All you need is Buffy the Vampire Slayer

originally posted by Thor:
Hey, finally a topic I know something about.

FWIW, Buffy (and Angel, which is essential to understanding the Whedonesque concept of the soul) was pretty clear in attempting to separate the essential personality -- which was, for example, supposed to be the same from Liam to Angelus to Angel, or William to Spike to ensouled Spike -- from the application of that personality. In other words, pathetic William reading poetry to Spike killing slayers to Spike falling in love with Buffy...all the same personality, just put to good, evil, or ambiguous ends. Evidence for this abounds, going back quite a ways. For example:

BUFFY
Just remember, a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the person it was.

ANGEL
Well, actually -- (off Buffy's glare) -- that's a good point.

("Doppelgngland")

ANGEL
It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man.

("Amends")

...and all the way to the end (Spike's choice of "world's about to end" activities in the final Angel episode).

Of course, whether or not they achieved this intent in the actual drama is a very different question. And I don't know if Angelus preferred Allemand or Verset, but I understand Drusilla was a big Bea fan, though she thought the wines were a little conventional, and also that the trombones falling from the sky were too bright.
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I think you refute your own claim twice. First neither Angelus nor William were anything like Angel or Spike as personalities. Nor was Spike ensouled like either William or vampire Spike. Regardless of our differing judgments about this, the first bit of dialogue affirms that the soulless vampire's personality changes and has nothing to do with the person it was.

With regard to the second remark, I'd have to know the context. Ensouled, Angel was always riddled with guilt that was frequently in excess of the situation. Guilt of course was not a particular problem for Angelus. Just another difference between the two.
 
First neither Angelus nor William were anything like Angel or Spike as personalities.
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I completely disagree. Moreover, so does the series as played. And so, if this matters, do the writers. But this isn't whedonesque.com, so I doubt anyone else wants to see the debate at the necessary length. Well, no, probably SFJoe does, based on his love of the comic book threads, but other than him...so, anyway, I'll keep this short-ish.

Nor was Spike ensouled like either William or vampire Spike.
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That's a...baffling viewing of the series. Just as an example, the first appearance (historically, not in broadcast order) of William and the last appearance of Spike (in the final episode of Angel) show him doing exactly the same thing, and for largely the same reasons. His romantic approaches to Cecily and Buffy (post-chip, pre-soul) were explicitly paralleled in "Fool For Love". Etc.

the first bit of dialogue affirms that the soulless vampire's personality changes and has nothing to do with the person it was.
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Considering it was in the context of Willow's alt-universe vampire personality having traits Willow didn't yet know she had, and that Buffy clearly agreed with Angel that the personality was continuous but didn't want Willow to think that, I don't understand your response.

With regard to the second remark, I'd have to know the context.
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Briefly, the First Evil is trying to get Angel to kill himself. It's been doing this by confronting Angel with his victims. Buffy's trying to save him by pointing out that he's different now that he has a soul. He's refuting her by saying that the problem isn't that Angelus was evil, but that Liam was no good in the first place, and that who he is as Angel (with a soul) is not worth saving because of what he did as Angelus and who he always was as Liam.

Guilt of course was not a particular problem for Angelus.
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Actually, Angelus' concept of guilt follows directly from Liam's (ref. "Orpheus").

I bet SFJoe is really excited by this discussion.
 
I will not get into all our different judgments of personalities since in the absence of text, the argument amounts to I say this or I say that.

Your first bit of dialogue has as its explicit claim that the vampire personality has nothing to do with the person it was. It may be that in context that dialogue should be taken as not representing the position of the show, but in that case you should not have quoted it as your interpretation remains one against its explicit claim.

I don't tend to read interviews with creators of TV shows. From the little I have read, I find it completely expectable that Joss Whedon would have theological positions on issues like this. I would find them about as reliable a basis for interpreting what the show displays as I find the comments of say John Barth about his novels are about his novels. And this gets back to the original definitional problem. If Whedon thinks that the soul gives one moral agency and that its absence takes that moral agency away, then the claim that the personality nevertheless remains the same in both cases either has an astonishingly restricted view of personality or is flatly self-contradictory. It's therefore unsurprising that the show doesn't show what he says it does.
 
I will not get into all our different judgments of personalities since in the absence of text, the argument amounts to I say this or I say that.

