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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 767418" data-attributes="member: 8394">RE: Elder-BasiliskAll good questions.  I suppose we could write books on such things, but somehow I think both the philosophical and the role-playing communities would completely ignore them.  Just imagine the wild moral codes someone like Kant, or especially Nietzsche, would come up with, if they lived in a world with tons of sentient races and omnipresent gods and fireballs.  There never would’ve been a categorical imperative if Kant was from a D&D world, even if he served the loftiest of the lofty good gods.For a fantasy world I get the feeling that a virtue-based morality might work the best.  One of Hume’s innovations was to say look, an act in itself isn’t really evil, it’s peoples’ reasons for doing things that make the things we do good or bad.  I think this sort of emphasis lends itself well to a virtue-oriented D&D world, where antipaladins could walk among paladins fighting the same fight, but for different reasons that made them wolves in sheepskins.No, of course you’re right.  Diogenes is not engaged in the disinterested pursuit of evil.  But that does not negate the possibility of being engaged in the disinterested pursuit of the good according to logic in a world where there is an absolute good that conflicts with logic.  Diogenes could value his pursuit of the good according to logic, at the same time that Tertullian, being aware of the absolute good, knew Diogenes’ pursuits to lead him to evil ways.  Diogenes values his logic, but in this hypothetical world the arbitrary absolute good conflicts with logic, making most logically deduced moral decisions evil.Whether it is possible for a person to value evil for itself at all is not an argument we can really have though.Like I said, this isn’t an argument we can really have because it’s such a hazy area.  I think I can sum up the positions though: The Paladin is not interested in good as a means to some other end, like wealth or power; he is interested in good as it is, for itself, because it is good.  The opposite of the Paladin, the Antipaladin, then, you think ought to be interested in evil for its own sake, not for the sake of gaining wealth or power through it.  So, the question is can a person be interested in evil purely for its own sake?  Your answer is no, but I don’t discount the possibility.  I am on the fence about this.That’s classic.</blockquote>

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