Game of Thrones and Philosophy

by Jacoby, Henry, Irwin, William

  It appears that Catelyn has a point. It was indeed because of the actions of men like Jaime and his nephew Joffrey that her husband was murdered.

  Problems with the Solutions

  Do Augustine’s arguments succeed in explaining why moral evil exists? Well, it seems that things are a bit more complicated than Augustine realized. Take, for instance, his definition of evil as the deprivation of good. This would be a proper definition of evil only if good and evil were polar concepts. Polar concepts are things that are defined in terms of one another. For instance, there can be no mountain unless there is also a valley. Just try to imagine a world with only mountains and no valleys. That would be a logical contradiction, for mountains require valleys to count as mountains, just like there can be tall men only if there are also short men, and there can be counterfeit coins only if there are also genuine coins.7

  Can the same be said about good and evil? Are good and evil like mountains and valleys? Well, I am perfectly able to imagine a world with only goodness (such as an endless summer), or a world with only evil happening (one long, nightmarish winter with the Others coming from everywhere). Thus they do not appear to be polar concepts. And that casts doubt on Augustine’s assertion that evil is the deprivation of good. Moreover, the evil acts that men do—rapes, murders, and the like—seem better characterized as actual occurrences, rather than deprivations. But even if we consider these acts to be deprivations, we can still ask why God allows them: why would he allow there to be “less good” when he could bring about more?

  The free will defense is also subject to counterarguments. Some philosophers and neuroscientists question whether we actually have free will.8 But even supposing that we do, there is one very important assumption underlying the free will defense: namely that having free will is, overall, so very important that it justifies the occurrence of all the evil in the world. In other words, it must be the case that having free will and the possibility of evil is somehow better than to have no free will and no evil.9

  It is very hard to defend this assumption, however, due to the sheer amount of evil in the world. Although Eddard Stark’s death was tragic, at least he was a grown man who had a full life behind him. But think of all those poor innocent children killed during wars. Even unborn children are not spared; think of Daenerys Targaryen’s baby. Is free will such a valuable good that it somehow makes up for all these, often very horrible, deaths? And further, it seems reasonable to assume that one should try to stop or prevent an evil that someone had freely chosen to bring about, even if doing so would interfere with that person’s free will. Why is it then not also reasonable to assume that God should likewise stop or prevent the evil that results from our free decisions? It’s not easy to answer these questions.

  David Hume and the Impotence of the Old Gods

  Having considered the Faith of the Seven, let us turn our analysis to the old gods, the nature spirits that were worshipped by the Children of the Forest and are still worshipped by the Northerners. They must have had at least some power, for why would anyone worship and pray to gods who have no power at all and hence exert no influence on the daily lives of human beings? Such gods would be impotent, in Hume’s sense of the word. But does it follow from the fact that they have some power, that they would have enough power to prevent all kinds of evil entirely? This seems very unlikely. Faith in the old gods meant faith in a polytheistic religion, a religion with multiple gods. And in such polytheistic religions, there is usually no omnipotent God.

  Think of the Greek gods. Even Zeus, who was more powerful than the other Olympian gods, could not prevent evil from happening. Nor did he have power to control events in the domains of his brothers Hades (the underworld) and Poseidon (the sea).

  Thus, if the old gods are anything like the Greek gods, then they cannot prevent all evil. They are, in one sense of the word, impotent. The old gods are also powerless in certain areas, especially those where the weirwoods have been cut down. Osha explains this to Bran when she tells him that his brother Robb should have taken an army north instead of south. And when Arya stayed in Harrenhal and tried to pray to the old gods, she wondered whether she perhaps should “pray aloud if she wanted the old gods to hear. Maybe she should pray longer. Sometimes her father had prayed a long time, she remembered. But the old gods had never helped him. Remembering that made her angry. ‘You should have saved him,’ she scolded the tree. ‘He prayed to you all the time. I don’t care if you help me or not. I don’t think you could even if you wanted to.’”10

  The old gods might even be a tiny bit malevolent; they are often unwilling to help those who request their help. As King Robert Baratheon told Eddard Stark: “The gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike.”11 So it seems that the problem of evil does not apply to the old gods; since they appear not to be powerful enough or willing enough to prevent evil from happening, you can’t wonder why they don’t do so.

  Blaming the Gods for Natural Evil

  Natural evil is the harm caused by natural events, such as earthquakes and hurricanes. For instance, Steffon Baratheon, the father of Robert, Stannis, and Renly Baratheon, was killed along with his wife and one hundred men on his ship the Windproud during a storm. Stannis Baratheon, recounting this event, explains that “I stopped believing in gods the day I saw the Windproud break up across the bay. Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship.”12

  At first glance, the existence of natural evil cannot be explained in the same way as the existence of moral evils such as murder and rape. For it appears that no one’s free will has directly caused these natural evils, nor can anyone, except the gods, stop such evils from happening. And as Stannis rightfully concluded, it seems that the gods, old and new, were not willing or able to prevent this type of evil.

  However, Augustine and other proponents of the free will defense, such as the contemporary philosopher Richard Swinburne, would still blame humans for this type of evil. They argue that natural evil is necessary for moral evil to exist. To illustrate this, consider the prologue to A Clash of Kings. Master Cressen decides to poison Melisandre by using the strangler, a dissolvable crystal that in fact is a deadly poison.13 But how did Cressen know that this crystal is poisonous? Well, he probably was taught that this crystal had the appropriate deadly effect by maesters of his Order. But how did these maesters know? There must have been a first murder using this crystal at some point in time. But how did the first murderer know that this crystal would have a deadly effect? Presumably, this person would have noticed that the crystal or its contents were deadly because someone had digested it by accident, dying in the process. But this latter event just is a natural evil. Thus, according to this line of reasoning, there must be naturally occurring evils if men are to know how to cause moral evils. Natural evils are thus a prerequisite for the occurrence of moral evils.14

  This reply seems very weak. The idea that moral evil requires the existence of natural evil doesn’t seem true. God—or in this case the gods—could’ve created human beings with an innate knowledge of how to harm or kill others. Or one might simply learn from trial and error. Further, even if one grants that poisons are needed for some reason, the existence of hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, which lay waste without reservation or bias, remain unexplained. No one has figured out how to use such natural disasters to create moral evil.

  A second explanation of natural evil is offered by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). Leibniz argued that the world we live in is the best possible world. God could not have created the world any better than it currently is. And natural evil just is a necessary part of the best possible world. To take a modern example, plate tectonics—which Leibniz of course knew nothing about—cause earthquakes, but they also refresh the element carbon in the so-called carbon cycle. Without this carbon cycle, carbon-based life forms (such as us) could not exist on this planet. Good and evil go hand in hand, and we simply live in the world with the m
ost optimal combination of both.15

  This argument, as well as the previous one, has a flaw that we have noticed earlier. The sheer amount of suffering and evil around us makes us wonder whether God or the gods have actually done a good thing in creating this world if it has to include all these evil things as well. And in reply to Leibniz, it certainly seems possible to imagine a world that’s better than ours.

  R’hllor and Natural Evil

  Although humans cannot cause natural evils such as storms, floods, and earthquakes themselves, gods could. These would have to be malevolent and evil gods, of course. But does the existence of evil gods mean that there are no good gods around?

  According to the religion of the R’hllor followers, there are two gods: R’hllor, the Lord of Light, who is the good god, and his enemy the Great Other, the god of darkness, cold, and death. These two gods are at war with one another, and the world is their battlefield. The R’hllorian faith displays many commonalities with Zoroastrianism, an old Persian faith in which the good god and evil gods are also at war, and humans are either on the side of the good god or else on the side of the evil god.

  The faith of the R’hllor followers can explain why there are natural evils: they are caused by the evil god. Examples include cold winters and the fearsome Others.

  Although this type of faith can account for natural evil while still including a good and just god, it suffers from two problems that we have seen before. The first is that R’hllor and the Great Other appear to be equal in power: neither of them is omnipotent. If R’hllor was omnipotent, then he could have simply destroyed the Great Other. That R’hllor has not done so suggests that he can’t do so, and the same goes for the Great Other. So neither is omnipotent, and Hume has taught us that without omnipotence the logical problem of evil doesn’t arise. Only an omnipotent god is capable of preventing all evil from happening. And, of course, the Christian God is omnipotent; so if you are concerned about defending his existence, you will have to look elsewhere.

  The second problem is that the followers of R’hllor are not innocent little kittens. Melisandre, the priestess of R’hllor, has caused many deaths. Think of poor Cressen, who drank the strangler poison that was meant for Melisandre.16 And think of Renly Baratheon, killed by the shadow of Stannis, which was created by Melisandre.17 If we can infer the will of the god by the actions of his followers, then it is doubtful that R’hllor can be counted as a good god, despite his colorful titles.

  Gods Don’t Care about Men

  The problem of evil poses some interesting questions for the gods of Westeros, but it doesn’t establish their nonexistence. At least in Westeros, the logical problem of evil, which says that the problem of evil leads to a logical contradiction, fails. However, there is a second type of the problem of evil, which is called the evidential problem of evil. The evidential problem of evil is less stringent, concluding simply that evil provides evidence against the existence of gods. As we have seen in this chapter, although there are possible explanations for why there is, or must be, some evil, philosophers sympathetic to these explanations are hard-pressed to show why there is so much cruelty, evil, and injustice in the world. It therefore seems that the sheer amount of evil in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, and perhaps also in our own world, provides evidence, though not absolute proof, for the nonexistence of the gods.

  Notice again, though, that these arguments concern only just, good, and powerful gods. The problem of evil, whether logical or evidential, does not argue against uncaring gods. And many of the inhabitants of Westeros would agree that the gods lack such charming characteristics. Thus when Catelyn Stark told Brienne:

  I was taught that good men must fight evil in this world, and Renly’s death was evil beyond all doubts. Yet I was also taught that the gods make kings, not the swords of men. If Stannis is our rightful king . . .

  Brienne replied:

  Robert was never the rightful king either, even Renly said as much. Jaime Lannister murdered the rightful king, after Robert killed his lawful heir on the Trident. Where were the gods then? The gods don’t care about men, no more than kings care about peasants.18

  NOTES

  1. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (part 10, 1779), ed. Richard Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980), p. 63.

  2. George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), p. 757.

  3. Ibid., p. 169.

  4. St. Augustine, The City of God, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), book XI, Chapter IX, p. 461.

  5. St. Augustine, Confessions, ed. M. Boulding (New York: New City Press, 1997), book VII, chapter 3, verse 5.

  6. Martin, A Clash of Kings, p. 793.

  7. G. Ryle, Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1960).

  8. Richard Double, The Non-Reality of Free Will (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991); and more recently from scientists, Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002); and Benjamin Libet, “Do We Have Free Will?,” Oxford Handbook on Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 551–564.

  9. H. J. McCloskey, “God and Evil,” Philosophical Quarterly 10, no. 39 (1960), p. 111.

  10. Martin, A Clash of Kings, p. 683.

  11. George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), p. 116.

  12. Martin, A Clash of Kings, p. 162.

  13. Ibid., p. 21.

  14. T. J. Mawson, “The possibility of a free-will defence for the problem of natural evil,” Religious Studies 40 (2004), p. 27. See also R. Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).

  15. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil (New York: Cosimo Books, 2009), p. 198.

