HARRY POTTER AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN

There are several Harry Potter entries in this collection, to help illustrate certain philosophical principles. As a matter of challenge, I ought to conduct a thorough examination of the philosophical content of Harry Potter, time permitting, of course. I sincerely think that this book is a tremendous vehicle, considering its popularity even among the least sophisticated, to connect philosophically to my reader, rather than to try to invent a different type of connection.

One amazing thing about Harry Potter’s creator J. K. Rowling. Where on earth did she get all that superb education of hers, that allows her to sprinkle her creation with such subtle and effective gems of theology, philosophy, and a lot of other such stuff? One of my cases in point is her story of Nicholas Flamel and his Philosopher’s Stone. Compare this to Hobbes’ interpretation of the story of the Tree of Life, in Genesis 2:9, growing side by side with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden, to bring to light their eye-catching similarities. According to Hobbes, and I accept his version, Adam and Eve, were created mortal, but were able to perpetuate their life indefinitely by their daily treats, plucked from the tree of life. (Incidentally, here is that intriguing excerpt from the 38^th Chapter of Hobbes’s Leviathan:

…Adam was created in such a condition of life as, had he not broken the commandment of God, he would have enjoyed it in the Paradise everlastingly. For there was the tree of life of which he was allowed to eat and of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he was not allowed to eat. And therefore as soon as he had eaten of it, God thrust him out of Paradise, “lest he should take also of the tree of life and live forever.”)

When God told them, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” what He must have meant was not that they should die on the spot, because in such a case the human race would have come to an early extinction, but that in the event of such gross disobedience, their daily rations from the tree of life were to be effectively discontinued and they would both lose their unique capacity to perpetuate their life indefinitely and thus having lived out their natural lives they would surely die. So, Flamel and his wife were able to live indefinitely, just like Adam and Eve, by using the Philosopher’s Stone, exactly as Adam and Eve had been using the Tree. Was this parallel deliberately designed, or was it just one of those strange coincidences? I choose the first answer as the more probable, even if Adam and Eve’s influence on J. K. Rowling had not been immediate and direct.

Once I am on this subject, I have this Biblical question, both in the literal and the figurative senses; and its ramifications, both theological and philosophical, are intriguing:

Did Adam and Eve become husband and wife and thus the parents of the human race as the direct result of their disobedience and not before that? Had the “tree of knowledge incident” never happened, would God’s design have been satisfied with just the two of them? Would not their chastity then constitute a similar sin of disobedience, with regard to God’s explicit command to them directly, in Genesis 1:28, to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”? This is a deeply relevant question, since only after their expulsion from the garden of Eden, we are told in Genesis 4:1, “Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived.” (!)

God obviously had the all-knowledge, timeless and infinite, and I am yet again as reluctant as ever to talk about predestination, which term incorrectly conjures up the idea of fatalism, or absence of choice, which linkage is philosophically unsustainable, because God’s all-knowledge (I am purposefully rejecting here the “usual” word foreknowledge, which is time-contained, and inapplicable to God’s infinite timelessness) in no way transfers to man’s function of choice.

What intrigues me, however, is that God’s whole purpose of Creation seems to hinge on the Fall of Adam, somewhat comparable to certain cases of “police entrapment” allowing the defense to have the whole case against their client to be thrown out of court. Therefore, if Creation is, indeed, predicated upon Man’s Sin, how can the origin of morality be justified by the implicit certainty of immorality. Unless, of course, we are to call Creation Amoral, as opposed to Moral or Immoral, but then, what does God have in mind, when he sees his Creation as Good? The only solution to this puzzle that comes to my mind is that we have to take a closer look at the opening passages of the Genesis, to make sure what exactly is called Good by God. And here is Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Now we are told “it was very good,” so that no doubt remains as to the goodness of all God’s creation! Well, Satan, of course, was also His creation...

I will continue to discuss this subject in subsequent entries. Ironically, leaving this whole matter now in a rather perplexed state, I can only wonder at the profundity of Nietzsche’s astonishingly insightful phrase “Jenseits von Gut und Böse” which, following my line of thinking here, may be applied toward the whole of God’s Creation!