Your first bit of dialogue has as its explicit claim that the vampire personality has nothing to do with the person it was. It may be that in context that dialogue should be taken as not representing the position of the show, but in that case you should not have quoted it as your interpretation remains one against its explicit claim.

I don't tend to read interviews with creators of TV shows. From the little I have read, I find it completely expectable that Joss Whedon would have theological positions on issues like this. I would find them about as reliable a basis for interpreting what the show displays as I find the comments of say John Barth about his novels are about his novels. And this gets back to the original definitional problem. If Whedon thinks that the soul gives one moral agency and that its absence takes that moral agency away, then the claim that the personality nevertheless remains the same in both cases either has an astonishingly restricted view of personality or is flatly self-contradictory. It's therefore unsurprising that the show doesn't show what he says it does.
 
Your first bit of dialogue has as its explicit claim that the vampire personality has nothing to do with the person it was. It may be that in context that dialogue should be taken as not representing the position of the show, but in that case you should not have quoted it as your interpretation remains one against its explicit claim.
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Well, I was assuming you were familiar with the show. My apologies.

Sarcasm aside, the full context is that Willow's alt-universe vampire is, in regular-universe Willow's words, "kinda gay." Which regular-universe Willow will be, a season later. Willow seems uncomfortable when she says it, so Buffy tries to cover with the "nothing to do" line. Angel, who would know, begins to refute this. Buffy stops him, because she's making Willow feel better, not telling her the truth.

From the little I have read, I find it completely expectable that Joss Whedon would have theological positions on issues like this.
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He's an atheist, but the Buffyverse concept of the soul comes from him, for certain, with explicit agreement from David Fury, Tim Minear, Jane Espenson, and a few others. I think Marti Noxon had a slightly different take.

If Whedon thinks that the soul gives one moral agency and that its absence takes that moral agency away, then the claim that the personality nevertheless remains the same in both cases either has an astonishingly restricted view of personality or is flatly self-contradictory. It's therefore unsurprising that the show doesn't show what he says it does.
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Well, as I said in the first message, whether or not the shows follow through on their philosophy of the soul is a much different question. But the concept of the soul the shows try to create, shortened and simplified to its actual utility within the shows, is that without it the being is killable by Buffy, and with it not.
 
originally posted by Thor:
But the concept of the soul the shows try to create, shortened and simplified to its actual utility within the shows, is that without it the being is killable by Buffy, and with it not.
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This is either silly or badly written. Buffy can kill entities with souls. She nearly kills the other slayer. Perhaps you mean that as a general rule, just like the rest of us she ought not kill entities with souls. But that's because souls create significances about those entities that personality is one of the words we use to capture.

If you can't tell the difference between Angel and Angelus, think that the difference is only one of whether Buffy can or ought to slay one or the other, and don't describe it as a difference in personality, I don't know what to say. If Whedon thinks there's no other difference, it's just as well he's a writer and not a psychologist.
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Actually all these definitions are versions of the same, the inner essence of a being that makes it what it is. They just define that essence variably as music, as spirit or, in Buffy's case, with a surprising Kantianism, as moral agency. I would deny by the way that in Buffy one's personality doesn't change depending on one's state of ensoulment.
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I'm a little late to this discussion but I can elaborate further why you're wrong. For starters, note that I used the phrase "diminution" in personality as opposed to "alteration," which was deliberate. In the Biblical and popular conception of the soul, a person without a soul would be something like a car without an engine, an empty shell. The Buffian definition is somewhat unusual in that beings without souls seem to function as well and experience all of the normal emotions and joys as beings with souls, with the sole exception that they lack a moral conscience and don't feel any guilt. That usually has some effect on their personality, but "the inner essence of [the] being that makes it what it is" is generally unchanged. Harmony is a good example of this (though in her case her personality remained totally constant). "Lovers Walk" and "Fool for Love," taken together, demonstrate this, too, since they show Spike being a pathetic lovesick romantic both before and after becoming a vampire.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Actually all these definitions are versions of the same, the inner essence of a being that makes it what it is. They just define that essence variably as music, as spirit or, in Buffy's case, with a surprising Kantianism, as moral agency. I would deny by the way that in Buffy one's personality doesn't change depending on one's state of ensoulment.
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I'm a little late to this discussion but I can elaborate further why you're wrong. For starters, note that I used the phrase "diminution" in personality as opposed to "alteration," which was deliberate. In the Biblical and popular conception of the soul, a person without a soul would be something like a car without an engine, an empty shell. The Buffian definition is somewhat unusual in that beings without souls seem to function as well and experience all of the normal emotions and joys as beings with souls, with the sole exception that they lack a moral conscience and don't feel any guilt. That usually has some effect on their personality, but "the inner essence of [the] being that makes it what it is" is generally unchanged. Harmony is a good example of this (though in her case her personality remained totally constant). "Lovers Walk" and "Fool for Love," taken together, demonstrate this, too, since they show Spike being a pathetic lovesick romantic both before and after becoming a vampire.
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Since I have already responded to this claim, I will merely quote myself:

and this gets back to the original definitional problem. If Whedon thinks that the soul gives one moral agency and that its absence takes that moral agency away, then the claim that the personality nevertheless remains the same in both cases either has an astonishingly restricted view of personality or is flatly self-contradictory.

William was a weak momma's boy. Spike with a soul raped Buffy. One may find continuities between them, but saying they are the same seems remarkably insensitive to difference. Same again with Liam, Angelus and Angel. The differences are not diminutions. It may indeed be that Whedon intends what you describe, but, then again, that just makes him a better writer than he is a thinker about what he writes.
 
Well, I think "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has now generated more conversation than Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurusawa, and Werner Herzog combined.

I can probably even throw in Kant and Wittgenstein and still have room left over.
 
William was a weak momma's boy. Spike with a soul raped Buffy. One may find continuities between them, but saying they are the same seems remarkably insensitive to difference.
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Rape? When was that?? Anyway, saying there is a material personality difference between William and Spike-with-a-soul doesn't establish anything since the soul is there in both cases. But it's true that becoming a vampire shifted Spike a bunch of notches on the beta-to-alpha meter, with obvious effects in demeanor, etc. That was always one of the whole points of the show - that having no moral conscience made you more confident, more powerful, cooler. You were supposed to envy that about the vampires. While that reflects a change in personality, it doesn't reflect a wholesale transplantation (or removal) of "inner essence." Rather, losing the moral conscience merely freed incipient aspects of the inner essence to manifest themselves (rather like a nerd who makes a billion dollars and suddenly starts getting chicks). The vampires keep not only the memories but other important personality characteristics of the people they were before getting vamped.
 
This is either silly or badly written. Buffy can kill entities with souls.
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She's not supposed to, which she says over and over across seasons. And with the occasional glaring exception (the Knights, for example, which the writers acknowledge was a mistake), she doesn't. That's why Faith doing so was such a big deal, and took years and two series to work through as a character thread. That's why the fight with Faith in "Graduation Day" was such a big deal.

But the "soul = unkillable" standard is set early (Faith & the deputy mayor, though I'm certainly forgetting something even earlier) and often, and explicitly expressed in her refusal to kill (among others) any of The Trio, or to allow Dawn to be killed even though it would save the universe(s), and so forth. Giles also states it rather explicitly at the end of "The Gift" when he does what he claims (I think correctly) that she wouldn't do.

The essential demon/non-demon difference is often suggested to be the soul, though I don't think they set down an iron-clad rule. Note that it's different from the evil/not evil standard; Clem is a mostly non-evil demon in his later incarnations (though in his first appearance, he apparently eats kittens, something they manage to forget later on), and so forth.

Perhaps you mean that as a general rule, just like the rest of us she ought not kill entities with souls.
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BUFFY: Being a Slayer is not the same as being a killer.

(later)

BUFFY: We help people! It doesn't mean we can do whatever we want.

FAITH: Why not? The guy I offed was no Gandhi. I mean, we just saw he
was mixed up in dirty dealings.

BUFFY: Maybe, but what if he was coming to us for help?

FAITH: What if he was? You're still not seeing the big picture, B.
Something made us different. We're warriors. We're built to kill.

BUFFY: To kill demons! But it does *not* mean that we get to pass
judgment on people like we're better than everybody else!

BUFFY: But we don't kill humans. It's not the way. ("Bad Girls")

(also)

BEN: Need a ... a minute. She could've killed me.

