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Philosophy in the Realms

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Originally posted by The Sage
I'd like to know more about specific philosophical schools of thought at play in the Realms today, and perhaps even in the past as well. Maybe a few tidbits on current theories, old and largely ignored theories, and even some bits on old schools of thought that, while they may seem ridiculous now, were given significant prominence at times in the past.

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Just as an aside, I think this is a fantastic description. I'm somewhat bored with stat blocks for NPCs and with monsters and stuff; this is the kind of material I like to learn about when I'm discussing a setting because it has so much more import to the basic interaction between people. It'll help a player understand motivations and key thought processes, the basic beliefs of a given society and how they shape the actions of its peoples much moreso than the impending threat of some kind of fugly wart monster of doom that looms in the swamps nearby or whatever.

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Also, I'd like to know a little about two or three philosophers of note in the Realms. We've learned a little in the past, from NPCs who've been referenced as having specific interests in philosophy. But they're largely students of particular philosophical schools -- not the founders or creators of individual schools of philosophical thought.

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This is another great question.

For example, in human society, we've got all manner of philosophical divide. We've got metaphysics (including ontology), epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and its derivative (thank you Descartes) in skepticism... we've got ethics (moral philosophy), logic (including mathematical and philosophical logic which differentiate between formal symbolic logic and linguistic logic).

Somewhere in there, you get ideas of political philosophy, so guys like Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Thomas Hobbes, Alexis de Tocqueville, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aristotle, Plato, etc. These often reacted to their given political system. Artistotle and Plato discussed things in the Greek context (and Plato's Republic describes an idealized political structure). Hobbes wrote in the context of the execution of King Charles; Hegel was 19 when the French Revolution started and reacted to the Terrors as an excess and feared that democracy might grow tyrannical, so he talked a lot of constitutional monarchies.

You've got notions of the development of philosophy as language grew in complexity and so did thought; pre-Socratic philosophy as a lot of really broad statements and as a whole, philosophy progresses towards much more complex and intense study of smaller issues in the context of broader issues (such as a specific study of some element as it pertains to epistemology, for example).

You've got the development of the Socratic Method, which dramatically impacted philosophy.

You get stuff like pragmatism and phenomenology, existentialism and stuff like Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra where he decries the existence of God and the use of spiritualism, with man as his own ultimate ideal...

You get the movement away from religion towards empirical study and rationalism.

I could go on... at great length... and that's just Western Philosophy.

So how does it pertain to the Realms?

Philosophy on Earth has arisen in reaction to events and developments in our timeline. I suspect strongly that the theories of guys like Nietzsche and so forth (existentialism in general) would either have never come about or never been accepted because religion has so much empirical proof to it that any discussion that invalidates religion as the key component of existence seems irrelevant.

When there's blatant proof of the existence of many different Gods, you're never going to see a great volume of literature on monotheism or things like individualism and the belief in man as the ultimate expression of moral existence, and so forth. So a lot of contemporary philosophy would then become irrelevant.

Consequently, because the physics of the Realms do not precisely correspond to the universe in which Toril exists, a lot of stuff by guys like David Hume and the epistemological developments of the modern era would then become sketchy in regards to their value or the need for their construction.

A great deal of modern philosophy arose as a reaction against religion, the move towards Reason, the Scientific Method, etc, a sort of distancing from God and faith. That kind of movement wouldn't exist in Faerun for the basic reason that, unlike here, the gods are very easily seen to be real... you could even empirically prove it! So there's a whole category of what we understand as philosophy that would be irrelevant.

Keep in mind too that, regionally speaking, you're talking about Faerun as a continent full of monarchies and independant city-states. That means a lot of the literature that we have from guys like Thomas Hobbes and everyone that followed him in terms of their discussions of political reality would also likely not have come about.

There would be no or very little discussion of democracy or Hegel's freedom through "informed choice," no discourse on the need for a debate over the relative merits of sovereignty or a global community. There would be no discussion of the distribution of suffrage, because voting as a political power would be largely irrelevant to the world of Faerun. There would be no movement that parallels "The Enlightenment" as we had in the 18th century with the monumental shift in thought towards reason as the ultimate authority instead of "The Good" or religious motivation or any other primary mover, so to speak.

The iconic "good" empire might be Cormyr but it's a monarchy. Silverymoon is perhaps the closest thing to a more modern, progressive political environment in the entire world, so maybe there you might see some scholars discussing and developing political theories that incorporate participation as a valid means of exercising political authority, discussions of "freedom of speech" and the like.

