Game of Thrones and Philosophy

by Jacoby, Henry, Irwin, William

  We’re glossing over some important details in Kant’s account. There’s an ongoing disagreement among scholars regarding what Kant’s moral psychology exactly amounts to—what he thinks has to be going on in our heads for us to count as acting for the right reasons and, thus, exercising a good will. In one interpretation of Kant, Tyrion would not be acting for the right reasons, since he had personal reasons for acting, in addition to recognizing his duty to keep Shae safe. This reading, though, is problematic, since it would mean that most of us rarely, if ever, act with a good will; most times, our choices are based on a number of motivating factors, moral considerations among them, but not exclusively. In light of this, in a different interpretation of Kant, Tyrion does count as acting with a good will, provided that he would have done what he did were he to have lacked any personal reasons for doing so.6

  We needn’t explore the details of these opposing interpretations of Kant, though, because it should be clear that they won’t help us address all the problems associated with moral luck. Even if Kant is right, all he has tackled is resultant luck. He has offered us an understanding of moral responsibility that pushes back on the idea that we should ever count the consequences of an action in evaluating whether a person who performed it is praiseworthy or blameworthy. All that matters is the will itself, regardless of what happens. But even if Kant is correct on this count, and we think he gives us reason to correct our inclination, at least at times, to evaluate persons morally based on the consequences of their actions, this doesn’t speak at all to the other forms of luck Nagel considers. Take constitutive luck. The disposition to act according to the categorical imperative—to have moral reasons guide and trump other reasons—is itself a contingent virtue that some persons have, and some don’t, based as much on luck and circumstance as anything else. If this were not true—if this disposition were something entirely in our control—then it would be surprising that so many of us fail to act morally so often. But it’s not surprising once we acknowledge that the disposition to let moral reasons guide our actions varies from person to person, and that life circumstances explain this better than anything else.

  Moral Luck and the Last Laugh

  The problem of moral luck isn’t just a clever philosophical conundrum. It is, as Nagel recognized, a deep paradox that forces us to examine the very idea of persons being morally responsible for anything. We don’t want to claim that no one is worthy of praise or blame, but at the same time, it seems that the only way to hold onto this idea is to abandon another idea that we cherish—that persons are morally responsible only for those things that are in their control. Finding a way to reconcile these two ideas has challenged philosophers for decades, without resolution. And Tyrion Lannister is the perfect character to force us to think about these matters as well. I doubt he’d be bothered too much by our inability to solve the problem. By his own admission, he is, in his words, a vile man whose crimes and sins are beyond counting (“A Golden Crown”). But he would no doubt have a smile on his face as we reflect on this and realize that perhaps, just perhaps, there’s nothing for which he deserves blame. After all, how much of Tyrion is in Tyrion’s control?

  NOTES

  1. Although I’m uncomfortable using the term “dwarf” to describe Tyrion, since we no longer refer to little people that way, I will nevertheless adopt the language used in the novels, for the sake of consistency.

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

  3. In Nagel’s book Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1979), pp. 24–38.

  4. See Stanley Milgram’s “Behavioral Study of Obedience” in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology (1963), pp. 371–378.

  5. Nagel, “Moral Luck,” p. 35.

  6. For a nice discussion of this issue, see Richard Hensen’s “What Kant Might Have Said: Moral Worth and the Overdetermination of Dutiful Action,” in the Philosophical Review 88 (1979), pp. 39–54; and Barbara Herman’s essay “On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty,” in her book The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 1–22.

  Chapter 15

  DANY’S ENCOUNTER WITH THE WILD: CULTURAL RELATIVISM IN A GAME OF THRONES

  Katherine Tullmann

  To Each His Own?

  As the hours passed, the terror grew in Dany, until it was all she could do not to scream. She was afraid of the Dothraki, whose ways seemed alien and monstrous, as if they were beasts in human skins and not true men at all.1

  As Princess Daenerys watches the Dothraki people celebrate her marriage to their leader, Khal Drogo, she experiences a growing feeling of disgust and fear. All around her arguments turn deadly, and men and women alike gorge themselves on horseflesh and wine before giving in to their sexual urges for all eyes to witness. Like Dany, the reader is probably disgusted and appalled by this celebration. Surely this display of violence and sexuality is the sign of an immoral group of people.

  Dany quickly learns that the wild regions beyond the Seven Kingdoms are not a land for the faint of heart. With her, we encounter a gritty, dark, and dangerous world where tempers flare, sexuality is unrestrained, and violence is commonplace. To a certain extent, audience members accept the foreign ethical codes and lifestyles that we encounter in the Seven Kingdoms. War is nearly constant because it was a different time; and women are treated poorly because they have not yet been “liberated.” We sympathize with the characters of the Seven Kingdoms because their world is similar to our own—a slice out of the European Middle Ages with some magic thrown in for good measure. Dany and Eddard Stark, in particular, serve as our moral compasses in this world, shaping our reactions to the other characters’ malicious deeds.

