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Practical Philosophy, Tuesday

"And now we arrive at the point in this series of classes where I start dragging old philosophers into it," Ender said, wryly, as he sat down on the law with his sandwich.

"But I think this might be an interesting one with this group," he added. "Specifically, I'd like to talk about justice. When is it okay to judge something terrible or evil? The philosophers of yore developed extensive theories on what made something good and right. Take the old Greeks, such as Socrates and Aristotle, who believed in what's called 'virtue ethics' - the idea that the character of the person defines the morality of his actions. Socrates argued, for instance, that if a person knew what was right, then he would do right. It was only not knowing what 'good' was that might cause someone to do evil."

"Then there were the stoics, who believed virtue laid in contentment, in being happy with what you're given, whatever it was. Opposite them, the hedonists, who believed 'good' was anything that made you feel happy. Later philosophers came up with the theory of consequentialism, the idea that your morality depends on the consequences of what you does. Some philosophers felt that good deeds were only good if they worked to better the country, for instance."

He sipped his bottle of water. "On the other hand, deontologists such as Kant believed that goodness came from doing, and the reasons someone might have to do something. If you were doing something out of duty, for instance, then according to Kant, you were doing some good. 'Nothing in the world can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.' Your intentions are what make you good."

He sat back.

"As I said, we all make our judgments. Of ourselves, of the people around us, of their pasts - especially around here. On what do you base your judgments? I think most of us realize that there is no such thing as pure good and evil - but how we judge other people tends to depend a lot on what we were taught and where we come from."

Another faint smile.

"I personally believe that character is important," he said. "Once you try to understand what makes people do what they do, it becomes that much harder to see them as evil. After all, most of us do what we think is right, even if our ideas of what right is are different." He gave a little shrug. "But of course I feel that way. I'm a Speaker for the Dead. It is, in many ways, our raison d'etre to value human understanding of the self above all else."

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Good or evil.

Ben Skywalker

Liliana Vess

Ghanima Atreides

Anakin Skywalker

Lana Beniko

Llewellyn Watts

It's a touch longer this time, but there's still beverages and sandwiches.

What is your conception of good and evil? Of justice?

When your grandfather was Darth Vader and your husband was the Xenocide, you've spent a fair bit of time wrestling with the concepts of good and evil. "I think intent is a part of it," Ben said. "If you are trying to cause suffering--like the Emperor in my galaxy did--that's of the Dark Side. Reveling in anger, hatred, greed, petty hurts, retaliating for slights real or imagined, none of that is remotely productive. That said, you don't get out of the responsibility for hurting someone or something just because your intent was good. I think to me, that's the measure of a person's innate goodness. Their ability to see that they, however unintentionally, have done harm, and then trying to learn from it and to fix it."

And he and Ben had had this conversation many times, so intellectually, Ender knew there was little more to add.

Ender nodded.

"A willingness to listen and learn," he said. "Unfortunately rare, at times."

Those conversations were definitely not for public consumption.

Ben grinned. "I definitely judge people based on their willingness to listen."

"Unfortunately for our children," Ender teased.

"Bantha has one head, he gets one fire hat," Ben said, grinning back.

Ender chuckled.

"So," he said, "I suppose a pertinent question is: has your sense of right and wrong changed since you were young? You were raised Jedi."

"I think it's evolved," Ben said. "I was very black and white as a teenager with not a lot of time or patience for nuance."

"What made your views change?"

"Experience," Ben said. "It's not so easy to be black and white in the actual world."

"Largely irrelevant," Liliana said coolly, well-aware that she was going to be the odd one out in this island of do-gooders. "Useful only as a philosophical debate and not even a particularly novel or interesting one at that. People tend to take reductive and overly simplistic views of it, disregarding the way the Multiverse actually functions, as if this moral system they've developed in a vacuum can somehow be overlaid upon the messiness of reality."

"Why do you think it's irrelevant?" Ender asked.

Because everything she'd mentioned after that word was just commentary on other people.

"Because, as concepts, they are largely arbitrary and play very little role in my decision making process, nor how I judge others," Liliana replied. "Life is not divided into good or evil, but what needs to be done, what does not need to be done, that which I wish to do, and that which I don't wish to do. Good and evil, if such things exist in an objective state, do not factor in. If we're being very subjective then..." She shrugged. "That which is good allows me to achieve my own ends or increases my own pleasure, the more efficiently, the better. That which is evil prevents me from achieving my own ends, or decreases my own pleasure, is evil. With the usual caveats of looking at the long-term, rather than the short-term, blah blah, et cetera, et cetera."

"Ah," Ender said, his mouth curving wryly. "So you're a utilitarian. Whatever maximizes happiness is good. But on a personal scale. So you judge others by whether or not their actions increase your happiness?"

"Mmmm..." Liliana looked thoughtful, as weighing whether that fit correctly or not. It did not seem to, or, at least, not perfectly, but she dismissed it as not being a particularly important correction to make. "Don't we all?" she asked instead. "If we find ourselves in the presence of someone who is objectively moral or whatnot, and also find he's a terrible bore with dreadful personal habits, don't we judge him for that, because interacting with him is a chore? Isn't the world filled with people who are cruel and petty and mean-spirited, and yet are the darlings of society because they are charming and a delightful conversationalists? Most people are just fine knowing that they socialize with the venial and immoral, so long as they have the good sense to commit their sins over there--" she gave a languid gesture off to the side "--where no one is forced to confront them."

