Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy Part 1
Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy.
Josef Steiff.
Chapter 1.
A Sherlockian Scandal in Philosophy.
Kate Rufa.
I'm in love with Sherlock Holmes. I'll admit it. He is so tantalizingly (yet utterly, infuriatingly) English. His cool, concise, and unapologetically confident nature enthralls me. Whether he's pacing a crime scene with his trademark magnifying gla.s.s or wearing one of his numerous disguises, Holmes is the epitome of confidence and his unruffled and rational persona is absolutely riveting and absorbing.
In my mind the image of Sherlock Holmes will forever remain the talented actor Jeremy Brett who played Holmes in the revolutionary 1980s TV series, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. And while I feel that other such actors who have taken on the Holmes role have given equally adequate performances-I enjoyed the versions played by Basil Rathbone and Robert Downey Jr.-no one will ever take the place of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in my heart.
But while the various movies are fun, I've always held the opinion that the books are far superior and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's world famous literary character was truly innovative. Holmes's astute logical thinking and objective rationality gives him a distinctive character. He is continuously unimpressed with the crimes and criminals he pursues and his unperturbed countenance makes him an exceptionally entertaining hero.
We're truly astounded by Sherlock Holmes because he is never astounded himself.
Sherlock Holmes is, at his quintessential core, unemotional, objective, and completely rational. He uses logic, science, and strict a.n.a.lytical cognitive processes to solve his mysteries. Whether he's handling the affairs of scandalous royalty as the world's first and only "unofficial consulting detective," chasing a murderer in the dead of night with his trusty hound Toby, or catching a treasure thief in an adrenalin-racing boat chase, one thing remains a constant: his logical and unemotional persona.
Truly, most philosophical doctrine tells us that this state of being-to utilize our reason to overcome our pa.s.sions-ought to be one of our ultimate goals if we wish to attain non-materialistic happiness. No philosopher embodies this doctrine more than seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In his most celebrated work, his Ethics, Spinoza discusses his view of human pa.s.sions and explains how the just man can utilize reason to overcome his negative human emotions. Once these emotions have been checked by reason he is able to experience not only freedom but the highest form of human happiness possible.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's literary character Sherlock Holmes is the very person whom Spinoza believed that human beings should aim to be. Sherlock Holmes is an unemotional sleuth in search of justice. His cool and precise nature allows him to examine clues without prejudice and place each puzzle piece together until he has a complete picture before him.
The crimes almost appear to the reader (and our beloved Dr. Watson) to be like elaborate illusions. Holmes, like the gifted illusionist, takes random, meaningless bits of information and connects them to show an undeniable chain of events. Once the illusion has been explained the magic disappears and we all believe it to be utterly simple.
No Romantic Illusions.
In The Sign of the Four Sherlock Holmes criticizes Watson for romanticizing his published stories about his criminal investigations: "Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid."
In Holmes's perspective, written works should be purely scientific and informative. Spinoza could not have agreed more. Spinoza himself amusedly called his style of writing in Ethics his "c.u.mbersome geometric method." He wrote in a fashion similar to a mathematical treatise, with definitions, proofs, and axioms all lined up in an orderly fashion. Spinoza's Ethics is broken down into five parts. Within each part Spinoza states a proposition then proceeds to prove it and occasionally add a scholim, axiom, corollary, or other extremely boring and complex geometric term to his proof. I can see much of a similar style between Holmes's "The Book of Life" (in A Study in Scarlet) and Spinoza's Ethics.
Similar to their writing styles both Holmes and Spinoza lived their life accordingly. Spinoza advocated a life in which we objectively examine our emotions (or pa.s.sions) and understand them (what initiated their cause and their effect once in place) and then utilize reason to overcome them through an understanding of the external emotional stimulus. When we use reason to keep our emotions in check we allow ourselves to broaden our minds to the possibility of more advanced forms of knowledge. And with a greater understanding of life, the universe, and ourselves, we experience the highest form of contentment possible.
