Ethics and Rulership

[kgauck]

Kgauck (did you move this here to the new thread? I didn't start it...)

I did move it, based on experience, these kinds of questions can generate a lot of posts, and we could have ended up hijacking Gary's work on the elves.

What you said on the first page when you were describing good rulership and mentioning St. Augustine, that's "just and virtuous" rulership. I don't know why you don't think that's the standard.

I do think its the standard, but I am aware that others don't. Between Augustine and Machiavelli, there is a long tradition of proscriptive political theory, which argues that kings should not make war, should not break treaties, should not lie, should be honest and upright in all things, because if everyone was good, kings would have no reason to be bad themselves. Sure, that's true (and its from this point of view that Machiavelli's descriptive politics is criticized) but "if everyone was good" is quite a qualification. John Adams noted that if we were all angels, we wouldn't need government.

Let's consider the case of Henry VIII and Thomas Moore. If Henry, a vaunted knight, chivalrous, defender of the Church against Heresy, is criticized by Thomas Moore for his wars, constant shifting between alliances with Habsburg then Valois, for his divource, and finally his break with a Pontiff controlled by Spain, is a just and virtous ruler, then what is Thomas Moore? A radical lawful good? What are the authors of political treatises of the middle ages who argued that the best king is a saintly king, and would hold Henry III up as a paragon and condemn a realist who governs well as tainted, compromised, or actually evil just because he knows you can't govern well and be a saint?

The reason I called this thread ethics and rulership and didn't use the word alignment is because we both might call Henry VIII LG, but call Henry a realist and Thomas an idealist.

[kgauck]

Those interested in seeing how temples could have different tenants, I would urge them look at the Northern Imperial Temple in the wiki, because that's exactly what I have done. Specifically look at the Teaching and Doctrine section of NIT, where I took a paragraph of text in the BoP and turned each sentence or two into a paragraph of its own by elaborating in the idea in light of other things in the PS of Talinie, the BoP, or the history of philosophy. Also see Fitzalan and Janna Many-Tongued for further discussions of the teachings of the NIT. Further work will be done and attached to subsequent figures, such as Bhàtair Armara.

I have set up a master list of qualities of temples of Haelyn, and then for each temple considered, remove one or two and emphasize several others. So the NIT is anti-ritual (one removed) and emphasizes humility, grace, and stewardship in its message (three emphasized). This comes from the BoP, local PS's, descriptions in Ruins of Empire or other regional books, and the history of philosophy.

I know it will be sophisticated enough to satisfy the most ardent student of ideas while at the same time, I hope, simple enough to give a little flavor for domains that are not at the core of the campaign playing area.

[geeman]

At 02:45 PM 2/8/2008, ThatSeanGuy wrote:

>This is a pretty interesting discussion, though it always feels like
>I`m coming in halfway on these things. Is there, like, a mailing
>list or something that I haven`t been able to find where this stuff starts?

You could subscribe to the birthright-l mailing list, which gets
emailed posts sent to the BR.net message boards thanks to the
ingenious efforts of the illustrious Arjan. To subscribe go to:

http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=birthright-l&A=1

Go ahead and email me directly (geeman@softhome.net) if you have any
questions or problems getting set up.

Gary

[Rowan]

From what I know of Henry VIII, I would call him more LN. Saint Louis was a king of France; there may have been other saintly kings (this one was well loved and known among his people for his piety and generosity and wisdom, though his attempt at crusade was ill-fated, if I remember correctly).

King David of the Bible and the early years of King Solomon seem good examples of imperfect but just and virtuous kings. Richard III as you mentioned was another. I think the idea is that you do the minimum evil possible, and then only when truly necessary to stave off greater evil, and rule always with the best of intentions and to the best of your ability for your people and not yourself. That's the ideal.

So it's not a situation of ends justifying means, but rather a much more limited scenario, with, for instance, war or execution being required when it is the only way left to protect innocents.

[Rowan]

"You might have missed that I`m referring to an absolute morality. I`m not some silly relativist in real life nor in my fantasy games, for fantasy is traditionally a genre acknowledging the absolute existence of Truth, Good, and Evil,"

Mmm? No. D&D tries to explain it that way but other systems don?t. And why do you think there is an idiom "the way to hell is paved with good intentions"? Read Machiavelli.

I wasn't just talking about D&D. I was talking about fantasy in general. Numerous authors, including most of the originals and greats, as well as literature critics, philosophers, theologians, and even psychologists have observed the patterns of Truth and the struggle and definition of Good and Evil in an absolute sense in most of fantasy.


