If its final act was indeed a free one, then our next question concerns
what
act it actually was. There was no action on the part of the Terminator that led directly to its death, since it merely stood passively as it was lowered to its doom. It did not jump, and it needed Sarah Connor to push the button and pull the metaphorical plug. So perhaps this wasn’t a suicide after all—maybe it was a case of
euthanasia
. In the case of humans, euthanasia typically involves a physician taking an active role in a patient’s death—not only prescribing the means of suicide, but also physically administering it in the face of the patient’s incapability to do it him- or herself. The parallel to the T-101’s situation is clear: the T-101 could not destroy itself, but it could ask someone else to destroy it—to kill it. So, in spite of the T-101’s lack of direct action, it can still be said to have committed suicide. Its request, if not its action, led to its death.
Now, some may think that the Terminator’s act was not a suicide precisely because of the real motive behind the act. After all, the T-101 did not want to die. It was just trying to prevent the rise of Skynet, and there was only one way to achieve this end. Far from being a suicide, the T-101’s act was more akin to an act of self-sacrifice, like being hit by a bus after pushing someone else out of its path. But there are two problems with this. First, suicide and self-sacrifice are not mutually exclusive. All that’s required for an act to be a suicide is the intention to die—not the desire. The second problem is the question of intention. Given that the Terminator intended to destroy Skynet, did it necessarily intend to die to fulfill that mission? Surely, to will a goal is also to will the
means to that goal
. The T-101 could no more have intended to stop Skynet without intending its own death than I could intend people to read this chapter without intending to submit it to the publisher. In both cases, the one includes the other.
So it’s clear that the Terminator died in Heidegger’s non-biological sense
and
that it committed suicide. Its suicide was committed for good, even selfless, reasons. Yet, still another serious moral problem remains.
Was the Terminator’s Suicide Justified?
Those who believe that suicide can never be a morally praiseworthy act of self-sacrifice often point to some base motive for suicide, such as selfishness or cowardice. We can see the flaw in this reasoning, though, if we see that there’s an important difference between the
intention
of an action and its
motive
. Put simply, an intention is a
plan
to act, while a motive is the
reason
to act. In our case, the T-101’s intention was to kill itself, but its motive was to preempt the creation of Skynet. A proper definition of suicide needs to consider the intention, regardless of motive.
Even if this were not true, it’s still the case that some of the most influential arguments against suicide don’t apply in the case of the T-101. Take, for example, Plato’s
Phaedo
.
5
In this dialogue, Plato’s teacher Socrates is awaiting his execution and trying to persuade his friends not to be upset, for death is nothing to fear. In fact, he says, it is the greatest good, what a life devoted to philosophy is all about, a release from the cares of the world in order to contemplate the truth in peace. Socrates makes it clear, however, that we can’t grant this boon to ourselves. Human beings are the property of the gods, he claims, and to kill oneself would effectively be stealing from the gods. A Christian variation of this argument holds that human life is God’s gift and therefore not to be taken by anyone, including oneself. But, simply put, these arguments fail to apply to our present case, since the Terminator is hardly a divine creation. And any claims to its life made by its mundane creators need to confront its new freedom and self-awareness.
For a view relevant to the Terminator, let’s turn to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who forbade suicide absolutely. Kant’s ultimate moral principle, the categorical imperative, tells us that if you could not will that
everyone
perform the action you intend, then you shouldn’t do it at all.
6
So, in the case of suicide, in order for it to be morally right, one would have to will that all people in similar situations take their own lives. Kant considers a man in dire straits. This poor fellow is contemplating suicide to end his pain—that is, out of love of himself. Applying the categorical imperative to this situation means that everyone who loves himself—or, everyone—would have to commit suicide.
The key distinction between Kantian ethics and others that categorically condemn suicide is that for Kant, what defines a being’s worth is not its divine origin or its possession of a soul, but its ability to reason. Kant also claims that our central moral duty is to treat others with respect and not simply as things to be used in order to satisfy our own desires. (“So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”)
7
Now, there may be some confusion caused by Kant’s use of the word “humanity.” The Terminator may have
looked
human, but it wasn’t a member of the species. But Kant did not restrict the meaning of “humanity” to human beings, since he meant any being capable of rational thought. Kant even speculates about the “humanity” of supernatural and extraterrestrial beings, like angels and aliens.
8
In essence, this formulation forbids using a rational being like a tool. Kant might say that this principle applies to the T-101’s decision because of the phrase “in
ourselves
or others.” In Kant’s eyes, the Terminator used
itself
as nothing more than a means to an end—by destroying itself, it failed to show the respect due to any rational agent. Its motives are irrelevant, since its intention was wrong in the first place.