So long as it didn't burst their precious illusion of goodness, the vast majority of people were happy to break bread with the wicked - after all, we wouldn't want to ruin Thanksgiving, now would we?

"I would say that my judgment of others is not solely predicated on their willingness and ability to increase my happiness, but it does play a very large role, yes."

Edited 2024-05-28 19:29 (UTC)

"And what of people who are the greatest net positive to your life?" Ender inquired. "Would threat to their life also be something you would consider quote-unquote 'evil'?"

"Absolutely," Liliana said and if it seemed like she was thinking of anyone specific hey shut up. "And treated accordingly."

"So then your rule would be 'what is evil, is what does harm to my community'," Ender noted, picking up his bottle of water. "At which point we come to the question of what you would consider harm, and what you would consider unacceptable behavior by those you care for most."

He took a sip.

Liliana blinked at the use of the word 'community,' looked inclined to object, reconsidered, frowned, thought more, and then nodded reluctantly. "That which is mine is mine," she said with a shrug that attempted to look idle, but even she was aware it didn't do a particularly great job. "There are...certain rules, I suppose. That I feel govern appropriate and inappropriate behavior, at least in...very specific circumstances. That do not fit within the framework of mine versus not mine. But, for the most part, yes. What is mine is mine."

She leaned back to consider Andrew's not-actually-questions. "There is a considerable calculus that would go into your first question," she said. "As for the latter, it's fairly easy - betrayal. Continued incompetence, which is separate from ignorance. Abusing my trust. I do not trust easily or well, so abuse of it is its own kind of betrayal, I suppose."

"I am from a survivalist culture of absolute necessity, where we recycle our dead for their water and the needs of the many overtake the needs of the few... or the one. It makes understanding 'terrible' decisions very easy, and I am very comfortable with the shades of gray that populate Fandom Island, and the larger universe," Ghanima said candidly, as she sipped her tea.

"My entire family has been sacrificed on that alter, including my own children. I command armies and raze planets out of duty, to give humanity a future. I then turn around and return to Fandom to teach out of a sense of pleasure and personal satisfaction, and I have never been happy with what I have been given and will forever reach for the world that could be," she continued cheerfully. "I have both 'good' and 'selfish' intentions, and I like to think that in the future, I could be the subject of entertaining debate between philosophers."

"That would mean I succeeded. That my universe's humanity gained a future past the crisis point, and they have the luxury to judge me however they like."

"Do you ever feel these parts of yourself are in conflict?" Ender asked. "How much would you give of yourself to fit the ideals of your forefathers? After all, razing planets is something you do to others, not to yourself."

Liliana listened to Ghanima with interest, raising a water bottle to her in a silent toast.

"I was raised Sith, where the greatest good was strength - of yourself, of the Sith, of the Empire. Weakness was bad." She hummed. "Though I don't recall ever being taught it was evil, per se, just counterproductive and shameful. Anyway, in the midst of all that, I came to my own personal decision that destroying the weak simply because they were weak was a weakness of imagination." She smiled wryly.

"Everyone can be useful in their own way. Deaths are rarely as productive as lives. Mind you, I know there's a belief on Earth that people shouldn't be judged by their productiveness - I'm still not quite sure where I stand on that. It's difficult not to, when you're constantly at war."

She shrugged. "Evil itself is difficult, though. I find no difficulty in saying that the former Sith emperor, Vitiate, was evil before the end. He wanted to kill every living thing in the galaxy to perpetuate himself, for no other reason than fearing death. But a few millennia before that, he was the emperor that helped the Sith survive as a people. He saved a lot of lives and an entire culture. We didn't know at the time that he'd killed hundreds of his top warriors and advisers to get the power to do so. Is killing those hundreds to save millions good or evil? Is it affected by the fact that he only did it as an experiment in being worshipped as a near god?"

Not that that last thing was anything Ender knew anything about...

"In my personal world, I would say that it is affected," he noted. "Of course, it's hard to fully know the intentions of another being. Did he originally set out to do it to help preserve your Sith? Did he find himself twisted along the way?"

Lana thought about it. "From what I know of his history, he was always ambitious and ruthless. I think he probably wanted to help preserve the Sith as an extension of himself."

Liliana was nodding along to the commentary about strength versus weakness, while her commentary on Vitiate made her look thoughtful.

Edited 2024-05-29 04:18 (UTC)

"As a lawman, I often find myself- in conflict with the ideas of justice versus the law," Watts admitted. "There are many laws that I truly believe to be unjust, mainly those that ascribe a legal consequence to indulging in behaviours that ought to be no-one's business but their own. Especially," he grimaced, "as those with means can often purchase their way out of punishment in a way the less affluent cannot. On the other hand, going outside the law in an effort to exact justice is not something I am able to condone either."

"Have you found ways to navigate that tension?" Ender asked. "If evidence can't be gathered legally, or someone affluent gets away with a terrible crime, what do you do?"

He's here, of course.

I just have to get through the next 18 hours.

Edited 2024-05-28 13:05 (UTC)

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Practical Philosophy, Tuesday

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