D&D 5E Why is animate dead considered inherently evil?

[Tolerable Tyrant]

I'm having a troublesome time understanding why the animate dead spell is considered evil. When I read the manual it states that the spall imbues the targeted corpse with a foul mimicry of life, implying that the soul is not a sentient being who is trapped in a decaying corpse. Rather, the spell does exactly what its title suggests, it only animates the corps. Now of course one could use the spell to create zombies that would hunt and kill humans, but by that same coin, they could create a labor force that needs no form of sustenance (other than for the spell to be recast of course). There have also been those who have said "the spell is associated with the negative realm which is evil", however when you ask someone why the negative realm is bad that will say "because it is used for necromancy", I'm sure you can see the fallacy in this argument.

However, I must take into account that I have only looked into the DnD magic system since yesterday so there are likely large gaps in my knowledge. PS(Apon further reflection I've decided that the animate dead spell doesn't fall into the school of necromancy, as life is not truly given to the corps, instead I believe this would most likely fall into the school of transmutation.) PPS(I apologize for my sloppy writing, I've decided I'm feeling too lazy to correct it.)

 

[MGibster]

Who died and put Aristotle in charge of ethics?

Plato?

 

[Ellorghast]

Who died and put Aristotle in charge of ethics?

I have issues with any class whose lore has them beholden to a more powerful being for their power (so, clerics, paladins, warlocks and maybe druids) that has no mechanical brake on their behavior, such that their ostensible obligation to said being is meaningless mechanically.

Personally, I feel like stuff like this is best handled on a more narrative basis by the DM and the player involved hashing out how they want to handle it. In my experience, all the rules tend to do is make things goofier and less satisfying. Like, the Atonement spell has always felt silly to me.

 

[Umbran]

I mean, that quote literally says anything you prefer is good.

I mean, you are literally taking the last five words of a thirty word quote, ignoring the context of the others, and making a claim as to correctness.

That's... not good analysis.

This is a quote that was translated from another language, from a cultural context 2000+ years old. Hanging on the most simplistic literal (English) interpretation of only the last five words is not the way to glean its meaning.

Aristotle is explicitly stating that the two options available are known to be evil, before your preference enters into it. This assumes you broadly have your head screwed on straight with respect to good and evil - you are basically a moral being, can see the difference between good and evil, and are trying to figure out what to do when the only choices available are bad.

As a basically moral being, we have a handle on your preferences: your preferences are for the most moral outcome! You actually care about your moral rightness*. You aren't some manipulative sociopath trying to find an excuse for doing what you want to do by quibbling semantics.

The quote is about comparing options, not really about absolute moral value. The lesser evil is good in comparison to the greater evil. If the greater evil is not your only other choice, the lesser one does not become good just because you like it.

This quote covers issues like... Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Spock would prefer to not enter a room flooded with radiation and stick his hands in a warp core. That's bad. But, everyone getting caught in the Genesis device explosion is clearly worse, so [spoilers!] he sacrifices himself - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one - evil to the one is acceptable if evil to the many is averted.

Or, like the Enigma Code in WWII. Allowing a town to be bombed is evil. But allowing the war to go longer by alerting the enemy that their code was broken is more evil. The Right Action then is to allow the town to be bombed. It is not a good thing, but it is still the moral choice in that situation.





* Aristotle reportedly did a lot of his speaking in town squares and on the steps of buildings. So, you're standing on stone pavement without arch support in your sandals, under the hot Grecian sun, no Gatorade in sight, listening to this old guy blather on all afternoon about moral philosophy? You either actually care about being morally upstanding, or have a weird thing for suffering heat stroke for the lulz.

 

[ad_hoc]

How can an action be inherently evil? What does inherent evil even mean? Evil is not a substance. It's not a quality of the universe. It's not a thing. Actions are actions. Good and evil are interpretations of what they mean, from a particular perspective. They don't exist independently.

You can argue that in the magical world of D&D alignment can happen because good and evil can be objectively real in fantasy land...but they can't. There is no way to define them that isn't ultimately a circular argument. The notion is logically incoherent. That's why thousands of year's worth of philosophy have tried and failed to define them.

So you can say that in D&D world evil is real and here's how we define it...but those definitions are always going to be rooted in subjective opinion. Really, all you're doing is practicing virtues ethics: defining right and wrong based on an arbitrary authority.

The underlying problem here is that no one can or has ever been able to objectively define "good" or "evil." Without that starting place, there's no point in even worrying about whether something can be inherently good or evil. Animate dead is not inherently evil because nothing is inherently evil.

I think you are fundamentally missing the point of stories.

We are not talking about a contemporary drama rooted in reality.

We are creating a fantasy story based on genre tropes and themes to communicate messages which includes morality tales.

Evil existing as a tangible thing is a core fantasy trope. A lot can be done with it.

Not allowing that premise because the real world is more complex is a lost opportunity. You can lose the opportunity but others have found a lot of value in it.

It isn't a matter of what is real. These are stories.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Plato?

That's what I was going for. Everyone needs to watch The Good Place.

 

[Voadam]

I have issues with any class whose lore has them beholden to a more powerful being for their power (so, clerics, paladins, warlocks and maybe druids) that has no mechanical brake on their behavior, such that their ostensible obligation to said being is meaningless mechanically.

I personally much prefer the flavor of Conan style magical priests like Thoth Amon, particularly for gaming dynamics at the table and possible game plots.

 

[James Gasik]

I have issues with any class whose lore has them beholden to a more powerful being for their power (so, clerics, paladins, warlocks and maybe druids) that has no mechanical brake on their behavior, such that their ostensible obligation to said being is meaningless mechanically.

Well Paladins might be exempt in 5e- the text is very ambiguous about whether a Paladin needs to worship a God or not- it certainly seems to be the default, but it lists a lot of examples of gaining one's powers through other means.

 

[Ellorghast]

Evil existing as a tangible thing is a core fantasy trope. A lot can be done with it.

To quote Brennan Lee Mulligan, “Really hard to be a freshman year relativist in a world with Baator and Mount Celestia.”

 

[Clint_L]

you can't have a game where a human being runs the game and not have conflicts on what morality or anything else means.

To the contrary, we never argue about morality in our games because we don't worry about alignments. We just try to play our characters as people and have their moral choices be consistent with who they are. So no one cares if an action is "chaotic evil" or "lawful good" and we don't need to argue about it. The players has their character do what makes sense to them, and the other players and DM react according to what makes sense to whoever they are RPing.

So if a player was going to have their character cast animate dead we wouldn't be interested in whether or not that was an evil act, we would be interested in why they were doing it and what the consequences would be in the context of the story and their character.

 

[Clint_L]

* Aristotle reportedly did a lot of his speaking in town squares and on the steps of buildings. So, you're standing on stone pavement without arch support in your sandals, under the hot Grecian sun, no Gatorade in sight, listening to this old guy blather on all afternoon about moral philosophy? You either actually care about being morally upstanding, or have a weird thing for suffering heat stroke for the lulz.

Well, you could always have your slave hold an umbrella over you. As interested as they were in the study of ethics, the Athenians had some mighty big blind spots.