PT Was any part of Palpatine good?

Evil is a narrative/rhetorical device, I don't believe it can be quantified in the real world. OTOH, evil could be described simply as the absence of good. Each and every one of us have done things this week that puts our ecosystem's viability at risk. Are we all evil? How useful is it to grade people on a good/evil scale?

I think the rhetorical device of evil just lets people ignore their own painful thoughts, their own natural empathy, their pity for people who do harm. It's a mental/emotional convenience to replace complicated and uncomfortable thought processes with disdain or hatred for evil.

As far as I know, you cannot choose to become, or cease to be a psychopath. It's biologically predetermined. Palpatine, as depicted in the excelled Darth Plagueis book, clearly checks most boxes on the Hare Psychopathy list. He's doubly dangerous because he knows how to fake 'normal' human emotional responses and behave as a good person in public. And, you know, the magic lightning and telekinesis and stuff.

Of course there was good in him, at least according to the Plagueis book, at least before Hego Damask got to him. There was a chance that he'd have led a more mundane life, though still a life of power and privilege, but perhaps he'd have found love, or focussed his passions on smaller scale, lesser evil projects.

 

There's a lot of things the Bible never says. The Bible isn't the last word on the archetypes and themes it deals with. I for one am not "drag[ging] religion into this," because I'm not really interested in talking about what any single organized religion has to say about the Devil.

As for whether Palpatine is "good" in any way, I think it's obvious that he is. We're all aware that many good people love Palpatine as a character. The things they love about him are the things that are good about him.

 

As othes have said, I think he definitely felt something for Anakin so I don't think I need to say much on that.

I know most would disagree but I do think that he felt something for Maul too, even if it was only a little bit. He definitely cared for Maul more than he did Dooku, even seeming hurt when Maul betrayed and lied to him in the clone wars. I remember a comic(can't remember which one), where he said that he planned on Maul always being by his side up until his sudden "death" by Obi-wan in the phantom menace.

I think for both Anakin and Maul, Palpatine was almost a father figure to them and he knew this, while at the same time seeing them as his possessions.

 

In the Darth Vader comic (issue 20) he does allude to Maul being "a loss" whereas Dooku's death was planned:

"A long, long time ago, there were many Sith. We rose up against the simpering Light... We warred with the Jedi... And lost as we also warred against our own kind. For a thousand years we have kept to the shadows, not afraid of the Jedi -- but ourselves. The Dark Side is powerful. It is too powerful. The weak will meekly stand in regimented Order. The Sith... One Master. One Apprentice. For generations. Generations building to me. I am the first to restore the Sith to their rightful place in the Galaxy. As we planned, the Jedi thought the Sith were gone, we were so inconsequential. The pomp of the Jedi was insufferable. I set the Galaxy aflame, my apprentice. I have purged my weakness and impurity. From the ashes, we would have a new age. I learned from the mistakes of my forebears, I used those who were not Sith to achieve my aims. And my Apprentices? Darth Maul was a loss, but Darth Tyranus... He was a proton torpedo. He served his purpose and was gone... I had a... Superior candidate in mind... We did it, Vader. The Jedi destroyed! The Republic a shattered corpse for me to resurrect as a puppet! And you Vader -- the boy transformed into the man you were destined to be... And then Mustafar. Your failure there jeopardized everything. There was so much more to do. In these most vital decades, I needed an Apprentice with might. I sought, of course. I found candidates -- but none sufficient. Some with vision but no ambition. Some fractured souls who I moulded to serve a smaller purpose... But all insufficient for the legacy of the Sith. For the Empire to live, Darth Vader had to live. I turned to Scientists. The best. The boldest. The ones more akin to the Sith than their Jedi-like peers. Cylo was among them."

 

My impression from their short appearance together in TPM was that Sidious and Maul were close. They mentioned their revenge. It seems like they were actually fighting together for a common cause, as opposed to Maul being a mere puppet of Sidious.

 

More than just evil, I think Palpatine has a different set of values, and most of his evil deeds are caused because he really doesn't see them as wrong. He honestly sees himself as superior to non Force users and entitled to dispose of them, and of anyone who goes against his plans; but I get the feeling that he also sees himself as a redeemer of sorts, bringing their deserved end to the Jedi and avenging the Sith. Also as part of a wronged legacy: for Palpatine, all is right and how it was always meant to be, now that the Sith are ruling the galaxy and the Jedi are gone.