  At what point, though, does our tenuous tolerance for these actions turn into disgust and moral outrage at the offenses they commit? There may not be a simple, cut-and-dry answer to this question. The further away some cultural practices are from our own, the less likely we are to condone them. This would suggest that moral practices vary by culture—and who are we to say that they’re wrong?

  But is this right? Consider the perversion of Cersei and Jaime Lannister’s sexual relationship and the Dothrakis’ pillaging compared to the Stark family’s “honorable” rebellion—though even they are by no means innocents. Some moral transgressions are impermissible no matter what, it seems.

  Moral Relativism

  Since the time of the ancient Greeks, philosophers have proposed that certain moral truths are universal. This view is called moral universalism, as opposed to moral relativism, which states that moral truth is relative. Even moral judgments that seem to obviously true, such as “incest is wrong,” are not independently justifiable beyond the beliefs of an individual, or perhaps a culture.

  Cultural relativism is a descriptive theory, simply telling us that “different cultures have different moral codes.”2 Observing that moral codes vary between cultures, cultural relativism may help to explain why some actions in A Game of Thrones seem acceptable while others do not. For example, we are quicker to condone Tyrion for sleeping with whores than we are to condone his siblings for committing incest because the former action is somewhat acceptable in our culture whereas the latter is utterly unacceptable.

  Although there are many examples of questionable morals in Martin’s stories, several of the most philosophically interesting surround Dany’s encounters with the Dothraki, whose transgressions strike the audience at a “gut” level—we know these actions are wrong, even if we can’t exactly explain why. Cultural relativism provides a fruitful means of understanding both Dany’s reactions and our own. Rape and murder seem like universal taboos, but that turns out not to be the case. Through Dany’s eyes, and her moral stance, the audience experiences a different way of life and judges the Dothraki accordingly. But before examining Dany’s experiences in more detail, let’s first see how cultural relativism plays out in the world of Game of Thrones, and our own.

  The D
iversity of Ethical Codes

  “Who are they?” Rickon asked.

  “Mudmen,” answered the Little Walder disdainfully.

  “They’re thieves and cravens, and they have green teeth from eating frogs.”3

  Different groups of people have different social practices, ranging from trivial dissimilarities in their choices of food and entertainment to more drastic differences in penalties for crimes and marital indiscretions. The men of the North scoff at the nomadic swamp-dwellers, the crannogmen, of the House Reed, who eat frogs and throw nets and poisoned spears in battle. The Starks live a Spartan lifestyle compared to the sumptuous frivolity of the Tyrells of Highgarden and the Lannisters in King’s Landing—not to mention the differences between the Dothraki and the collective houses of the Seven Kingdoms. And the wildlings beyond the Wall differ from both the kingdoms and the Dothraki. In A Clash of Kings, for example, we see Jon and the other Black Brothers repulsed by Craster’s custom of marrying his daughters and leaving his sons as offerings for the gods.4

  Clearly, each of the different cultures in Martin’s fictional world has its own way of life and its own way of handling social and moral problems. Such cultural diversity isn’t restricted to the realm of fiction, however. In our own world, people from different backgrounds and cultures have different practices and laws as well. This suggests that different cultures also have different moral values.

  Think about cannibalism, one of the strongest taboos in our society. In modern Western society, we view cannibalism as a morally repulsive practice, but other cultures did not always take such a negative stance. Historically, cannibalism was practiced by cultures all over the world, though in different ways and for different reasons. Mortuary exocannibalism, for example, is the eating of dead family members, whereas warfare cannibalism is the eating of members of other social groups after they are killed in battle. Contemporary philosopher Jesse Prinz argues that cannibalism may have been commonplace for most premodern societies, and that the practice tended to die out once groups began to organize into states.5 The most notable counterexample to this was the Aztecs of North America, who belonged to a highly organized state but nevertheless practiced cannibalism until the Spanish takeover in the 1500s. Nowadays, cannibalism rarely occurs. But even the fact that it did occur, and may still occur in such places as Papua New Guinea, shows that the practice was not always universally considered to be immoral.

  Love and Incest

  “The things I do for love.”

  —Jaime Lannister (“Winter Is Coming”)

  Let’s consider another example of the cultural diversity of morals found in A Game of Thrones: incest. Perhaps the reason why we are disposed to condemn incest is that we have been conditioned to do so by cultural practices and pressures.6 We are exposed to stories or situations at a young age in which we learn that incest is disgusting and shameful. Other cultures, however, are much more tolerant of incest, at least in some respects. In America, it is morally blameworthy to marry your own first cousin, but this is a common practice in India, Pakistan, and parts of the Middle East. Among the Incas, those who committed incest had their eyes gouged out, while the Trumai, a native group in Brazil, merely discourage it. Sibling incest was common in ancient Egypt, but died out in Western cultures with the advent of Christianity.7

  A Game of Thrones features incest between the twins, Cersei and Jaime Lannister. When Eddard Stark discovers the truth, he confronts the queen, who admits that Jaime is her lover, saying: “And why not? The Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to keep the bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies. We shared a womb together. He came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said. When he is in me I feel . . . whole.”8

  The Lannisters’ incestuous relationship has serious consequences for the kingdom. They have three children: Prince Joffrey and his younger siblings Myrcella and Tommen, all of whom are mistakenly thought to be sired by King Robert. After Robert is killed by a boar during a hunting trip, Joffrey becomes the illegitimate king. In fact, the true king should have been Robert’s brother, Stannis! Thus, the cruel Lannisters gain control of most of the Seven Kingdoms, Joffrey being little more than a puppet for his manipulative mother.

