is done and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die…

Especially considering the difficulties inherent in wiring a TV with satellite hookup to a pit in the desert, it seems that Bane has gone to great lengths to ensure that Batman’s final days be as miserable as possible. Why such cruelty? What are Bane’s motives? Well, actually, the question we should be asking is what are Talia’s motives, since it is revealed later that Bane is really nothing more than her puppet. Talia/Bane’s motives very hard to pin down because of their seeming non-existence. Throughout the course of the movie, Bane spits out a lot of rhetoric (both to his followers and the people of Gotham) that never quite makes sense. His followers/cronies clearly believe that the they are part of a sort of revolution, but all we ever hear Bane tell them is, “The fire rises!” He feeds the people of Gotham a mishmash of anti-capitalist/anarchist revolutionary sentiment, but we know that this is only meant to give them false hope so as to ensure maximum pain later. Even though he tells them some paper-thin lie about someone in Gotham having the trigger to the bomb, making it seem as though they are “free to choose their own destiny,” he and Talia are going to stop at nothing to ensure that it goes off when the ticker reaches zero.

But again, why? None of this really seems to be for any sensible purpose? In Batman Begins, Ra’s Al Gul planned to destroy Gotham because he believed it to be a blight upon the world. But he wanted to do it in a clean, efficient way; causing extra suffering for the sake of suffering would have actually gone against his moral philosophy. Joker, by comparison, had much less of a “plan,” but he still had a method to his madness. He wanted to show the world how hilariously pathetic their moral rules and standards were. Talia, and her new League of Shadows (which, we learn, was excommunicated from Ra’s Al Gul’s original branch for being too extreme), seem to be driven by one purpose only: revenge. Specifically, revenge against Batman for killing her father. There is a controversial philosophical principle known as the Principle of Sufficient Reason (or PSR) which states that everything must have a cause or reason behind it. If we believe in this principle, at least in regards to human actions, than we will want to say that the reason for Talia’s wish and subsequent desire to destroy Gotham are caused by Batman having killed her father. But is this really a logical reason for her actions? Why should the whole of Gotham have to pay for what Batman did to her father? Could she really have any sort of coherent moral rationale that convinces her that it is reasonable to blow up an entire city to torture one man? Maybe she’s not only seeking revenge on Batman, but on the whole world for allowing her to spend her childhood in a hellish pit. But even then, what do the people of Gotham have to do with that? Alfred had it wrong – it wasn’t the Joker who just wanted to watch the world burn, it was these two. They’re out for revenge, and revenge doesn’t abide by any rule or reason.

This all kind of sucks for Bruce. All he ever tried to do was be a good guy and help everyone, and now it appears that he’s failed in every possible way. Oh, I also forgot to mention: right before he left Alfred told him that Rachel actually chose Harvey over him. Bruce is having an epic FML moment right now, and he did nothing to deserve it. In my interpretation, Talia and Bane are really only manifestations of a much larger evil that has worked over the course of all three films to bring Bruce to the bottom of the pit. What evil is that? Evil. Simple as that. Bad things happen in the world, even the best of people who have the best of intentions, and they happen all the time. Theologians refer to this as the “problem of evil.” Forest Gump concisely sums up the reality with the phrase, “shit happens.” Everyone’s aware that shit happens, but we don’t know why. Bruce didn’t do anything to deserve losing his parents, then losing Rachel, and then having to listen to Catwoman be a huge b, but it all happened anyway. We desperately want an answer that will satisfy the Principle of Sufficient Reason, but we usually can’t find one.

Batman, of course, is way better than the rest of us, so we know that he’s going to find some way to rise above this. While he’s making miraculous Wolverine-like recovery in the prison and preparing to make the life or death climb, he tells another prisoner that “he’s not afraid, he’s angry.” He wants to get out so he can take his city back – so he can get back to being the hero that Gotham needs. That’s nice, says his fellow prisoner/doctor, but it’s not going to be enough. The only prisoner to make it out of the pit, he tells Bruce, made it without using a rope. Without the rope, you have no other choice but to make the jump or die; there’s no third option, and the natural will and human instinct to survive is what will carry you over. In other words, he’s telling Bruce, “unless you can find something to live for, something that makes you afraid of dying, you have no chance out of here.” Other interpreters have found echoes of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in this. Schopenhauer believed that the only real thing that existed in the world was a universal “Will” that is constantly striving for satisfaction. In human beings, this Will is expressed by a desire to live and reproduce, and this continually dissatisfied will causes us great suffering. I think this connection has a lot of merit Batman’s “will” and his striving to make things right in Gotham has certainly caused him a great amount of suffering, and it is ultimately this same, self interested will to survive that will allow him to escape the prison and overcome Bane. I don’t think the movie can be understood purely through Schopenhauer’s lens for one two reasons, however. First, Schopenhauer argues that the best way to achieve tranquility and inner peace is by a sort of extreme asceticism and subjugation of the will. Only through doing things like practicing chastity and contemplating art can we temporarily escape ourselves and our painful desires, which will always be insatiable. Second, Schopenhauer argues that the only truly moral acts are ones which are totally and completely separate from any sense of duty or self-interest. These seem to be the maxims that Bruce previously lived by during his time as Batman; through extreme asceticism and subjugation of his own will in service of others, he was able to become Batman and be the “hero Gotham needed.” In order to save Gotham now, however, he’s going to have to save himself as well, and that’s going to be harder.

