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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wild Gazebo" data-source="post: 1952620" data-attributes="member: 24413">Quote:I was going to respond to Wild Gazebo's post but I got distracted, so I'll make the points here. First, it's incorrect to assume that modern ethics is possible because we no longer live in a brutal world. My comment wasn't based on modernity it was based on situation...yeah, and I guess the absence of modernity.  Though, I never...would ever suggest that we don't live in a brutal world, and it was not my intention to use that as an argument.Your arguments of ethical contingencies start from the presupposition of a (modern)cultural bias--as if you or I have a choice. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The idea that a culture forms differently or is in a more primordial stage lends to the prospect that our idea of ethics deals more with a higher-less grounded ethos (think progressively more abstract such as sun and moon gods).  Meaning, sex and violence aren't wrong(as they started, animalistic)--they are a part of survival and everyday life.  In fact they become almost meaningless--not the responce to personal attachment or care of family or will to live--it is just that the predominance of these actions are simply what you know of as normal existence.  You seem well read, think of a kind of post-structuralist view of society based on the abjection of self determining the bondaries that society creates.  These social bondaries would get more difficult and indominable the further in history you progress.  Meaning, the further back you travel the more likely they will be as difficult (of course, this is not all encompassing).Quote:The blood of the people of Darfur, the excavated interrogation rooms of Iraq, the purges, the death camps of Germany, the gulags in Siberia, the re-education camps in Cambodia, the suicide bombers in the middle east, machete wielding gangsters in El-Salvadore, child slavery and prostitution rings, etc. are just as much reality as our nice sanitized office buildings, sterile operating rooms, and children wearing helmets so they can walk down the street safely. To the extent that ethical theories are true, they are as applicable to the anarchy of Somalia, the atrocities in Sudan, and the political prisons of China as they are to insulated and sheltered American suburbanites.Watching it on tv is different than walking through it.  What would be the poor woman from Sudan's version of a paladin?(silly question, please don't answer)  My responce had really nothing to do with atrocities but with the idea that one would know no different.  It is difficult to define death, slavery, and sex as evil in of themselves.  How people deal with, provoke, incure, and understand these events may well be arguably evil.  But I personally don't beleive in 'good' or 'evil' in a non-literary sense--so I'm really the wrong person to debate this with.Quote:Second, it's incorrect to assume that, because paladins are set in a brutal medieval world, they must have no problem with vice. The paladin does not embody the actuality of such a society with its filth and its dirt. On the contrary, even on the most relativistic interpretation of a paladin, he embodies the society's ideals. The paladin is the Good Man. He doesn't make the little compromises that "everyone" makes. Fusangite writes that his campaign is medieval and that he therefore tends towards violent prudishness in paladin codes. The medieval paladin is less likely to approve of Sir Cedric's behavior than one a paladin operating by distinctively modern ethics.The idea of vice would most likely be different as well as ideals.  Beating small children into submission, selling slaves, burning witches, interrogating (torturing)suspicious individuals, having two of your thirteen siblings survive childhood, believing that a caste system is defined by a god, public executions, public brothels, ......ect(all everyday realities-not once or twice removed situations)  would most likely colour your perspective of right, order, and justice.  It seems to me that most 'freedom fighters' have been oppressed by a system before they act to oust it.  Not to many nobles died for the cause of livable wages--and I'd have to say most paladins I imagine are or were nobles.  Ok, I'm getting off topic...and giving you fuel for your argument.  Your idea of the paladin being above the rabble appeals to me, just more in the sense of devotion, piety, and the will to stand his/her ground in the face of insurmountable odds--for an honorable cause, and the tennets that a paladin should follow would hold them to that...not incure penalties for social trespasses.</blockquote>

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