James Lawler
In Attack of the Clones (AOTC), Senator Padmé Amidala asks Anakin Skywalker, “Are you allowed to love? I thought that was forbidden for a Jedi.” Anakin replies, “Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi's life. So you might say we are encouraged to love.” Anakin is playing with two meanings of love, the passionate love that he feels for Padmé and the dispassionate, detached, “Platonic love” of the Jedi warrior. Anakin is therefore deeply conflicted.
This conflict expresses the Jedi teaching of “the Force” – the life‐generated power with which the Jedi are able consciously to connect. The Force is an energy field that surrounds and penetrates all living beings; it binds everything together. Modern physics extends this Jedi teaching to the entire universe. According to Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727), it is the force of gravity that binds the universe together. In his Law of Gravity, each body attracts every other body in direct proportion to the mass of the bodies, and in inverse proportion to the square of the distance between them. This means that every individual being exerts power over every other being and exists in relation to the force of gravity of the universe as a whole.
If we were able to tap into that power and use it for ourselves, imagine what we could do! The Jedi have a natural ability to tune into the Force to a greater degree than ordinary humans, and through their special training learn to exercise and control this power. The heart of this training is to close your eyes and feel the Force within you. Since everything is connected to everything else, this feeling will guide you in relation to everything else, whether a dangerous object hurtling toward you or finding important targets at a distance from you.
Gravity is, by definition, a force of attraction, not a force for repelling objects, disrupting them, or pushing them away, although this is a possibility. A small mass contains an enormous destructive force, as Einstein's formula E = mc2 expresses. Imagine a brick falls from 10 ft above you – how much damage could it do to you if it were to land on your head? The brick picks up speed as it falls. Suppose it was falling at the speed of light and then square that number. That's the total amount of force in a single brick. This is why the small amount of mass of the atomic bomb can devastate a city. The force of gravity is the sum of the inner powers of all bodies in the Universe. Fortunately, it normally acts by the quiet force of attraction that one body exerts on another, rather than by the force of one body crashing against another.
In Lucas's universe, the Jedi have a special capacity to connect with the Force. But all of us feel the Force in very ordinary ways when we fall in love. There is nothing more powerful in human psychology than the power of attraction in the love of one person for another. In love the Force is internalized and becomes conscious in the feeling of attraction of one person for another. The Force is not only an external physical power but also the inner reality of human feelings and intuitions. In another scene from AOTC, Anakin tells Padmé, in words worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: “I'm haunted by the kiss you should never have given me. My heart is beating, hoping that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me. What can I do? I will do anything you ask.”
Padmé was right when she said she thought the Jedi were forbidden to fall in love. The power of passionate love between persons – sexual love or love of the body – is experience of the Force. But the Jedi teach that this kind of love belongs to the dark side and needs to be shunned. This side of the Force is held to be negative, destructive, taking all rational control away from those who are caught up in its power. It's this side of the Force that Anakin feels for Padmé. Its prohibition leads him to abandon the Jedi and join the Sith, who use the Force for control and domination.
But the Jedi also teach their trainees to have a detached, compassionate love for others that is sometimes called “Platonic love.” It's the kind of love that lets others go, even lets them die. In Revenge of the Sith, Yoda counsels Anakin, “Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is … Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” Anakin can't follow this advice and decides to use the powers of the dark side to save his beloved. The result is his transformation into Darth Vader.
