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atomicitalian t1_j917im8 wrote

Reply to comment by StoneTwin in Is Frankenstein responsible for the murders his creation committed? by siuknowwhatImean

I guess it depends on the fictional history of the trial, but I would argue that all successful resuscitations before and after this one resulted in a normal living human.

This one resulted in a horrible monster. How could he have predicted it would be a horrible monster? Science doesn't really recognize "souls" as real, so Dr Frankenstein - a scientist - would have had no reason to think a body made it disparate parts versus an intact corpse would act any differently upon revival.

(Obviously I'm not asking this for real merely just playing the part of a defense attorney here)

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StoneTwin t1_j91bdk6 wrote

Needs examples

Zombies are the most numerous known undead.

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atomicitalian t1_j91cf2d wrote

Right, this gets into the fiction of the world. Are zombies real in this world, or just fiction? Would make a substantive difference in this line of argument

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StoneTwin t1_j91dtxv wrote

I'm sure you can cite "documentaries" depicting Frankenstein's monster & vampires & mummies (curse people!) & skeletons & zombies.

Even Jason & the Argonauts, a very old tale, has people creating extremely dangerous skeleton warriors by throwing teeth on the ground.

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atomicitalian t1_j91f0ew wrote

Sure but you can also look at modern day practice of stopping and restarting the heart to bring people back and see they don't become monsters.

So I would argue it's not the revival of the dead that's in question but the method. And while Frankenstein's methods were certainly unorthodox, theres no reason to assume they would inherently lead to an evil outcome. He didn't use voodoo or teeth to make skeletons or do witchcraft or demon summoning, he was doing a medical procedure.

We transfer organs all the time and have even done penis and face replacements. So using foreign organs to restore someone's health isn't inherently evil, and using electricity to restore function to a body isn't inherently evil, therefore I'd argue Frankenstein could have reasonably assumed his experiment would have similar, non evil outcomes, and not result in a monster.

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siuknowwhatImean OP t1_j93v3pp wrote

Right, but would the “reasonable person” defense still hold up once it is clear that the monster is conscious (regardless of what was expected of its moral temperament before it was alive), as it was when I turned my back on it?

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StoneTwin t1_j91ndsm wrote

It is the creation of undead, not just reviving someone that hasn't reached a natural death.

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siuknowwhatImean OP t1_j93uerv wrote

Even then, aren’t zombies basically a virus? How can we even assign morality to that

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StoneTwin t1_j9470on wrote

It's something that is technically dead that is reanimated.

The only "good" reanimation in popular culture is the resurrection of Christianity, and certainly not applicable to a creature that defiles that very same concept by stealing the earthly remains of the people that need them as part of this supposed resurrection.

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