  Even if incest is not considered morally wrong, it still may have negative political and social consequences. This seems to be Eddard’s view: he condemns Cersei and Jaime’s relationship, but mostly due to its negative consequences for the realm he feels honor-bound to protect. In their confrontation, Eddard does not morally judge Cersei for this action. Instead, his thoughts are of Robert’s blindness and the murders Cersei committed in order to hide the truth about her children. The incestuous relationship is a political indecency more than a moral one.

  It seems that some of the citizens of the Seven Kingdoms have a more tolerant view of incest than we do. Cersei is correct in appealing to the Targaryens’ long history of marriage between siblings: we see the truth of this from the Targaryen family line.9 When he learns the truth, Eddard doesn’t feel disgust, but rather dismay and indignation for the consequences of the coupling. We, on the other hand, likely feel a range of negative and condemnatory emotions when we first witness, through Eddard’s son Bran’s eyes, Cersei and Jaime having sex (“Winter Is Coming”). We think that this is as much of a moral transgression as a social or political one, and most of the people in the Seven Kingdoms share our view. After Stannis reveals that Joffrey is the son of Cersei and Jaime, people respond very negatively to this “abomination.” Catelyn Stark muses that incest is a “monstrous sin to both old gods and new,” yet recognizes that the practice was common for the Targaryens: “but they were the blood of old Valyria where such practices had been common, and like their dragons, the Targaryens answered to neither gods nor men.”10 The circumstances surrounding the Targaryens’ incestuous relationships may make it more morally permissible than other deviant actions—the desire to keep the bloodlines pure, the lack of trust between warring families, etc. The Starks would never commit such an act themselves, and neither would we. But they can imagine situations in which incest might be permissible. Again, we find a case where the moral blame for an action varies, depending on the values of those committing it.

  Moral Relativism

  “It’s not my law.”

  — Viserys (“A Golden Crown”)

  We’ve seen how the descriptive theory of cultural relativism helps explain our reactions to the diversity of moral practices, both in Game of Thrones and in our own world. As a normative theory, moral relativism goes further, claiming that not only do different cultures have different moral practices, but morality itself differs from one culture to another. In other words, there are no universal standards of right and wrong. There is nothing we could do to prove that our moral codes are better than any other culture’s: they are merely different. There may be hundreds of different cultures with different moral values and stances on different issues, and we should be tolerant toward the customs of other cultures. Even if we are morally disgusted or outraged by instances of cannibalism or incest in another culture, moral relativism claims that we have no grounds to condemn those practices.

  Despite the abundant diversity of ethical codes we encounter both in our world and in the Seven Kingdoms, moral relativism as a normative theory seems unsatisfactory. Surely there are some moral practices that should be blameworthy in every culture. While it makes sense to be tolerant of some of the different practices we encounter in other cultures, we certainly wouldn’t want to be so for all of them. There might be cultures in which human trafficking, for example, is morally acceptable—or at least not as morally blameworthy as in others.11 Moral relativism would tell us that since this is morally acceptable for their culture, there is nothing really wrong with it. Surely this is a negative consequence for the theory of moral relativism that will make us want to reject it. Dany’s experiences with the Dothraki provide another example: the rape o
f innocent women during their plundering.

  The Dothraki Wedding Ceremony

  “A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is deemed a dull affair.”12

  —Magister Illyrio

  Princess Daenerys Targaryen, the last of the line of the usurped rulers of the Seven Kingdoms, is married off to the leader of the wild Dothraki, a horse tribe that lives beyond the sea. We sympathize with Dany as she tries to accustom herself to the foreign ways of her new people. Dany did not grow up in the Seven Kingdoms since she and her brother, Viserys, who considers himself to be the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, were exiled from their land after Robert became king. Nevertheless, her values are similar to those of her ancestors as well as our own.

  We first witness this strange culture in Dany’s wedding ceremony to Khal Drogo, a strong and fearsome warrior. The celebration is an “endless day of drinking and eating and fighting.”13 Both the Dothraki men and women celebrate with bare chests, devouring horseflesh and guzzling wine. As the night progresses, a Dothraki warrior grabs a dancer and has sex with her in front of the crowd. Two other warriors fight over another woman, and one is killed.

  Dany is frightened and appalled by the ceremony. This new culture is so different from her own that she cannot help but feel disgusted. Of course, the reader is also appalled by the celebration. Compare it to the last wedding reception you attended! Such overt sexuality and violence are strongly discouraged in our culture, but as the magister points out, it is commonplace for the Dothraki.