Description: The Philosopher is one of the oldest of the archetypes. Wherever man sits down and wonders why he is here, there the Philosopher is holding sway. Whenever any man contemplates his place in the world without wondering about the world itself, the Philosopher is thinking with him. This is the Avatar of the man who thinks about the world while simultaneously ignoring it altogether.
The Philosopher is a figure for whom abstract thought is the one driving force. Only the big questions interest him – what is freedom, does fate control all things, does God exist, and many more. Philosophers concern themselves with answering the questions that plague the thinking being, which inspire metaphysical dread and uncertainty by their mere mention. The answers to these questions must be found, but they may not simply be accepted casually – to the Philosopher, all answers are suspect, and must be tested to destruction if necessary.
Philosophers have historically had strange relationships to other Avatars. They have related well to the Demagogue – indeed, many Philosophers who are aware of such things like to test their arguments against Demagogues, seeing what arguments they will come up with in an effort to disprove the thesis the Philosopher puts to them. In other cases Masterless Men have come to Philosophers to learn about the true nature of freedom, the odd pearl of wisdom has been imparted to them by a Fool, and many True Kings have taken Philosophers as their servants to impart wisdom on the nature of leadership.
Attributes: The most important thing about the Philosopher is hard thought. Whatever the question, a Philosopher can never let it go without deep contemplation. However, the questions are also ethereal and metaphysical. The real world merely muddies the already pretty murky waters of the big issues the Philosopher seeks to examine. Practicality is a foolish distraction from the process of reasoning.
Taboo: The Philosopher may never attach true importance to any subject of real, practical importance. They may think about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin until their brains hurt, but may never spend more than a few minutes contemplating what they will have for dinner. The physical is impermanent, but the philosophical is for all time. The exception to this rule is politics, where Philosophers are free to say what they like; however, they may only propose principles on which political systems should be based, never any practical solutions to real problems.
There is also another taboo, which is so hard to break it has never yet been invoked: if a Philosopher ever discovers a true answer to any grand moral, ethical or existential question, his connection to the Archetype is permanently severed. Answers confuse and upset Philosophers – how on earth can they continue to contemplate questions if people are going to go finding answers all the time? To the Philosopher the process of trying to find the answer is the most important thing. The answer itself is unnecessary.
Symbols: The statue of The Thinker is the ultimate sign of the Philosopher.
Suspected Avatars in History: Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are the three greatest of the historical Avatars. There have been many others, including John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell.
Channels:
01-50%: The Philosopher never contemplates practical issues, yet many practical solutions come from his musings entirely by accident. If the Philosopher spends at least half an hour in uninterrupted contemplation of any philosophical topic, their meandering thought processes will toss out answers to relevant questions. With the required period of hard thought and a successful roll against Avatar: The Philosopher, the Philosopher may gain a + or –10% shift on any mental skill check.
51-70%: To the Philosopher, all things are relative. What the brain perceives as ‘tragic’ or ‘traumatic’ is merely an emotional response and may be safely ignored. If the Philosopher spends at least half their waking hours in one day attempting to rationalise some horrific experience and makes a successful check against Avatar: The Philosopher, they may remove one Hardened or Failed Notch on any Madness gauge. Alternatively, if the Philosopher undertakes the same process while thinking about an action they are to undertake in the future, they may render themselves immune to any stress checks made as a direct consequence of this act. Indirect or unforeseen consequences are not covered by this mental preparation.
71-90%: While the Philosopher hates answers to truly important questions, it is necessary to gain some understanding of lesser issues to further his quest for enlightenment. If the Philosopher spends an entire uninterrupted day contemplating a single question, he may roll against his Avatar: The Philosopher skill to attain a vague answer. There is only one stipulation: the issue he is contemplating must be related, in his own mind, to a wider philosophical issue and the answer will come to him in a relevant manner.
Example: Matthew Wainwright, wealthy academic recluse, wishes to discover the cause of a series of suspicious murders which are taking place in a nearby city. He wakes up one morning, and sets the question to himself: is violence against another human being ever justified? For the rest of the day he potters around his house in a vague daze, until by the end of the day he sits down to consider his conclusion: violence could be said to be justified in some circumstances, if only to prevent harm to oneself. It therefore comes to him that the murders are connected, and are being committed to protect someone from some unknown harm.
91-98%: Practicality and the real world are no longer barriers to the Philosopher. Reason rules all things, and the laws of physics, cause and effect and numerous other ridiculous conceits are rendered entirely secondary. By sheer force of reason, the Philosopher may alter physical reality to suit his own needs. If a Philosopher can come up with a good reason why something should happen, he may make a roll against his Avatar: The Philosopher to actually alter reality to make it happen.
Example: Matthew Wainwright has gone to investigate the murders he had contemplated earlier, only to be confronted with the sight of a maniac threatening him with a gun. He reasons that he knew he was going to a bad part of town, he knew he was going to be getting involved with a murder case, and he knew he was not particularly well-suited to self-defence. Therefore, he reasons, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that he would have left the house wearing the bullet-proof vest he normally keeps hanging up in his storeroom for just such occasions. With a slight ripple in the space-time continuum events are retroactively altered, and suddenly the much-needed protection is firmly strapped on under his clothing.
