A Christian Philosopher Watches The Godfather
There exists a profound confusion in this age of noise regarding greatness. We tend to equate importance with stature: a towering building, a commanding voice, or an unquestioned position. Something within each of us admires the one who sits highest upon the mountain, yet they more often remain blinded by the reflection of sky. See, greatness is never in any one extreme, but at the edges of opposed extremes. To misunderstand this distinction is to confuse power with virtue and forget the truest self, thus remaining perpetually trapped within the clutches of Amnesis.
One film that illuminates this crucial divergence between temporal might and eternal character is The Godfather. The film is an experiment upon the human soul, testing the limits of ambition against the weight of conscience. Michael Corleone begins as an observer and becomes sovereign. To comprehend Michael is to grasp the operational definition of Magnanimity, the first and foundational virtue within our structured framework of the twelve skills in reason which we call virtues. Magnanimity is the profound, often humbling, remembrance of identity, cultivated through the lens of Honesty applied to the Awareness moment. The film captures the friction between chaos and order, the struggle for identity when societal scaffolding crumbles, and the quiet, terrifying evolution of a soul adrift in a materialistic sea.
The Initiation of Identity (Kratos)
Witness his first significant act of rejection, in his refusal to be part of the family business. Far from teenage rebellion against authority, Michael is attempting to make a conscious disenrolment spiritually from a predefined set of rules, rules he is seemingly most rewarded for. He is angry at the lies, crime, and bloodshed. In the phenomenology of Reason, this anger at deceit and lies constitutes a first necessary step towards Awareness on the road to Magnanimity, granting us truer identity through the Honesty inherent.
This situation presents placement within the Kratos domain of Resurrexit Spiritus, the primitive psychomenal activity where one first encounters group affiliations and rejects or accepts their governing rules. Resurrexit Spiritus and Structural Virtues theories posit that human expression in true freedom, that is to say moderation for goodness, begins within this domain of Kratos, the rules we accept. This includes the primordial realm of acceptances and rejections to which we are born into through cultural customs, taboos, and inherited rules. To belong to a group is, fundamentally, to agree to be governed by its laws, seen and unseen.
Michael Corleone enters a very strict and violent rendition of this world. He is not the outlaw here actually, within his culture; he is an heir to the group he was born to. The Kratos domain is dangerous territory for the unguarded soul. When one accepts the rules, they enter a stasis of potential stagnation; when they reject them, they risk isolation. Michael’s rejection was his entry into a complex, often brutal and arduous, moral training ground especially for someone born into a criminal sub-culture. The film saturates this domain with conflicting acceptances: loyalty to family versus loyalty to country, adherence to tradition versus the demand for modernity, violence as necessity versus violence as excess. The central question: is loyalty worth anything if it does not recognise genuine loyalty and all honest antecedents?
The film becomes an undeniable case study in the failing of the first domain. Michael Corleone begins not as a villain, but as a candidate for virtue, stumbling upon the threshold of something immense. Awareness, being the first moment, demands that we look inward rather than outward at our definitions. It requires Honesty applied to our origins. Michael attempts this. This attempt at rejection was radical Honesty, which he should have taken further. It was a tentative rejection of the materialist rules that had bound his family for generations. He was able to stand outside the established order and speak freely because he could disengage from the system, allowing him to judge with more clarity. He initially seeks to sever himself from the shadowy and violent legacy thrust upon him, or at least the most outward manifestations of it by the end. This striving is, technically, an expression in the processes of Magnanimity glimmering in that vast darkness.
Magnanimity: Spark of Honest Spiritual Awareness
Enter the spark of Magnanimity. Magnanimity is the light to the dark and petty vindictiveness that festers in the shadows of power. This is true identity remembrance. It is recognising that one’s worth is not derived from a position, a title, or the accumulation of objects, but from a deeper, unchanging essence in accumulating deeper knowledge of our identity through the good we may accomplish. To cultivate Magnanimity is therefore an act of monumental conservation.
Michael’s initial recoil is a flicker of this. He rejects the small identity imposed upon him as the crime-prince: the criminal mastermind, assassin, and money-chaser. Magnanimity demands more than escape or tentative rejections; it demands transcendence. It asks us to identify not merely with who we are, but with what we could be, irrespective of circumstance, and demands we deny ourselves, or at least our other selves that would be without this “what we could be.”