The two sides of the Force can be found in an allegory by Plato (ca. 428–348 BCE) in the dialogue Phaedrus, in which the human soul is compared to the driver of a chariot with two horses pulling in opposite directions. One horse pulls the chariot in an upward direction, toward greater beauty, goodness, and understanding. The other pulls the chariot downward toward evil and madness. The charioteer must choose between following the upward‐moving horse, symbol of the rational soul's pure dispassionate love, or the downward‐moving one, symbol of the body's sensuous and egotistical love.1
In Plato's Symposium, however, this teaching of two opposing forces in human life is presented with greater complexity. The Symposium tells the story of a gathering of friends around cups of wine. They decide to challenge one another for the best account of the nature of love. Socrates explains the teaching he received from a wise woman, Diotima, who teaches Socrates that to become a philosopher it's first necessary to fall passionately in love with someone: “For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only. Out of that he should create fair thoughts.”2
Diotima's introductory course in philosophy begins with loving someone, for only then will a person's thoughts become beautiful. This starting point has its dangers, however, since we shouldn't get stuck on this first step in understanding love. Love for only one person tends to blind the lover to what's beautiful in other persons and in other things. More advanced philosophy must go beyond this initial love; otherwise it will become a violent, overwhelming force. We need to climb the ladder of love to higher and higher levels, to see the beauty of institutions, laws, and the sciences. The advanced student of philosophy will then not be
like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow‐minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere.3
According to this teaching, Anakin's love of Padmé should've been welcomed by his Jedi teachers as a necessary beginning, but one that needs eventually to be channeled to wider and higher degrees of comprehension of the universal nature of the Force first experienced in passionate love. Instead, the Jedi condemn students who naturally feel the attractions and power of such love. As a result of this negative attitude, the students of the Force become divided into two groups: the proponents of the light side, who condemn passionate love, and those who fall under the spell of the dark side, and cultivate the darker emotions, including anger and hatred as well as passionate love. Instead of combining together and composing, as Palpatine tells Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, “a larger view of the Force,” the two groups fight against one another in acts of mutual self‐destruction.
Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader seems to contradict a prophecy about him: that he's the Chosen One who would bring balance back to the Force. If the sequel trilogy of Star Wars lays out this framework, the original trilogy shows how Anakin's love of Padmé, along with his turn to the dark side, begins to fulfill the prophecy. Return of the Jedi concludes with Darth Vader's turn against his master, Emperor Palpatine, out of compassionate love for his son Luke – one of the twins, along with Leia, born from his union with his beloved Padmé.
The pursuit of a middle ground between the two sides of the Force culminates in the Force love of The Rise of Skywalker that unites Rey, granddaughter of Palpatine, and Kylo Ren, son of Leia Organa and Han Solo and grandson of Anakin Skywalker. The two sides of love that are first divided and set in opposition to one another become intertwined. Ren explains to Rey: “My mother was the daughter of Vader. Your father was the son of the Emperor. What Palpatine doesn't know is we're a dyad in the Force, Rey, two that are one.” The love comprising the dyad of Rey and Ren realizes the balance of the Force begun by the love of Anakin and Padmé.
Plato again provides the framework for this conception of love as a destiny arranged by the Force, giving us the playwright Aristophanes's story of the origin and nature of love. We've mentioned Socrates's account of Diotima's teaching on the same subject. Aristophanes, the author of comedies, gives an account that remains at the level of the passionate love between two people, but evolves and deepens over many lifetimes. According to Aristophanes, human beings were once much more powerful than we are today. We had four legs and four arms and faces on both sides of our heads. We moved very quickly by turning cartwheels at high speed. The gods were afraid of us, for we threatened their power. And so Zeus decided literally to cut us down to size, splitting us in half.
Ever since, we “halflings” have been searching over many lifetimes for our original other half. We might find someone who's similar to our other half and we might have a friendly, congenial love with them. If we pursue a good life, avoiding excesses and being responsible citizens, we'll eventually find our true other half: “And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself … the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy.” Aristophanes concludes, “I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our race would be happy.”4
Star Wars doesn't leave the original love, Anakin's passionate love for Padmé, behind. Its nine episodes follow Aristophanes's progression in which the truly perfect love is found at the end of the story. In effect, Star Wars is a love story in three acts. Anakin and Padmé's passionate love is at the heart of the prequel trilogy. The Platonic love of the twins Luke and Leia is at the core of the original trilogy. The Force love of Rey and Ren concludes the drama of love that finally achieves the balance of the Force in the sequel trilogy. This is when Rey and Ren overcome the dualism and seeming contradiction of the dark side and the light side. Rey, child of the dark side who turns to the light, joins forces with the Jedi, Kylo Ren, child of the light side who turns to the dark, seeks to conquer the universe as the leader of the First Order. And then Rey and Ren, the third such dyad of love in Star Wars, join forces.