Sherlock Holmes is the ideal model for Spinoza's concept of the "just man." Holmes must have long ago eliminated the illogical nuisance of uncontrolled pa.s.sions and chosen to live life through the utilization of reason. Because his mind is not cluttered with irrelevant and, therefore, useless thoughts that might hinder his investigations, Holmes is capable of examining clues and crime scenes with an almost automaton quality.
Indeed, Watson on many occasions in the canons of Conan Doyle's work noted Holmes's perpetual unemotional state of being, and considered him more machine then man. For example, in The Sign of the Four, Watson describes Holmes as "an automaton-a calculating machine,' I cried. 'There is something positively inhuman in you at times.'"
And again in "A Scandal in Bohemia," Watson uses the metaphor of a machine to describe Holmes's objective, a.n.a.lytical mind even in reference to Holmes's only potential love interest, Irene Adler: It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one in particular, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has ever seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position.
Even when facing the threat of death, Holmes remains his distinguished self. In "The Final Problem" we encounter a somewhat different Holmes than that found in Doyle's previous stories. While confident as ever, we find our calculating consultant detective more cautious and guarded as he faces off against "the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe:" the maniacal Professor Moriarty. Indeed, while confronting Moriarty's revenge for interfering in his criminal activities, Holmes (in the company of Watson) is eventually forced to leave the country on "holiday."
This dramatic tale begins with Sherlock Holmes's unexpected visit to Dr. Watson's consulting room. Holmes arrives looking thinner and more sickly than usual. One of his hands appears to be injured due to a violent confrontation that occurred that very night on his way to Watson's home. Holmes immediately proceeds to close the windows to the room, securing them with bolts. Watson, aware that something is amiss, concludes that Holmes is frightened by something, though we should know by now that Holmes is never afraid but merely cautious. Holmes begins to relate to Watson his recent actives to bring down the villain Moriarty whom, Holmes believes, is behind all of the major crimes of the last few years.
Moriarty, who is described as being "extremely tall and thin" and almost snakelike in his mannerisms, is described by Holmes as being the "Napoleon of crime." He is Holmes's intellectual equal and his moral polar opposite. After an impressive battle of wits and intellect, Watson is left to conclude, at the end of the story, that during their travels through Switzerland, Holmes and Moriarty fell together while still in battle, plummeting down Reichenbach Falls where they both presumably perished.
Indeed, while a thrilling tale in and of itself, what is most intriguing about this short story, in which we witness what was meant to be the death of one of the greatest detective characters of literary history, is that throughout its entirety, complete with all the death threats and very real possibility of mutually a.s.sured destruction, Holmes shows no fear and no regret. His temperament constantly remains calm and cool. If he does express an emotion it is never a negative or pernicious one but one of intrigue or amus.e.m.e.nt. Indeed, when dueling both physically and mentally against Moriarty's vengeance Holmes was not depressed but energized. He was excited by the challenge of a worthy opponent and the tale played out similarly to a game of chess.
From this we can see that whether engaged against his only potential love interest or battling to his presumed death, Sherlock Holmes maintains a Spinozistic countenance at all times. Spinozistic philosophy maintains that while there is nothing wrong with human emotions as such, they can interfere with higher forms of cognitive processes. When an emotion is provoked by an external cause and is not properly reasoned through it can distract us from understanding the truth about said external cause by adding a personal element to an objective occurrence.
One of the ultimate goals of Spinozistic philosophy is to achieve true happiness, happiness that is found through an intellectual pursuit of the mind instead of any fictional happiness that can temporarily arise from materialistic gains. For Spinoza happiness can be found only through freedom, the freedom that we can experience when we're no longer controlled by our emotions and by our human ignorance. If we allow ourselves to merely react when an external force happens to elicit our uncontrolled emotions, we submit ourselves to forces that are ultimately beyond our control.
