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163 heroIC Love and Its InversIon In the Parent-ChILd reLatIonshIP In abraMs’s star trek Charles Taliaferro and Emilie Judge-Becker In philosophy there is a tradition according to which there are three precepts of justice (preacepta juris): live in a morally right way, do no harm to others , and render to each what is her or his own.1 One of the more vexing and interesting questions that remains quite unsettled in twenty-first-century philosophy concerns the duties (if any) that are owed between parents and children. We believe that the 2009 film Star Trek (directed by J. J. Abrams and written by Roberta Orci and Alex Kurtzman) speaks to the question of what is owed in a loving, heroic parent-child relationship, and in so doing it speaks to questions about living morally and not harming others. The film does not just speak to the heroic; it can suggest something important to those of us who have more humdrum parent-child relationships, but this will be a matter we will only suggest at the end of our chapter. To get things started, we offer a brief overview of the philosophy of parent-child relationships and then move to Star Trek. An important qualification: while we will be using the film to make philosophical observations about the parent-child relationship, we are not claiming that Abrams himself or the writers were intentionally crafting a philosophy. Rather, we are proposing that the film may be used to extract an important lesson about parent-child relations, especially as this bears on heroic, loving sacrifice and its inversion. Philosophers have taken different positions on the relationship between parents and children. In Greco-Roman times parents (especially the father) had absolute power over children, and abortion and infanticide were not uncommon (approved of by both Plato and Aristotle in cases of severe infant 164 Charles Taliaferro and Emilie Judge-Becker deformity). But even among the ancients, a parent killing a child was often considered horrific (Hercules’s killing of his children and wife made him cursed, Medea’s killing of her children was, quite literally, considered tragic), and there is a powerful, intimate tenderness displayed between parents and children in the oldest poem in the west, the Iliad (Hector’s loving care for his son).2 As we come to the modern era, many philosophers (most notably John Locke in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) defended the idea that children were not owned by parents and that they were to be treated as proper individuals with rights and duties of their own. But precisely what those rights and duties are has not been fully settled by philosophers as we begin the twenty-first century. This has been especially vexing as philosophers in more recent times have sought to develop a secular account of the parent-child relationship. There is not total disagreement today on the parent-child relationship. Most philosophers today and in the modern era think that if someone gives birth to a child, then they have some responsibility for the welfare of the child, if only to ensure that the child is raised in a healthy way. Philosophers may diverge on the comparative ethical significance of a genetic connection between parent and child, the importance of gestation (is a “surrogate” mother a true or real mother?), the ethics of adoption, and so on, but what might be called motherly or fatherly love has a fairly clear meaning when it comes to identifying the responsible care that we (today) expect of parental care for children. But what of children themselves and their duties, if any? Of course, as an infant, a child lacks the kind of self-control that can form the basis for morally responsible action, but once he or she has some powers of agency, is it the duty of a child to love his or her parents? Could love ever be a duty? Love seems to be an emotion, and emotions do not seem to be immediately under our self-control. If we do have a duty to love our parents, what would its basis be? In healthy settings, presumably the child has received a great gift (life itself and a good upbringing), but the child never asked for this gift. If a child ought to love or honor her or his parent, this seems to be something that has been involuntarily thrust on the child, and not something the child must ethically take ownership of. In...

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