Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Brother MacLaren said:
I think the flippant answer is: Midnight doesn't have paladins. The not-so-flippant answer is that there's a reason Midnight has no paladins. In fact, it's an open question whether we could justify recognizable standards of good in a world that is not believed to be ordered so that good is ascendant. Natural Law theory only yields a recognizable good if the essential tendencies of the world are good. Divine command theory only produces a recognizable version of good if the god doing the commanding is good. Utilitarianism famously produces some rather odd conclusions about what is good if given the proper assumptions. Stoicism maintained that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Aristotle thought that virtue, combined with luck and good circumstances could yield happiness. If vice led to happiness, the logic of both the stoics and Aristotle would actually counsel it as the wise or "right" course. Similarly, Pragmatism doesn't support a recognizable morality if recognizable morality doesn't work.
So, why do we think it's heroic? Fusangite writes, "To me, people who do good things despite fully comprehending their futility, who fight the good fight as skeptics rather than zealots are the most heroic characters. Think of the Norse gods who know how it's all going to end. Think of Aragorn leading that army to what he thought to be certain defeat. That's what heroism is all about for me." I know that something in me resonates with Puddleglum, when, in the Silver Chair, he says that, even if there's no Narnia, he'll be a narnian anyway because the dream is better than the green witch's "reality." I think it's generally because, observing from a distance, we have hope that the right side will eventually win. The Christian martyrs (and Christianity still provides the background for a lot of our cultural tendencies) died, believing that God would be victorious in the end and that he would reward them for their faithfulness. IIRC, the norse expected a new world to be made after Ragnarok, even though they neither they nor their gods would live to see it. Aragorn led his army to the Morannon in the hope that, even though he was likely to die, he could buy Frodo an opportunity to reach Mount Doom and that Frodo would then be able to destroy the ring. In other words, none of these struggles are ever truly hopeless.
In a Midnight campaign that was played as truly hopeless, I suspect that it would take our outside perspective to give the sacrifices and efforts of the heroes (or anti-heroes as the case may be) meaning and justification. From inside such a world, I suspect that philosophy would counsel accomodation and cooperation with Irzador and despair would counsel either Saruman style evil, Denethor style suicide, or Cypher style (to bring the Matrix into this) treachery.
I was going to respond to Wild Gazebo's post but I got distracted, so I'll make the points here. First, it's incorrect to assume that modern ethics is possible because we no longer live in a brutal world. The blood of the people of Darfur, the excavated interrogation rooms of Iraq, the purges, the death camps of Germany, the gulags in Siberia, the re-education camps in Cambodia, the suicide bombers in the middle east, machete wielding gangsters in El-Salvadore, child slavery and prostitution rings, etc. are just as much reality as our nice sanitized office buildings, sterile operating rooms, and children wearing helmets so they can walk down the street safely. To the extent that ethical theories are true, they are as applicable to the anarchy of Somalia, the atrocities in Sudan, and the political prisons of China as they are to insulated and sheltered American suburbanites.
Second, it's incorrect to assume that, because paladins are set in a brutal medieval world, they must have no problem with vice. The paladin does not embody the actuality of such a society with its filth and its dirt. On the contrary, even on the most relativistic interpretation of a paladin, he embodies the society's ideals. The paladin is the Good Man. He doesn't make the little compromises that "everyone" makes. Fusangite writes that his campaign is medieval and that he therefore tends towards violent prudishness in paladin codes. The medieval paladin is less likely to approve of Sir Cedric's behavior than one a paladin operating by distinctively modern ethics.
Finally, a response to some of Fusangite's post is in order:
Fusangite said:
The idea that drunkenness and debauchery is not virtuous is hardly limited to 19th century American Protestants. As far back as the ancient greeks (and before), people had reservations about alcohol. Alcohol was forbidden in Sparta, Plato devotes a sizable portion of his Laws to a discussion of moderation and drinking parties (actually, he is justifying them, but in a context that would exclude the hedonism of Sir Cedric), and the various myths about the Bachhante illustrate that the Greeks were well aware that alcohol could have negative effects and were cautious about the way it could make one lose control. Temperence (moderation) was one of the primary virtues of the ancient world. A man who, like Sir Cedric, does not evince any concern for moderation in his drinking, but rather considers it the perogative of his lofty status would not have been able to bear the mantle of virtue. Later, Dante had some rather unpleasant visions of both fornicators and drunkards. Shakespeare knew that his portrayal of Falstaff, however amusing, was widely identified with a popular (deceased) Lollard knight, and that it was seen as an insult to his memory. This is true to such an extent that he prefaced one of his playes (Henry IV, pt II IIRC) with a disavowal of that connection. Furthermore, he portrayed Henry the V as gaining virtue when he put the debaucheries of his youth with Sir Falstaff behind him. Pretending that concern over drunkenness and debauchery can be dismissed with 19th century American Protestantism is what is hogwash.
The problem isn't that Sir Cedric drinks; it's in his approach to drink. Sir Cedric appears to be more Falstaff than Beowulf in his approach to it.
But, as you point out later, the cultural archetype on which the Paladin is based is at least somewhat influenced by Christ's teachings.
Even if that weren't the case, intentions affect actions. The paladin who drinks to forget his despair is going to drink quite different from the paladin who drinks in honor of the victorious dead. It is possible to do the latter in moderation. In the former case, the case of Sir Cedric as I read it, moderation would defeat the entire point of the exercise. A paladin need not be an ascetic, but he can't live as a hedonist. It's his presumed actions, not just his perspective that disqualifies him from paladinhood. (Not that we actually see him getting drunk in the story, but his perspective sounds like that of the despairing hedonist ("Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die") and the story is supposed to introduce us to Sir Cedric so I presume it is not misleading).
And why is it that he doesn't resonate with chivalric characters if it is not for his lack of dedication to personal virtue, intentional debauchery, and despair? It sounds like you're embracing what you just called hogwash.