Of course we cannot eliminate our emotions. No matter what, they are there. Even our renowned Sherlock Holmes cannot eliminate all of his emotions (just primarily the negative or pa.s.sive ones). What reason does, says Spinoza, is turn our pa.s.sive human emotions into active emotions by allowing us to understand them as clearly and distinctly as is humanly possible. Once we have a clear and distinct understanding of the emotion, the more control we have over it, and the less pa.s.sive we are when we encounter it. Because we're no longer pa.s.sive bystanders to the powerful emotions set into place by external stimuli we experience a kind of freedom, which for Spinoza, is true happiness. Spinozistic philosophy dictates, and Sherlock Holmes demonstrates, the idea that we ought to control our reactions to our emotions instead of allowing them to control us.
The Conatus and Cocaine.
One of the more troubling character flaws with Holmes has always been his morphine and cocaine addiction. It doesn't seem to fit with his purely rational persona. As much as it may surprise us, it was Watson in The Sign of the Four who reasonably argued to Holmes the illogical choice of utilizing these powerful hallucinogenic drugs: "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for mere pa.s.sing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed?"
Sherlock Holmes attempts to justify his substance abuse by claiming the drugs allow his mind to stay in an active state when he has no work or crime to solve. From Conan Doyle's first work about Holmes, A Study in Scarlet, we note Holmes's demeanor when he fails to have adequate cognitive stimulation. He not only becomes depressed but utterly torpid: Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night.
Here again we can see Sherlock Holmes as a representation of Spinoza's concept of the just man. He's only happy when engaged in intellectual work and problem solving. Spinoza claims that happiness can only be achieved when we utilize our reason and are in a state of cognitive activity. Intellectual pa.s.sivity leads to unhappiness. We can note the same feelings in Conan Doyle's Holmes: when Holmes has no work he becomes utterly depressed to the point of lying on the couch for days on end. To alleviate the depression, Holmes abuses powerful hallucinogenic drugs in an attempt to stimulate his mind.
One of the clearest examples of Holmes's drug use and of his excuses for his addiction can be found in The Sign of the Four, where Watson, having repeatedly witnessed Holmes's drug use, finally rages at him. Holmes contemplates Watson's argument, but finally states, probably more forcefully and dramatically then really necessary: "My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate a.n.a.lysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave mental exaltation."
Holmes will sacrifice his life, not just his physical duration on Earth, but his all-consuming mental facilities to maintain his constant mental activity.
It's here that Holmes appears to separate himself from Spinoza's just man. One of Spinoza's key concepts in the Ethics is his notion of 'conatus'. Conatus is the Latin word for striving or endeavor. In the third part of the Ethics, "Concerning the Origin and Nature of the Emotions," Spinoza introduces and defines a thing's conatus as its endeavor to persist in its own being. This simply means that everything has an innate sense of wanting to promote its own existence for as long as possible.
Holmes's use of morphine and cocaine, then, suggests that he is acting, consciously or unconsciously, against his conatus in that the use of these drugs will potentially (and drastically) shorten his existence. We can convincingly conclude that he is irrefutably acting against his conatus by purposefully performing actions that instead of promoting longevity perform the opposite.
Why? Why would Sherlock Holmes, the master of logical, a.n.a.lytical thinking, this objective and rational machine that so astounds us, allow himself to make such an obvious miscalculation? Quite simply, Sherlock Holmes is not a machine. He is a human being and, as such, not above human error. He too is p.r.o.ne to inadequate ideas. If he were otherwise the beautiful and talented Irene Adler would not have escaped and several of his clients wouldn't have inconveniently died.
We can attempt to rationalize Holmes's inadequate ideas concerning drugs through our continued examination of Spinozistic philosophy. Spinoza, as a philosopher, believed in a world view in which the only thing that exists is G.o.d (otherwise known as Nature or that which is self-caused) and various modes of G.o.d (things which are conceived and brought into a transient state of duration through something other than themselves). Human beings are, hence, considered "modes" in Spinozistic philosophy.
G.o.d itself is understood as being complete actuality. Which makes sense, in that if G.o.d were anything else this would inherently imply that G.o.d has the potential to be something G.o.d is not, which is absurd if we accept the notion that G.o.d is omnipotent. If G.o.d or Nature is complete actuality, various human modal units are found somewhere within a scale of potentiality. We as beings have the potential to always be more or less than we currently are.
