User:Sol Pacificus/Assassin philosophy

"You cannot know anything. Only suspect. You must expect to be wrong, to have overlooked something."

―Malik al-Sayf to Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad

Throughout its long existence, the Assassin Order has opposed tyrants and oppressors alike, priding itself as a "champion of the poor" and downtrodden, while assuming ideals such as egalitarianism and freedom closely associated with the concept of natural and human rights. Though these principles may encourage the view that the Assassins are, like their sworn enemies the Templars, founded on a distinct set of ideals, at its roots, the Assassins' philosophy is grounded not in idealism, but in rationalism and epistemology, with the unique viewpoint that before one is to devise a specific code of ethics or belief system, one must first approach the world from a chiefly scientific standpoint, untempered by biases or such products of subjectivity as morality or faith. To an Assassin, knowledge should be obtained first and foremost through strict objective reasoning and critical analysis, but this method is disrupted by each individual's fundamental dependency on his or her own senses to acquire information. These senses can and always will be deceived in some measure, or otherwise will never convey the precise intrinsic quality of an object, and consequently are rendered unreliable, with the end result being that "true" or "full" objectivity is, as Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad argued, unreachable. The driving theory behind the Assassin's creed is thus that "one can only know that one knows nothing," a handicap corroborated by the Precursor Juno, who cited this as a defect of humans.

From this skepticism arises the Assassins' maxim that "nothing is true, everything is permitted," a relativistic assertion designed to provide an answer to the vastly disparate convictions of what constitutes the ultimate solution for humanity's ills: that there is no Truth and any attempted application of a singular ideal on a universal scale is first and foremost unrealistic. Moderation is therefore an inherent principle of the Assassins, who shun extremism as destructive to society, for to treat one belief as absolute is to not only surrender oneself to the irrationality of blind faith, but as well to alienate and disrespect the perspectives of inevitable dissenters. These perspectives must always be taken into account, not only in one's outlook of society and life, but also in aspects of one's work and problem-solving, which manifests in the Assassins' emphasis on precision and stealth, and has been referred to by Assassins such as Altaïr and Pierre Bellec as "variables."

The second component of the creed, "everything is permitted" is an extension of this principle of uncertainty. Because the quantity of variables is infinite, it follows that theoretically, anything is possible in nature itself, for as long as there is no absolute answer to any query, no impossibility can be ascertained, and therefore, one must remain vigilantly open-minded to the unexpected and unknown, without ever drawing a conclusion without being conscious of that conclusion's plausibility of error. Beyond being a further vessel for pluralism, Assassins are taught to be mindful of pretensions and their own capability to achieve either great dreams or great destruction.