Jason Bourne’s Virtues

These much-lauded action movies consist of more than intrigue, shootouts, and chase scenes.

Thrown into a foreign environment with no memory to speak of, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) searches for his lost memories and evades those who would kill him, in "The Bourne Identity." Universal Pictures

Action movies should be perfect vehicles to show virtue, at least according to Aristotle. In his “Poetics,” he indicated that drama is the imitation of the deepest kind of action, action that proceeds from moral character. The first three films of the “Bourne” franchise are actioners in this sense. Together, they are about one great action, a flawed man becoming a good and a great man.

In the first movie, Jason Bourne rejects vice and orients himself toward the good. In the second, he faces and does what he can to remedy the evil he has done. In the third movie, he is particularly marked by magnanimity, putting his skills and sorrows at the service of others. As a whole, these movies offer hope in virtue’s ability to help conquer the greatest of odds.

Prudence and ‘The Bourne Identity’

The queen of the cardinal virtues is prudence, because it’s the virtue by which human beings can know, in a practical way, how to do good. While it’s as common to associate prudence with evil masterminds and cowards as with good and wise people, prudence really has nothing to do with evil. Evil is self-destructive; smart evil people just destroy themselves cleverly. Socrates and Plato say that the only real evil does is to the doer’s soul. The Bible states: “The wicked fall into their own nets.”