We can move forward on this imaginary scale closer to actuality if we are active (mentally and physically) and move away from it when we are pa.s.sive. Moving closer to actuality makes us happy which, in the world of philosophy, ought to be one of our primary goals. We can be cognitively active by utilizing reason to understand and override our emotions and allow for higher forms of knowledge and intellectual fulfillment. The role of reason is to turn pa.s.sive emotions into active affects. If we were to visualize this scale we would see Watson probably somewhere towards the upper middle of the scale between pa.s.sivity and actuality and Holmes about as close as a human can get to actuality.
Holmes's drug use is his attempt to stay in an active state (as close to actuality as modally possible) for as long as possible. He ignores his conatus in an attempt to maintain a state of near actuality. Human modal units are not designed to maintain that intense level of activity continuously, since we can only exist within the scale of potentiality. To attempt to exceed this is to endanger shortening the already temporary duration to which we exist.
And so, Holmes's cocaine use is his attempt to maintain a complete form of actuality while still being merely a temporary modal unit. Or, in other words, Sherlock Holmes has a G.o.dcomplex. Which should not surprise us; he is, after all, a nineteenth-century Englishman.
The Most Impious and the Most Dangerous Man of the Century.
Honour is not opposed to reason, but can arise from it.
-Spinoza, EIVP58.
Therefore he who is born free and remains free has only adequate ideas and thus has no conception of evil, and consequently no conception of good (for good and evil are correlative).
-Spinoza, EIVP68.
Holmes represents Spinoza's concept of the just man in many ways. The most notable of these is Holmes's unique ability to be unaffected by his negative human pa.s.sions and maintain an almost constant level of machine-like cognitive performance. Sherlock Holmes is, and always will be a precise, calculating, objective character. Very rarely does anything he sees or observes astound him (and let's face it, he's seen a lot). He simply does not let his emotions get in the way of his intellectual endeavors and lives only to challenge his intellectual prowess.
Furthermore, we as the readers metaphorically gorge ourselves on Holmes's ability to create and maintain this perpetual state of being unimpressed and unperturbed. We love him for literally sticking his nose in the air at a crime as if it is so boring, that its straightforward and uncomplicated structure has some disagreeable smell. So remarkable is it when he finds a case worthy of his abilities, miraculous as it may seem, we the readers, find ourselves excited by the unfolding mystery as if we were Holmes the man, instead of merely his readers. Of course the adventure, and the mystery that lies therein, are all too short-lived. The clues play out in an obvious way that for him is almost always far too predictable. The cycle continues and he falls back into his tall armchair and his experiments.
There's something rather appealing in this almost inhuman attribute to rid ourselves of our emotional burdens and examine life the way Holmes would. When freed (so to speak) from the emotions that can hinder our a.n.a.lytical abilities we encounter a whole new world of possibilities. But can this ability to separate ourselves from being personally involved with things injure our sense of ethical and moral responsibility, not only to each other, but our community, indeed, our humanity?
This was an important question for Spinoza. Dramatically called "the most impious and the most dangerous man of the century" by one disgruntled theologian (as cited by Matthew Stewart in The Courtier and the Heretic), Spinoza's almost pantheistic views regarding life, the universe, and well, everything else, defiantly challenged and certainly frightened the ruling cla.s.ses of the seventeenth-century Netherlands. And with appreciable reason, I might add. Spinoza was two hundred years ahead of his time. This type of forward thinking has the potential to create a hero of Holmes's stature but a villain of Moriarty's capacity as well.
We can see that, similar to Holmes, Moriarty was an objective, abstract thinker. His objectivity, however, led him to a life of depravity and crime. Most interestingly examined in the hit television show Sherlock, Moriarty can truly be seen as Holmes's negative image when considered under the t.i.tle of the world's first and only consulting criminal.
