So this is a paper from the olden days of fantasy conventions and is about the moralty Terry Pratchett has for his witch characters, some of my favourites.
Croft first describes what they think is the theory, and then how different witch characters live it out. Granny Weatherwax is such goals lmao. What an icon!! Pratchett describes with magic as being out of the ground, not the sky (what the wizards are doing). the trio of Granny, Nanny (Ogg) and Magrat Garlick are the classical trio of the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone apparently.
Oh dear, this is a good piece for pulling out excellent Pratchett Quotes…
Granny “hated everything that predetermined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human”.
Granny, again: “I ain’t having elves here. You make us want what we can’t have, and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves. […] So bugger off.” (hmm, could substitute capitalism for elves couldn’t you. this is an excellent indictement of lots of things! “you make us want what we can’t have”)
“cross Granny Weatherwax on a bad day and you’d be like blossom in the frost.” ahhh pratchett’s prose is so good lmao.
“Them as can has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices”
omg farah mendelsohn shoutout!! haha (for audience context, Farah used to live in Stoke and we met one time when i was like 17 and they were giving away lots of interesting academic books whilst downsizing. had a nice coffee and chat, though their dogs did bother me a bit).
so according to fjm the ethical system of discworld is based on valuing the individual, and their right and responsisibily to make their own decisions. Croft suggests that “Nice, Good, and Right” are shorthands for different ways for a witch to deal with this moral imperative
Pratchett often has his good characters (lowercase g) often embody just one or two of these, in contrast to a more traditional protaganist. furthermore, his good characters always have the potential to be evil, but never vice-versa.
the system
nice
Don’t try to make hard moral choices, just try to get along in life offending the fewest folk. Granny says this is the opposite of witchcraft. Involves accepting people with all their flaws, accepting them as fallible fellow creatures. “A Nice person has insight into the weaknesses of their fellow creatures and makes allowances for them. Granny, on the other hand, has a way of expecting others to be able to handle whatever burden she gives them.”
good
Good people tend to follow a moral system imposed from outside, and make their choices thus. Explored in the Watch Novels where Vimes has to find a path between Goodness and Rightness (he never even considers niceness haha, except when maybe with his family). The imposition of good can be a great evil :(
right
Right means seeing past Niceness or Goodness, and it means making decisions that are just but not necessarily merciful, morally correct but not necessarily pleasant. Ooh here’s a good quote: Granny “always tried to face toward the light. But the harder you stared into the brightness, the harsher it burnt into you until, at last, the temptation picked you up and bid you turn around to see how long, rich, strong and dark, streaming away from you, your shadow had become.” gosh.
“Right is giving people what they know they need, what what we think they ought to want.” (this is making me think of that oldest of problems, do i give the homeless guy my cash? (i say yes, because i expect ppl to make their own right choices)) trying to do right by people is often hard, but it is the right goal. its a direction, a way to face, a guiding question… like anarchism.
Witchery is the willingness to make the Right choices and take the consequences. I want to be a witch, then!
Apparently Rightness includes making decisions “so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made” okay well i straight-up disagree with that haha. I guess making decisions can be hard, maybe it is better to take on that burden for others, from time to time? But that gets dangerous. That’s what the thinking about it first is for!
hmm maybe i shouldn’t allergically avoid authority. maybe its okay to be in charge for some things, a little bit.
But being nice can be useful for getting away with Rightness (Nanny Ogg). Hmm.
Obviously one shouldn’t base their real-life ethics on fictional ethics made up for witches (they don’t even really use magic! just authority! yuck, authority.)… but one should aim to do right by others, and this framework poses a good set of questions I think.
The good life: living beautifully, doing Right by others and doing adventerous and dangerous things with your friends. I need to read Pratchett again…
“You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end of it was hard work and self-denial”, alas.