About Vader, he has the potential to surpass him. He is the gloriousness of his whole plan, incarnated. He chose the Sith over the Jedi and actually helped ending them, for years. I do think there is some genuine interest in him, at least because of all the time he devoted to mold Anakin into what he is...

 

What Ian McDiarmid is postulating is that Satan had an understandable reason, albeit a selfish reason, for his evil ways. He was once an angel who fell from grace and his vicious, terrible deeds afterwards are that of revenge against God.

Whereas Palpatine does evil things, he does it for pleasure. Like it's a drug. He is not motivated by hatred, but by greed. Revenge is a professional goal set forth by his predecessor but Sidious himself makes it clear it's just a means to an end for more power.

Either that or McDiarmid is making it clear that he believes that Palpatine is born evil, with no excuses explaining his malicious behavior.

 

I take Palpatine at his word and believe he is at least partially motivated by a desire for peace. Of course, it's a seriously twisted version of peace which manifests itself as a rigidly ordered society completely under Palpatine's despotic control. But the fundamental impulse, the desire to bring order to chaos, to bring meaning to confusion, to see one's own will reflected in the change it effects on the universe--all that energy can be very positive when channeled in other ways. That's how civilizations are built. It's how science is done. It's how art is created (is it any wonder Palpatine is so passionate about art?).

I think that's the kernel of good that lies at the heart of Palpatine's megalomania, and I think Ian McDiarmid was very astute in identifying Palpatine's love of art as his most redeeming quality. I think George Lucas also hints at this insight when he compares himself to Palpatine in his capacity as film director, calling himself "the Emperor of the universe" who has ultimate control over every aspect of his creation. I think this is why viewers have such a genuine fondness for Palpatine as a character, responding to his passion, his ingenuity, and his creativity in the same way they admire those qualities in more positive role models.

Obviously Palpatine is an evil character, but he's an evil character we love to hate. I think most of us would admit that, in a strange way, we like Palpatine. Right? And why on Earth would we like someone who has absolutely no redeeming qualities? At the end of the day, the OP's question is a deceptively easy one to answer. Of course there's good in Palpatine. We all instinctively recognize and respond to it. It's just buried way, way, way deep down, to an extent that it might be impossible to ever retrieve it in its benign form.

 

Indeed, the whole series is called "Star Wars" because there is a war going on against Palpatine's tyranny. But if it were left unchallenged the galaxy would be at peace, albeit the iron-fisted peace of a despot.

 

In a way, Ian McDiarmid does make playing a villain of pure evil feel like a work of art. I recall that he was giddy of the idea of playing a villain with no redeeming features, as if it was some kind of a challenge for him. Where as Vader is motivated by anger and pain, Palpatine is primary motivated by impulses and greed.

It's almost as if Palpatine is self-aware that he's evil with no freudian excuses and decides to run with it because why not, at least he's being honest with himself.

 

I don't think Palpatine is self-aware that he's evil. I don't think Palpatine even believes in evil. I think Palpatine only believes in himself and his own will to power. He views himself as an overman who must destroy in order to create, just as an artist must, in a way, destroy the subject of his work in order to create his own interpretation of it.

If you pay attention, you see even Palpatine undergoes a sort of fall from grace as he falls deeper and deeper under the spell of his own machinations. The darkly beautiful artwork of his offices gradually gives way to the cold, bare gray of his computer control room, which eventually grows to become an entire throne room, completely devoid of any aesthetic trappings. Even Palpatine has some humanity left to lose, and he does lose it.

Palpatine isn't being honest with himself. Art seemed to hold some value to him. But by the time of Return of the Jedi, there is no art in his life. Is he really satisfied with what he's become? A shambling corpse which can only find joy in the pain of others? Maybe Darth Sidious is happy with that existence, but I suspect there was an actual Palpatine who was lost along the way. He might still be in there somewhere, gnawing at the back of Sidious's skull, asking where his sculptures are.

There's an old story about the Devil which was often related by Joseph Campbell. The story goes that the Devil was cast out of Heaven because he refused to bow down before man when God asked him to. But he didn't refuse out of spite for God. He refused because he loved God so much that he could never bow down to any being he viewed as inferior to God. For this, he was banished, and his eternal separation from his beloved is the pain which drives his unimaginable evil.

If we view art as the contemplation of the sublime, which is the essence of what we might call God, then it can be said that Palpatine, in a sense, loved God more than anything else. Yet he had nothing but contempt for man, God's greatest creation. And so his love for God drove him to destroy that which God loved. This may be the core of Palpatine's damnation. He yearns for the sublime as found in art, yet he is blind to the sublime as manifested in the world which that art reflects. His acts of "creative expression" only serve to destroy the beauty of the world which would be his salvation.

