Star Wars: Andor and Gray Morality

[RDKirk]

People talk about the "morally gray" characters in Star Wars Andor. However, I don't think a person who has to do an evil thing morally gray if he understands that what he did was evil without rationalizing it as good.

For instance, the character Luthen says, "I'm damned for what I do." That indicates a person of conventional morality, not different from the average soldier of the Allies during WWII. On a personal note, and why this is an issue of importance to me, all of my elder relatives were ground combat veterans. Toward the ends of their lives--good lives, well-lived lives--they were all still tortured by things they'd done in combat. None of them felt his actions had been justified even though their actions had been forced upon them by circumstances they did not create.

Luthen's acknowledgment--"I'm condemned to use the methods of my enemy to defeat him....I'm damned for what I do"--is not morally gray in the classical sense. It reflects a man with a strong moral compass who knowingly violates it for a cause he believes just. That’s very different from someone who redefines wrong as right, which is often what the term “morally gray” suggests.

Luthen does morally reprehensible things: manipulating people, sacrificing allies, orchestrating civilian deaths, but he never excuses them as good. He doesn’t relativize morality; he believes in it. He just accepts damnation as the cost of victory.

That places him closer to the moral framework of Allied soldiers in WWII: “I’m doing something I believe is necessary, but I still know it’s morally wrong.”

IMO, a "morally gray" character is one who doesn’t operate on a fixed moral code or shifts between ethical systems situationally. A morally gray character denies the evil they do is actually evil, or they deny that good and evil actually exist.

Luthen believes in absolute morality, but he chooses to sin against it consciously and accepts a tragic ending that he considers a just ending for what he has done.

 

[The Liturgist]

People talk about the "morally gray" characters in Star Wars Andor. However, I don't think a person who has to do an evil thing morally gray if he understands that what he did was evil without rationalizing it as good.

For instance, the character Luthen says, "I'm damned for what I do." That indicates a person of conventional morality, not different from the average soldier of the Allies during WWII. On a personal note, and why this is an issue of importance to me, all of my elder relatives were ground combat veterans. Toward the ends of their lives--good lives, well-lived lives--they were all still tortured by things they'd done in combat. None of them felt his actions had been justified even though their actions had been forced upon them by circumstances they did not create.

Luthen's acknowledgment--"I'm condemned to use the methods of my enemy to defeat him....I'm damned for what I do"--is not morally gray in the classical sense. It reflects a man with a strong moral compass who knowingly violates it for a cause he believes just. That’s very different from someone who redefines wrong as right, which is often what the term “morally gray” suggests.

Luthen does morally reprehensible things: manipulating people, sacrificing allies, orchestrating civilian deaths, but he never excuses them as good. He doesn’t relativize morality; he believes in it. He just accepts damnation as the cost of victory.

That places him closer to the moral framework of Allied soldiers in WWII: “I’m doing something I believe is necessary, but I still know it’s morally wrong.”

IMO, a "morally gray" character is one who doesn’t operate on a fixed moral code or shifts between ethical systems situationally. A morally gray character denies the evil they do is actually evil, or they deny that good and evil actually exist.

Luthen believes in absolute morality, but he chooses to sin against it consciously and accepts a tragic ending that he considers a just ending for what he has done.

I rather liked Andor and I agree with your assesment of Luthen Rael’s character.

A better example of actually morally grey characters might come in the form of some of the “good Imperials” we see in the show, for example, Major Lio Pardigaz of the ISB, who one can dismiss as a mere bureaucrat but who seems to have a genuine interest in safety and stability, or even more poignantly in the first season, the Imperial engineer on Aldhani who attempts to force the rebels into releasing the young son of the garrison commander who was being held hostage, who was the same engineer who had been sent to construct a dam which was to flood the valley regarded by the locals as sacred (I would actually argue this character could be regarded as a good character overall, since we never see him conspire to use violence).

We also have the interesting case of Syril Karn who is manipulated by Dedra Meero into becoming an unwitting accomplice of genocide against the Ghormans.

 

[RDKirk]

We also have the interesting case of Syril Karn who is manipulated by Dedra Meero into becoming an unwitting accomplice of genocide against the Ghormans.

Syril is undone when he discovers that the good he thought he was doing was for evil all along.

 

[FireDragon76]

People talk about the "morally gray" characters in Star Wars Andor. However, I don't think a person who has to do an evil thing morally gray if he understands that what he did was evil without rationalizing it as good.

For instance, the character Luthen says, "I'm damned for what I do." That indicates a person of conventional morality, not different from the average soldier of the Allies during WWII. On a personal note, and why this is an issue of importance to me, all of my elder relatives were ground combat veterans. Toward the ends of their lives--good lives, well-lived lives--they were all still tortured by things they'd done in combat. None of them felt his actions had been justified even though their actions had been forced upon them by circumstances they did not create.

Luthen's acknowledgment--"I'm condemned to use the methods of my enemy to defeat him....I'm damned for what I do"--is not morally gray in the classical sense. It reflects a man with a strong moral compass who knowingly violates it for a cause he believes just. That’s very different from someone who redefines wrong as right, which is often what the term “morally gray” suggests.

Luthen does morally reprehensible things: manipulating people, sacrificing allies, orchestrating civilian deaths, but he never excuses them as good. He doesn’t relativize morality; he believes in it. He just accepts damnation as the cost of victory.

That places him closer to the moral framework of Allied soldiers in WWII: “I’m doing something I believe is necessary, but I still know it’s morally wrong.”

IMO, a "morally gray" character is one who doesn’t operate on a fixed moral code or shifts between ethical systems situationally. A morally gray character denies the evil they do is actually evil, or they deny that good and evil actually exist.

Luthen believes in absolute morality, but he chooses to sin against it consciously and accepts a tragic ending that he considers a just ending for what he has done.

Contextual ethics is still a relatively new idea in mass culture, at least in the western world. What one person might see as ethical complexity, another might see as moral chaos. There's been a strong tendency, particularly among cultural conservatives (but not exclusively so) to see people genuinely embodying ethical complexity as morally unserious or transactional.

 

[The Liturgist]

Contextual ethics is still a relatively new idea in mass culture, at least in the western world. What one person might see as ethical complexity, another might see as moral chaos. There's been a strong tendency, particularly among cultural conservatives (but not exclusively so) to see people genuinely embodying ethical complexity as morally unserious or transactional.

The problem is that while we are all guilty of hypocrisy, none moreso than myself, for like all Orthodox I confess myself to be the chief of sinners, since I lack reliable information on the sins of others, situational or contextual ethics represents an attempt to normalize this hypocrisy, and capitulation to the sinful passions.

Under the Orthodox faith I am not in a position to criticize another human being’s behavior without engaging in gross hypocrisy, for I would be pointing out the mote in their eye whilst ignoring the beam protruding from mine own. However, from a theoretical perspective I can say that ethical complexity seems like an excuse for ethical flexibility, for treating one’s neighbor like oneself except under special conditions in which they can be dehumanized, for example, because they might disagree with me about politics, or they might embody a culture whose values threaten mine, or they might work in a profession I am uncomfortable with, or many other things. I believe the commandments to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love our neighbor as ourselves are absolute, like God’s infinite love and mercy, and the more we derogate from them the more we risk aligning ourselves contrary to the love of God. Conversely, sin is infectious, and God is infinitely forgiving, but we must seek that forgiveness rather than try to obfuscate our sins under the aegis of situational morality or ethical complexity. For those of us who can, we should make use of daily or continuous prayer (for example using the Jesus Prayer or the Psalter, which is memorized by the Coptic monks who use the Agpeya in that manner.

 

[FireDragon76]

The problem is that while we are all guilty of hypocrisy, none moreso than myself, for like all Orthodox I confess myself to be the chief of sinners, since I lack reliable information on the sins of others, situational or contextual ethics represents an attempt to normalize this hypocrisy, and capitulation to the sinful passions.

Under the Orthodox faith I am not in a position to criticize another human being’s behavior without engaging in gross hypocrisy, for I would be pointing out the mote in their eye whilst ignoring the beam protruding from mine own. However, from a theoretical perspective I can say that ethical complexity seems like an excuse for ethical flexibility, for treating one’s neighbor like oneself except under special conditions in which they can be dehumanized, for example, because they might disagree with me about politics, or they might embody a culture whose values threaten mine, or they might work in a profession I am uncomfortable with, or many other things. I believe the commandments to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love our neighbor as ourselves are absolute, like God’s infinite love and mercy, and the more we derogate from them the more we risk aligning ourselves contrary to the love of God. Conversely, sin is infectious, and God is infinitely forgiving, but we must seek that forgiveness rather than try to obfuscate our sins under the aegis of situational morality or ethical complexity. For those of us who can, we should make use of daily or continuous prayer (for example using the Jesus Prayer or the Psalter, which is memorized by the Coptic monks who use the Agpeya in that manner.

I think you may have misunderstood what I mean by contextual ethics. I’m not talking about moral relativism or an excuse for sin, but about the practice of ethics as it is actually lived. No ethical commands are carried out in the abstract, but their embodiment is always situated in particular relationships, histories, and circumstances.

Contextual does not mean permissive. It means relational. And that, I think, is already deeply consistent with Orthodox tradition. Confession, pastoral counsel, and the practice of economia all recognize that persons are not reducible to abstractions, but are encountered in the concreteness of their lives. Relational ontology itself leads in this direction: the being of a particular thing is never isolated, but always exists in relation, and so the practice of ethics must attend to relation as well.

If we treat contextual discernment as mere compromise, we risk imagining that love could exist apart from relation, as though the command could be obeyed without regard for the neighbor actually before us. Contextual ethics is not an escape from the absolutes but their enactment in living form.

 

[DragonFox91]

I finished Andor Season 2 recently. Luthen is definitely one of the hilights of the show.

I was just thinking that I think what makes him so challenging is he's just hard to work w/ in general. We don't really see a sweet-side to him. He just ticks everyone off. I wish I had deeper analysis then that but it's like the real tragedy is that

 

[RDKirk]

I finished Andor Season 2 recently. Luthen is definitely one of the hilights of the show.

I was just thinking that I think what makes him so challenging is he's just hard to work w/ in general. We don't really see a sweet-side to him. He just ticks everyone off. I wish I had deeper analysis then that but it's like the real tragedy is that

I don't think we can view Luthen without Kleya. By the end of the first season, it was clear to me Kleya was more than a mere assistant to Luthen.

Luthen had pointed out that Kleya had a right to revenge. From the very beginning of their relationship, Kleya was Luthen's impetus. Luthen might have stopped and turned away at any time, but Kleya kept him on track and moving forward even in the instances he was anxious or worried.

Kleya was also the albatross--the symbol of his guilt--that Luthen was condemned to wear around his neck. Revenge was _Kleya's_ right, not his. Kleya may have consciously ridden Luthen as the vehicle of her own revenge...not fully forgiving him until that very last moment as he died.


This was Elizabeth Delau's first job after acting school. She certainly had a dazzling debut.

 

[DragonFox91]

I re-watched Rogue One.

Combined, Andor Season 1, 2, & Rogue One is perfect