Sunday, April 26, 2015
(Star)War as a Means for Peace
*Note: I admittedly am referencing from all of the Star Wars movies to make this point.
In 2005's Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith we see the evil Chancellor Palpatine-turned-Darth Sidious declare in his grimy voice.
"Once more the Sith shall rule the galaxy... and we shall have peace."
This quote comes as a shock initially because the Sith are the archetypal "bad guys". They are regularly told to "use [their] anger, aggression, and hate" for their power and focus. It is presumed that their entire motivation is destruction and evil, with no other surrounding motives other than that now the Sith can be unchallenged by Jedi.
However, nowhere in the series do any of the Sith lords ever proclaim to be evil or desire chaos or rebellion. In fact, Anakin-turned-Darth Vader infamously says to his previous master, Obi-Wan,"...From my point of view the Jedi are evil." Given that Anakin is not completely delusional and that Darth Sidious isn't just lying about peace, we can delineate a philosophy of war for the Sith.
In Shelley Kagan's Intending Harm (written after Doing Harm) she extrapolates on the difference between coldly desiring harm for someone versus harm being done to someone for the greater good.
So when this concept is initially applied to the Sith, we see that they view war, hate, and aggression as totally justifiable means in order to achieve galactic peace. The power and focus that comes from anger establishes their security, or peace. It seems that maybe in fact the Sith aren't actually evil, they just have a different avenue for achieving the same goal, right? However at the end of her paper, Kagan concludes that means-to-an-end harm is not worth separating from intentional harm. If someone goes into a situation foreseeing and being fully aware that harm will be done to people though it isn't the goal entirely, this person is still inciting harm intentionally. The Sith may want to justify war as the means to peace, but to say that harm inflicted on others is the only way to peace is just creating the conflict they wished to destroy.
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It is inretesting to compare harm for harm's sake and harm for the greater good . If you think about it the only difference is the mind set of the one causing the harm, be in malucious or remorseful, but harm is done none-the-less. No one starts a war knowing no one will die, it's always "people WILL die", but it is always rationalized that is for the greater end result. The fact that they know people will die and continue anyway plays into Kagan's point that harm for the greater good is still intentional, it just gives it an excuse .
ReplyDeleteI like that you shine light on the "Dark Side", as giving a possible stance in which we could sympathize with the Sith cause apposed to simply writing the plot off as good vs. evil. We still see clear intent to harm from both of the opposing sides of the story, but as Cara said above, the only difference seems to be their mental state as effected by the occurring violence
ReplyDeleteI like that you shine light on the "Dark Side", as giving a possible stance in which we could sympathize with the Sith cause apposed to simply writing the plot off as good vs. evil. We still see clear intent to harm from both of the opposing sides of the story, but as Cara said above, the only difference seems to be their mental state as effected by the occurring violence
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