Today, I saw the last Harry Potter movie again. Three or four years ago, I took a course on "Kant's Moral Theory in Film and Literature." This is the kind of thing that results.
Snape is one of my favorite characters in the Harry Potter books. Of course at the beginning he was just that professor you love to hate for his irrational prejudice against your heroes, but by the end of book six, when he had seemingly revealed his true colors and betrayed Dumbledore, I knew that the story wasn't over. Little hints, clues suggested that Snape was more than he appeared, a hunch that was confirmed in the seventh book. Snape, as it turns out, was perhaps *the* ultimate example of sacrificial love from the books. Many people die for Harry's sake (including Harry himself), but Snape's sacrifice is perhaps the greatest as it is unknown, unrewarded and uncertain of result.
Snape's actions somehow connected to my memories of college classes in Kant's moral theory. If I remember correctly, one of Kant's ideas about moral behavior was that TRUE moral action was done solely for it's own sake. In other words, if you were doing the right thing because a) it made you feel good or b) you'd feel guilty if you didn't or c) you benefited in any way--that action was not *quite* as moral or good as the action of someone who was acting simply out of duty. (This may be a gross oversimplification or misstatement, but this is what I remember.)
Snape, then, is almost the perfect Kantian moral agent. He receives no benefit from his service to Dumbledore, his protection to Harry--he refuses to be recognized, he doesn't like Harry, and at the very end he is told that all his work has been for nothing, as it were. And yet he continues until the very end, obeying Dumbledore's orders even when he has nothing to gain by it, because he has promised to do so, based on his love for Lily Potter.
I wonder what Immanuel Kant would say to that?