With regard to alignment, I recognize its roots, and thanks for the detailed explanation, Kgauck. That's more than I knew. It makes sense that there is some tension, as the nine alignments also contend with various other senses of good and evil in D&D; for example the Paladin is very simply based off of the ideal of Christian knighthood as in Arthurian legend.

Which brings me to an aside that King Arthur is a legend very much delving into the question of rulership in righteousness, setting up an ideal that must be acknowledged to be ultimately unreachable by imperfect man, but worthy of striving towards anyway. I think we have trouble identifying a historical monarch as our ideal because all naturally were less than the ideal, though they may represent some part of it well.

Personally, I do find alignment useful and I like it. I don't have much of a problem making it work in my games, and I and my players find it a good guide for characters without being a straightjacket. I find it pretty easy to apply to rulers in BR games as well, and it helps to keep the tension and differences among rulers in mind.

[ryancaveney]

You might have missed that I'm referring to an absolute morality.

What interests me is that there are so many different absolute moralities which have been advocated over the years. If I had to pick an absolute standard for Cerilia, it would be this: the elves can do whatever they like to the humans, because elves are better than humans. Naturally, Cerilia's humans will disagree with this particular absolute standard, but I think they're wrong. =)

Fantasy is so successful as a genre because it appeals to and does not shy away from

I disagree completely. I find such moralistic bullheadedness to be the primary obstacle to my enjoyment of fantasy books and games and such. Suspension of disbelief is a vastly more difficult task for me when applied to the idea of rulers who aren't Machiavellian than to a system of biophysics which allows dragons to fly and breathe fire.

our instinctive roots in and knowledge of Truth, Good, and Evil.

Ah, instinctive. Yes, that's always been the problem with any ethical theory. It is not possible to be logical about morality, because the utility function is an input, not an output. That is, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche or whoever says, "Action A is better than action B." The student asks, "Why?" The teacher replies, "Because A leads to X and B leads to Y, and X is better than Y." It is at this point that I ask, "Why?" The only answer I have ever gotten boils down to, "Uh, just because." Therefore, it is clear to me that all talk of having an ethical theory is really just a smokescreen to cover the fact that there is nothing more to morality than "I just like that answer better, and I'll beat you up if you disagree." We can argue logically about what consequences a given set of axioms may have, but we cannot argue logically about what consequences or axioms are better than others, because the very notion of "better" essentially _precedes_ logic. The reason we are still arguing about ethics after thousands of years of recorded history is that "instinctive knowledge of good and evil" has *changed* radically over time, and at any given point in time differs wildly between societies and between individuals within a given society. The real meat of the variation is not so much which things are wrong, but which bad things are worse than others. For example, "is it OK to kill a random stranger" is -- to some (many? most?) people, but not all -- a very different question from "is it OK to kill that particular stranger who is trying to mug you". The exact proportion of people voting "yes" changes constantly as you vary the clause after "who is trying to" over the wide range of options from "steal your favorite coffee mug from your desk" to "torture your spouse and child to death".

On that note, my thought on the elves is that while they find it regrettable to have to engage in genocide of the humans, it is merely self-defense on a time scale which they can appreciate but the humans can't. In particular, since it is human reproduction which is the driving engine of the conflict, "unarmed" women and children are *not* innocent -- they are *weapons*, and any sane policy of reducing the threat posed by the humans must include killing (at least some of) them.

[Rowan]

What interests me is that there are so many different absolute moralities which have been advocated over the years.

Different levels of knowledge, understanding, or theories about one absolute morality.

I never claimed that all people are attracted to fantasy because of its moral components (though even the atheistic author of the Golden Compass was). I only stated that a huge variety of experts and authors have recognized that these traits exist strongly in fantasy and are a major reason for fantasy's huge growth and mass appeal.

As much as I'd love to get into the debate with you about absolute morality and ethics, this isn't really the forum for it. Suffice it to say that your characterization of moral philosophy seems to me to have suffered from poor teachers, insufficient investigation, or just denial. Even faith for many if not most people stems from a serious and ruthless logical, rational search for truth. Moral philosophy certainly does--heck, utilitarianism explicitly removes the judgment of the "good" of an action until viewing its consequences.

As for the elves, I think you're missing some serious game implications.

I questioned sexual reproduction and family relationships because with spontaneous generation of elves, there are no parent-child, sibling, or wider relationships. There is no evolutionary purpose for sex or the sexes; male/female sexes exist throughout much of nature because they rely on sexual reproduction. The sexes do not exist apart from sexual reproduction in nature--and there are great numbers of species that don't have sexes in nature, so why should the elves have sexes if they don't reproduce sexually? It would be a major departure from their closeness to nature and the "natural order."

Because you need a greater density to make an elf -- perhaps you need a 7 or higher.