BUt you also have to think about who philophers are. In a general (though not universal) sense, philosophy has tended to arise from the upper echelons of society (at least in the ancient context) because those were the people with the resources to have the freedom to think and write. Nobles, the upper class, etc. You've also got religious orders as sources of philosophy of a sort, pertaining to their given faith and describing life in that context (a good parallel in our world might be St. Thomas Aquinas and his attempt to deductively prove the existence of God).

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Section Break, to go easy on the eyes!

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It seems that a large-scale parallel of the types of philosophy that Earth has enjoyed over the last three centuries or so is unlikely to be matched in Faerun; the political and social environments are generally too different. The historical events are dramatically different and the nature of religion is such that it is not really an exercise in faith so much as accepting reality. That fundamentally alters everything about the way we as humans in our world think about how existence goes.

You'll get pockets and isolated locations in the Realms where thought will advance in certain ways (I'm sure the scholars of Candlekeep and, as aforementioned, Silverymoon would have different environments in which to work and think, different motivations, but they have their own core differences in experience that would direct their focus towards issues that differ from what our contemporary thinkers experience. It's of some import to note that a lot of modern philosophy has been influenced by a market economy that drastically differs from the sort of trade situations medieval-type societies enjoy. I don't see a guy like Adam Smith proclaiming the value of the Invisible Hand in Faerun, you know?

So any discussion, one would think, should turn to our own ancient and medieval philosophies, since those are the societies and times that most accurately parallel Faerun... and then how they might have been affected by irrefutable knowledge of the Gods, the existence of magic, etc. There would be no room for skepticism of those truths, no relevance to the "brain in a vat" argument, etc.

But even then, as Sage and others have pointed out, you've got sort of "alien" empires leaving legacies. The elves would undoubtedly have a very interesting perspective on life on account of their particular culture and their longevity, their conflicts and interactions with older races, etc.

Philosophy is ultimately the discussion of existence; how to live, how we perceive things, what things exist, what counts as valid, genuine knowledge, the principles of reason, etc.

So what place does that have in Faerunian society?

In older empires, for example, Netheril, would there even really BE philosophers? They had a cultural obsession with magic and the advancement of that pursuit. But given their history of excess, it's pretty clear that they didn't have a strong study of the ethics of magical research and study, no? So were their thoughts confined to how to grow stronger? Perhaps that's a comment on their society, no? The interrelation between power and status, and so forth?

What would the elves say about knowledge? They seem a people grounded in sensuality and nature, so maybe their philosophy might be similar to things brought up by ancient worshippers of deities like Dionysus, or even Ares in his capacity as god of growth in nature. Pan, maybe?

Philosophy is also influenced by the introduction of new cultures into a given society. A place that was oft-invaded or multicultural, so to speak, would probably have a very diverse and divergent view of existence in all its myriad facets on account of the beliefs of the various cultures therein.

How about Alaundo? Perhaps he was the Plato of the Realms. He was more a prophet but did he write works of any significance that were not prophecy? So then perhaps he's the Nostradamus of Faerun.

But since Philosophy is a school of thought grounded in reason and logical discourse and Faerun is a world of magic and prophecy and gods, it's almost out of place.

Each religion in Faerun would undoubtedly produce doctrine; there you start to get things like codes of living, systems of morals and ethics, etc.

Just at a quick glance at the Wiki for Christian philosophy, here are some interesting questions that Realmsian theological thinkers might pose to a given religion, replacing 'God' with the specific deity:

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* What is the nature of God? How do we know that God exists?
* What is the nature of revelation? How do we know that God reveals his will to mankind?
* Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted literally?
* Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted allegorically?
* What must one actually believe to be considered a true adherent of our religion?
* How can one reconcile the findings of philosophy with religion?
* How can one reconcile the findings of science with religion?

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Remember, in our world, political reality and the contrast of faith with science have often been the primary motivations for the development of a given school of thought. Or the movement towards Reason as the ultimate ideal, etc. A lot of the questions we asked in this world aren't relevant to Faerun.

But OK, look at that first one. In the Realms, deities have given portfolios; they exist as the embodiment of some trait or aspect of existence. You know they exist because they can speak directly to you, can and do influence events in the real world, perform miracles. But as others have mentioned, there are questions regarding which deity is answering your prayers, etc. So you've got lines of theological thought that might take you to places like "does it really matter who answers our prayers as long as someone does" and so forth.

