Why Leia is bad ( according to Moral Ethics)

Princess Leia. She’s strong, intelligent, snappy with sarcastic comebacks but most importantly she’s bad! If we were to look at Princess Leia through the lens of a moral ethics philosopher we would see not only is she a bad person but she’s also solely responsible for the death of over 2 Billion people on her home planet of Alderaan. 

    But why is this you may ask? After all, it was the empire who decided to target Alderaan as the test site for their battle station. So why is that Leia’s fault? Well sit down, grab a cup of cold blue milk and get ready to understand why Leia is the bad guy, according to moral ethics. 

    To start off princess Leia is a liar! Remember, the empire didn’t just blow up Alderaan for no reason. They blew it up as a threat, after Leia refused to give up the location of the Death Star plans or the rebel base. She repeatedly says she doesn’t know where the rebel base is. That of course is a lie. And that is where german philosopher Immanuel Kant says Leia would be at fault. Immanuel Kant thought it was never morally right to lie, not because it's just wrong, but because it took away people's right to make decisions. If you lie to someone you are altering their decisions based on the facts you have given them, and therefore, according to Kant, robbing them of their morality. Being able to make free will decisions is what makes us human and taking that away is a big no no. 

    So by lying Leia robbed the empire of the humanity they have, despite how little the princess perceives them to have, and taking away their ability to make a decision on their own based on the facts they have. And because Leia took this away from the empire, and therefore influenced them, Kant would say she is directly responsible for the death of the over 2 billion life forms on Alderaan.

    Now I’m sure you’re beginning to think something along the lines of “That’s not fair. Leia didn’t mean to be responsible for the death of her home world” and to that I would say, “Sounds like we are getting into “action based theory” of ethical theory. Broken down there are two types of action based theory. Your side, defending Princess Leia, for the sake of argument would be subscribed to the deconology side of action based theory. Deconology looks at the intention of the action rather than the result. For example, it doesn’t matter that Leia lied and got Alderaan blown up because her intention was to keep the rebel base safe and princess Leia ain’t no snitch. 

    Consequentialism is the other side of action based theory. Consequentialism is when we say, it doesn’t matter what you were trying to do, this is what happened and that’s what we’re going to judge your morality on. So it doesn’t matter that Leia lied to try and protect the rebel base. That lie led to the empire destroying Alderaan, making Leia just as much responsible as the empire. 

    But Leia had no choice you may be saying. Sure according to all these moral ethics Leia may be responsible for the planet being destroyed but is being morally clean more important than keeping the location of the rebel base safe? Well let's do the hypothetical thing and make Leia do the morally right thing in an alternate universe. After all she is our hero. So let's say it’s the beginning of the movie and Darth Vader asks “Where are the Death Star plans?” To that she can honestly say she doesn’t know. Sure she knows a droid has them but that droid can be anywhere by now. So after Leia answers honestly to the first question Vader thinks, if I can’t have the plans so the next best thing is destroy the people who want the plan. So Vader asks “Where is the rebel base?” Leia aware of the torture the empire will bring to the galaxy and the many star systems within it, decides to give the rebel base’s location to the sith lord. So now, with Leia giving away the base location right away, the empire no longer needs to use Alderaan as an interrogation tactic the empire heads directly to Yavin 4. One of two things happen;

    one) the rebel see the battle station enter orbit and make a quick escape (in the movie it took 30 minutes for the Death Star to clear the moon that was blocking the path to Yavin 4) 

    Or

    two) the death star comes into orbit and in this alternative universe doesn’t need to clear the moon and has a direct shot right away. Maybe a few rebels are able to get away but ultimately the empire blows up Yavin 4.

So it’s either Alderaan or Yavin 4? Sounds like Leia is responsible either way for deaths. Sorry but no! Alderaan is, sorry, was, a fully civilized planet with a society, economy, and government. Yavin 4 is a forest moon, which according to my research, has little to no civilization. After all that makes sense. No point in having a secret base with a lot of people around to rat you out to the big guys. 

    So there you have it, using Kant’s theories and other moral ethical theories it is clear that Princess Leia is more of a bad guy than the people of the empire.