Could you specifically cite the passages where Gygax states this? The little I've been able to find on the internet seems to imply that both good and evil are of no concern to those of LN and CN alignment
This is confused.
Goodness is a value. People
ought to be concerned with it. Some are, some aren't. Those who are, and who live up to their ideals (per Gygax, "life, relative freedom and the prospect of happiness": DMG p 23), are good. Perhaps those who don't think about goodness, but who nevertheless realise it in their lives are also good (this is less clear in the alignment rules as written, but I don't see why their can't be room for naive heroes).
The d20srd frames the requirements of goodness very similarly: "altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings." Within the rough-and-ready approach of D&D's alignment system, there is no important difference between talking about rights to life, liberty and happiness and talking about life and dignity that are owed respect by others.
Evil is not a value. It is a description of a certain sort of person (and of that person's motivational framework), one for whom "purpose is the determinant" (DMG p 23). That is, the evil are those who disregard moral requirements and who are prepared to do anything to get what they want. The d20srd elaborates evil in similar terms: "Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient." It also notes that "Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master." That is, some evil people actively enjoy or even advocate the disregard of the rights of others.
Those who are LN and CN are not good - they do not honour others' rights to life, freedom and hapiness - but they are not evil either. That is, for them purpose is
not the sole determinant, but nor do they fully honour the rights of others and grant them the respect that they are due.
LN people are of "the view . . . that law and order give purpose and meaning to everything" (Gygax, DMG p 23). They "view regulation as all-important . . . becaue the utimate harmony of the world . . . is considered . . . to have its sole hope rest upon law and order" (Gygax, PHB p 33). That is to say, LN people are rules fetishists. They disregard the rights of others, and fail to pay them due respect, because they will sacrifice those interests if necessary to establish and maintain order.
This is a moral failing - it is treating a means, which has at best instrumental value, as if it were an end in itself. Contrast the LG, who "follow [the] precepts [of law and order] to improve the common weal" (PHB p 33) and who believe that "order and law are absolutely necessary to assure . . . the most benefit to the greater number of decent, thinking creatures and the least woe to the rest" (DMG p 23).
CN people, by contrast, prioritise "randomness and disorder" (PHB p 33) and regard "absolute freedom as necessary" regardless of "[w]hether the individual exercising such freedom choose to do good or evil" (DMG p 24). This is a moral failing - it is prioritising freedom from the will of others above the duties owed to them (in virtue of their rights and their entitlement to respect). Contrast the CG, whose "respect for individualism is . . . great" (PHB p 23) but who take this view because they regard "freedom as the only means by which each creature can achieve true satisfaction and happiness" because "each individual is capable of achieving self-realization and propserity through himself, herself or itself" (DMG p 23).
Law and chaos have value, in this framework, as means to the end of human wellbeing (and the wellbeing of other sentient creatures). Those who fetishise them - the LN and the CN - are morally flawed. Those who turn law and chaos to their own selfish purposes, without caring about the moral duties that they owe others, are evil. They are
more morally flawed. The LE, for instance, "consider order as the means by which each group is properly placed in the cosmos . . . strongest first, weakest last" (DMG p 23) and "by adhering to stingent discipline . . . hope to impose their yoke upon the world" (PHB p 33). For the LE "life, beauty, truth, freedom and the like [ie things of value] are held as valueless, or at least scorned" (PHB p 33) because "[g]ood is seen as an excuse to promote the mediocrity of the whole and suppress the better and more capable" (DMG p 23). In other words, rather than using law and order as as a means of promoting welfare, the LE person uses it simply as a means of pursuing his/her own desires within a hierarchy of power.
The CE, contrasting with both the LG and the LE, aspire "to positions of power, glory, and prestig in a system ruled by individual caprice and thir own whims" (PHB p 33). For the CE, "law and order, kindness, and good deeds are disdained" (PHB p 33) because "law and order tends to promote not individuals but groups, and groups suppress individual volition and success" (DMG p 24). The CE person "holds that individual freedom and choice is important, and that other individuals and their freedoms are unimportant if they cannot be held . . . through . . . strength and merit" (DMG p 24) - in other words, they do not accept that indviduals are under a duty of forbearance to others on the basis of those others' rights. They live life as if the world were the Hobbesian state of nature, the war of all against all.
The NE are intermediate between the LE and CE. Like LE and CE they pursue their own desires, but they have no strong view about whether order and hierarchy is a pro or a con for that end. Such a person "holds that seeking to promote weal for all actually brings woe to the truly deserving [because] [n]atural fores which are meant to cull out the weak and stupid are artificaly suppressed by the so-called good, and the fittest are wrongfully held back" (DMG p 23). The NE person "views law and chaos as uncessary considerations" because "[e]ither might be used" (PHB p 33). Indeed,"whatever means are expedient can be used by the powerful to gain and maintain their dominance, without concern for anything" (DMG 23).
I'm not suggesting this scheme is perfect. In particular, characterising law and chaos is notoriously difficult - are mystics who believe in individual self-realisation via self-discipline chaotic or lawful? are advocates of the rule of law as a necessary condition for individual freedom within a community chaotic or lawful? Etc. Also, the conception of goodness at its core is very anachronistic relative to the D&D setting, given that it is an enlightenment moral outlook being projected onto a pre-enlightenment fantasy world. So in play, it is likely to break down, as paladins who are played in the spirit of knights and crusaders find themselves losing their powers for failing to honour the human rights of apostates and the infidel.
