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The moral of the stories
Harry Potter and the Good Life lecture draws mass of Muggles

By Hope Green

Greek philosophy scholar Steven Tigner felt he had more important things to read than J. K. Rowling's phenomenally popular Harry Potter books. But the best-selling children's series so fascinated his undergraduate students at the School of Education that one day he reluctantly opened up the first volume, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

"Like so many astonished adults both before me and after, I was soon ensorcelled," says Tigner, whose February 15 lecture on the series, Harry Potter and the Good Life, drew an overflow crowd to the Ryan Library in SED's Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character. "The ways in which Rowling's imagination harmonizes with the moral insights we find in Plato and Aristotle are really quite remarkable."

	Steven Tigner confers with Assistant Professor Karen Bohlin, director of SED's Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character (CAEC), in the Ryan Library, where Tigner recently lectured on the Harry Potter books. The talk marked the official opening of the library, which was dedicated in the fall to CAEC's now retired founding director, Kevin Ryan. Photo by Albert l'Étoile

Rowling may have her detractors, but Tigner, SED adjunct professor and author of several articles on character education, is not one of them. Critics have charged that her books lure children into the occult, have an antifamily bias, promote sexism, are too violent, and have scant literary merit. Tigner dismisses all such claims with the speed of a Firebolt (an expensive racing broom Harry craves, but sensibly resists buying), for debunking critics is not the objective of Tigner's Potter analysis. His aim is to cast a scholarly eye on these contemporary books and demonstrate how the narrative echoes the ideas of ancient thinkers, especially where character virtues such as temperance, wisdom, courage, and responsibility are concerned.

"Although J. K. Rowling does say these are moral stories, I don't think it is her intention to moralize," Tigner says. "I think a background in the classics, Plato and Aristotle in particular, gives us what we need to discern what's really going on morally in these stories and what children can get out of them."

TM & 2000 Warner Bros.

For the uninitiated, Harry Potter is an orphaned British lad whose wizard parents were killed in a magical attack by the evil Lord Voldemort when he was an infant. It is not until Harry turns 11 that another wizard, the virtuous and wise Albus Dumbledore, visits the Muggle, or mortal, world to reveal the truth about the boy's heritage. Escaping the nasty relatives who have raised him, the young hero finds friends at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and learns about good and evil through interactions with fantastic characters.

The term good life in the title of Tigner's presentation refers to a life lived virtuously, apart from one's relative wealth. In his analysis, Tigner looks at all four volumes in the Harry Potter series, drawing parallels between quotes from the Bible, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and other classic literature with the language in Rowling's books. For example, he cites Aristotle's definition of moral virtue as "a state of character concerned with choice," then quotes the second volume of the Potter series when Dumbledore says, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

	TM & 2000 Warner Bros.

On the subject of temperance, Tigner finds that the contrast between Harry and his gluttonous cousin, Dudley Dursley, resonates with the writings of Plato. "Dudley was given every opportunity and aid to indulge himself, did so, and became perfectly horrible," Tigner says. "Harry, on the other hand, never given any more than the bare essentials, grew temperate and won our sympathy. Harry and Dudley are like the citizens of Plato's two cities, the frugal, healthy city, and the luxurious unhealthy one, living side by side."

Tigner teaches two Cultural Foundations for Educators courses, which introduce teacher trainees in early childhood and elementary education to classic literature and art.

"If I ever were to teach a third course," he says, "it would go up into the 21st century and would certainly include Harry Potter." The books are useful in studying how literature can provide moral insight, he says, "because far more of my students are into Harry Potter than are into Plato and Aristotle. Learning how to make the moral connection is salutary for the soul."

23 February 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations