By Penny Theodorakopoulou,
Warning! The following article contains spoilers on Game of Thrones.
Everyone has at least heard of the TV phenomenon called Game of Thrones. For 8 years, from April 17, 2011, when the first episode was aired, to May 19, 2019, when the last episode was shown on everyone’s screens, those who have watched the series – including myself – have been on edge at the end of each episode with a cliffhanger, waiting in agony for the next episode to air. The most torturing part was when, after a huge cliffhanger, you had to wait a year to find out what happened when Jon Snow died. Even though for most people the end was rather disappointing — including me –, we cannot forget all those unforgettable battles, the plot twists, the schemes against each other and, of course, the beautiful story that was brought to our screens.
Apart from the bloodshed and treason, Game of Thrones was rather famous for the influence from an abundance of philosophers, such as Machiavelli, Kant, Aristotle, and so on. In fact, there is a great number of the show’s characters that are based on the aforementioned philosophers: Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Jaime Lannister, Jon Snow, Cersei Lannister, Ned Stark, etc. To be honest, I would write a whole article dedicated to each of the names mentioned above, but we will discuss something else today.
Let us take things from the beginning. The whole conflict between the North and the South, between the Starks and the Lannisters, began when King Joffrey, son of the previous king, Robert Baratheon, and his wife, Cersei Lannister, executed Ned Stark for treason against the crown. However, that was not the real reason, at least that Joffrey knew of. Ned had found out that Joffrey was not the son of Robert and Cersei, but of Jaime Lannister, Cersei’s twin brother, and Cersei. As expected, and as she continuously mentions throughout the series, Cersei only cares about her family’s well-being; and whoever is threatening her family, is an enemy. The same applies to Ned’s case: when he told Cersei bout him having found out the truth about Joffrey’s real identity, she warned him that he would be beheaded for treason and not bending the knee to the “true” king, her eldest son, Joffrey.
Whoever has watched Game of Thrones, is aware that Ned Stark had been an honest and merciful man until his death. But for whoever has not watched the series yet, he was a man of honor who respected tradition and was always honest – maybe a little too much. If we were to refer to a philosopher, that would be Aristotle, with his theories of virtue and eudaimonia, the well-being. According to virtue ethics, a truly virtuous person is a truly good person. The kind of character trait that counts as a virtue is not easily determined, but virtues are often thought of as dispositions. For example, Ned, being an honest person, not only performs honest actions but also considers nothing but honest actions as possible options. Being virtuous is usually not easy. Virtues — like many other character traits — are acquired through training, and there may be setbacks in training. Therefore, Ned is a virtuous person.
Cersei loves her children, too. So, does that make her virtuous as well? No. Cersei’s love for herself and her children is unbalanced. Thus, she forgets about other virtues, like honesty, altogether. Eddard, on the other hand, balances virtues such as honesty and sensitivity. According to virtue ethics, if a character trait is lived out too extremely, it is no longer a virtue. A person can, in a sense, be too honest, too brave, and even too caring (hyperbole). The same applies when a person is a liar, a coward, or not caring (ellipse). The ultimate goal of a virtuous life is a state called eudaimonia. Eudaimonia cannot be achieved accidentally, but only through living a virtuous life. Being virtuous means administering the right dose of virtue in every situation, thus achieving what Aristotle termed the golden mean (the middle way).
Cersei did not want Ned to be executed. Quite opposite, she understood the grave consequences that killing Lord Stark could have. Cersei’s decisions are always based on the well-being of her children and herself. Cersei seems to base her choices on the likely outcomes of her actions, which makes her a consequentialist. There is a variety of versions regarding consequentialism, but the most common is utilitarianism, which holds that all affected subjects should be taken into account, and the moral status of an action is thereby determined by its positive and negative effects on all of them. Actions are assessed by the amount of happiness or harm caused to all those involved. Cersei clearly is no utilitarian. She certainly does not consider all subjects involved. She is therefore a “minimally extended” egoistic consequentialist, and a very successful one at that. Cersei’s success does not mean that this kind of egoism is morally acceptable, however. If our goal is a functional society where people can live together peacefully, then a universal application of egoistic consequentialism should be avoided. Utilitarianism must cope with severe difficulties as well. According to J. S. Mill and Jeremy Bentham, the fundamental pioneers of utilitarianism, one must always act to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason. In a similar vein, Mill’s method of determining the best utility is that a moral agent, when given the choice between two or more actions, ought to choose the action that contributes most to (maximizes) the total happiness in the world. Happiness, in this context, is understood as the production of pleasure or privation of pain. In Cersei’s case, pleasure would be the well-being of her family and death and pain to everyone who dares to hurt them.
Lastly, I would like to comment on the end of Game of Thrones. As the final episode, “The Iron Throne”, was nearing its end, Jon Snow (or more likely, Aegon Targaryen) had recently found out that he was the true heir to the Iron Throne. After witnessing with his own eyes the disaster his aunt, Daenerys Targaryen, had caused, and after listening to Tyrion’s advice, he stabbed Daenerys as she laid dead in his embrace. When the only remaining dragon of Daenerys, Drogon, realized that his mother was dead, he “cried” in grief and anger, covering the Iron Thrones in flames; melting it to the ground, never to be seen again, and marking the end of Game of Thrones. That very action of Drogon’s indicates that all that killing, all that bloodshed, all those schemes, were happening for one to sit at the Iron Throne – an object “forged by a thousand swords”. No matter if you wish for the well-being of your own and your family’s, as long as you wish to sit on the Iron Throne, that leads to your downfall.
References
- William Irwin, Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper than Swords, published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2012
- Jim A.C. Everett, Molly J. Crockett, What Game of Thrones Reveals about Moral Decision-Making, Available here
- Yi Li, The Problem with Ethics in Game of Thrones: Honor, Bullet-biters, and Intuition-chasers, Available here
- Joanna Moncrieff, What can Game of Thrones teach us about moral philosophy?, Available here