Hence, if we understand Holmes to be as close to as we can humanly get to Spinoza's just man, Moriarty must be considered the negative possibilities that such a life may present. Spinoza, however, was ready for such immoral and unethical interpretations of his work. Found within his a.r.s.enal of astute logic and rationality was the ever formidable philosophy of Socrates (dramatic music please, maestro!).
Socrates argued in the Apology that when we harm others we inevitably harm ourselves, which we would never knowingly do. Spinoza, in his own way, states the same concept in Ethics.
When we follow the dictates of our conatus we are in a sense, being self serving, or more accurately, it allows us to seek our own advantage: The more each one strives [utilizes one's conatus], and is able, to seek his own advantage, that is to preserve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue; conversely, insofar as each one neglects his own advantage, that is neglects to preserve his being, he lacks power. (EIVP20) According to Spinoza, the more we seek our own advantage, the more power we gain. The more power we gain through adequate ideas the more we are endowed with virtue. Thus we choose to partic.i.p.ate in actions that positively benefit ourselves and others through the adequate ideas we possess.
To act otherwise (as our evil antagonist Moriarty does) is to act from a basis of ignorance and from inadequate ideas. Because Holmes operates from mostly adequate ideas he is considered virtuous and free. Moriarty, on the other hand, is immoral and entrapped by his pa.s.sive affects.
The House that Holmes Built.
Many of Conan Doyle's stories begin with Dr. Watson praising the wit and brilliance that is Sherlock Holmes's mind and capabilities. Indeed, though often thought narcissistic and conceited by the local authorities whom he a.s.sists, Sherlock Holmes deserves every ounce of the self-importance he feels.
And what's more, we love him for it. There's something about the intellectual hero that is simply engaging, especially in today's culture. Our modern day conception of a hero now involves (more often than not) an intellectual crime solver instead of the brash cowboy of recent years. Whether Dr. Gregory House in House, Dr. Temperance Brennan in Bones, Mr. Spock in Star Trek, or Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, if you prefer, or any number of the characters found on American television shows such as CSI Miami or Criminal Minds, you'll find that it's the intellect instead of the brawn that saves the day.
And Sherlock Holmes just may have started it all. His cold and impa.s.sive nature makes him stand apart from the pa.s.sionate few whose success rely more on good luck than anything else. I find it fascinating that this creation of nineteenth-century literary genius should follow so closely to the image that a man from the seventeenth century proposed.
I find the correlation found between Spinoza's ethical writing and Sherlock Holmes's sleuthing truly astounding. And it's intriguing to see how these ideas have blossomed into the characters of our modern day protagonists. Whether considered together or separately, Spinoza and Sherlock have seemingly helped pave the metaphoric road for the modern conception of a hero.
Why? Why is this ideal of an intellectual hero so appealing to us? Why is it that we love Holmes's unemotional objectivity or care about Spinoza's ethical implication that such a life presents?
Holmes and Spinoza have already spelled it out for us. Utilize reason and logic when you act and do not let your emotions govern you. Get in control of your own life and your own sense of self. Avoid ignorance, create brilliance. Open yourself up to a whole new world of thinking and understanding and gain the respect (or, quite possibly, the annoyance) of those around you. With study and discipline we can become the House, or the Bones, or even the Sherlock Holmes of any field of study.
Perhaps what's most wonderful about Sherlock Holmes and Spinoza's just man is simply this, that they truly have no superhuman qualities to them, no magic powers beyond our own meager means. What makes them special is what we ourselves have within us. We too can become that which so astounds us.
Chapter 2.
Calculating Humanity.
Timothy s.e.xton.
The first glimpse of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes that the viewer gets in every episode of the Granada television series is that of Holmes looking down on Baker Street's activities from his apartment on the second floor.
Brett turns his face slightly toward the camera with a look on his face registering a very definite emotion that is just as definitely impossible for the viewer to identify. Is he amused by what he sees out the window? Is he intrigued? He may even be bored.
It's impossible to read his emotional register as the scene turns into a freeze-frame, but one thing is certain: this Sherlock Holmes-this one-is situated above all other humans and rather than being unconcerned or disinterested about his special status, he is quite satisfied with the nature of the relationship between him and everybody else who exists on a level below. Equality be d.a.m.ned; it's all about the will to power and Holmes has the will lacking in the street urchins, bobbies, and a.s.sorted rabble below.