GILES: No she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later Glory will re-emerge, and make Buffy pay for that mercy. And the world with her. Buffy even knows that...and still she couldn't take a human life.

(also)

BUFFY: Being a Slayer doesn't give me a license to kill. Warren's human.

DAWN: So?

BUFFY: So the human world has its own rules for dealing with people like him.

("Villains")

You're free to think the concept is stupid, but it's what was in the show.

If you can't tell the difference between Angel and Angelus
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Of course there's a difference. One kills people and the other doesn't...of course, except when he does ("Reunion" for example). But the lesson of "Amends" and about a half-dozen Angel episodes is that Angel and Angelus are both Liam. It's just that one has a moral conscience and the will to choose his morality, and the other doesn't. Angel's lament in "Amends" is that Liam had a choice and rejected it.

William was a weak momma's boy. Spike with a soul raped Buffy.
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No, that was pre-soul. The first characterization was shown to be continuous in, as Keith said, "Lovers Walk" and "Fool For Love," but also "Lies My Parents Told Me."

Marti Noxon seems to have had a slightly different idea of this whole concept as developed in season 6, which is why David Fury wrote Spike the way he did in all three historical periods he referenced in "Lies My Parents Told Me," since he wanted to address the Buffyverse concept of soul, personality, and moral agency directly, using William/soulless Spike/ensouled Spike as the subject.
 
Rather, losing the moral conscience merely freed incipient aspects of the inner essence to manifest themselves. The vampires keep not only the memories but other important personality characteristics of the people they were before getting vamped.
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Indeed. Established right away in the second episode of the series, via Jesse. And over and over again...with Willow, Darla, Drusilla, Spike, Angel, and even demonized non-vamps like Giles.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Well, I think "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has now generated more conversation than Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurusawa, and Werner Herzog combined.

I can probably even throw in Kant and Wittgenstein and still have room left over.
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I don't know, there was a long Kant bit awhile back. The Godard thing, as I well know, has never got off the ground around here.
 
Thor,

Since your explanation--Buffy oughtn't to kill people with souls--comes down to the recognition that she can (is able to) kill people with souls, I fail to see the point of all the verbiage. All Buffy is saying is that the rules for entities with souls govern her just as they govern everybody else. This rather goes without saying and the dialogue in which she has to say it has always been excessive. She mostly shouldn't lie, cheat or steal either, though sometimes she may have to.

Do you find a distinction between Spike with a chip in his head and Spike with a soul? If not, your theory about the soul in Buffy works but at the cost of having any coherent account of what soul means anymore.

Your account of the difference between Angel and Angelus is on the face of it unsatisfactory. But if you think that way, then again your theory holds but at the cost of losing all grip on reality.

Once again, an entity with no moral agency may have the memories of the prior entity with that agency, but that is not the same thing as being that person merely happening not to have moral agency. Moral agency, if one believes we have it, isn't like arms, legs or even sight or hearing. It does go to who one is. Imagining a self without it (assuming you think that selves have it) is like imagining an automaton version of yourself able to access your memories, able even (far better than Angelus can imitate Angel) to imitate your mannerisms. That automaton won't be you. It's true that vampires aren't automatons. Keith is right about one thing. They don't lack essences. They have different essences.
 
Since your explanation--Buffy oughtn't to kill people with souls--comes down to the recognition that she can (is able to) kill people with souls, I fail to see the point of all the verbiage.
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Whose verbiage? I'm just explaining the show. As I've noted before, you're free to think it's asinine philosophy, or whatever. But it's what the show posited.

Buffy "oughtn't" kill beings with souls, the need for dealing with which being the purview of human-constituted authorities. ["Dead Things"] Buffy kills demons. Demons don't have souls, thus Buffy can kill them. ["Selfless"] That's essential to the show. Buffy can't kill Maggie Walsh, or Ethan Rayne, or Warren Mears, etc., even though they're all unquestionably evil, because they have souls.["Villains"] Buffy could kill Angelus (aside from her reluctance), but has strong reasons to not kill ensouled Angel, (the conflict that makes the end of "Becoming" so powerful), and Buffy may kill Spike but not ensouled-yet-murdering Spike (the conflict that drives her away from Giles ["Lies My Parents Told Me"]), and so forth. This is the Buffyverse's concept of a soul. You may think this is stupid, and I may or may not agree, but it's what the show has set up, thus it's not really arguable from a metaposition, which is what Keith was presenting. You may consider it philosophically untenable. I might agree. You may think they contradicted themselves over the course of the show(s). I'd almost certainly agree. But it's what they presented via the drama.

