Philosophical Interpretation of:

"Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

A Philosophical Paper Presented to Rev. Fr. John Carl Robles, PhL - MA

Sancta Maria Mater et Regina Seminarium

Cagay, Roxas City

In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements

For Subject course of Special Question in Philosophy

BY

Sem. Dale Andrew S. Aguihap

April 2023
Outline of the Topic

I. Introduction

II. Dualism

a. Human nature

b. Possibility of split – personality

III. Moral Philosophy

a. Is Hyde an evil person?

IV. Reflection/Conclusion

V. Bibliography and Sources

Introduction

Most people would agree that inside every human being, there is some good, and some evil. No

one is perfectly good, beyond all analysis. At the same time, maybe pure evil.  Thus, the story of

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a useful analogy in understanding human nature and morality.

Many philosophers say that two or more people or thinking beings could share a single human

being in a split-personality case, if only the personalities were sufficiently independent and

individually well integrated. I argue that this view is incompatible with our being material things,

and conclude that there could never be two or more people in a split-personality case. This

refutes the view, almost universally held, that facts about mental unity and disunity determine

how many people there are. I suggest that the number of human people is simply the number of

appropriately endowed rational animals.

The Strange Case reveals moral confusion, duality of man and the unpleasant consequences of

relying on unethical principles in understanding the world and the human nature. The brutal

battle for the right to happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction of desires, twisting career and

interpersonal conflicts set the circle of social understanding.

While Philosophers with different ideas have vastly different philosophical opinions, they agree

on one thing: people are complex. They are motivated by a multitude of aspects, and all these

philosophers attempt to explain just what drives human beings. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde also

strives to answer this important question, and is a valuable tool in understand human nature. Dr.

Jekyll’s attempts to suppress the evil side of himself are timeless, and everyone can relate to it at

some point during their lives.

DUALISM

Human nature

Man is a union between body and soul which is substantial in that the soul and body form one

substance. Man is one person inasmuch as it is a nature that is the subject or conscious center of

actions and attributions. A person is an individual thing endowed with auto-consciousness and

freedom.1

Man then is one substance, one nature, one person; in philosophy, it has been considered that

Human Beings, as opposed to other Beings, consist of two ontological aspects: the spiritual and

the natural. This concept basically states that we are made up of two uniquely different but

intertwined aspects. The physical and the metaphysical. When we look at the metaphysical, the

non-physical side of the human being, there is no gradient scale to measure up to, so we cannot

use instrumentation to define it; we must use ontological argument.

Jekyll’s discovery of the duality (or plurality) of human beings is supposed to be

responsible for his demise. The concept of the “divided character,” what we call
dualism, was a powerful one for Stevenson, and the one which most clearly looks
forward to Jekyll and Hyde. Stevenson’s own life and his early fiction, both of which
include hints of duality and mysteries, prefigure his most successful “doubled”
character, Jekyll and Hyde. Whereas “good shone upon the countenance” of the
respected and urbane physician, Dr. Jekyll, “evil was written broadly and plainly on the
face” of the his alter-ego, Mr. Hyde2
1
Richards, R. J. (1980). Christian Wolff’s prolegomena to empirical and rational psychology:
translation and commentary. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at
Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, 124(3), 227–239.
2
Hustis, H. (2009). Hyding Nietzsche in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic of Philosophy.
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 49(4), 993–1007.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40467514
Throughout the novel the two characters appear to be two separate individuals. This occurs

especially because they are so different in nature. The duality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is very

complex and intriguing as well. Jekyll and Hyde are two beings in one body. Because Jekyll and

Hyde are embodied in the same individual we realize that they are both handsome and ugly, or,

more importantly, both one and another in a same material body which is incapable of having

two natures.

Possibility of split – personality

So, what are the properties of being? We know that there are no two human beings alike. Each

human is the same in that we are all unique. Basically, through our individual experiences, we

build complex thought filters to interact with our environment, which includes other humans.

One of the problems with defining a human being is that we are inherently analogous. In its

essence, our Being is so complex it can only be defined by what it is like, or not like. Because of

this indescribable quality, we need to make an ontological argument to explore our nature. In

philosophy, like law, an argument is the act of making a point. It is not meant to be

argumentative.

Through the theme of split personality The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde represents a

parallel and dual presence of good and evil, light and dark in human mind. Two separate

individualities: One utterly good, the other utterly evil.

