In this preliminary ethics exercise, the contrasting perspectives of Richard Dawkins, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the prophet Jeremiah provide a framework for examining the moral universes inhabited by Robert McCall and Dave York in The Equalizer 2. Drawing on their conversation as presented in the referenced dialogue, this essay accurately describes each character’s world, offers a critical response and evaluates which vision aligns more closely with observable reality.
McCall’s World: Moral Agency Amid Indifference
Robert McCall occupies a universe he knows to be largely indifferent, yet he insists on inserting deliberate good. After Susan Plummer’s assassination, McCall refuses the official “robbery” narrative and pursues justice at personal risk. His actions embody Solzhenitsyn’s observation that “the line separating good and evil passes… right through every human heart.” McCall retains a “small bridgehead of good” even after decades of state-sanctioned violence. From an ethical standpoint his stance is deontological: certain acts are simply wrong, regardless of consequences. Critics might note that McCall’s vigilantism nonetheless replicates the very force he claims to reject, illustrating the limited critical reach of a purely rule-based moral code.
York’s World: Pragmatic Utility and Moral Drift
Dave York, by contrast, accepts Dawkins’ description of existence as “blind pitiless indifference.” In their exchange he defends ordering Plummer’s death as a necessary maintenance of operational security. Moral categories collapse into calculations of risk and self-preservation; DNA, as Dawkins remarks, “neither knows nor cares.” York’s worldview therefore treats other persons as instruments rather than ends. Ethically this position echoes a crude utilitarian calculus that maximises the survival of his own network. Yet the dialogue also reveals an internal inconsistency: York still appeals to former loyalty and friendship, suggesting that even a self-consciously amoral actor retains residual moral language. The oscillation Solzhenitsyn describes is therefore visible inside York himself.
Which World Reflects the True Nature of Things?
McCall’s world ultimately offers a more coherent account of lived experience. Solzhenitsyn’s claim that the dividing line runs through every heart accommodates both characters’ capacity for good and evil without reducing morality to genetic determinism. Empirical observation of ordinary moral conflict—individuals who act rightly despite personal cost—supports this view more readily than York’s thoroughgoing nihilism. Nevertheless, McCall’s method of enforcing justice remains open to consequentialist critique, reminding students that no single ethical theory exhausts the complexity of human action.
In conclusion, the film’s confrontation dramatises the perennial ethical tension between moral commitment and cosmic indifference. By refusing to absolutise either position, the narrative invites undergraduates to recognise that ethical reflection must begin with the recognition that good and evil are not external forces but interior possibilities.
References
- Dawkins, R. (1995) River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
- Solzhenitsyn, A. (1974) The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Parts III–IV. Translated by T.P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row.
- The Bible (2013) The Message. Colorado Springs: NavPress. Jeremiah 17:9.