All Buffy is saying is that the rules for entities with souls govern her just as they govern everybody else. This rather goes without saying and the dialogue in which she has to say it has always been excessive. She mostly shouldn't lie, cheat or steal either, though sometimes she may have to.
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So what are the rules for entities without souls in the there's-no-Slayer-verse? I think I need to know them before I can judge your statement's applicability.

But actually, no. She lies, cheats, and steals (not always explicitly, but metaphorically...but finally explicitly in season 8) with regularity and mostly without remorse. The show has always been fairly clear about the difference between the demands of the person (who she doesn't always take seriously) and the demands of the calling (which she takes very seriously, despite season one's dialogue). [season 1, season 2, season 3, season 4, season 5, season 6, season 7...hey, that might be a fundamental concept!]

Do you find a distinction between Spike with a chip in his head and Spike with a soul?
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Viewed from an overview of both series? Not all that much. Yes, "School Hard" Spike is very different from "Fool For Love" Spike (which is perfectly understandable; "School Hard" Spike was a briefly-recurring character, not to have an in-depth arc), while "Something Blue" Spike and "End of Days" Spike are fairly similar, but both Spikes and William are a fundamental part of "Lies My Parents Told Me," and every permutation of William/Spike is evident in "Not Fade Away" and many other AtS season 5 episodes besides. Spike's motivations in "Out of My Mind" and season 7 aren't all that different, but he's got a soul in the latter, and that's enough difference to drive drama ["Grave", "The Gift", "Beneath You," "Never Leave Me," "Touched"] but not enough to demonstrate true personality separation ["Fool For Love"].

If not, your theory about the soul in Buffy works but at the cost of having any coherent account of what soul means anymore.
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Look, it's not my theory. It's right there in the text. To quote the show..."I didn't jump to conclusions. I took a small step, and there the conclusions were." Again, you're free to think it's ridiculous. That's not really my argument. I can love the show more than almost any other and think the premises are sometimes insupportable. But what Keith and I have written is what the show posits, re: the soul.

Your account of the difference between Angel and Angelus is on the face of it unsatisfactory. But if you think that way, then again your theory holds but at the cost of losing all grip on reality.
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Well, it's a TV show. I'm not really sure what your foundation for complaint is. It's fiction and subject to the mutable whims of the authors. The writers and the show are quite clear about the Liam-Angelus-Angel continuity, as expressed in "Amends" and countless episodes of Angel running from about mid-season 1 right through to "Not Fade Away." If you think it's dumb, then hate the shows' intent re: this issue. If you don't, then fine, but I don't think you've grasped what they intended. There wasn't a single Angelus/Darla/(Drusilla)/(Spike)/(Liam) flashback that didn't intend to highlight parallel behavior between desouled/ensouled entities.

Once again, an entity with no moral agency may have the memories of the prior entity with that agency, but that is not the same thing as being that person merely happening not to have moral agency.
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Given all the stuff I've typed above, I can't really believe I'm saying this, but: Christ, Jonathan, it's a TV show. It's not Kant, or Genesis (not the band, the book), or real life. It's Joss Whedon's amusing notions and ways to make his characters suffer, or a bunch of writers' late-night ideas about that same suffering. I can't and won't defend the correctness or viability of what the show posits as its concept of "soul," but I can defend that definition as being the show's actual definition. If you missed it, then you missed it. If you don't agree with it, or think it's wretched, then that's what you think. But it's there. Love it, hate it, or whatever.

Keith is right about one thing. They don't lack essences. They have different essences.
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I suggest to you that you failed to grasp the entirety of the Angel, Spike, Drusilla, and Darla arcs, if this is what you actually think. But you could take the shortcut and just watch "New Moon Rising," which explains everything in shorthand form.
 
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, isn't Dylan from 90210 in that?

Did he have the same bathtub porsche driving, sometimes I prefer the blondes, sometimes I prefer the brunettes soul in Buffy that he had in the Spelling production?
 
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