Game of Thrones and Philosophy Read online

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  A Raven from House Wiley

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Part One: “You Win or you Die”

  Chapter 1: Maester Hobbes Goes to King’s Landing

  You are Selfish and Dangerous

  The Realm Needs a King

  Hobbes Takes the Maester’s Chain

  The Horrors of War

  Robert’s Rebellion

  Lion and Direwolf, Dragon and Leviathan

  Chapter 2: It is a Great Crime to Lie to a King

  Lying and Deceiving in Westeros

  Lord Stark’s Lies

  Is Lying Worse than Deceiving?

  Betraying Trust and Shifting Responsibility

  The Ruses of War

  Bad Consequences and Broken Oaths

  Chapter 3: Playing the Game of Thrones

  Virtù and Fortuna

  The Downfall of Kings

  Morality and Dependency

  Always Wear a Mask

  Those Who Make Their Own Luck

  A Final Lesson

  Chapter 4: The War in Westeros and Just War Theory

  The Justness of Resorting to War

  Just Cause

  Right Intention

  Proper Authority

  Last Resort

  Probability of Success

  Proportionality of Loss versus Gain

  Justness in Conducting War

  Discrimination between Combatants and Noncombatants

  Appropriate Treatment of Prisoners of War

  No Reprisals

  Respect the Rights of the State’s Own Citizens

  A Just War?

  Part Two: “The Things I Do For Love”

  Chapter 5: Winter Is Coming!

  “Is the Honorable Person Happy?”

  “Is the Devious Person Happy?”

  “I Do Not Know Which of You I Pity Most”

  “Life is Not a Song, Sweetling. You May Learn That One Day to Your Sorrow”

  “When You Play the Game of Thrones, You Win or You Die. There Is No Middle Ground”

  What Game of Thrones Teaches Us about Happiness

  Chapter 6: The Death of Lord Stark

  “If the Wicked Do Not Fear the King’s Justice Then You Have Put the Wrong Man in Office”

  “The Day Will Come When you Need Them to Respect you, Even Fear you a Little”

  “Most Men Would Rather Deny a Hard Truth Than Face It”

  Threats to the Realm

  “The Madness of Mercy”

  Chapter 7: Lord Eddard Stark, Queen Cersei Lannister

  “You Never Could Lie for Love nor Honor, Ned Stark”

  The Madness of Mercy—The Price of Honesty

  “When you Play the Game of Thrones, You Win or You Die”: The Rewards of Egoism

  “And Pray That He is the Man I Think He is”

  “How Are you Any Different from Robert, or Me, or Jaime?”

  Chapter 8: It Would Be a Mercy

  “Give Me a Good Clean Death”

  “You Love Your Children, Do you Not?”

  “When Will He Be as He Was?”

  “This is Not Life”

  Part Three: “Winter is Coming”

  Chapter 9: Wargs, Wights, and Wolves That Are Dire

  What is It Like to Be a Direwolf?

  Wargs and Consciousness

  Descartes and Direwolves

  Wargs Again

  What about the Wights?

  Back to the Wights

  Chapter 10: Magic, Science, and Metaphysics in A Game of Thrones

  Let’s Get Physical

  Science in A Game of Thrones

  Magic and Causation

  Science and Magic in Westeros

  Magic and Metaphysics

  Chapter 11: “You Know Nothing, Jon Snow”

  Not Knowing That You Know Nothing

  What Even a Blind Man Can See

  Calibrating Confidence in What We (Don’t) Know

  Justified True Belief

  A Trip to King’s Landing

  Back to the Wall

  The Horn of Winter

  Chapter 12: “Why is the World So Full of Injustice?”

  Is the Problem of Evil Really a Problem?

  But What is Evil?

  Augustine and Catelyn Defend the Faith of the Seven

  Problems with the Solutions

  David Hume and the Impotence of the Old Gods

  Blaming the Gods for Natural Evil

  R’hllor and Natural Evil

  Gods Don’t Care about Men

  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?

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

  A Man with Great Ambition and No Morals, I Wouldn’t Bet against Him (“Fire and Blood”)

  The Truth Will Be What You Make It (“Lord Snow”)

  You’ve a Long Way to Travel and In Bad Company (“Fire and Blood”)

  Our Way is the Old Way (“Winter is Coming”)

  I Must Be One of the Few Men in This City Who Doesn’t Want to Be King (“Fire and Blood”)

  Chapter 14: The Moral Luck of Tyrion Lannister

  The Virtues and Vices of Tyrion Lannister

  It’s Out of the King’s Hand’s Hands

  The Many Faces of Moral Luck

  Kant to the Rescue?

  Moral Luck and the Last Laugh

  Chapter 15: Dany’s Encounter with the Wild

  To Each His Own?

  Moral Relativism

  The Diversity of Ethical Codes

  Love and Incest

  Moral Relativism

  The Dothraki Wedding Ceremony

  Pillage and Plunder

  The Morality of the Seven Kingdoms and Beyond

  Chapter 16: “There Are No True Knights”

  The Dark Side of Chivalry

  Chivalry is Misguided

  Sansa and her Songs

  The Death of Modern Chivalry: Good Riddance

  Women, Not Wards: What Has Humanity Made of the Human Female?

  Part Five: “Stick them With the Pointy End”

  Chapter 17: Fate, Freedom, and Authenticity in A Game of Thrones

  The Freedom to Be or Not to Be

  Que Sera, Sera (What Will Be, Will Be)

  Fulfilling Fate

  Becoming Who You Are

  Chapter 18: No One Dances the Water Dance

  Virtues and the Good Life

  Martial Arts and Virtues

  The Water Dance

  Zen and the Sword Master from Braavos

  Ninjutsu and the Faceless Men

  The Faceless Dance of Virtue

  Chapter 19: The Things I Do For Love

  What is Game Theory?

