Dexter

The word monster blends three judgments that the series will pull apart: an anomaly (Dexter does not feel what others feel), a condemnation (what he does is wrong) and an exclusion (he is not one of us). The code given to him by Harry, his adoptive father, bets that one can keep the anomaly and lift the condemnation: you do not change a nature, you regulate its use. Two of its rules look moral: kill only murderers, have proof of their guilt. But the very first rule betrays what the code is: never get caught. A rule whose first command is not to get caught belongs to prudence, not to morality. Kant distinguished an act in conformity with duty from an act done from duty. Even granting that killing a murderer could be just, which Kant would never allow a private individual: a code whose first rule is not to get caught says plainly enough what these killings are for.

That his need has a cause is not enough to excuse it. Dexter speaks of it as a "Dark Passenger" that would do the driving for him. Spoiler The question shifts: it is no longer about what caused the need, but about how Dexter acts with it. One version of compatibilism puts it this way: a caused act remains free if the agent is responsive to reasons. Dexter investigates, waits, gives up when proof is lacking: however hard his need pushes, it is reasons that decide his targets. The "Passenger" can then be read as what Sartre calls bad faith: a third person that spares him from saying "I".

That leaves the defense the code supplies: the usefulness of his killings. Those he kills have killed and would kill again. That this is not his motive would not be enough to condemn him: an act can be useful without being done for that reason. So the series goes after the balance sheet itself, in two ways: by handing the code to others, who lack his need, and by counting what it costs.

Dexter's asymmetry shows what he really believes. For himself, he invokes causes: he is driven. For his victims, he invokes desert: before killing them, he puts the photos of their own victims before their eyes. An executioner convinced that no one is responsible would have no need for this ritual. Dexter needs them to be guilty, so he believes in guilt, and his determinism is reserved for his own case. Peter Strawson helps us see what is at stake. We do not blame because a theory of free will entitles us to: indignation is part of our relationships. We suspend it in two ways. Through excuse, when the other did not know or could not have done otherwise on that occasion. Through exemption, when he is incapable of ordinary relationships: we then take an objective view of him, as of a patient to be treated or a danger to be contained. Dexter presents himself as exempt in just this way: without emotions, a stranger to the bonds he imitates. The series refutes this self-portrait. He protects his sister, grows attached to Rita, his partner, and her children: he enters the relationships in which people blame, and the exemption he claims hardly holds. Spoiler

The series makes us live through the excuse that the problem refuses. Its voice-over puts us inside Dexter's head: as the only witnesses to his secret, for eight seasons we hope he will not get caught. We grant him what we would refuse a stranger, because we know him: partiality, not service, is what tilts us toward him. Two details nonetheless recall what we forget. The opening credits film a breakfast as a sequence of violent acts: routine and murder are made of the same gestures. And Dexter keeps a drop of blood from each victim on a glass slide. A vigilante has no need of trophies; a collector does. His conscience, finally, speaks in the voice of a dead father whom he makes speak. A rule that comes from someone else is not thereby alien: Kant allows that one can make a learned rule one's own by judging it. But when Dexter hesitates, he does not ask whether the rule is right; he asks what Harry would say. This is what Kant calls heteronomy: obeying a law because someone else commands it. Spoiler