Rey and Ren's conflicting and converging paths provide one of the two main themes of The Rise of Skywalker. The other is the clash of armies: the Republican forces with Leia at their head and Rey as their main fighter, and the First Order forces led by Kylo Ren, with Palpatine lurking in the background. The two themes intertwine as alternate pulses of the final film, the former one loud and strident in bright daylight, the latter one quiet and introspective, taking place mostly in dark shadows. Rey and Ren are, after all, leaders of armies as well as a dyad of mutual attraction in a struggle over the direction of the future of the galaxy.
It's this other side of the story, the clash of armies, that's addressed in Plato's notion of the widening of forms and objects of love. While passionate love plays a necessary role in the unfolding of human history, the love of freedom at the level of the state is equally important. In the Symposium's final part, the friendly combat over love's nature is interrupted by the appearance of Alcibiades, one of the most brilliant, powerful, and wealthy Athenians. He's also known for his good looks. Alcibiades insists on telling a story of his own confused love for Socrates, in which higher and lower motives collided. Alcibiades, spellbound by Socrates's ideas, came to be mesmerized by him, to the point of realizing that his own pursuit of fame, fortune, and power conflicted with the pursuit of goodness, beauty, and knowledge. He confesses,
I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him, and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate would be like that of others. He would transfix me, and I should grow old sitting at his feet. For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the Athenians; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away from him.5
Failing to follow Socrates's teaching and climb the ladder of love, Alcibiades remained fixed on the first rung, and tried unsuccessfully to get Socrates to join him there.
In the war between Athens and Sparta, Alcibiades betrayed his fellow Athenians by going over to the Spartans. Athens was the leader of the city‐states of Greece run by its free male citizens. Sparta was the leader of the forces of aristocracy and slavery. When the war ended with their defeat, Athens's leaders, seeking to deflect responsibility from their own shoulders, focused on Alcibiades's treason. As Alcibiades was thought to be Socrates's student, they charged Socrates with responsibility for leading Alcibiades astray. The portrayal of Alcibiades's rejection of Socrates's teachings in the Symposium is one side of Plato's defense of Socrates. In the Apology, Plato presents Socrates's defense at his trial, where he was accused of corrupting the youth and not believing in the gods of the city. The most prominent of these youth who'd supposedly been corrupted was the known traitor, Alcibiades.
In the Apology, Socrates explains the problem with Athens: too many Athenians, especially the rich and powerful, failed to understand the upper reaches of the ladder of love and focused instead on individualistic goals, as Alcibiades had done. Socrates is therefore the true patriot: “I think that no better piece of fortune has ever befallen you in Athens than my service to God. For I spend my whole life in going about and persuading you all to give your first and chiefest care to the perfection of your souls, and not till you have done that to think of your bodies, or your wealth; and telling you that virtue does not come from wealth, but that wealth, and every other good thing which men have, whether in public, or in private, comes from virtue.”6
The rich Athenians, Alcibiades and others, put their own interests above the city's. Virtue, Socrates teaches, must come first: devotion to the good of all. This is the secret of lasting wealth. A society in which individuals put their self‐interest first will be divided and weak. A society in which individuals join together for the good of all will be rich and powerful. Love between separate individuals, however beautiful it is in itself, mustn't be isolated from the more general kind of love that has its own kind of passion and force, the greater Force that shines forth when individuals join together for a higher cause.
In the final confrontation over the galaxy's fate, Finn, an escaped First Order stormtrooper, whose love for Rey creates a commitment to the Resistance, bonds with Jannah, a leader of refugees who are also former stormtroopers. Finn explains to Jannah how the power of the Force has brought them together in a unity based on the commitment of individuals to the higher good that Socrates called virtue:
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In the end, Rey summons the Jedi of the past to destroy Palpatine, exchanging her life for his death. Ren finds Rey's body, as Romeo found Juliet in Shakespeare's tragedy. Thinking Juliet had died, Romeo kills himself to join her, as Juliet does when she awakens from her drug‐induced sleep to find her lover dead. Rey is really dead, but Ren revives her by exchanging his life for hers. Ren doesn't die a natural death however. Simultaneously with his mother, Leia, his body evaporates under its shroud. Linked together in life, they become one with the Force without losing their identities. Luke and Leia appear to Rey when she buries their lightsabers. After being just Rey with no family name, she takes the Skywalker name as her own. It turns out that Yoda was wrong about death after all. The dead don't transform into the Force. The Force transforms into them.