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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6475996" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think you could probably fit philosophies into alignment slots without too much shoe horning.   Existentialism for CN, Nihilism for NE, Stoicism for LG, and so forth.  Obviously, more than one philosophical tradition might fit in one slot, and particularly broad traditions might overlap into several alignments, but I think you could do it.   More to the point, you can use ideas from philosophy to inform what intelligent creatures of a particular alignment believe, and how they rationalize their own actions.In general, I hold the following relationships true: as intelligence increases in a being, the more philosophical and formalized his alignment beliefs become, and as wisdom increases in a being, the more correctly the being assigns particular actions and beliefs to an alignment and so the more correctly he categorizes himself and lives his life according to his actual beliefs.  A low intelligence high wisdom being would not be able to adequately articulate his beliefs or explain why he did things, but would reliably make good choices anyway.  A high intelligence low wisdom being would have an elaborately constructed philosophy, that would not only fail to inform his actual choices, but on close examination might not even correctly describe his motives or beliefs.   For example, he might believe that he was being altruistic, when in fact his beliefs and actions were characterized by self-centeredness.  He'd claim to be for justice, but would observably be motivated by vengeance and so forth.  Alternatively, a high intelligence low wisdom being would hold complex philosophies that ostensibly had one goal in mind, but which in practice consistently delivered the opposite of the desired outcome.One problem with discussing the intersection of philosophy and alignment is that inevitably it ends up intersecting politics or religion or both with predictable results.</blockquote>

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