Palpatine's greatest work, the Empire, is ultimately nothing more than a reflection of himself, isolated from all other subjects, stripped of all other individual wills. It lacks the transcendence of true art, which is an expression of the All, of the interconnectedness of all things. This is why his throne room is so bare, sterile, lifeless. Because he refuses to love man, he can never know the love of God. This is why art disappears from his life, and he is left only with cold steel.

 

Yeah, ''nobody is ever truly gone'' but Palpatine's percentage would be something like %0.01 , while Vader's was %5-10, thus it was possible for Luke turn him to the light-side. No one could turn the true Sith Lords to the light-side, except for Vader, which is why the Jedi's approach was always to ''destroy the Sith we must.''

Also, no one is completely immune to the dark-side, everyone has a dark side as we've seen from even Yoda;



So it's same for the both sides, everyone can be turned to the light-side and the dark-side.

 

Not sure about the style, but the condition of his hair is impeccable.

 

I would say that Sheev Palpatine is Neutral Evil with slight Chaotic Evil tendencies. This means that he does the Evil Things primarily with a view to his own gain, and although he does not do the Evil Things purely for the sake of Doing The Evil Things, he does exhibit a measure of manic glee when doing the Evil Things. Long story short, he does not merely do the Evil Things, he enjoys doing the Evil Things. And someone who enjoys doing the Evil Things is pretty much irredeemable, because why would a person want to stop doing something they enjoy?

Darth Vader, by contrast, is more Lawful Evil, doing the Evil Things as a bad means to what he thinks is a good end. And although they can be formidable opponents, because, to quote an old saying, "there is nothing so dangerous as a true believer", Lawful Evil individuals also carry the most potential for redemption.

 

There's a bit more flexibility than that. You can have devils (LE fiends) who really enjoy what they do, and conversely, you can have CE characters who are out "for the greater freedom" but do very evil things (which they don't enjoy) in the pursuit of maximising freedom.

But I'd agree with the general point, that Vader doesn't enjoy evil deeds the way Palpatine does, and that Vader is much less interested in personal gain than Palpatine is.

 

He was soooo good being Evil!


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Another aspect of the prequels that I loved was its treatment of Palpatine!
His grandfatherly portrayal is refreshing, when compared with his overly
cartoonish, cackling Emperor persona. So much so that I'm actually quite
convinced that Palpatine does, indeed, have some good within him. "They"
always say that you know how kindly a soul someone is, when viewing them
around animals, or children. Watch Palpatine around Anakin!


The evidence presents itself.

 

Ian was outstanding! Palpating is the ultimate evil....he makes Snoke look like a child!

Prequels did a awesome job on his rise and I love it


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I think that, if Padme hadn't been around, and if Anakin hadn't been injured so badly at Mustafar, that Palpatine and Anakin would have had more of a father / son relationship, rather than your standard Sith master / apprentice "power struggle" relationship that we see in the OT. If you watch the way Palpatine and Anakin converse in AOTC, you can imagine this casual friendship extending past ROTS, had events been a little less tense.

Anakin finds out that Palpatine is a Sith Lord and offers to join him, disgusted with the Council and the events of the Clone Wars. Palpatine crowns him Darth Vader, Order 66 happens, but if Yoda and Kenobi had been wiped out, and Anakin remained a fit young man with potential, rather than a burned, walking respirator, I think Palpatine's fondness would have been genuine. Until later, of course...

 

Does killing a Sith count as a good deed if you’re a Sith yourself?

 

“From a certain point of view,” yes. Palpatine in Episode III says that after the Jedi Purge and his plans take effect, “we will have peace.” Like the Romans, Palpatine thinks he can bring peace to the galaxy via the empire. But his intentions are undermined by the fact the Dark Side is not about peace but choas, as seen in Force Lightning.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux sums up Palpatine’s path, “the best intentions pave the way to hell.”

 

Depends on the context. If you’re killing the Sith because you realize what they (and you) are doing is wrong, then it’s a good deed.

If you’re doing it for power and the ability to become the Sith Master, then no.

 

Agreed. Vader killing Sidious yes. Sidious killing Plagueis no.

 

From a certain point of view, Vader merely did the rule of two and what Sith do, slayed his master.

 

Darth Bane might disagree on that.