Virtue Ethics and the film Untouchable

“The soul never thinks without a picture”, Aristotle.

Films are great source of ethcial examples and discussion points and Untouchable is a remarkable film based on a true story, about virtue and friendship, where we are forced to ask the question: what is the true source of goodness and of friendship?

The film traces the improbable relationship between a black unemployed man called Driss who becomes carer to Philippe, a rich business man paralysed in a paragliding accident. We discover that Driss was brought up by his uncle and aunt after arriving from Senegal at the age of five, and since then has become a wheeler and dealer, a drifter through life who is only apparently interested in his benefit cheque. Philippe has become lonely and isolated in his disability, surrounded by well-meaning but functional professionals.

However, we rapidly realise that despite being a petty thief, Driss has some amazing virtues. One is a sense of humour, of play and of fun. The first thing he does is to make Philippe laugh. He makes him laugh at his refusal to do menial chores, he makes him laugh when he wheels him round Paris at four in the morning, he makes him laugh when he demonstrates break dancing, and when he drives the Mazaratti rather than the specially adapted wheelchair people mover and involves the Police in a car chase.

But above all, Driss offers friendship. He gives straight answers, and when at night Philippe is fighting for breath, he knows instinctively what to do…..

In a funny but moving scene, he even persuades Philippe to ring the woman he’s been writing to for nine months, and then invite her on a date. He seems to believe in Philippe more than Philippe believes in himself, to see the human being underneath the category “disabled”: He is someone worthy of love and to be in loving relationships.

In the fourth century BC Aristotle wrote that justice and friendship were the two key virtues or habits of character that built community. He argued there were three levels of friendship: the utility friendship, that exists for mutual benefit such as workplace friends, or fellow backpackers going round the world. Then there are pleasurable friendships, those that exist on the basis of shared reward, such as humour, a dancing partner, or sports fan.

But there is also complete friendship, where we become best friends, and a best friend is someone “who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake”. Reach this type of friendship and we have reached a height of excellence that will really make us flourish. Do we find it easy to have best friends like this?

Eventually Philippe persuades Driss to leave his employment for his own sake – to help a brother in trouble with a gang on the streets of Paris, even though it causes Philippe to sink back into unshaven despair. I won’t spoil the film by telling you the ending, but I encourage you to see the film for yourself, and think about the virtue of friendship and how we cultivate it. For it may be it isn’t easy in our world of a hundred network friends to have real friends that love us for our own sake.

“Friendship”, said Aristotle, when we experience it like this, at its best “is a single soul united in two bodies”. Human experience at its best touches these heights of friendship.

For how Buffy the Vampire Slayer demonstrates Aristotle’s three levels of friendship go to:

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/bangel/articles/28716/title/buffy-vampire-slayer-philosophy