Mycroft and Sherlock’s moral philosophies, and Sherlock’s immediate attraction to John

 (Sherlock Meta by Loudest Subtext In Television)

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We’re at the last scene of A Study in Pink, the crime scene after John has shot the cabbie.

Mycroft shows up the crime scene. He and Sherlock squabble, and the conversation may hold some hints to their past and moral philosophies. Some of it’s not important to the main theory but it comes up now and again, plus we’ll come to see that Sherlock’s moral philosophy is how Moriarty manipulates him, so let’s take a quick moment to examine it. Sherlock and Mycroft’s moral philosophies vary in a few key ways, and where they vary seems to be a point of contention between them.

Sherlock’s philosophy tends to be this: save lives, unless someone is a murderer or over-the-top slimy like Magnussen (whose actions directly contribute to deaths, like Lord Smallwood’s suicide), in which case they can suffer and rot; it’s reprehensible to protect or work with bad people; it’s a tragedy when innocent lives are lost. It doesn’t bother Sherlock to come across people who are already dead: it’s too late and pointless to deal with sentiment, so focusing on the case is how he “helps” them, by bringing the perpetrator to justice. But Sherlock feels responsible when he fails to save someone’s life, and it effects him heavily. When the old woman gets blown up in The Great Game despite Sherlock solving the puzzle, Sherlock says he obviously lost that round and is still in a bad mood about it the next day: the puzzle wasn’t more important to him than the person he didn’t even know.

Mycroft’s philosophy is this: everything for the greater good, even if that means protecting or working with bad people, and it’s inevitable some innocent lives will be lost. But that doesn’t mean Mycroft doesn’t care about innocent lives! We’ll see that he submits to Irene Adler’s demands just in case there is something on her phone that could save the lives of British citizens. Mycroft is detached enough to look at the bigger picture and stomach his job, and reserves his visceral concern for family, but he does have great concern for the country and takes his job of protecting its people very seriously.

If Mycroft engages in moral calculus, Sherlock draws the line at moral algebra. But is it really that simple?

Mycroft asks if it never occurred to Sherlock that they should be working on the same side. Sherlock says no, and Mycroft says, “We have more in common than you like to believe. This petty feud between us is simply childish. People will suffer.”

We’ll come to see that Mycroft isn’t out of line to suggest this: their moral philosophies aren’t that different. In series three, Sherlock tells us that Billy Kinkaid, the Camden Garroter, is the best man because he saved far more lives with his charitable contributions to hospitals than he took with the garroting. Sherlock detests most murderers, but this is an exception. It would seem that Sherlock needs to be able to quantify lives saved and lives lost, but the decisions Mycroft makes are more nebulous than that. If you protect someone like Magnussen in order to use him in some future situation, for example, you don’t know how many people he’ll drive to suicide or murder, or if future situations will make up for it. Those are the kinds of decisions governments have to make multiple times a day, though, so it’s no surprise Sherlock will continually make cracks against the government as the show goes on: he declines knighthoods, rolls his eyes at the idea of “queen and country,” and so on.

Also note here that Mycroft’s appeal to Sherlock is based on the idea that people will suffer if he doesn’t work for Mycroft. The Holmes brothers both care about innocent lives, and Mycroft feels that Sherlock would be saving lives on a greater scale if he worked for the government. Mycroft is probably right about that, but Sherlock wouldn’t be able to feel it that way.

Sherlock makes his departure from Mycroft by telling him not to start any wars. We heard Sherlock earlier insinuate that invading Afghanistan was ridiculous, too. A war, especially one like Afghanistan, is exactly one of those situations where you can’t quantify the lives saved versus lives lost.

In light of all this, though, it’s easy to see why Sherlock would have a military kink in general, and immediately start peacocking for a soldier who’s also a doctor. Unlike government officials, soldiers are the ones actually risking their lives to protect people and principles, and individual soldiers make life or death decisions that are immediate and concrete — this is the sort of thing Sherlock is also willing to risk his life for, and he respects it. Because John is a doctor Sherlock can safely assume he enlisted for noble reasons and not merely to kill people. When Sherlock deduces who shot the cabbie, the line that makes Sherlock slow down and look to John is “strong moral principle,” and then Sherlock nearly swoons.

Guh, he’s so dreamy.

Makes you wonder if Mycroft knew immediately that Sherlock, given his moral philosophy, would get off on that sort of thing. John probably saved more lives than he took, and given he’s not a sick type of person, probably only killed people in self defense or to save someone else. John’s balance sheet probably isn’t as impressive as the Camden Garroter’s, but, then again, few people’s are.