We needn't insist that any two material people indistinguishable in their non-mental
qualities must be mentally alike. It would be enough if they were likely to be mentally
alike. It would even be enough if they were likely to be mentally very similar. This would
be so if, for instance, a thing's non-mental properties reliably but fallibly caused its
mental properties. For in that case Even and Odd's being non-mentally alike would make
 significant mental differences between them improbable. We should expect their mental
properties to converge in the future. And we should expect the people in most other cases
of split personality to be men- tally alike.3

The human mind is not able to cross all limitations, it is not even able to restrain human nature.

There were opinions that the barriers of ignorance and the unknown would burst when faced

with the power of the human mind, and that in the near future, human reason would solve all the

problems of humanity.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Is Hyde an evil person?

Do we really have a dark side inside of us? The idea of this good and evil duality has been

explored from different points of view in the background of several studies such as

philosophy and psychology.

Let’s discuss evil in this notion according to Aquinas, evil is not a being, but absence, lack, or

defect of being.

Evil has a cause some way or in other way. Actually evil is the lack of good that which is

natural or due to a thing. As a being only good can be a cause or everything that

happens in a being. Evil cannot be seen in the formal cause and in the final cause, but it

exists in the material cause due to a being that is good. Evil does have a cause in the

3
Olson, E. T. (2003). Was Jekyll Hyde? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66(2),
328–348. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20140539
 manner of an agent. Evil is caused in one way in an action and in another way in an

effect.4

But to this Hyde even though way not ontologically evil, he was morally evil in which he chose

to be bad by murdering and causing mayhem to other people. Hyde would seem easily

recognizable as the id, seeking instant gratification, having an aggressive instinct, and having no

moral or social mores that need be followed. He takes pleasure in violence and similar to the

death instinct ultimately leads to his own destruction. Eventually even Jekyll said that; “Edward

Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil”.

For Aquinas said that, Sin is the only evil because it is the only evil which is willed. It is the

perversion of the will which by nature is ordained toward the good. Only sin is evil because it is

a willful self-destruction. This is indeed the ultimate perversion: to use one’s will to decide not

for being but for nothing. After all, is not sin ultimately ordained toward a deliberate self-

annihilation?

Hyde had succumb to his own Uncontrollable cravings, addictions, lust, and the odd impulse

which is to murder has intentionally destroyed himself and eventually even Jekyll had not

controlled but to witness the horror that Hyde has done.

Conclusion/Reflection

The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explores the consequences of trying to separate the

good from evil, leading to an unfolding of personality. Both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were

unreal – but rather an abstract representation of a fictional human nature opposed to a

4
Thomas, S., & Kreeft, P. (1990). A Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical
Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Ignatius Press. I, Q 19
philosophic study of human nature, they both were the different. This book symbolizes an

exploration of human nature and tries to teach that good and evil can’t be separated. They

both reside in us.

In philosophy, our nature is one, true, good, and beautiful, we are given rationality to

control our will and to apprehend what are the good that we must certainly need. For this to

happen, we evaluate our own human actions, thru acts of will, we possess the ability that

humans are consciously aware of the need to reason. To doubt something, one must be able to

judge it. To judge something means weighing it, comparing it to something or some standard like

a ruler or measurable quality. Then judgment assumes an ability to make a moral definition; not

just is it good or bad, but good or bad for what? An old saying states that there are no murderers

in nature. This implies that animals act out of necessity, not judgment. But with humans,

judgment matters.

To this in my own opinion, Jekyll was meant to think whether a duality may exist but extracting

the bad of it may not be some smart idea but only that the opposite. He thinks that he can receive

the pleasure that both parts of his being crave without each being burdened by the demands of

the other. Eventually succumbing to the darkness or evil Hyde gradually becomes ever more

powerful than his ‘good’ counterpart and ultimately leads Jekyll to his doom.

As Dr. Jekyll says, “With every day and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and
intellectual, I thus drew steadily to that truth by whose partial discovery I have been
doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.” He
further adds,”… that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man;…
if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both”. Page
114.
Lastly, we may seem to be human as we are, looking upon this novel it may seem that it could be

applied philosophically moral to all situations in life. Never succumb to evil and always chose to

be good and apart from this we may attain a better end of this rather that dooming ourselves to a

situation that we may never rise up from.

Bibliography and Sources

Hustis, H. (2009). Hyding Nietzsche in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic of Philosophy. Studies
in English Literature, 1500-1900, 49(4), 993–1007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40467514

Olson, E. T. (2003). Was Jekyll Hyde? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66(2), 328–
348. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20140539

Richards, R. J. (1980). Christian Wolff’s prolegomena to empirical and rational psychology:

translation and commentary. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at
Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, 124(3), 227–239.
Thomas, S., & Kreeft, P. (1990). A Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages
of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Ignatius Press. I, Q 19