  16. Martin, A Clash of Kings, p. 29.

  17. Ibid., p. 502.

  18. Ibid., p. 561.

  PART FOUR

  “THE MAN WHO PASSES THE SENTENCE SHOULD SWING THE SWORD”

  Chapter 13

  WHY SHOULD JOFFREY BE MORAL IF HE HAS ALREADY WON THE GAME OF THRONES?

  Daniel Haas

  The first season of Game of Thrones ends with a cruel and immoral boy seated on the Iron Throne. Joffrey Baratheon, thanks to the Machiavellian maneuvering of his mother and the death of his “father,” becomes king over all of Westeros. He is an absolute monarch who answers to no one, as Eddard Stark dramatically discovered.

  Joffrey’s newly acquired power bodes ill for all of Westeros. As king, he is above rebuke and immune from punishment for his actions. While his subjects cower in fear, surely they must hope that Joffrey will change his ways and become a just and moral ruler.

  But why should Joffrey be moral if he doesn’t have to face any negative consequences for his actions? Although the people of his kingdom might prefer him to be a moral ruler, why should that motivate him? If he has the power to do whatever he wants, isn’t it reasonable for him to do exactly that? In fact, what reason do any of us have to be moral in the absence of negative consequences?

  The World Will Be Exactly As You Want It to Be (“Lord Snow”)

  King Joffrey doesn’t see any reason why he should behave morally. He’s born to privilege and power and is well aware that few people have the power to overtly question his behavior. Even before his “father’s” unfortunate “accident,” Joffrey is well aware that he can get away with pretty much whatever he wants. And that’s exactly what he does.

  When Joffrey decides to pick on Arya and her friend Mycah, the butcher’s son, it’s not Joffrey who is punished for being a bully. Sure, Arya disarms the prince, her direwolf bites his hand, and Joffrey’s sword is thrown in the river, but Joffrey is not called to account for picking a fight with Arya in the first place. Instead, Arya is punished, her direwolf is chased off, and both Mycah and Sansa’s innocent direwolf, Lady, are killed. Joffrey literally gets away with murder. He treats others poorly, and they get punished for calling him out
on his misbehavior.

  Not surprisingly, when Joffrey becomes king, he continues to act as if he can do whatever he wants. Cersei says of her son, “Now that he’s king, he believes he should do as he pleases, not as he’s bid.”1 What changes when Joffrey is king, however, is that he believes he really is accountable to no one for his actions. Before his coronation, he at least knew he answered to his parents and, to a lesser extent, to the rest of his family, but once the Iron Throne is his, Joffrey believes he is above rebuke. This perceived privilege gives him license to engage in all sorts of horrible actions, not least of which is the merciless beheading of Eddard Stark.

  Joffrey’s self-indulgent, sadistic behavior leaves most fans of A Song of Ice and Fire with a visceral distaste for him. Even George R. R. Martin has admitted that he took a certain guilty pleasure writing the scenes in which Joffrey finally gets his comeuppance.2 We can all agree that Joffrey ought to be a better person. Even though he has the political power to do whatever he wants, there are some things you just don’t do. No matter how much your future in-laws upset you, you don’t cut off their heads in front of your fiancée.

  But does Joffrey have reason to behave differently, given that there’s no external negative consequence for his actions? Isn’t he rational to do exactly what he wants to do, given that he need not fear punishment? What reason does Joffrey have to behave morally if nothing outwardly bad will happen to him as a response to his actions? Wouldn’t we all do the same (maybe we wouldn’t beat up our fiancées)? If you can get away with it, why not smite your enemies, cheat on your college entrance exams, or download a couple of movies without paying? If you’re guaranteed not to get caught and guaranteed not to suffer any negative repercussions for your misbehavior, why care about what morality dictates? Wouldn’t it be rational to behave like Joffrey and do whatever you want when you know you can get away with it? Or is there some self-interested reason that Joffrey and the rest of us should behave morally, even in the absence of external negative consequences for our actions?