You've got to deal with prophets and intermediaries and what-not, beings who could still dilute knowledge of the deity's true nature, so you can get serious theological discussion as to how any mortal can come to understand his chosen patron. That's probably a significant debate in monastic/scholarly circles. Candlekeep probably has a boatload of writings on topics that begin there.

"What is the meaning of life when events have been prophecized to occur" is probably another big question; what does it mean that Alaundo saw the future so far in advance and set down guidelines with road markers that indicated the kinds of big events coming? How important, then, are the people who study his prophecies to the basic existence of society? What would life be like without them? HUGE questions about the nature of freedm versus destiny come up. Is freedom a valid concept at all in a world that basically plays out to the whims of the Gods and ancient prophecy? What IS freedom in a world like that? Is it only a local concept instead of a grand, abstract ideal to strive for? What then is the real difference between a place like Thay and a place like Cormyr or Silverymoon?

And, on the topic of Thay, you get the notion of slavery. That's a big question: is a slave in that position because of some moral failing, or perhaps because it is his soul's place in the world? Or is it something else? You start to get phenomenological arguments, so you can parallel guys like Hegel, Edmund Hesserl and Martin Heidegger. That's a piece of applicable contemporary philosophy. Hegel, for example, argued that the idea that slaves were slaves because they were supposed to be was ludicrous, reacted to the idea that Ancient Greece and Rome were the pinnacle of societal development. So you can get reactionist thinkers decrying the notion of slavery. There's already a fairly vehement movement AGAINST slavery, though that's actually (amusingly enough) oriented on an East/West axis.

Perhaps it was unintentional, but it cannot be lost on us that most of the slave-keeping nations (Mulhorand, Thay, even Zhentil Keep itself) lie in the Eastern portion of Faerun while most of the more progressive nations (most notably including Cormyr and Silverymoon) are in the West... which seems to parallel the West of our Earth in some ways... even if there are still places like Calimshan and Luskan and what-not. Anyway, that aside, slavery and destiny versus fate, moral authority, those are definitely big questions in the Realmsian context.

Questions of the need or value of literal or allegorical interpretation of religious doctrine are also important, for fairly obvious reasons. What you need to believe in order to be a "true adherent" of a religion, that's another big question. You can look at that in terms of the definition of true faith, the manipulation of that meaning to coerce others, elitism, all kinds of things. There could be a huge body of literature on that topic... in each different religion present in the Realms.

Free thought versus heresy is probably a significant argument... look at the witch-burnings of our own history.

Morality, that's probably a gargantuan topic; in a world where Heaven and Hell are objectively proven to exist and contain beings that embody the notions of Good and Evil, morality is a topic that might seem unimportant to explore. But what about the uncompromising and dispassionate actions of a Solar? Is it truly the embodiment of good if it can act in ways that seem evil? How about the notion of "necessary evil for the preservation of a greater good?" A slippery slope but one that would undoubtedly be explored.

Science versus religion seems unimportant; physical sciences are of secondary concern in Faerun. Why care about science when you can learn magic? The gnomes and dwarves and various cultures develop certain physical sciences (masonry, for example, or clockwork, maybe even steam power) but they all pale in comparison to the things the Netherese and others proved capable with the power of magic and the existence of the deities. Of what use is the study of anatomy and physiology in the context of medical science when basic healing magic can overcome injuries with greater speed that medical science could?

But what you MIGHT get is the study of the value of dependance versus independance, the sort of stoic value of a man's ability to do for himself instead of asking another (deity or mortal) to do for him.

Martial virtue versus peaceable society?

Multiculturalism versus segmented nations? That's a contemporary concern but seems eminently applicable to the vast and diverse cultures of the Realms.

Scholastic reasoning? Find a problem and resolve it? Dialectical reasoning, right? Answer a question or resolve a contradiction. That's scholasticism, a very prominent form of medieval philosophy. Candlekeep would be very familiar with this, since it involves critically reading a given text and writing a response, referencing other source documents and what-not. This is standard scholarly work. The monks and scholars of Candlekeep would be CONSTANTLY involved in this type of effort and would undoubtedly have a treasure trove of literary responses to various works contained within their walls.

I could go on but I've got to boot from the computer; I'll add to this later. Ed may jump in here and tell me I'm completely wrong but these are the thoughts that came to regarding philosophy and the Realms.

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