But more on that Sherlock Holmes later. The game is afoot and since I don't want to make it too elementary, you will have to pay close attention to the clues.
Human, Inhuman, or Underhuman?
Man, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's t.i.tular prophet in Thus Spake Zarathustra tells us, is a state of being that must be overcome. Zarathustra's essential contention: comparing modern man to the coming Overman is like comparing a gorilla strutting back and forth in his zoo habitat to Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in Royal Wedding.
In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four, Dr. John Watson turns to his good friend Sherlock Holmes and replies to a statement made by Holmes that he-Holmes-had not even observed that future client Mary Morstan was, and I'm paraphrasing Watson here, one stone cold fox. Watson, accustomed to Holmes's ability to successfully construct an entire biography merely by observing the clothing a person wears, is compelled to cry out: "You really are an automaton-a calculating machine. There is something positively inhuman in you at times."
Sherlock Holmes is inhuman, observes his close companion-who should know-Dr. Watson. Zarathustra does not say that the next evolutionary tiptoe up the ladder to perfection will be inhuman, but rather overhuman.
To Underestimate One's Ability Is Just as Wrong as Overestimation.
"He is a calculating machine, and anything you add to that simply weakens the effect." The words are again being used to describe Sherlock Holmes. In this case, Arthur Conan Doyle is writing entirely in the guise of an author reflecting on his literary creation and he goes on to observe-and he should know-that Sherlock Holmes is just a calculating machine with no room for the addition of common literary characteristics like light or shade or nuance or complexity or, let's finally admit it, a personality. If you go by the description of the author who created him, Sherlock Holmes can only be what your English teachers referred to as a "flat character."
Actors for over a century appeared to pay great respect to Doyle's a.s.sessment of the lack of style in Sherlock Holmes. Actors portrayed Sherlock Holmes as an admittedly brilliant seeker of truth and justice with little in the way of style. Whether it was the famous Basil Rathbone or the considerably less famous Alan Wheatley, actors saw in Sherlock a chance to play a character with significant cranial capacity, but not a whole heck of a lot more. Indeed, judging from most performances, apparently you can't be both smart and fascinating. The only time that these Sherlocks even came close to being fascinating was in the scenes where Holmes is telling someone all about themselves based on their gloves or tie.
We shouldn't blame actors for making of Sherlock Holmes something much more inhuman than overhuman. Just as Holmes proudly points out the fact that he is the creator of the job of consulting detective, so was Conan Doyle a co-creator with Edgar Allan Poe of a new literary genre known as the detective story. Today, amid well-rounded characters in the world of crime-solving, from Columbo to Ellery Queen to Monk, it's sometimes difficult to remember that the detective is way too often the least interesting character in a story because he's only there to solve the dang crime. It took a while for writers to learn that crimes could be solved in just as stylish a fashion as they could be committed.
You Don't Think I Put Too Much Color and Life into It?
Watson's exclamation includes a rejoinder that begs further study: "There is something positively inhuman in you at times." What does it really mean to be inhuman? Most dictionaries agree: any material object that is not a human being (like an automaton) or a human being who lacks qualities such as compa.s.sion and mercy and also possesses the potential to display cruelty or act in a barbaric fashion.
Remember, this is his good friend Sherlock Holmes that Dr. Watson is talking about. Okay, maybe Doyle's Sherlock and the Sherlock of Rathbone and the rest aren't particularly rounded, but to suggest that their Holmes showed no compa.s.sion or mercy? That their Holmes acted barbarically? This description doesn't seem to describe the character as written in the books nor does it seem an apt depiction of Holmes as portrayed on film.
To compare Sherlock Holmes as we know him to the Sherlock Holmes that Dr. Watson describes is like comparing Jerry Lewis's nutty professor to Mr. Spock. A calculating machine could be used to determine the odds that a specific person committed murder by speckled band, but that machine is hardly capable of caring enough to place its own life in jeopardy in pursuit of the proving the hypothesis.
