Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy (31 page)

Bruce Russell, “The Philosophical Limits of Film,”
Film and Philosophy
(Special Edition on Woody Allen, 2000), pp. 163-67; reprinted in
Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures
, pp. 387-390. Also see my article, “There Can Be Little Philosophy in Fictional Film,” forthcoming in
Film and Philosophy
.

John Stuart Mill,
Utilitarianism
, Chapter 5, paragraph 14, second edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001).

Alan Gibbard,
Wise Choices, Apt Feelings
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), pp. 42, 45.

David Hume,
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
in
Hume’s Moral and Political Philosophy
(New York: Hafner, 1948), p. 252.

Jean Baudrillard,
America
(London: Verso, 1999), p. 28.

Baudrillard,
Simulacra and Simulation
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 118.

Gilles Deleuze, “Coldness and Cruelty,” In
Masochism
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Zone, 1989), p. 17.

Many thanks to K. Silem Mohammad and Justine Lopez for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter and to Alain J.-J. Cohen for his guidance through Baudrillard and Deleuze. All mistakes, however, are my own.

Rüdiger Safranski,
Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography
(New York: Norton, 2002), pp. 25-27, 353-57.

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Attempt at Self-Criticism,”
Basic Writings of Nietzsche
(New York: Modern Library, 1968; hereafter BW), p. 19.

Friedrich Nietzsche,
Ecce Homo
, in BW, p. 727.

F.M. Cornford,
From Religion to Philosophy
, as quoted in BW, p. 8.

Three years earlier Nietzsche had been awarded a chair at the University of Basel at the recommendation of a respected scholar, and a year later he was promoted to full professor—all without his having ever written a dissertation for his PhD, which was awarded to him in
consequence
of his appointment, not prior to it. As his most influential English translator pointed out, “Nietzsche’s appointment to a chair at twenty-four was a sensation in professional circles, and it was to be expected that in his first book he would try to show the world of classical philology that his meteoric rise had been justified” (Walter Kaufmann, “Introduction,” in BW, p. 5).

Jami Bernard,
Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies
(New York: Harper, 1995), p. 12.

David Fox, “Let’s See. Whose Calls Won’t I Return Today,”
Quentin Tarantino: Interviews
, edited by Gerald Peary (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998; hereafter QTI), p. 4.

Chris Willman, “Celluloid Heroes,” in QTI, p. 146.

Ella Taylor, “Quentin Tarantino’s
Reservoir Dogs
and the Thrill of Excess,” in QTI, p. 41.

Peter Brunette, “Interview With Quentin Tarantino,” in QTI, p. 33.

Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret, “Interview at Cannes,” in QTI, p. 29.

Camille Nevers, “Encounter With Quentin Tarantino,” in QTI, p. 7.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in BW, p. 140. This sentiment is reformulated in numerous places in the text, especially in Sections 24 and 25. But Section 3 contains perhaps its most familiar expression: “The same impulse which calls art into being, as the complement and consummation of existence, seducing one to a continuation of life, was also the cause of the Olympian world which the Hellenic “will” made use of as a transfiguring mirror. Thus do the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live it—the only satisfactory theodicy!” (BW, p. 43).

Stephen Weinberger, “It’s Not Easy Being Pink: Tarantino’s Ultimate Professional,”
Literature/Film Quarterly
32:1 (2004), p. 50.

Mark T. Conard, “Reservoir Dogs: Redemption in a Postmodern World,” in
The Philosophy of Neo-Noir
(Knoxville: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), pp. 101-106.

David Hume,
A Treatise Of Human Nature
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1975).

Jonathan Glover,
Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a psychologist and former army Ranger, provides an extensive argument for the existence of this aversion in
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
(Back Bay Books, 1995)
.

Robert Axelrod discusses these unofficial cease-fire agreements in
The Evolution of Cooperation
(New York: Basic Books, 1984)
.

The scene concludes with the ringleader Joe telling Mr. Pink: “Cough up the buck, ya cheap bastard, I paid for your goddamn breakfast,” and “See what I’m dealing with here. Infants. I’m fuckin’ dealin’ with infants.” An introduction to ethics could be taught with this scene.

An early draft of this chapter was presented to the Department of Philosophy at East Tennessee State University. Many thanks for the helpful, thought-provoking comments. I would also like to thank Jason Grinnell for careful comments.

Robert Nozick, “Retribution and Revenge,” in
What Is Justice?
, edited byRobert Solomon and Mark Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 214.

Tarantino wanted
Natural Born Killers
, for which he wrote the screenplay, to be his directing debut, but it was given to Oliver Stone instead. Stone didn’t do it at all as Tarantino envisioned, and consequently Tarantino never watched it. (See Jami Bernard,
Quentin Tarantino the Man and his Movies
. (New York: Harper, 1995), Chapter 6.

For this section, a great many of my thanks go to my good and long time friend, Caleb Holt. Caleb is a third degree black belt in Kaishu Ki Kempo Karate and a Renshi (Assistant Instructor) in the discipline: he inspired (and wrote) much of this section.

Nippon Steel,
Nippon: The Land and Its People.
Japan: Nippon Steel Human Resources Development Company, 1988, p. 329.

