Vigilante or Villain?

In the Batman movies, clearly Batman is portrayed as a hero. Though sometimes he seems to make the wrong choices, usually as the result of pressures to present a reasonable facade through his life Bruce Wayne as well as to maintain the balance between his egos, he in general is held up as the salvation of Gotham. I would like to discuss whether or not Bruce Wayne as Batman made the proper choice in becoming a vigilante patrol for the crime-ridden streets of Gotham.

Now the advent of Batman was demanded by the corruption coursing through Gotham. Both the police quarters and the government had their share of people in the pay of the drug lords, and then some. As such, the law no longer functioned as an objective standard against which everyone stood for judgment. It had become a subjective standard against which only those without connections or money stood for judgment, while those with such benefits went scot-free. Since the system was failing, the introduction of the Batman sought to amend those failings. Batman was to enforce the law as an objective standard, because whereas the drug lords could bribe the judges, witnesses, and etc, they could not bribe Batman. From him, they would receive their payment of justice.

In this way, it is true that Batman is the idea he seeks to become. An idea cannot be killed, just as justice cannot be destroyed, only momentarily thwarted. Thus, Batman patches up the holes in the corrupt justice system of Gotham.

However, the problem arises in that Batman is not merely an idea. As he says, "An idea can be anyone." The important point that I want to focus on here is the stress that the embodiment of an idea must be someone. True, that it can be anyone, but nor can it be no one. As a result, the idea of justice, or the patch of the idea of justice, that Batman is also feels the weigh of a real person. A vigilante must necessarily be a person.

As such, I would like to argue that a vigilante cannot help become a villain at some point, if they continue down the same path without tapering or stopping. A vigilante takes justice into their own hands, whether partially or wholly. By so doing, they threaten to remove justice from its objective standard and subjectify it through their own conceptions of justice. By preserving some part of justice, they may only preserve that which they conceive to be justice, an idea which may or may not hold true to the objective standard.

The more they continue to do so, the more they may realize that justice relies on their actions rather than vice versa. The potential then arises for a vigilante to see any of their actions as the actions of justice, thus making the idea bow to their treatment. Instead of judging their actions based on ideals of justice, their actions have become the ideals of justice, regardless of what they are. This then carries the potential for justification, a state that will let the vigilante excuse any of their actions as the necessary call of justice. Thus it seems that the vigilante could descend on a path quite opposite the cries of justice but yet justify themselves and their actions based on the ideal, as they have made it defined by themselves.

There is no assurance that Batman, the previous defender of true justice, would not become its greatest antagonist. An objective standard in the hands of one person can be no better than a subjective standard, a standard subject to the flux of human emotion and thought. 

Thus, while Gotham can praise Batman as its hero who maintained justice's objective standard in a time of crime and corruption, it can likewise praise Batman for hanging up the cape.