PT Only a Sith...

So while the irony of what Obi Wan said pretty much destroyed the whole thing, it's clear that they were trying to give him something intellectual over Anakin, right? So I can kinda get that this was a hard thing to write in the first place. What alternative could've been used?

 

Why do you assume that the irony wasn't intended?



- I'm gonna go help them out!
- Quietly! There may be more of them out there.
/LM

 

'It is normally, but not always, a Sith who takes the liberty of dealing in absolutes' doesn't ring quite as well.

 

Sith have a stronger-than-average tendency to think in absolutist moral dichotomies. As published by Yubnub et al. in the Journal of Sith Studies.

 

'Sith sometimes have a problem with acknowledging other people's points of view thereby prompting a tendency towards absolutist philosophies on moral issues.'

 

I like how he follows up with the "i'll do what I must' line after. I took it like he's going to mess with Anakin a bit to see if he's fully gone. Which he's realized is the case when he screams 'Well then you are lost!"

...just edited for iphone fat-finger typos

 

Bingo.

 

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be like that, to show the arrogance and dogmatism of the Jedi.

 

I sort of took that view as well, after the second time I saw it. The first time, the only thing I thought was "Awesome, Obi Wan is gonna mess someone up big time."

 

But that can't be right. Lucas likes to use the Black and White view of the Jedi and Sith. One's wholly evil and one's more so good.

 

Defintely, there is a black and white view regarding the Jedi and Sith. But the Jedi are fallible and can be wrong. Hence, although Obi Wan is doing good, trying to stop Anakin, he is also wrong, fuelling Anakin's mind by showing that the Jedi are arrogant (which was a warning made by Yoda in AOTC). Being good does not mean mistakes are not made. The whole of ROTS is supposed to show how the 'fog of war' causes things to go wrong, 'the dark side clouds things'. Furthermore, on the flip side - just as the Sith are bad, they can be perceived to be right. Hence, the words 'we shall have peace' trip off Palpatine's lips by bringing the war to an end and Anakin can be seduced.

 

The Jedi have that same problem, especially when Luke addressed that there's still some goodness left within Vadakin. Obi-wan dismisses that notion when he says, "he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil". Maybe, PalpSidious was right when he said that "the Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way".

 

Obi-Wan had good intentions but that doesn't mean he wasn't wrongheaded. He says as much in ROTJ.

 

Obi-Wan chose those words specifically because he knew Anakin couldn't understand irony. Because Anakin is dumb.

 

But I thought good was dumb?

 

/Thread Winner.

 

BS. The irony was not intentional. Look at the way the scene is filmed. The sun behind Obi-Wan as he says those words. The theme is good v evil in that scene and the visuals absolutely highlight that. The visuals are intentional - CGI and all that.

Also, remember the line with Padmé, about being deceived, and about how they all had been. That was the theme, not arrogance, but deception.

 

I don't think what Obi-Wan is saying is meant to be ironic and I don't think it technically is self-contradictory. The term "absolute" has a lot of meanings. Here are 2 of its major ones: 1) a concept not limited by restrictions or exceptions 2) a concept that is only understood in black or white terms.

Obi-Wan is using the 2nd meaning in response to Anakin's statement "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." He is saying Sith can only see things in black or white terms. It's like saying a computer can only see things in terms of ones or zeroes, or yes's or no's. So, if this is truly a characteristic of a Sith (like a computer can only see things as a 1 or a zero), then it is not false to say this. However, Obi-Wan's statement is not a true statement of an absolute in itself. While Obi-Wan does mean that Sith only see things in black or white terms, he does not mean that that if you are not a Sith, then you never ever see things in black or white terms. Only if Obi-Wan meant this would Obi-Wan be saying a paradox because he himself would be dividing the world into 2 black and white opposing groups: Sith who only see things in absolutes and everyone else who never see things in absolutes. Obi does not mean this, so his statement is not an absolute either.

The other thing that makes this confusing is that Obi-Wan's statement does seem to fit the 1st definition of absolute, but what's important is that Obi-Wan isn't using this 1st meaning of the word absolute when he's judging Anakin. It fits the first definition because Obi isn't leaving it open that some Sith out there may be an exception to the rule and that Sith who's an exception could sometimes not see things in black or white terms. However, he isn't using the word absolute to mean no exceptions but rather to mean seeing the world in black and white terms.

If you're going to split hairs, then Obi-Wan could be criticized for where he places the word "only." He says "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." He should say the less dramatic sounding: "A Sith only deals in absolutes." The first statement "Only a Sith deals in absolutes" could mean one of 2 things: 1) it could mean that no one else in the universe uses black or white thinking, and at least, there are certainly some people on earth who seem to see the world in black or white terms (though maybe not always), so this statement would seem to be very close to being false. 2) if you interpret the phrase "deals in absolutes" to mean "always thinks in absolutes," then his full statement would be equal to "Only a Sith always thinks in absolutes, " which would mean that a Sith always uses black or white thinking, but there are other people in the universe who sometimes use black or white thinking, and this position seems much more defensible.

If Obi had moved the position of the word only and said "A Sith only deals in absolutes," then that would mean that Sith see things in black and white terms, but leave it open for some other people to sometimes have that fault as well and for some other people to always have that fault and for some other people to never have that fault.

Since Obi-Wan was about to face his best friend in mortal combat, I forgive Obi for placing the adverb "only" in the wrong place in the sentence, though I do think it would be funny if Anakin had called him on his placement of the word "only" and then they could've argued back and forth for five minutes about what the precise meaning of what Obi-Wan had just said really was.

 

slip of the tongue on Obi-Wan's part.

 

"Only Sith leaves the toilet seat up and doesn't flush."
Or is that a misquote on my part?

 

"If good and evil are mixed things become blurred - there is nothing between good and evil, everything is gray. In each of us we to have balance these emotions, and in the Star Wars saga the most important point is balance, balance between everything. It is dangerous to lose this."

--George Lucas, Time Magazine article, 2002

That's the point of the PT. The lines between good and evil become blurred, because of the actions of the Sith which bring to light some of the problems of the Jedi Order, which had occurred after a thousand years. We're meant to see the Jedi as less than they were in the OT and in TPM. We're seeing from Anakin's point of view with regards to why he would betray the very people that had been part of his life for so many years. It's especially true from the moment Obi-wan talks to Anakin about what the Council wants him to do, up until the end of the film. Yoda even says what they're doing would take them all to a dark place and as Anakin states, goes against the very principles he was taught to fight against.

 

I think that spying on somebody that he considers his friend is the least of anakins worries about going against principles.

 

It's one factor in a growing set of concerns that he has. Padme may be at the top, but there's more than just her at work. These factors play into his own reasoning behind turning and staying with the dark side.

 

Perhaps that is why I tend to regard the Jedi and the Sith as two sides of one coin.

 

It was said that Revan used both the light and dark sides of the force simultaneously to unleash it in its purest form.