Kant and Nietzsche

But why?

“I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing
star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.”(Thus Spake Zarathustra)
Nietzsche is often contradictive. Yet generally speaking one can say that he appreciates the strong will of the individual over society’s norms for justice and decency. He calls himself an immoral and nihilist. Yet despises shallowness and hypocrisy, for example, and thus preaches moral through the backdoor.

I suggest that Nietzsche is completely incompatible with the concepts of alignment in the D&D game. I find it interesting that he shows up again and again. Would you say that has Nietzsche something planar about him?

Kant gave by his categorical imperative a good definition of lawful good behaviour. It is a sort of “built in” law that will automatically prevent any harmful action towards society and individual. Lying is intolerable by all means, for example:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
As an old Prussian he had a generally high opinion of duty (“Pflicht!”).

(Some aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy have already been discussed in this
thread.)

Rabenaas wrote:

I’d say that it would be quite logical for a person that is fond of Planescape, i.e. , among things, playing around with ones own creativity and self-creation ability, also to enjoy at least some aspects of Nietzsche who plays around with human creativity and self-creation as well through his unique poetic, or stylistic approach – concerning an intertwined relationship between content and form.

Second that.

Modern sociological concepts (Luhmann's theory of social systems and derived texts, i.e. Willke; but I think there are lots of others who I do not know of) deal with the arrangement of law and order in a very creative manner. While each one can potentially trump over the other (compare today's Afghanistan to North Korea), they can also be mutually enhancing. Basically, a good law can produce or enable lots of creative chaos which in turn can produces recources for new attempts at ordering society (just think about property law; yeah, its somewhat kindred to liberal economic theories but goes much farther for it is not so stupidly static). Every new way do deal with certain risks enables new possibilities to produce risks and so forth.

I think one can read Nietzsche's phrase this way (though I don't know if this was on his mind when he wrote it): “I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star."

Well, whos say neutrality cannot have a force of will?

My oh my, you really got that wrong. Besides, I don't think anyone (in the real world) gives a damn about the balance of abstract law and chaos, actively promoting both. Its a fictional concept. Fits the mood of Planescape, though, so I don't complain.

You forgot about the Rule of Three.

I never liked the rule of three much as it limits peoples's creativity, but there do strike me as being three types of Neutrality. There's active Neutrality, which, as Iavas said is typified in the Rilmani, passive neutrality, which is typified be the Kamarel and their utter inaction, and then there's discordant or hypocritical neutrality where two different ideas people have cancel each other out. If someone feals that they should respect the law but also follow their own conscience, the two beliefs cancel each other out and leave them at neutral. Most neutral mortals are hypocritical neutrals, some are passive neutrals, but only the truly nuts (and druids, but really it's the same thing) ever become active neutrals.

Yes, humans.

Touche!