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Paladin, How Are You Righteous?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7891600" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>If one is thinking about this in serious terms, there is some complexity in the sorts of situation that you describe.</p><p></p><p>The most famous real-world contemporary scholarly exponent of natural law, John Finnis, argues that there is a duty to obey the law which is independent of the law's content, because by <em>disobeying </em>the law one reduces its authority and therefore increases the risk in the breakdown of order - which would (according to him) be a bad thing.</p><p></p><p>In contemporary writing on these matters slavery laws and National Socialist Germany provide the standard bogeyman cases, and various authors have different ways of dealing with them. But I think the idea that the paladin would simply free the slaves is not self-evident - for instance, I just rewatched Iron Monkey recently and although Iron Monkey robs from the rich to give to the poor, he only robs from public officials and so is taking money that (arguably is not really theirs, because embezzled pubic funds. Whereas in the flashback in which he recruits his assistant Ms Orchid from the brothel where she works, he pays the brothel owner the money necessary to redeem her from her indenture.</p><p></p><p>The idea that a LG paladin would try to redeem slaves rather than simply overturn the property system isn't absurd to me. Of course the idea that a LG paladin might try and overthrow the whole system - perhaps agreeing with John Rawls that a system of social "order" that depends on slavery isn't genuinely a system of <em>order </em>at all because not stable for the right reasons - is also plausible.</p><p></p><p>The D&D alignment system leaves these issues open for the individual player (or at more GM-directed tables, the individual GM) to decide. Conversely, if one wants to play D&D with more of a "4 colour" morality - which is an approach I tend to take in my own D&D games, leaving moral complexity for other systems - then I think it is better not to throw up examples that are overly tricky. So eg in my 4e D&D campaign the slavers were kidnappers - and so straightforwardly lawbreakers as well as immoral - and hence there is no need for the paladins to worry about the consequences of acting contrary to the underpinnings of the existing social order.</p><p></p><p>I think that another important aspect of making paladins work well in D&D-type fantasy is leaving room for providential morality of the sort found in JRRT. If one reads LotR with a critical sociological/political eye it's of course absurd that restoring the rightful king is the most morally or socially important thing to be done - as opposed to, say, raising the living standards of the peasant of Rohan, scrutinising the class structure of the Shire, etc. But to read it in such a way is to reject its internal aesthetic. WIthin that aesthetic, the world is subject to providential direction, and the restoration of the rightful king is both a cause and a sign of providential bounty coming to the land. Classic D&D paladins work best in my view, under a similar aesthetic.</p><p></p><p>Which also ovleraps nicely with a 4-colour approach - we don't need to worry why Storm spends her time fighting Arcade and Magneto rather than relieving droughts and famine, because in the fiction defeating those supervillains is the way to redeem the world and bring good to it. (And notice that once you drop this aesthetic you move from 4 colour morality to something like the Watchmen. In that world there's no room for superheroes or paladins in the classic mould - as Adrian Veidt notes, they're self-indulgent and self-deluded.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7891600, member: 42582"] If one is thinking about this in serious terms, there is some complexity in the sorts of situation that you describe. The most famous real-world contemporary scholarly exponent of natural law, John Finnis, argues that there is a duty to obey the law which is independent of the law's content, because by [I]disobeying [/I]the law one reduces its authority and therefore increases the risk in the breakdown of order - which would (according to him) be a bad thing. In contemporary writing on these matters slavery laws and National Socialist Germany provide the standard bogeyman cases, and various authors have different ways of dealing with them. But I think the idea that the paladin would simply free the slaves is not self-evident - for instance, I just rewatched Iron Monkey recently and although Iron Monkey robs from the rich to give to the poor, he only robs from public officials and so is taking money that (arguably is not really theirs, because embezzled pubic funds. Whereas in the flashback in which he recruits his assistant Ms Orchid from the brothel where she works, he pays the brothel owner the money necessary to redeem her from her indenture. The idea that a LG paladin would try to redeem slaves rather than simply overturn the property system isn't absurd to me. Of course the idea that a LG paladin might try and overthrow the whole system - perhaps agreeing with John Rawls that a system of social "order" that depends on slavery isn't genuinely a system of [I]order [/I]at all because not stable for the right reasons - is also plausible. The D&D alignment system leaves these issues open for the individual player (or at more GM-directed tables, the individual GM) to decide. Conversely, if one wants to play D&D with more of a "4 colour" morality - which is an approach I tend to take in my own D&D games, leaving moral complexity for other systems - then I think it is better not to throw up examples that are overly tricky. So eg in my 4e D&D campaign the slavers were kidnappers - and so straightforwardly lawbreakers as well as immoral - and hence there is no need for the paladins to worry about the consequences of acting contrary to the underpinnings of the existing social order. I think that another important aspect of making paladins work well in D&D-type fantasy is leaving room for providential morality of the sort found in JRRT. If one reads LotR with a critical sociological/political eye it's of course absurd that restoring the rightful king is the most morally or socially important thing to be done - as opposed to, say, raising the living standards of the peasant of Rohan, scrutinising the class structure of the Shire, etc. But to read it in such a way is to reject its internal aesthetic. WIthin that aesthetic, the world is subject to providential direction, and the restoration of the rightful king is both a cause and a sign of providential bounty coming to the land. Classic D&D paladins work best in my view, under a similar aesthetic. Which also ovleraps nicely with a 4-colour approach - we don't need to worry why Storm spends her time fighting Arcade and Magneto rather than relieving droughts and famine, because in the fiction defeating those supervillains is the way to redeem the world and bring good to it. (And notice that once you drop this aesthetic you move from 4 colour morality to something like the Watchmen. In that world there's no room for superheroes or paladins in the classic mould - as Adrian Veidt notes, they're self-indulgent and self-deluded.) [/QUOTE]
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