Wow, this is a great archetype.
The top level channel is a little shaky – it’s functionally indistinguishable from omnipotence. Maybe take a more narrow effect along the same angle, though?
Also, seems like there’s a lot of non-Western philosophy you could include in here. Always seeking questions but never wanting more answers resonates pretty well with Zen Buddhism, and, to some extent, with Taoism, and even some sects of Sufism. Seems worthwhile to mention those, and they work well with the archetype.
Well the top level is rather powerful, I must admit. What I had in mind, however, but didn’t really say, was that the warping of reality is limited by the Philosopher’s powers of reasoning. Here is a re-written version of the fourth channel:
91-98%: Practicality and the real world are no longer barriers to the Philosopher. Reason rules all things, and the laws of physics, cause and effect and numerous other ridiculous conceits are rendered entirely secondary. By sheer force of reason, the Philosopher may alter physical reality to suit his own needs. If the Philosopher can reason out, beyond reasonable doubt, that something should be true, then with a successful check against Avatar: The Philosopher, it becomes true. This is not as simple as it sounds. The more major the change in reality, the more time the Philosopher would have to spend reasoning it out. Something as simple as altering reality so he is carrying something he owns would take barely any time at all; however, if a Philosopher wished to alter the actions of another person he would have to come up with concrete reasons, based on that persons’s character and circumstances, why they would do what he wants them to. Great power requires great knowledge, and the more the Philosopher knows about someone, the more likely it would be that he could change them. There is also a time factor to consider; many Philosophers, upon reaching the fourth channel, spent decades trying to affect major changes in everything from significant past events, the attitudes of society and even basic human nature itself. So far, every one has died of old age before they have managed to complete the process of reasoning. Remember, the Philosopher always needs time to think, and some things take more time than others.
Does that sound more balanced?
I think the rewritten fourth channel is a lot better. It’s always good to spell things out where players are concerned.
One other comment I’d like to make is that the list of historical avatars seems a little boring. You could easily have Socrates (during/after his execution) or Aristotle (referred to as ‘The Philosopher’ in Mediaeval Christendom) having been the original ascension. Conversely, they may just have laid the groundwork for someone like Siddartha Gautama (Buddha) to ascend.
Some of the other avatars aren’t really appropriate – Locke, Hobbes, Nietzche and Russel were all quite concerned with worldly things in their time. Someone like Soren Kierkegaard might be a better bet. Ted Prodromou’s comment about buddhist monks etc. bears repeating, too. Also, what about people like Timothy Leary (searching for answers to big questions and ignoring the real world)?
I stand by my list. Boring, you say? Well, that’s as may be. It may be western-centric, but that’s because I don’t know a lot about non-Western Philosophers (Ah, Confucious! He say too much.) Hobbes and Locke I stand by as they may have concerned themselves with practical issues, but both came up with broad generalisations on ‘human nature’ and neither managed to clear up any controversy surrounding government – they created more questions than they answered, which is kind of the point. Similarly, look at a lot of Philosophers who have concerned themselves with so-called ‘practical issues’ – does their work stand up to close, detailed analysis? Does it stand up to exposure to the real world? More often than not, one will find that it doesn’t.
I’ll keep your comments about Kierkegaard and leary in mind, though. They may well make worthy replacements to the list.
What You Hear:
The current Godwalker of The Philosopher is a man in Avignon. He hasn’t eaten, drunk, slept or even left his house in five years. He’s currently trying to use his fourth channel to justify why the Archetypes of The Executioner, The Warrior and The Savage should not have ascended. His goal is to promote peace and civilised behaviour in the next incarnation of the Universe.
There’s an international network of Philosophers who call themselves the ‘Cartesian Dualists’. They claim to be followers of the last Godwalker of The Philosopher – a 20 year old Philosophy student at University who accidentally starved to death while povdering the nature of the seperation of mind and body. The Dualists claim that he actually managed to use the fourth channel to enfore his Dualist views on the world, retroactively re-writing the universe to the Soul was actually something separate from the body. The Dualists believe that if they can contact his soul, they can allow him to possess their bodies and thus ensure the immortality of the (supposedly) Greatest Philosopher of all time.
I’d say that 19th century philosophy could be seen as an all-out war over this archetype. I’d suspect that Hegel ascended (kicking out Socrates), because his system theoretically subsumes everything under one principle. In other words, it explains everything, but only in vague, otherworldly terms.
After that, though, the shit hits the fan. Karl Marx was a Hegelian, but almost changed the nature of the Philosopher by insisting that His insights be both grounded in and pertinent to real life (and he was much more successful at making this happen than Socrates’ Philosopher-King). If Communism hadn’t been perverted through Lenin et. al, Marx might have made it. Another challenge came through (*grin*) postmodernism/deconstructionism, which undermined the whole concept that pretty much everyone from Socrates to Hegel had been working under. You can find hints of it in both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but it doesn’t really hit fruition until Derrida. I’d say all three of them channelled the Philosopher, but were also undermining one of its major conceptions (sort of like a contemporary duke is doing to the Messenger…)