Wizwell he/him Posted November 27, 2017 Report Share Posted November 27, 2017 So somebody asked a question... here Quote Are the ideals of the of the knights radiant clearly defined by Honor or are they relative to each knight's subjective viewpoint? Say if a mad Windrunner honestly believes that, by murdering innocents, he is protecting them somehow, would he still retain his powers? To which somebody answered it... here Quote But in terms of whether you would retain your powers, your Spren would have to agree that you are maintaining the Oaths. (Although I don't think we know what would happen if your Spren felt it was okay but you didn't think so. Might be something to ask Brandon sometime) At which point I got carried away and wrote a essay somewhere around... here Quote Whether or not you are maintaining an oath is a system of checks and balances based off of a two (maybe even three) party system. The first party is you, the windrunner, fallible and susceptible to change. The second party to judge whether the thing is right is your spren, who is not-so-fallible and not-so-changeable. But the thing I really think ties it all together is that Honor spren are cognitive essences of societies views of the "right thing". So, for example, an Honor spren could never be able to view [insert debated and highly controversial topic here] as right unless society upheld standards that supported that thing as right. But it's important not to conflate society upholding certain standards as right with society viewing an individual action as right. That's what so many people get wrong - Moash, King Taravangian, Guantanamo Bay torturers. Yes, while you can view a certain action you take as the right thing to do, if society views any of those steps in that action as morally inept, then it is negated. A long and much broader sum-up of "The ends most certainly do not justify the means!". This is why Syl is so distraught by a man carrying an honor blade that lacks a spren, there are no checks for power. To preface, I must add that this is not an attempt to try to become a surgebinder, but more a pseudo-philosophical look into what it means to be a windrunner with a bond to honor By ending my post by saying what Sanderson is trying to do is get his audience to understand "The end does not justify the means" I think I am not giving credit to him or his audience in my oversimplification. As I said before, the Windrunner's Nahel bond is based off of what society thinks is right and wrong and works off of a system of checks and balances. It is also important to note that what is being judged is the pure action of the Windrunner, as well as the choice that led him to that action. You can save a child from being sacrificed in some devil worshipping occult even if the kid's death would bring 100 years of good harvest and 40 virgins to boot, and that would be viewed as the definite right thing. And on the other side you can't kill a kid for 100 years of good harvest and 40 virgins, that would be WRONG. A bother isn't it? My point is that the action taken is judged in it's immediate capacity, not on what it's outcome will be. Because, fundamentally, Sanderson believes that humanity has a base set of values which they deem as right and wrong. They believe the killing of a child to be WRONG, even if that murder will bring wealth and safety to many others. There's no getting past their view of this as wrong. On the 99th year of the occullts bountiful harvest, someone is still going to look back on that day were they offed a six-year-old as WRONG, even if they have reaped a bunch of reward from it. The tie-in to following the path of the Windrunner comes in when you start to make decisions based was not on what is best for the people, but what is right to the people. In my previous example made with devil worshipping and occults, the argument could be seen as a simple choice. The gain that of selfishness, and the party that of evil. I'll come back to that. In Sanderson's book The Way of Kings (of course minor spoilers ahead) Kaladin is offered a shardblade, which he earned after killing a shardbearer who murdered many of his friends and allies. Kaladin earns this shardblade from a pure act of selflessness. He protects those which he deems worthy of protection, and it seems like Kaladin's heroism and against-the-odds win is about to have the payoff of our main protagonist being awarded the weapon which has since been the center-point of the book; a weapon which can slay men with ease and is worth kingdoms. But Kaladin goes against the expectation. He chooses to deny his reward. Kaladin sees what the audience does not see until much later in the Stormlight Archive (Oathbringer omage); he sees the ease of destruction that the blade brings, and how any man can use it for evil. NO, the taking of the blade isn't WRONG, but what it represents is. When given this scenario, the decision is a lot harder to stand behind, but it carries the same ideology. Do humans think that abused power is wrong? Do humans find something that is used to oppress others as wrong? Then the shardblade becomes impotent as a source of honor, and must be discarded. Sure, the murder of Parshendi is easy when society calls them Voidbringers, and they mean the end of worlds for you and your kind, but it becomes hard to stand behind it when the truth is that they're no different from any other human you've met, and therefore must be addressed the same way any human would. I wish I could say more, but I really don't want to make this an Oathbringer only thread. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndigoAjah he/him Posted December 6, 2017 Report Share Posted December 6, 2017 Basically I see one of the most key points in SA as the comparison between different ethics systems and the exploration of what moral means. I agree in so far as the Windrunner's, as well as their (simplistic) promise based system, seem to have a deontological approach. The Skybreakers treat law as paramount. Inkspren seem to be interested in the fundamentals of being, inherent truths if you like, which will be interesting to see but kind of fits Virtue ethics a bit, in a different and more logic based way than Honorspren. Lightweavers focus on Truth. There seems to be an aspect of charity with Edgedancers. In a way, these Spren based ethics all seem quite deontological in very different variants. Amaram is far more interested in consequences, as is Mr T. I don't know if that is a deliberate rift or not. I think it would be a bit sad to see all non-values based ethics like Utilitarianism and existentialism seen as purely bad, and I expect that won't be the case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walin he/him Posted December 7, 2017 Report Share Posted December 7, 2017 It definitely depends on the spren and Connection to society. I think that maybe if you come from some society with a completely different set of values, however, it may be different. Your Connection to it could make killing the hypothetical victim for a massive gain in life a good thing. However, the society would have to be large enough to get spren that share their worldview...so if it's small, you only have two edges to your tripod being removed. There's still that spren. If you have a spren that agrees with you though--you'd have a Nightblood on your side. Which I think can't happen with Windrunners; protecting is specific enough to not be subvert-able by different cultural values. Guess it's time for an Honorblade to do stuff like that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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