For more on Bushido see John Newman,
Bushido: The Way of the Warrior
(New York: Gallery, 1989); Noel Perrin,
Giving Up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword
, 1543-1879 (Boulder: Shambhala, 1979); Inazo Nitobe,
Bushido:The Soul of Japan
(Tokyo: Tuttle, 1969); Conrad Schirokauer
,
A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations
(Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989); H. Paul Varley,
Samurai
(New York: Dell, 1970).

Luke 6:27-29.

Romans 12:17-19.

De Cive: Liberty
, Chapter III: Of the Other Laws of Nature, p. 18.

De Cive
, p. 18.

Those who know Hobbes know that he suggests that the only moral obligation we have is to obey the state. Thus one is tempted to conclude that vengeance would be morally off limits, if the state condemned it. But
this
might not even be right! Hobbes, at least in one place, admits that one is not morally bound to follow the rule of the state if doing so requires one to sacrifice one’s life or honor. And since many view vengeance as a defense of one’s honor, it would seem that, according to Hobbes, vengeance could be justified even if the state forbade it. But it should be noted that Hobbes saying this is quite confusing, given other things that Hobbes says about the absolute authority of the state. See Sharon A Lloyd, “Hobbes’s Moral and Political Philosophy,”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2006 Edition)
, URL = <
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2006/entries/hobbes-moral/
>.

John Locke,
Second Treatise of Civil Government
, Chapter 19, paragraph 233.

Locke, Chapter 19, paragraph 233.

Jeffrie Murphy, “Getting Even: The Role of the Victim,” in
Philosophy of Law,
sixth edition, edited by Joel Feinberg and Jules Coleman (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2000), p. 791.

Gregory Vlastos,
Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 196.

Romans 12:19 and Deuteronomy 32:35.

See Murphy, pp. 792-93.

Mackie, although he is talking about retribution, not revenge, acknowledges that this argument seems to have some force. However, he adds that it seems that most still won’t think that punishment is permissible, unless it is combined with an obligation to punish; but I find that unpersuasive and he says nothing more on the issue. See J.L. Mackie, “Retributivism: A Test Case for Ethical Theory,” in Feinberg and Coleman.

www.beliefnet.com/story/163/story_16301_1.html
.

Murphy, pp. 788-89

John Stuart Mill,
Utilitarianism
, second edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001).

Jeremy Bentham,
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
, (Mineola: Dover, 2007).

At this point, for the purpose of ease of explanation, I am leaving out the fact that both women are deadly assassins. I will touch on this detail later.

Immanuel Kant,
Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
, third edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).

See Sections 44, 56, 61-62, 203, 211-12, 242, 272, and 296 of Nietzsche’s
Beyond Good and Evil
(London: Penguin, 2003).

Inferno
, Canto 3, lines 4-6. Robin Kirkpatrick,
The Divine Comedy I: Inferno
(London: Penguin, 2006).

Kirkpatrick, lxxv.

Inferno
. Canto 3, lines 49-50. Kirkpatrick, p. 23.

Nichomachean Ethics,
Book IV, Chapter 5, in
Introduction to Aristotle
, edited by Richard McKeon (New York: Modern Library, 1992), p. 414.

Uma Thurman, “Samurai Sistas.” Interview in
FiRST
(October 2003).

Richard J. Clifford, “The Major Prophets, Baruch, and Lamentations,” in
The Catholic Study Bible
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 284.

1 Kings 19:1-18 (NAB).

Jonah 4:2.

James 1:20.

Leviticus 19:18.

U2,
Vertigo Tour
, 2005.

Summa Theologica
II-II, 64, 7 as quoted in
Catechism of the Catholic Church
(New York: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 603-04.

Uma Thurman, “The Making of
Kill Bill Vol. 1
.” Miramax, 2003.

Quentin Tarantino, “Celluloid Heroes.” 1995 interview by Chris Willman in
Quentin Tarantino: Interviews
, edited by Gerald Peary (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), p. 147.

Oliver Conolly, “Pleasure and Pain in Literature,”
Philosophy and Literature
29 (2005), p. 314.

For a broad overview of different forms of retributivism, see Ted Honderich,
Punishment: The Supposed Justification Revisited
, revised edition (Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2006).

John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,”
Philosophical Review
64 (1955), pp. 4f.

Immanuel Kant,
The Metaphysics of Morals
(Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 106 [6:333].

John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty and Other Essays
, edited by John Gray (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 7.

Hart is combining some features of utilitarian theory with those of pure retributive theory, to develop a stronger theory of punishment which overcomes the weaknesses of both theories. H.L.A. Hart,
Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy of Law
(Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 1-27.

Rawls,
A Theory of Justice
, revised edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999).

James P. Sterba,
The Demands of Justice
(South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), pp. 63-83.

I am grateful for comments on a draft of this chapter by Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, and I would like to thank Kathleen Evers, Heather Figaro, Rich Mancuso, Dave Moreshead, Ed Page, and Allen Terrell for discussing the topic of this paper years ago after I had watched the movie for the first time. Though they weren’t privy to reading drafts of this chapter, the discussions we had played a large role in the formulation of my ideas.

Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1953, 1958, 2001). Wittgenstein borrowed the duck-rabbit from a book by American psychologist Joseph Jastrow.