What are our obligations, as science progresses, and we learn to do new things with our natural bodies and our natural environment? Especially, we might ask, what do we do when we begin to accomplish those things that were once considered to belong to God and God alone?

In yesterday's post, I started a short discussion of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  Considered by some to be the first science fiction* novel, Frankenstein probes into questions of science, its relation to the supernatural, and the ethical responsibilities of men and women of science as they carry out their labour.

Victor Frankenstein goes about his work without much overt consideration of the question of the supernatural (in the 1818 edition, though this was later modified).  However, he says that his goal in his work was to become a creator, and have a whole new species rise up and bless him as its maker.  Now, like it or not, that is language that we cannot, when considering the novel in the context of its own time and place, fail to recognize as dealing with questions of the supernatural.  It places Victor Frankenstein firmly in the place traditionally held by God — the creator of a species that owes him some praise.

Frankenstein was written at a time when the English-speaking world (and all European culture) was set to embark on a huge paradigm shift.  Led by the thought of Nietzsche (1844-1900), Marx (1818-1883), Darwin (1809-1882), and Freud (1856-1939), Enlightment thinking was about to take a nosedive from which it seems destined to never recover.  Mary Shelley's novel sits right on the brink of that change, almost a prophecy of what was to come.  Indeed, in the novel, we can find discussion of the major concerns addressed by these 4 thinkers who have changed the course of modern society.  Indeed, Victor Frankenstein seems to be the prime example of a man shaped by this new thinking, discarding Enlightenment thought (except where it benefits him in scientific endeavour — or "natural philosophy," as it was still called at the time).  He lives without any consideration of God (predicting, perhaps, his death) and with the assumption that humankind can evolve into a new species, which he is bound and determined to create.  This new species will be a sort of superman (note the Creature's superhuman stature and strength).  And after the Creature is animated, we find an exploration of society in terms of economic and social norms, alongside an exploration of the development of a mind and the urges that drive a person.  That is Nietzsche, Darwin, Marx, and Freud all neatly bundled up and delivered to us in this little novel.

It is interesting, then, where the text leads.  It is a sad story.  It doesn't seem to project a very promising future for either man in his unevolved state (Frankenstein) or the new man that we might evolve to be (the Creature).  In the end, nothing is left but a determination of each to destroy the other. 

Is the novel, then, a warning to turn back?  Does the text advocate a turning away from this change and embracing the older, more stable (?) Enlightenment mentality with all of its certainty?

I don't think that it does.  If anything, I think that the text recognizes this change as a natural progression from Enlightenment thinking.  The Enlightenment seemed to promise to mankind unbounded knowledge — everything in the world is knowable, is provable, is attainable.  All it takes is more proof, a little more knowledge, a little more experimentation, and we'll eventually find in humankind (at least our collective knowledge) the ability to do pretty much anything.  That leads us, then, to the place where God is, naturally, sure to die. We just don't need him anymore.  (It is important to recognize that Nietzsche, in his famous "God is Dead" statement, is not supposing that God once lived and now died in any place other than in human consciousness.  So, naturally, when man can do all that he once relied on God to do, God can rest in peace at last.)

What, then, does the text teach us?  At the end of the day, I think it teaches us nothing.  I don't think it is a text that aims, exactly, to moralize and tell us what to do with the problem.  It seems to me, instead, that it points us to the problems ahead (at that time), offers a sort of prophetic vision of the issues (sometimes troubling ones) to come, and calls us to think.  The biggest “sin” of Victor Frankenstein, if you read the text, is not just that he overstepped the boundaries of what man is allowed to do.  It isn't even that he rejected his Creature, thus truly creating a monster.  It seems to me that the phrase most repeated, most bringing about regret in him, is that he didn't think carefully about the implications of what he was doing.

To me, then, the text only calls us to that.  It calls us to think, to act responsibly with the new God-like powers humanity has sought to take into hand.  That may sound like moralizing, but the difference is, the book never really tells us what it is that constitutes responsible behaviour.  It just asks us to think. 

More — it provokes us to think.

© 2006 Shelly Bryant

Sources

Shelley, Mary.  Frankenstein (1818 Text).  Ed. Marilyn Butler.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1993.

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