[MD] Morality and Prudence

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dan,

Dan said:
The character of Dexter is not a psychopath in the strict sense of the 
definition: A social predator who charms, manipulates and ruthlessly 
plows their way through life...completely lacking in feelings for others, 
they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating 
social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or 
regret.

The fact that Dexter is a serial killer immediately brings to mind the 
likes of Ted Bundy, Richard Speck, John Gacy, and other notorious 
psychopaths. But Dexter isn't that kind of serial killer... he is more a 
vigilante like the character Charles Bronson played in Death Wish. 
Dexter is a normal, every day person... he is a loving father, he 
cares deeply for his wife and sister.

Matt:
It's funny, but we have completely different perspectives on these 
shows.  I see Dexter as exactly fulfilling the definition you just 
supplied (though I care much less about strictness in fittingness).  
The problem of Dexter, and why he's interesting, is exactly 
because he is _not_ Bronson: a vigilante who cares.  It is because 
his mode of being a predator doesn't fit our notions of what 
patterns usually do fulfill that type.  I don't have time to accumulate 
textual evidence, but it seems to me that a mountain of it is on my 
side.  Without a doubt, Dexter is evolving through the seasons (and 
I haven't seen the last season, so no spoilers) and is having more 
and more existential crises, but at the beginning of Season 1, there 
seems to be several internal monologues that spell out that the only 
reason he _behaves like_ a loving boyfriend (eventually father) and 
brother is because it's what he needs to do to fit in, not because he 
feels the emotions.  (As I believe Arlo also articulated.)

And Walter of Breaking Bad!  No way.  Not a psychopath.  At the 
beginning of Season 1 and even through the end of Season 2 (no 
spoilers on 3!), he is a broken man who wants desperately to leave 
his family with enough money to survive after he dies.  Again, no 
doubt he's evolving like Dexter, but it strikes me that he's evolving 
normally as one who begins to taste specific kinds of power that 
had been withheld him (for various reasons).  But an underlying 
psychopathology?  Don't see it.

Dan said:
You seem to be saying Dynamic Quality is what the law meant in the 
past, means now, and will mean forever. I think of law, common or 
codified, as purely static quality. Dynamic Quality, or the notion of 
what is better, is what's behind the continuing evolution of law... it 
changes with the social circumstances of the times via intellectual 
arguments and judgements. If that's what you mean... then I agree.

Matt:
Yes, the notion of "common law," as opposed to other 
understandings of the relationship between laws and the rulings of 
judges, is such that the Judge tells us what the law _is_: which 
means that seeming changes of law are, according to the cover story, 
_seeming_ and rather what later judges do is tell us what the law 
has always really meant.  This, in practice, is exactly the opposite of 
static, and is in fact the very picture of reason-guided evolution.  The 
theory of common law that, say, Oliver Wendell Holmes (who figure 
into Louis Menand's story of pragmatism) had was that the idea that 
the law always says one thing is only a cover story, but a necessary 
one for it codifies the rule of precedent, which I'd like to think is 
analogous to Pirsig's notion of static latching.  But, on the other hand, 
it is only an analogy, no near perfect (for what's "passing a new law" 
on this analogy: I have no idea).

Matt