So, how did he muster up the will to live and manage to escape the pit? Well, let’s look at what he does after he escapes. He goes back to Gotham and gets back to kicking ass pretty much immediately. After saving Gordon and freeing the cops, he confronts Bane and punches him in the face a lot. He doesn’t kill him, but it’s implied that he’s ready to leave him to die: “Tell me where the trigger is! Then, you have my permission to die!” He has a brief setback when he gets stabbed by Talia, but is saved by Catwoman. In the film’s climax, he saves Gotham and fakes his own death, and then runs off with Catwoman to live happily ever after. He leaves Gotham behind forever to start a new life, and makes sure that Alfred gets to spot him at a Parisian cafe so he can cry a few old butler tears.

What? This doesn’t seem at all like Batman. First off, for all intents and purposes he basically breaks his “no killing” rule. He doesn’t kill Bane, but he’s prepared to leave him to die. Second, he saves Gotham, but then abandons it. He’s done being the hero Gotham needs. Third, he does what he never allowed himself to do with Rachel. He hangs up his cape and ends his crusade in order to run away and start a life with Anne Hathaway. Yet, in spite of this seemingly “selfish” behavior and abandonment of his principles, it seems that he’s made the right choice. Certainly no one thinks he’s a bad person. But why? If being a good person is about eliminating as much suffering as possible in the world, as he thought before his break with Ra’s Al Gul, then Bruce isn’t being a good person. He’s leaving Gotham, and God knows bad shit happens all the time there. If being a person is about always adhering to moral absolutes and a completely un-self-interested sense of duty, as he thought before the Joker made him take this philosophy to its limits then he’s not being a good person. He’s shirking his duties. Sure, he leaves the bat-cave and all his toys to Robin, but everyone knows Robin is kind of a pussy compared to Bruce, and Bruce could probably have a few more years of crime fighting left in him. So why do we still think he’s a good guy, a hero even? Maybe it’s because deep down, we have a sense that morality is about more than rules, duties, and calculating utility. Maybe being a good person and living a good, happy life are one and same.

This idea is nothing new. Many ancient philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, asserted that the ultimate aim of morality was human happiness, and that a person could only achieve happiness by behaving in ways that were good and just. In this sense, morality was deeply self-interested. Aristotle understood the virtues in a teleological sense; that is to say, they were goal oriented. According to Aristotle, every thing had a “function” in virtue of which it was good. To take the classic example, an eye is only a good eye in virtue of it being able to see well. Aristotle thought that a person was only a good, well functioning person in virtue of how well he or she was able to be happy. Thus, whatever tended to help achieve the goal of a happy human life was understood as a virtuous way to act. Morality, moreover, was not a purely individual affair. Rather, the individual was always understood to exist as part of a community, and his or her own well being and happiness depended upon the happiness and well being of the community as a whole. This is why the worst possible punishment in ancient Greece was not considered to be death, but rather banishment from one’s city.

The moral philosophy at the core of many religions is essentially the same, even if they make different claims about the specific virtues that will produce human happiness. According to modern moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, somewhere around the time of the Enlightenment, however, philosophers began to try to create universal accounts of morality based upon independent criteria such as duty, “utility,” or metaphysical truths. These never ended up being coherent, because people were never in agreement on the starting points from which they departed in the first place. These incoherent moral philosophies led thinkers like Nietzsche to reject morality altogether, or so MacIntyre says. He argues that the world needs to return to an Aristotelian understanding of morality based on virtue. The virtues that we should consider to be truthful will be the ones that tend to produce human happiness.

What’s interesting is that MacIntyre believes that such virtues are taught through stories. These stories are part of communities, and form part of a cultural identity among people who believe in and practice these virtues. In these stories, the people who embody the virtues are the heroes. Batman is an example of such a hero in our culture. We believe that he is a good person because we watch him do good things. In difficult situations, he makes the right choice. It’s sometimes hard to say why this is the right choice, but we still believe that it is. We usually believe so because he makes choices that allow people to live good, happy lives; he protects Gotham, his community, and tries to guide it towards a better future. Sometimes, acting in the right way causes him a great amount of suffering, but in the end, they allow him to overcome great evil in the world and make his life into good, happy one because he has lived as a good person. Batman is able to crawl out of the pit in the Dark Knight Rises not because of a sense of moral obligation, but because he has hope in his ability to find happiness and to make Gotham safe others to live good, happy lives. Despite the suffering that the evil in the world causes him, he continues to try to best he can be, because he knows that to give up (like all of the villains in the films have, in some way or another), would be even worse. No matter how much we might want an airtight, logical explanation of why the things Batman does are the right ones, we won’t get one. The best we can do is just say that the things Batman does are the right things to do because to our society, they seem and feel right, and they tend to make people happy.

That’s it. I’ll stop there before I make this any longer. I hope you enjoyed and found at least a small kernel of knowledge in these!

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