Several generations of actors portraying Sherlock Holmes as a mere calculating machine based on the literary tales of a character described by his own creator as such have conditioned fans to accept without question that Sherlock puts his brilliant mind to work solving crimes because he is interested in Truth, Justice, and the Victorian Way. That Sherlock-that one-often ploddingly goes about collecting clues which he uses as punchcards in his calculating machine of a brain to arrive at the answer to what is, after all, the central component without which no detective story can survive: whodunit? (And howdunit and whydunit in most cases.) While the Sherlock that wormed its way into public consciousness and acceptance was usually quite surprisingly unemotional about everything, including proving himself right, he wasn't exactly what most of us would describe as inhuman.
Maybe if Dr. Watson had been a bit more imaginative, he might have searched the definition of 'inhuman' in his mind before speaking, have found it insanely inappropriate and coined a much more suitable word to describe what he actually meant: underhuman. Then, being as how this was the Victorian Age, he would have necessarily shortened to reflect a more honest appraisal of the gender conventions of the time. "You really are an underman-a calculating machine," Watson might have said.
The Law Is as Dangerous to Us as the Criminals Are.
Sherlock Holmes: the Underman. A calculating machine slightly less than human and an automaton who is most certainly a far cry from Nietzsche's promises of those to come who shall be "the meaning of the Earth." The Sherlock Holmes who exists in stories written by his creator and the overwhelming majority of cinematic adaptations is, ultimately, only another member of what Nietzsche termed the herd. He solves crimes in the pursuit of justice fostered by purely traditional notions of good and evil, right and wrong, fact and fiction.
The lack of style in this Holmes is rather astonishing. If you were Sherlock Holmes and you had just solved a crime that the police could not solve, and you had exhibited compa.s.sion and mercy by letting someone you know to be a guilty man go free, you, too, might shout out in clear, very human, frustration: "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies! Maybe I am committing a felony, but I may be saving a soul."
Here's the way Arthur Conan Doyle describes the moment that Sherlock Holmes says those very words: "After all, Watson," said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing; but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am committing a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jail-bird for life."
No exclamation points in that paragraph. Perhaps Doyle felt that emotion would weaken the effect of the coldly calculating mind playing over the odds that his decision to break the law would result in an ultimate good that playing by the rules of statutory justice could not match. Sherlock is willing to break a minor law in order to achieve what might be a cosmically greater good: saving a soul.
But where is Sherlock's soul in that scene? In addition to banning light and shade, Arthur Conan Doyle also seems to have banished Holmes's soul. And what's a human without a soul? Inhuman? Unhuman? Underhuman? Certainly not overhuman.
Sherlock Holmes suggests that his action of committing a felony may result in saving a soul, but Jeremy Brett's aristocratic dismissal of the real felon in question makes one wonder if Holmes even believes in such an illogical concept as a soul. Lacking any hint of style, the above scene from "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" is about little more than Sherlock Holmes matter-of-factly admitting that he regularly outsmarts the police.
One's Moral Code Is a Decisive Witness to Who He Is.
Now let's examine the exact same scene from "The Blue Carbuncle," but with Sherlock Holmes reinterpreted-Oh, let's go ahead and say it-recreated by Jeremy Brett. The disgusted dismissal of the actual thief of a priceless blue jewel shows Sherlock sitting in profile, left hand held up to his temple. The scene provides us with yet another example of how we know the man is deeply in touch with a certain emotion, but we're not allowed to know exactly what that emotion is. Not yet, anyway.
And then Dr. Watson confesses to being more than a little surprised at the shocking turn of events in which Sherlock Holmes-up to now just an unofficial arm of the prevailing Victorian ideology to punish transgressors of some moral rules codified into statutory law-actually breaks the law by letting a man he knows is guilty of the most famous crime of the moment get away scot-free. Sherlock Holmes does what Nietzsche tells us must be done in order to be an Overman: he has moved beyond good and evil.