What is a Paladin?

[Celebrim]

...Mother Theresa LN, and Gandhi I'm not sure, but I guess either LG or NG.

Funny, I would have reversed the two assessments, Mother T. as LG and Gandhi as LN.

Assigning alignments to any real person (except yourself just for the fun of it) is always fraught with difficulty. Here we dealing with two clearly extremely sincere individuals, and by most standards extremists of some sort, but in assigning alignments we would run into questions of what it meant to be 'good' which would be answered in very particular ways.

I think that we can safely say that neither is true neutral (we aren't dealing with people that believe in living life in a balance) and that neither is chaotic of any sort (we aren't dealing with people that put a primacy on self and self-interest), but after that it's a matter of debate with some reasonable things that can be said on many sides.

The reason I see Gandhi as lawful neutral is that he seems to value the process over the results. Ghandi doesn't believe that the ends justify the means, but he takes that view to the extent of believing that the ends are irrelevant. That is to say that he believed that even if his code were to lead to demonstratable evil ends that it would still be a moral requirement to follow it. I'm not sure that most readers will get why that is extraordinary, but in contrast most people who believe that the ends don't justify the means believe that because they believe that bad means invariably lead to bad ends regardless of ones good motivation, and that good means lead to good ends regardless of ones motivation. Ghandi goes as far as to say, "I recognize that my means may lead to evil ends, but whether they do or not, they are still the only good means." This strikes me as a lawful neutral position - that a moral code is absolute and cannot be judged or deviated from regardless of the benefit or lack thier of it produces.

I understand that Mother T. is frequently judged LN on much the same grounds, and that's probably where you get your assessment, and while I understand where people are coming from I think if you'll do some research on Ghandi - say his position on WWII - you'll see that he was far more of an extremist in this than even Mother T., as her understanding of what was meant by 'good ends' (and therefore 'good means') is probably closer to what most of us would agree those terms meant.

 

[S'mon]

Celebrim - I really don't know enough about Gandhi to judge his alignment. Were I more of an imperialist I'd judge him CE for seeking to overthrow the benevolent LG rule of my people!

Mother Theresa - a life dedicated to being close to suffering, to bring her closer to God. With some alleviation of that suffering, but being careful not to end it. Some people really hate her for that, for not doing the good her resources would have enabled her to do. I'd peg her LN.

 

[papastebu]

Well I thought your examples were particularly inappropriate because they were two Clerics and a Monk.

LOL

And, well, Alignment wise in AD&D/3e terms I'd peg Martin Luther King NG/CG, Mother Theresa LN, and Gandhi I'm not sure, but I guess either LG or NG. From everything I know of the three, at an extreme stretch I can just about see King & Gandhi as Paladins, but unless you have LN paladins in your campaign, definitely not Mother Theresa. Which is either politics or religion & thus may get me in trouble, so cheers mate.

I should have separated my curiosity and my defense of my own real-world choices. I wanted to know why real-world examples, in general, were not appropriate, rather than my own choices. I can totally understand why some people would have to stretch their definitions--and quite a bit, admittedly--to get them around my examples. Maybe I'm letting my admiration for them get in the way of defining a paladin.

 

[S'mon]

Maybe I'm letting my admiration for them get in the way of defining a paladin.

I find this a very common problem - unless your own ethos happens to be what the game regards as LG, then it's unlikely that "I admire them" = "a possible paladin". Not that many D&D players are strongly Lawful in ethos, in my experience, although Good seems fairly common. I admire MLK, but I think his expressed philosophy & actions were NG or possibly tending to CG, depending on your view of C - he spoke to white Southerners in a way which appealed to their sense of fairness which was derived from a highly individualist Scots-Irish ethos (which I'm familiar with, being from Northern Ireland and half Scots-Irish myself); this might be reasonably regarded as a Chaotic ethos in 9-point alignment terms.

Joan of Arc does look like a reasonable candidate for Paladinhood. Note Lisa-as-Joan's sppech to the troops in a Simpsons episode: "Their (the English's) concept of individual rights threatens the rule of our beloved tyrant!"

 

[papastebu]

I was just looking up at my bookshelves and I saw one called Wind Rider's Oath, by David Weber. This book and The War God's Own, which is the previous novel in the trilogy--I've never read the first, unfortunately, couldn't find it--are just full of examples of paladins in action, and they are a damn good read, too. Check them out. They may help.

 

[GreatLemur]

I work with lots of CG type post-modernist Frankfurt School type cultural Marxist theorists at my University, and they don't seem insane. Wrong, possibly, but not insane...