And even if the fantasy world is more modernist/S&S, the system is still likely to break down in play, because it characterises someone like Conan as non-good (he doesn't generally respect human rights and is probably best labelled as CN), and hence tells the player of a Conan-esque hero that s/he is not really heroic at all!
But as a set of labels for a range of outlooks, based on a broad-brush-strokes conception of what goodness is and happy to play anachronistic fantasy (eg Forgotten Realms), it is workable if a given table can reach agreement on what law and chaos are.
But when you try and treat it as a framework of competing values - try to treat
evil not as the absence of good but as a competing value in its own right that is a "valid" life choice (to paraphrase [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] from upthread); and treat law and chaos not as techniques for pursuing ends, which are prone to fetishisation, but as
legitimate ends in themselves; then the system breaks down.
The Great Wheel, especially in its Planescape form, tends to engage in this cosmological reading of alignment.
whatever "morality" (see below) they exhibit is instead guided by the principles of law or chaos
They don't exhibit "morality". They exhibit indifference to the demands of morality. That's why they're not good.
You seem to be stuck on one particular definition of morals (and morality)as it pertains to right and wrong or good and bad behavior but there is also the definition of morals as...
a person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.
But that is not what the alignment system is. That's not how Gygax or the d20srd present it. The evil don't have an alternative value system - they are
amoral, rejecting the claims of morality to constrain legitimate behaviour. "Purpose is the determinant". They do what is convenient. They don't have alternative standards - they
eschew standards.
morality as...
a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society...
These are, IMO, the more common usages of the words and are how I, as well as a few other posters are using them. That said I don't see how following order or following chaos does not qualify as a system of morality under these defintions.
So would a devotion to the eating of mud. But the number of human beings in the history of the world who have devoted themselves to the eating of mud, and who have not been suffering from mental illness of some sort, is vanishingly small.
Likewise the number of people who have thought it a
good thing for lives to be ruined and destroyed.
Hence,
evil as defined in D&D is not a meaningful candidate to be a moral framework in the sense you describe.
But in any event, neither Gygax nor the d20srd present alignment as a categorisation of moral outlooks. They present it as a normative framework: the good honour the duties owed to others, adapting means of law and chaos depending on their views about the nature and consequences of social order; and the LN, CN and evil disregard those duties (the evil more seriously than the LN and CN). That is not an alternative but valid life choice; it is evil.
yet Elric does change the nature of goodness on the plane of the Young Kingdoms...The Melniboneans believe that a world with chaos is good and for their people (who are not human and do not subscribe to the same morality as humans) it is... Humans for the most part view Law as good in the YK's... Elric is the lone Melnibonean whose concept of good changes throughout the stories first from chaos being a good thing then to law being a good thing then to balance being a good thing and finally realizing only a world free of these cosmological powers would be "good" (at least as he conceives it)... then by blowing the Horn of Fate he ushers in a new reality where the cosmological forces of law and chaos no longer exist... and thus are no longer a part of "goodness"
Changing a concept of goodness is not changing goodness.
My concept of atoms is not the same as that of Democritus. My concept of the elements is not the same as that of Aristotle. But the nature of atoms and of the elements has not changed since Ancient Greece and now. It's just that they were confused, to greater or less extents, about the nature of the physical world.
And a new world without certain forces doesn't change the nature of goodness, either, and in your own passage you have to use scare quotes to try and suggest otherwise! Elric believes that the powers of law and chaos are inimical to the wellbeing of the world, and so he reconstitutes the world free of those powers. That is not changing the nature of goodness. That is bringing the world into greater conformity with the demands of goodness.
I disagree especially when the point isn't to answer the question of whether that reform is good or evil but to let those observing it, enacting and experiencing it decide within their own moral framework (again see the definitions I am using at the beginning of this post).
I don't understand this.
I mean, let's look at a concrete instance of moral reform - the enfranchisement of women. What would it mean to say "the point isn't to answer the question of whether that reform is good or evil but to let those observing it, enacting and expriencing it decide within their own moral framework"? In calling it a reform we're already judging it to be good! (That's what the word
reform means - an improvement in things.)
I mean wasn't this one of the reasons you argued against the classic paladin code? Because you didn't think the question of what is good should be objectively answered for a player/character?
This has nothing to do with whether or not morality is objective. My objection to GM-enforced alignment/codes is that it substituted the GM's judgement for the player's judgement about the evaluative significance of the actions peformed by the player's PC.
That objection would hold whether morality was objective or not. It's basis isn't any sort of view that what a player sincerely believes is
true, but that what a player sincerely believes is an important thing in the context of collectively authoring and then engaging with a piece of fiction. I mean, suppose that there were objective moral truths - why would that mean that the GM has the authority to dictate to a player what those truths are?
When I co-author academic pieces with colleagues who don't agree with me, I don't try and dictate to them what counts as good or bad, nor they to me. This is also about respect for the integrity of one another's opinions, and has nothing to do with whether those opinions are true or false, objectively or otherwise.
