Within Reason

> I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will allow it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

If you’re a fan of the novel *Dune* by Frank Herbert, you know that the above is the so-called “Bene Gesserit” litany against fear. And if you look at it closely after reading enough Kantian ethics, you can see that it is actually downright Kantian. For Kant, one of the key ideas is that we are caught between two worlds: the rational (or noumenal) world and the material world. Fear is an emotion from the material world–a response we have because we are beings that are held in bondage to natural laws. But our truer and moral leanings are towards the rational world, where we are something other than our fears. Thus, the separation of us from our fears in the litany is terribly Kantian. The little-death is the danger to our more rational side. We cannot avoid fear, because we are part of the material world (unlike, say, angels) but when it confronts us we can let it go past, taking the perspective of the rational part of ourselves. And since fear is in all but the worst situations transient, we can emerge from fear being just our rational selves.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Bene-Gesserit “Gom Jabbar” is pretty Kantian. In Dune, young Paul Atreides is made to put his hand in a box that induces pain, with a poison needle at his neck (the Gom Jabbar) that will kill him if he takes the hand out. As the pain increases, the temptation to remove one’s hand increases. An animal, responding merely on instinct (or in the human case, inclination, for Kant) will recoil from the pain, unable to override its instincts. When Paul outlasts the pain and the poison needle is withdrawn, he is said to be shown to be “human”–capable of overriding instinct for other reasons. It’s almost perfectly Kantian, but it is possible that Paul is merely letting his inclination for long-term happiness override his inclination for short-term inclination to be free from pain. So the Bene Gesserit have a little more work to do before they can “prove” the motive involved is one of a human, but it is an admirable start.

A little more after the break about the Dune series.

Wherein I declare that I am a snob: Dune is a great book. Even, I think, a kind of masterpiece of science fiction. The mythology is compelling and deep. So deep, in fact, I don’t think Frank Herbert really knew what he had. After I read it, I eagerly picked up the other six novels in the series. Now I am somewhat picky, but the truth is that the other six are nothing like the genius of the first one. Not even pale shadows, actually. It’s as if Herbert either didn’t write the first book or chose someone else to write the rest. I’m not saying people can’t or shouldn’t like the rest, but the sequel to Dune is really bad and the rest are mediocre imitations of what the first book was. It’s sad, because of how good Dune was. I won’t even start about the Dune books that weren’t written by Frank Herbert, but rather his son. I’ve picked them up from time to time in a bookstore to see if they were any good. And really, these new Dune books are just pure dreck. Awful, amateur dreck even. It’s touching that his son wants to continue his work, but with Frank Herbert not even able to understand the potential inherent in the first book, Herbert the second didn’t really have much of a chance. Still, I recommend the first book to anyone who likes science fiction and philosophy.