Wait, wait, wait. Marxism is Chaotic, then? That seems like an unlikely proposition, especially given your "primacy-of-self" definition of the "Chaos" pole. Or maybe my understanding of Marxism is way off base.

 

[Celebrim]

Wait, wait, wait. Marxism is Chaotic, then? That seems like an unlikely proposition, especially given your "primacy-of-self" definition of the "Chaos" pole. Or maybe my understanding of Marxism is way off base.

In its post-modernist form, I'd tend to say that the assessment correct. Marx certainly seems to assumed that the dissolution of private property would have been empowering to people... however bizarre that concept may have sounded to 18th century Liberal proponents of the rights of man and may sound bizarre to post-20th century survivors of Stalinism. Anyway, the surviving modern form of the meme becomes tied up with the notion of public entitlements, and puts a high emphasis on there being no objective meaning but only constructed values (very Chaotic). I very much doubt whether any form of Marxism is stably Chaotic, as I think that it tends to gravitate to authoritarianism by putting effective control into the hands of a few, but wierd and wacky things are possible when dealing with philosophies. For example, considers those that identify themselves as 'anarco-socialists' who simultaneously hold that society is both present oppressor and potential savior. I can't say that I get it, but its certainly Chaotic to hold such paradoxical views.

Personally, I've Monte Pythons take on this, "We're part of an anarcho-syndicalist commune..."

Another thing to consider is that in mortal society, law/chaos philosophical declarations cannot be considered a good predictor of Authoritarianism. It's equally possible to have a Chaotic society which forms a cult of personality around a tyrant who rules absolutely and by whim, and to have a Lawful society which enshrines as its highest form of order the protection of the rights of the individual. It's an open question whether any such paradoxical systems are stable in the long run. For example, nation-states revolving around Cults of Personality tend to dissolve rapidly into anarchy as soon as the cult leader dies, or else they evolve something like a Monarchist tradition and gradually morph into a lawful society with the original tyrant in the role of Founder and Law Giver.

 

[Wolfwood2]

I was just looking up at my bookshelves and I saw one called Wind Rider's Oath, by David Weber. This book and The War God's Own, which is the previous novel in the trilogy--I've never read the first, unfortunately, couldn't find it--are just full of examples of paladins in action, and they are a damn good read, too. Check them out. They may help.

Agreed. Better than any character I've seen, Bahzell gets across the point that being a paladin is a calling. You don't go to paladin school; you don't seek it out. It's a burden laid down upon characters whether they like it or not. Frequently not, but anyone called as a paladin is morally incapable of ducking responsibility.

Oh, and the first volume is available free and legally on-line in the Baen Free Library. Just look under David Weber.

http://www.baen.com/library/

The amount of nagging the god has to do in order to get Bahzell to let him help Bahzell with paladin powers is highly amusing.

 

[GreatLemur]

In its post-modernist form, I'd tend to say that the assessment correct. Marx certainly seems to assumed that the dissolution of private property would have been empowering to people... however bizarre that concept may have sounded to 18th century Liberal proponents of the rights of man and may sound bizarre to post-20th century survivors of Stalinism. Anyway, the surviving modern form of the meme becomes tied up with the notion of public entitlements, and puts a high emphasis on there being no objective meaning but only constructed values (very Chaotic). I very much doubt whether any form of Marxism is stably Chaotic, as I think that it tends to gravitate to authoritarianism by putting effective control into the hands of a few, but wierd and wacky things are possible when dealing with philosophies. For example, considers those that identify themselves as 'anarco-socialists' who simultaneously hold that society is both present oppressor and potential savior. I can't say that I get it, but its certainly Chaotic to hold such paradoxical views.

Paradoxical indeed. I think my cognitive dissonance here stems from an inability to see anarchism and socialism as being even vaguely compatible. If Marx's proposed dissolution of private property is looked at as a call for anarchy--that is, "There is no private property because there are no laws to preserve it"--then that is most certainly a very Chaotic philosophy. But if the proposal is taken to mean "There is no private property because a central authority controls and distributes all resources", then it strikes me as extremely Lawful, and very far from the primacy-of-self ideals which S'mon brought up. But I'm certainly aware that some folks with extremely rosy ideas about anarchy might imagine the former scenario to be desirable.

 

[Mallus]

I had something else I wanted to say, but, thanks to the last couple of posts, now all I can think of is an order Marxist paladins. Their doctrine is based on an economic 'reading' of sin and the belief the love of private property is the root of all evil. Through faith and works they seek to bring about the (faithful) workers paradise. And by works I probably mean 'armed conflict'.

I might need to design a whole new campaign setting just to accommodate them.

See, this is why I love ENWorld. It's inspirational.