Is Lord Vader accountable for his actions Morally?

Something I have often wondered... is Lord Vader actually accountable morally for his actions? He was a young man who actually stated out doing the right things as a jedi Knight, But was mislead by the Emperor. I actually submit he is NOT accountable for his actions as he has simply forgotten who he was as a result of being manipulated.

Lord Vader would be accountable for his actions, no matter if he was being manipulated. Every man makes his own decisions. He slaughtered the Sand People out of anger and the selfish desire to get his mother out of there, rather than leaving in peace, knowing his mother had become one with the Force and therefore would always be there with him. He made bad decision from the start, such as marrying Padme.

One can argue that the cinematic Jedi should've allowed marriage, but they did not and he knew that. It caused undo stress and led him down a dark path to keep this secret. He made this decision knowing what would come of it. He went against the Order. It is a slow decent, but a decent nonetheless. This eventually ended up being the crux of his pain as it led him to the darkest of paths all for the sake of someone he should have never allowed himself to love. If he could not control his actions around her then she is a poison to him and he should have separated himself from her.

So yes, he was accountable. He made his bed, and he got to sleep in it.

Perhaps there was hope for him, and in the end we see this, but he was his own man and no one forced him to do anything.

Agree totally, Anakin knew what he was doing from the start, he always had a certain arrogance that he could accomplish more than the Order and chose to go down his own path in more ways than just Padme and his marriage. Yoda was right about him in his initial assessment 'Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.' ... The order were right, he should not have been trained... It was certainly not helped by the Clone war and the fact that Jedi became warriors, not peace keepers... Barriss Offee was also right... Sad really...

(Note: As you can see from my profile, I'm an Anakin fan... )

The same way we are all accountable for our decisions, even if we "may not have made them if we had all the facts" or they only "seemed like a good idea at the time"

They might be mitigating factors in judgment, but the responsibility is still there.

Suppose you are all correct, now that you mention it..... Lord vader would be accountable for these actions. Still I must admit to something of a "Soft spot" for this rather tragic Fictional person... He did seem to mean well....

To be honest, in the movies it looks like he was taught pretty much nothing except to keep his mouth shut, keep things bottled up, and swing a saber......... either he was taught nothing, or he learnt nothing.

So I see your point, if because of his prior experiences as a child slave he was unable to be jolted out of his childhood worldview then ultimately the Jedi have a lot to answer for in allowing him get so qualified, and indeed in a position of so much power to be abused. But I don't think the young Anakin as acted was so damaged, so I'd have to assume what he experienced during the Clone Wars must have fueled an inability to have a more appropriate attachment to his Mother, such that her brutal end should not have caused his fall. Still, at the end of the day his actions were his own no matter the subterfuge involved, as that doesn't pardon him but rather just additionally makes those who aided or abetted culpable. Blame need not be transferred, when it is more accurate for it to be shared.

On Vader, Anakin will still be the Jedi that destroys the Sith. Maybe the will is hard to accept sometimes but if you're going to talk about it so comfortably when things are beautiful , you have to be ready to talk about it when things get ugly. If you're going to relate Anakins plunge into darkness to your own life , and see how it was secrets, hatred and anger that lead little Ani to darkness. His crush on Padme , his hatred for slavery, and his feelings of inadequcies for not saving his mother. You'll see he wasn't punished for his actions, but by his actions. A noble truth the Buddhists have also observed.
But because the force had willed him to be born a slave, to have been introduced to Padme, and to have had his bound Mother die in his arms, we are allowed to govern our own part of the force , and Ani governed his down the dark path. What the sith don't tell you is that passion can be corrosive, and the thirst for power is unquenchable.

This seems like a matter of point of view.

You do not understand the perspective of the antagonist until you understand how he or she views the world as the protagonist.

Brother Barbarian wrote: Something I have often wondered... is Lord Vader actually accountable morally for his actions? He was a young man who actually stated out doing the right things as a jedi Knight, But was mislead by the Emperor. I actually submit he is NOT accountable for his actions as he has simply forgotten who he was as a result of being manipulated.

He is not accountable, given that he is a fictional character. It's Lucas' fault. :laugh:

Archon wrote: This seems like a matter of point of view.