But what Kant can’t account for are the particular circumstances of the Terminator’s sacrifice. According to Kant, we cannot have two conflicting duties, which, in fact, was clearly the situation faced by the T-101. On the one hand, it had a duty to preserve its life. On the other hand, it had a duty to do everything it could to try to prevent the creation of Skynet. The Terminator had both of those duties and should have tried to accomplish both. To violate either duty would be morally wrong. But, from the Terminator’s perspective, to perform one was necessarily to violate the other. If it preserved its life, millions would die; but the only way to save those lives was to commit suicide. For Kant, there is no way of weighing one duty against the other, because such a conflict is inconceivable.
9
So something is wrong with Kant’s moral theory.
In order to solve the problem of conflicting duties, let’s turn to another moral perspective, consequentialism. In consequentialist moral theories, the moral significance of any action is tied to the results of that action, rather than the motives behind it.
10
No action is wrong because of the
kind
of action it is—killing, lying, stealing could all be justified if they were to lead to better outcomes than other actions would. In
T2
, it seems that the T-101 is implicitly relying on a form of consequentialism called utilitarianism. Utilitarianism, as first formalized by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), argues that actions are moral or immoral based on how much pleasure is generated and how much pain is prevented by them. The T-101’s decision to sacrifice itself caused some pain for the young John Connor, and perhaps some for the Terminator itself. But that suffering would be minuscule compared to the amount of pain that would have been prevented were Skynet never to exist. In exchange for a young man’s brief bereavement, the world is saved. From the T-101’s perspective, as from that of any good utilitarian, this is a no-brainer. Not only is it permissible for the T-101 to commit suicide; it is positively required. In utilitarian terms, the T-101’s suicide was its
only option
, since to remain alive would have been to condemn billions of human beings to death.
This decision, though, is flawed, and in a way that characterizes all consequentialist moral thinking. The Terminator killed itself, destroyed all of the remains of its predecessor, and melted down the T-1000, and in spite of all of that, Skynet still became self-aware, still declared war on humans. This chain of events points to the inherent flaw in consequentialist thinking: we cannot control the future, and consequentialism gives us no points for even trying. For a consequentialist, what motivates an action is completely irrelevant in assessing the moral worth of that action. All that counts are the consequences of the action. The actual, unpredictable results of the T-101’s actions were, on the whole, negative: its death, John Connor’s pain, and the war between machines and humans. By any consequentialist or utilitarian standard, the Terminator’s suicide was the wrong choice—but, of course, we can know that only with hindsight.
So it would seem that there is no moral justification for the T-101’s self-termination. From whichever standpoint we view this suicide, it is morally wrong. Kant tells us that the motive for killing a rational being, even oneself, is inherently wrong. Utilitarians and other consequentialists tell us that an act that results in more pain than pleasure, or more bad than good, must always be considered the wrong action to take. Viewed from either perspective, the Terminator’s self-destruction is at best a misguided action based on a noble motive. But we get no points for motives.
Can Suicide Ever Be Justified?
The example of the Terminator tells us something about the logic of self-sacrifice, of dying for a cause: it is illogical. Those who do so, or who encourage others to do so, ignore the basic reality of death. As Heidegger showed, to die authentically is to end one’s possibilities. Human beings have only a limited degree of control over events when they are alive: to die is to throw away even that influence. The dead have no control over events—nor do they have any right to such control. To die intentionally, even in a noble way, is to abdicate responsibility for oneself and one’s actions. It is to leave the interpretation and consequences of one’s actions in the hands of others. This is both unwise and unfair.
NOTES
1
Albert Camus,
The Myth of Sisyphus
, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1955), 3.
2
Martin Heidegger,
Being and Time
, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), 219-233.
3
Heidegger,
Being and Time
, 233-240.
4
Is it too much to hope that whoever came up with this term will be scheduled to receive a visit from an unstoppable killing machine from the future?
5
Plato, “Phaedo,” in
The Trial and Death of Socrates
, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Dover, 1992), 59-60.
6
This is the “first formulation” of Kant’s categorical imperative; see Immanuel Kant,
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), 31.
7
Kant,
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
, 38.
8
Kant mentions supernatural beings like angels in his
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
. He speculates briefly on the existence of extraterrestrial life in his
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
, trans. Robert Louden (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006). He also, unfortunately, does not extend his definition of “humanity” to all members of the human species. See for instance, his comments on Africans in
Observations on Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime
, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2003).
9
Immanuel Kant,
The Metaphysics of Morals
, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 16.
10
For more on consequentialism in the
Terminator
films, see Wayne Yuen’s chapter in this volume, “What’s So Terrible about Judgment Day?”
15
WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT BEING TERMINATED?
Jason T. Eberl
“Sarah Connor?”
“Yes.”
BANG!
The Terminator is a frightening figure, not only because of his (or her, as the case may be) relentless pursuit of Sarah and John Connor, but also because he remorselessly eliminates anyone who gets in the way of achieving his objective. He’s also not afraid of terminating each and every “Sarah Connor” he comes across, just to make sure he’s gotten the job done. Such pitiless devaluing of human life is both scary to those who might share a certain surname and morally reprehensible to those of us who haven’t been programmed as leather-and-sunglass-wearing killing machines.