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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 6197268" data-attributes="member: 2303">I don't at all get the "Self Cultivation" angle early in this thread. How is a monk cultivating the self more than rogue, and how could cultivating the self (as opposed to the group) be lawful? Does "Self Cultivation" have some idiomatic meaning I am not aware of?Interesting, but can't say I agree. I'd make both those things a law/chaos thing in DnD. Actually, Singer (as described in the article) seems to me a more important qualifier for being lawful than deontological ethics do. Characters with allegiance to small organizations, like tribal elves and barbarians, are chaotic in DnD, not evil. That paladins cannot commit evil act or suffer consequences is indeed a deontological ethic, but this does not define what an evil act is. If the paladin comes from a church that allows justified torture, that doesn't make torture non-evil, it merely says that the cult is in some aspects non-good. An example would be the church of Abadar in Golarion - the cult has paladins but it lawful neutral. There are things a LN cleric of Abadar could do (such as "justified"  torture) that a paladin of Abadar could not. Not having read Singer, I suppose he is talking about much less blatant evil than is typically found in DnD, such as in the "evil of society" and structural problems.Good and evil is much more complex, even in DnD, and yet at the same time easier for most of us to identify. And yes, it also has aspects of "black hats, white hats" arbitrarity. Being good is about how you treat others, regardless of if they are close to you or not. Yes, an evil person can have a group (or even a majority) that he treats well, reserving his evil only for certain targets. But if I love all living creatures except the Anderson family, who I keep imprisoned in my basement and torture each day, I am still evil.</blockquote>

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