What ‘The Dude’ from ‘The Big Lebowski’ taught me about philosophy

“Blood Simple” was just a different kind of film and watching it was like eating salty chocolates. Both experiences bring opposites together in an unusually satisfying way. They are also tied to a famous theory about dialectics: Now, let me explain.

The 1984 movie, produced by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (remember 1998’s “The Big Lebowski”), was both a horror and a comedy. Who would have thought that this genre would work? While gripping the edge of my seat I laughed at what seemed like inappropriate moments during the screening of this now classic film. Do opposites attract or do they only surprise us with their unlikely complementarity? That’s how I felt about salty chocolates too – salted and sweet – a culinary contradiction that strangely worked.

What underlies these pleasant contrasts is an old idea proposed by German philosopher Georg Hegel, when he claimed that advances in human knowledge are based on reconciling tensions between opposites; these find resolution in a process involving a thesis (like sweet), an antithesis (or, salty), and finally, a synthesis (voila, salted chocolates).

Or, a horror, which is also a comedy finding resolution in a scary-funny movie (have you seen any of the many frightening, yet hilarious teen slasher films?). Savory and sweet usually proceed in culinary order – i.e., leave the dessert to last – but when combined make for an excellent synthesis.

In a now famous “Big Lebowski” line, the protagonist Jeffrey Lebowski (aka the Dude) when confronted with another unknown character in a movie filled with plot twists related to a case of mistaken identity asks, “Who the [heck] are you?” The same question can also be asked about comedy-horror films or sweet-salty treats.

Presented with two apparently contradictory positions, Hegel would not reject either, but instead choose a synthesis that creates something that is not only new, but arguably better.

In the end, Lebowski realizes that each new situation helps clarify his predicament ... in other words, to resolve the conundrum concerning who you are (i.e., the little Lebowski is the thesis) you need to understand who you are not (which means he is not the big Lebowski or the antithesis), which allows our protagonist to discover who he has become. In this way the Dude represents the synthesis; someone who is neither big nor little, but just an average guy trying to make sense of a confusing world.