You do not understand the perspective of the antagonist until you understand how he or she views the world as the protagonist.

this is true as a matter of fact so long as people dont confuse "understand" with "excuse"

it is definitely helpful to understand ted bundy and how he viewed the world, rather than ONLY judge and condemn him as a sexual predator and a murderer

sure, he was the protagonist from within his own frame if reference, but that his frame if reference was one which allowed him to be a sexual predator and a murderer, so even though we understand him, that doesng mean that we excuse his behavior or talk about it as if it werent the right thing to do to capture him and keep him in prison

or as if his frame of referrence was equally valid to those of us who are not sexual predator/murderers

Ob1shinobi , Relentless. I see Archon's point of view , seeking understanding. I agree with Ob1shinobi, acting on it. To the queston , to begin answering it, you'd have to tell me, Barbarian, by who or what would be holding Anakin's "Moral" decision accountable ? If it, the condemning party, did decide to hold him accountable. Also, to put the question in a situation, imagine you were Obi-Wan, and you learned Anakin's new point of view, what do you do ?

Funny this came up today- as I drew this funny little design to illustrate:

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.."

And also, for us this is a great topic of reflection, for "hindsight is always 20/20". Echoing Adder, and like Archon said, if you were in his shoes, would you have done anything different?

If he weren't accoubtable would his redemption have nearly as much meaning?

He wasn't ready for the training, but this doesn't absolve the moral responsibility. But it also means the responsiblity doesn't lie solely on him. It was redemption for his masters as well. I don't recall a word of condemnation from either Yoda or Obiwan.

Oh, boy, so many points made... Before I address the OP, a few things about the prequels... I do not believe that the takeaway was that Anakin should never have disobeyed the Order or fallen in love or married. His downfall was that the Order indoctrinated him into thinking that his genuine feelings are wrong and mustn't be there. This is what made him conflicted inside and what led him to submit to the one person who seemed to understand and support him at the time - the chancellor. I'm tempted to get political here since this mirrors a lot of what is going on on a bit larger scales in recent years very well but that is perhaps a discussion for another time... Now, while I appreciate that Lucas is a poor writer at best and that for all we know his message might have been that the Order is sacred and that Anakin betrayed it because of datass, my takeaway was that the Order and the Republic were corrupt and broken beyond repair, profoundly unprepared for as few as two people talking outside of their immediate surveillance. Especially the Jedi are portrayed as not merely flawed but outright rotten because of the position they have been put in for so long and frankly you can see the remnants of that in the Original Trilogy's portrayal of Ben and especially Yoda, too.

Speaking of the OT... And this is coming from someone who in recent years has grown to be somewhat of an OT purist... Again, probably unintended by Lucas himself, the original tale was ripe with layers upon layers of symbolism and while there is a simple story on the surface to tie it all together, the sheer depth of the messages and nuances can hardly be overstated. Darth Vader was what remained of a man after the Empire had feasted on him. He was stripped of most of his humanity by the time we see him, rendered, to put it in Ben's words, "more machine now than man", and of course that, too, is not only meant literally in that Darth Vader essentially exists because of cybernetics replacing essential body functions and big parts of the body itself, but also symbolically in that he is not so much a person with dignity and honour, but a tool, an instrument of the Empire's might. His relationship to the Death Star shows vividly how the two are competing for essentially the same position of the Emperor's public face and his ultimate superweapon, one with the magic of life, the other with technology - a conflict mirrored within the body of Darth Vader himself, too.

So is Lord Vader morally accountable for his actions? Well, this depends. Clearly there was a spark of humanity left in him through to the end, so he was never fully a tool to be used at his master's discretion. But how much of a machine does one have to be before one is clear of responsibility? How much human is enough to qualify as fully human? Are there levels of humanity, can one be more or less human than another? Can this change over time? To the extent that Star Wars presents us with these questions (and I'm happy to say that not all of them were put there intentionally), it doesn't exactly direct us to answers the way the prequels did. There is a reason we bring up Campbell so often when we speak of Star Wars, because at the end of the day, those questions of what is the measure of a man, what are our duties towards each other and towards ourselves, are a typical theme in myths of this sort. This is what they are designed not so much to answer as to address and to make us think about.

No matter how bad his past was Anakin clearly via the movies and EU material was shown to have felt bad. That means no matter what excuses or mitigating factors we try to put forward we can see he knew it was wrong. He was guilt-wracked and felt hesitation every step of the way right up until he was in the suit. Even then he hated what he was and what he did but he just gave up trying to find a better way until his son reached him.

So while he is a sad character and one who we can see was failed by those he trusted, he was still in the end responsible for what he did.