  House Rules

  Eros’s Aim

  The Nature of the Game

  The Dwarf’s Gamble: Non-Zero-Sum Games and Repeated Play

  Through the Eyes of Love

  Chapter 20: Stop the Madness!

  The Archaeologist and the Mad Fool

  Pointing a Finger at the Crazies

  Meet the Mayor of Crazytown

  We Had to Murder the Mad Murderer!

  Technologies of the Self

  Am I Sane? I Think I Am. . . . I Think I Am. . . . I Think I Am. . . .

  Everything is Dangerous

  Contributors

  Index

  The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

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  Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved

  Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

  Published simultaneously in Canada

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  FOREWORD

  Elio M. Garcia and Linda Antonsson

  “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”

  “Love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.”

  “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.”

  With phrases like these, George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones reveals not only a powerful sense of drama, a rich setting, and complex characters, but an understanding that at the heart of his story—of any great story—lies conflict. Martin often cites William Faulkner’s statement that the only story worth telling is that of “the human heart in conflict with itself,” and that conflict appears again and again throughout the Song of Ice and Fire series in a way that seemed unprecedented in the epic fantasy genre back in 1996 when the first novel was published. Whether the conflict entailed one lonely, misshapen dwarf’s efforts to survive in a society that looks down on him, a friend’s struggle to keep an irresponsible king on his throne, or a mother’s choice between her family and her duty, Martin presented the moral complexity of people and societies that breathed reality. Though inspired by the likes of J. R. R. Tolkien—father of the epic fantasy—Martin took a different path, and opened the door for a wave of new writers who explore characters and settings with an eye toward the darker side of human nature and society.

  When it was announced that George R. R. Martin’s series of fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, would be adapted by HBO in Game of Thrones, it caused a great deal of excitement and speculation among fans who had been following the saga for a decade. Casting, budgets, shooting locations, special effects—these subjects and more were up for discussion. Yet at the heart of all of these questions was a single, overriding concern for most fans: How much fidelity would the show maintain to Martin’s novel, not only in terms of plot and characters, but in tone and themes? The first season came and went, and now we know that the producers largely stayed faithful on all levels, weaving together a drama that combined elements of the heroic epic with a moral scale that covered the range from the saintly to the monstrous.

  Readers often cite the moral complexity of the novels as being a key part of their enjoyment, alluding to characters painted in “shades of gray.” Previous works of epic fantasy tended to operate with a straightforward moral compass where the antagonist was some variety of evil “Dark Lord” and the protagonists were defined by their opposition to this evil character based on their obvious moral goodness. In contrast, Martin’s series has been written with no dark lord to speak of, instead focusing the narrative on the dynastic conflicts that rend the Seven Kingdoms apart beneath the shadow of a looming catastrophe. That catastrophe may be created by nefarious creatures and it may be the ultimate end point of the narrative, but Martin’s choice to keep his eyes on the very human characters, with their very human flaws, was done well enough to win him legions of fans who appreciated the so-called “gritty realism” of the narrative.

  Some of the post-Martin fantasists seem to pursue “grittiness” for the sake of grittiness—an
d that certainly is one approach among many. But it’s hard to find in some of these works the human core of the story. In contrast, Martin keeps a sharp focus on his characters, and though they suffer greatly at times, it tastes all the sweeter when they triumph. When they struggle, we struggle with them: Eddard Stark’s struggle with questions of honor and honesty, Jon Snow’s struggle to choose between vows and love, Tyrion Lannister’s effort to win his father’s approval because he has so little else. The inner conflict is absolutely integral to the weight of the story, to making A Song of Ice and Fire—and now Game of Thrones—such popular works. These and other questions—of ethics, political philosophy, and more—are the fulcrum on which the entire story turns. Despite the fact that many of the problems presented in the novel and on the screen are couched in the quasi-medieval context of lords and castles and personal honor, there’s a relevance to the way the characters wrestle with choices that do not seem so dissimilar to choices that we are faced with on a daily basis.

  George R. R. Martin’s writing is ripe for introspection and consideration, not merely as examples of masterfully told popular literature, but as a genuine exploration of human nature in uncertain times. To provide some avenues for illumination, Game of Thrones and Philosophy presents essays on topics that run the gamut of philosophical topics, from ethics to metaphysics to political philosophy. Eric Silverman interrogates Plato’s views on virute and happiness, seen through the lense of Ned Stark’s and Cersei Lannister’s very different life strategies. Henry Jacoby explores the topic of consciousness in a series where magically created wights and supernatural direwolves exist. Richard Littman imagines Hobbes as a maester, looking on Westeros and considering the question of who should rule. These essays are just a few examples, of course; as Martin might write, there are “many and more” to engage with.

  And all this, thanks to the sudden image Martin received one day back in 1991, while trying to write a science fiction novel: a huge wolf, found dead amidst summer snow. From such small beginnings, something great came, something worth reading, worth enjoying, worth examining.

  A RAVEN FROM HOUSE WILEY

  Editor’s Note on Spoilers

  Many of the philosophical quandaries of this series cannot be discussed without looking at events across the five books of the Song of Ice and Fire series that have been published at the time of this writing. However, we understand that some readers are fans of the HBO series and don’t want to be spoiled for events beyond the first season. Therefore, with that in mind, you may wish to delay reading chapters 3, 11, 12, 14, 18, and 20 until you’ve read further into the series; the rest are safe and relatively spoiler-free.