If this is so, the implication that follows is that elves have no use for terrain other than forests, mountains, and swamps. If they care about the propagation their species (at least in similar fashion to all natural species), they'd probably try just as much to push dwarves from the mountains for their influence on mebhaigl as push humans out of the forests. Further, they'd have no problem letting the humans have all of the other terrain types, needing only to defend their forests--which as several of us have shown in the Battle Elves thread, they can do quite handily.

It is quite possible for humans to control sources of level 7 or higher, especially if they reduce the province level. Would elves go on crusade against these humans? Would any province of level 7 or higher start spontaneously generating an elven population? If those elves are formed as adults and outside of families or community in these isolated locales, how do they learn anything? Might they end up being "raised" by humans or other sentient creatures, thereby becoming impressioned by their traits and culture?

[kgauck]

Ah, instinctive. Yes, that's always been the problem with any ethical theory. It is not possible to be logical about morality, because the utility function is an input, not an output. That is, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche or whoever says, "Action A is better than action B." The student asks, "Why?" The teacher replies, "Because A leads to X and B leads to Y, and X is better than Y." It is at this point that I ask, "Why?" The only answer I have ever gotten boils down to, "Uh, just because." Therefore, it is clear to me that all talk of having an ethical theory is really just a smokescreen to cover the fact that there is nothing more to morality than "I just like that answer better, and I'll beat you up if you disagree."

There are two schools on this one, the idealists, and the realists. The ideals, indeed say, because it is, and make recourse to things you cannot see, forms, God, souls, quintessence, and so on. From Plato to Descartes, you have the idealists. The ideas of right and wrong are built into who we are, part of our natures, or ideas that precede our other thinking.

The other school are the realists. They say that Action A is better than Action B because after a long period of observing many cases directly through my senses and indirectly through descriptions (history and biography) I have found that A comes to a happy end much more often than B. This is Aristotle, whose ethics and politics are based on his overall method. First we construct a metaphysics (how does the world actually work), then we constructs names and categories of things (our ontology) and finally we can construct an axiology (our ethics and aesthetics). Too many people start with an axiology and go from there. I would argue that idealists do this. Realism goes from Aristotle to Locke, who argued against Descartes that there are no natural ideas inherent in men, but that men form their ideas and ultimately their moral sense by observing the world and reflecting on those observations. And yet, in his politics (just like Aristotle) he constructs a theory of the social contract. He does this because he believes (now unlike Hobbes) that humans are reasonable and rational, and under the right conditions, can cooperate rather the conflict, and can establish societies based on rule of law, parliaments, and commerce, rather than ruled by an almighty leviathan who imposes order from god, or the ruler's personal will.

Machiavelli is a modern interpreter of Aristotle, so much so that much of Machiavelli's analytical method can be found in the Politics of Aristotle.

[Rowan]

Both of the approaches you mention resort to reason.

Early Western Christians recognized pre-existant absolutes/ideals, but also applied an Aristotelian approach to construct and describe reality and morality. They found that each system approached the same problems from different directions, and could meet in harmonious accord at the point of Truth--each validated the other. Witness the concept of Natural Law (C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity is an everyman's introduction to natural law).

I tend to use natural law observations of game worlds to describe and pattern right and wrong, and it is by those absolute standards that I say the commonalities of elves and humans are significant enough to demonstrate the moral evil of wanton elven extermination of humans. For many of the justifications elves would use for genocide, they could apply to most other beings, and most other beings could apply to elves. The existence of such contradictions shows that justification of genocide is self-contradictory and is thus only accepted by those who don't or won't recognize the truth or don't care. So while many elves may give justifications for their actions, as well as many humans for theirs, both would be errant. Of course, there's nothing preventing whole nations and cultures from following evil aims while believing themselves justified. That's why I don't say that elves can't believe this way, just that they'd be demonstrably wrong to in context of the game world, and that the setting doesn't seem to indicate that so many are so anti-human. Since I believe that it would be hard to be an intelligent creature that lives so long and not be a philosopher, I tend to think elves are rather better at natural law than humans, and so contravening their conscience is an act of their frequent passions, but is still recognized (with sympathy) as wrong among the elven community.

[kgauck]

I simply don't see the elves as Stoics, the inventers of natural law (and the continuing source of it even to the 18th century). The stoics, and their natural law fits into this, are concerned with avoiding disturbance. Its hardly surprising that stoics opposed war and violence of all kind, let alone genocide. But would the elves invent a universal moral system? I don't see elves fearing disturbance, but rather fomenting disturbance, they are chaotics. I don't see elves universalizing moral systems, but each inventing their own, they are chaotics.