What I'm saying, is that a lawful evil character could be a freedom fighter. Do you disagree?
I'm not sure. I would say that it would be a very unusual circumstance and that to a certain extent, it would involve someone going against his own nature. In essence, the LE person would be acting out his honor, but believe that the group he held allegiance to was in the wrong, but that the code he adhered to prevented him from acting on this belief.
Before a LE character could be a freedom fighter, there'd have to be a long standing legal framework that had a Chaotic purpose, which had become by tradition and the establishment of a social order something that people could adhere to in a lawful manner even as they found certain aspects of the code problematic and provisioning for too much freedom and individuality. I'm thinking of course of something like the Constitution of the United States of America (though arguably, this document represents various compromises that make it a neutral document, but at least it gives an example of the type). Once you have an external moral authority like that instituted and ordained to establish freedom, then you have the possibility of a lawful adherent of a freedom loving entity. As such, that person could then fight to protect freedom under a lawful agency.
He'd be terribly conflicted about it. Indeed, he'd likely blame the conflict on the flaws in the document/society itself - on its excesses of freedom, excessive decadence or softness, and so forth. I think there would be a strong temptation to side with whatever group wanted to resolve the conflict in favor of reduced freedom and more centralized authority, and to reinterpret the moral code as not being primarily about freedom but rather about social order. There would also tend to be attempts to preserve freedom by greater and greater authoritarian measures, so that while in theory he was fighting to protect freedom for the duration of the emergency there would be a tendency to find reason to forgo the very institutions he'd claim to be fighting for. To the extent none of this happened, I'd think it would speak to the idea that the person was Neutral on the law/chaos axis and (and possibly on the good/evil axis as well) saw both law and chaos as being valuable tools toward the end he desired.
In short, a LE freedom fighter would be a like a tuna in the desert. Totally out of his element. Eventually, you'd expect the conflict to come to a head and force him to choose to change his alignment or his allegiance. Historically, LE 'freedom fighters' if successful tend to create societies that don't prioritize freedom, regardless of the rhetoric that they may employ.
What I mean is that most values aren't inherently good.
Ok. Sure. There is nothing inherently good about 'valor', for example. It very much depends on to what ends you employ that valor. But your question seemed to imply not that most values weren't inherently good, but all values weren't inherently good.
In other words, just because you hold a "good value" in high regard, does not automatically make you a good person.
Agreed.
And neither does holding a "bad value" in high regard, automatically make you a villain.
I'm not sure what you mean by that? Do you mean that villains can end up serving good ends by fighting against evil, as anti-villains as it were?
Good values can be upheld for the wrong reasons, and bad values can be upheld for the right reasons.
But a bad value upheld for good reasons doesn't make it good.
The players delivered a bunch of Kturgian pirates to a slave master, and then debated the morality of slavery with him. The slave master argued that the country is at war, and that the Kturgian pirates are there for considered enemy combatants. By putting them to work, they are helping the war efforts. Where as, if they had been set free, they would soon return to their killing and plundering. Had they been put in jail, they would surely been subjected to cruel torture, and then probably hanged. So the slave master argued, that slavery was the merciful thing to do. And sure, some masters may treat their slaves badly, but most of them were alright. The players couldn't really disagree with the man.
Ah. Well I see why this blew your mind and leaves you confused. You'd previously treated slavery as a thing that was inherently evil, and so when you encountered a valid argument that this was not so - given the social status slavery has - you naturally questioned whether anything had inherent moral value.
I think you should step back and contrast the slavery in the above story with the sort of slavery that led this society to rightfully think of slavery as repugnant. In the above story, the fundamental question is, "Is slavery for these persons unjust?" If you accept that the pirates deserved death, then surely they deserve slavery as well. And since slavery is maybe more merciful than death, then it follows that slavery in this case is both merciful and just. But in this example, you aren't actually debating the morality of slavery. You've been tricked. You are debating the morality of slavery as a punishment when the only alternative is execution. This is a much narrower topic. The justice of punishing pirates with slavery, particularly in a society which cannot afford mass unproductive incarceration, doesn't tell us much about the morality of slavery itself.
And it certainly doesn't vindicate imposing slavery on people
who do not deserve it. You see, the real principle on trial here isn't slavery, and it isn't even freedom. The real virtues on trial are justice and mercy, and your example doesn't show that those principles are corrupt, but reaffirms them even in the difficult hard case you describe.
So an evil character is not capable of giving a person better than he deserves?
No more than a good character is incapable of treating a person worse than they deserve. But we are talking not about individual actions, but what a person believes is right. An evil character that is merciful, if he reflects, feels vaguely guilty and disquieted by his actions. He'll want to rationalize and excuse them in the same way a good character would if he realized he'd been cruel. He may even be tempted to make restitution and make things right by withdrawing the mercy.
Because he's evil, and that's what he believes is right and proper. To act mercifully is to violate his own basic view of reality and to give credence to the idea that there is such a thing as goodness and its valueable and a valid and maybe necessary approach to the world. It would involve overturning in his mind all his basic convictions and reevaluating his own actions and worth. Faced with the need to be merciful to someone he liked or even loved, he's like Darth Vader watching Luke thrashing around on the ground begging for mercy. This isn't just some weak person he's dismissed in his mind as a failure that is leading the world into chaos; this is his son. But if he can have mercy on his son despite his sons failure, and if his son can have mercy on him despite his father's failing, maybe everything he's believed for so long has been completely wrong.
Does one good deed automatically turn a villain into a good guy? Are villains incapable of doing good things, or showing kindness?
Of course not; no more than one bad deed automatically turns a good guy into a villain. But it can if that deed ends up changing what they actually believe either consciously on unconsciously.
Lawful does not mean that a character follows the law. He could also follow a code, or a set of personal tenets.
No, that's probably the most common misunderstanding and misuse of words when it comes to describing alignment. If you follow a personal private code or set of personal tenets, you are chaotic. You are still putting the primary burden of determining what you should do on yourself, and still claiming that ultimately it is the individual that creates meaning and judges value. A personal code is not a law, and indeed is rather the opposite of law. A personal code sets each individual person up as executive, legislator, and judge. No one but yourself is responsible for judging whether you've adhered to the code. No one but yourself is responsible for amending the code and creating its stipulations. In short, a personal code lets you believe is right what you want to believe is right. The fact that you've perhaps documented your personal preferences doesn't make you lawful.
All lawful codes are inherently external and reviewable. A code that is private is simply an internalized filter, where the individual has determined privately and for himself what all of this means.
Again, don't mistake personality for alignment.
As such you could have a lawful evil character who rules over no one, and yet serves no one either.
You fail to grasp the implication of this statement. Lawful things are always defined by their relationship to other things. There is no order without relationships. Chaotic things are always defined internally by their own nature and beliefs rather than by their relationship to other things. This is explicit in the concepts of Law and Chaos. There is no such thing a being lawful and not having a role in some order or system. It's the relationship that makes it lawful. Chaotics are individuals, beholden only to themselves and their own judgment. Lawfuls are members of societies, and inherently always underneath something. Even a lawful monarch is always under the law, duty, tradition, and obligation to the rest of society. A 'lawful' person with no role or 'place' in the world, belonging to nothing, and believing that they are under no law but what he's made for himself is indistinguishable from a chaotic person because they are a chaotic person.