It is here, within this state of disrupted Kratos acceptance, that the sin of Amnesis most readily takes hold. Without a clear Moral anchor (the next moment), there is no foundation for Honour since the self has become fragmented. Michael forgets why he entered the business initially; the love for his family and the desire to provide. The relentless pressure of the Telos and Eros domains risk erasing these original purposes at every turn without firm Kratos rejections in moderation, driving the character toward entropy.
Michael fails. His vision of himself remains constrained by his environment. His grandeur is illusory, built upon the very foundations he seeks to uproot. He remembers his lineage, but he does not remember the universal spark that all men share. He clings to the distinction between “us” and “them,” a division that is the very engine of Amnesis.
The Crushing Weight of Amnesis
This anger against lies and corruption is supposed to fuel our overcoming of the most outward error in Amnesis, precisely what Michael battles, but ultimately does not conquer. He forgets himself, his truest identity. Amnesis is the deliberate or careless forgetfulness regarding intrinsic worth, forgetting that one possesses inherent dignity regardless of anything else, based upon how well we align with universal goodness. The error of Amnesis would have us believe that virtue is earned solely through conformity, and that transgressions necessitate atonement measured only in further transgressions, the illogic detectable at the foundations of all lies. This is a never-ending fog only dissipated when we identify ourselves and adhere to this identity (the “greater spirit” in Magnanimity).
Michael’s anger turns, from the system itself and what it does to his family, into anger against those endangering the people he loves most. His murders turn from revenge in anger into power plays, as he gets the hang of the action; from tribal fealty to tribal calculation. It is a rather natural progression, from fighting corruption in his family to revenging death in his family, and finally to abstractly coordinating warfare in hopes of avoiding potentially more death in his family. He is ever-more acting out of fear of losing his place in the order which is revealed through the loving patriarchal infrastructure above him giving way, thus disabling acknowledgement of the possibility for greater change or grace, and justifying each action with the sunk cost of the previous actions, as well as the ephemeral promise of a potential future free from such perceived necessities.
This anger, as a fire, should melt the ice of Amnesis. It should force the recognition: “I am worthy of better than this.” However, Michael lets the fire consume him instead, turning his righteous fury into control through paranoid violence. His anger keeps him trapped in the Kratos domain, corrupting the other RS domains above it thoroughly.
The Stagnation of Telos
The Structural Virtues Theory dictates a progression: Kratos (Rules) must move to Telos (Goals), then Eros (Relationships), finally Logos (Reason and Truth).
Michael remains stuck in Kratos because he cannot achieve Magnanimity. He cannot shed the need for group validation and is unable to step into moderation in the Telos domain. In Telos, one balances craft (how things are done) with product (what is produced). Michael’s world is pure product: power, territory, and fear. In such extremes, there is no room for craft; and there is no space for Honour or Temperance found through Honesty’s moderation.
He cannot progress in Eros either. In the realm of Relationships, Loyalty must take hold atop Magnanimity, Honour, and Temperance. Michael approaches every interaction from a place of transactional loyalty. Love is a liability; mercy is a vulnerability. He cannot overcome the Sin of Amnesis because he cannot remember that human connection exists outside the framework of power dynamics, and so he sinks into Disdain, Obsession, and Hubris, obstructing any perspective of Excellence or Patience with Envy and Dependence. He wants all the money and power, but without the risks.
Conclusion: Loyalty Tested
Resurrexit Spiritus posits that the universe operates in an orderly fashion, with the goal of the living spirit in material to attempt order within. The angry Michael Corleone is presented as a tragic figure because he believes he is fighting against an ordering in the world, one that can be conquered by strength or cunning. He was wrong. Michael proved he could temporarily avoid chaos by redirecting it.
Anger at deception and corruptions is healthy, vital even. It signifies the wakefulness of Awareness. If that anger prevents one from remembering their own inherent humble grandeur (Magnanimity) as a child of God, however, it becomes a form of self-sacrifice more bitter than the enemy’s betrayal. Loyalty in blood alone in base tribalism is the simplistic alternative to loyalty built upon the virtues, which obviously incorporates tribe.
Michael Corleone demonstrates that loyalty based on tribe alone can hold a man together for a time, but it is a rope tied too tightly about the waist, limiting our freedom in Christ. To move toward Magnanimity is not to become naive; it is to realise that even in darkness, there is a Light greater than us with a bigger plan for us. Michael Corleone does not achieve final redemption and his victory is pyrrhic, based upon survival and moving on. He trades a legacy in some profits of sin for other profits of sin, yet built upon another layer of vices which simply hides the blood.