Not really. While they do seem to be involved in diplomacy, and occasionally rooting out the bad guys, they tend to follow their own goals more than those of the government. The do seem to be "on call for the Republic, but I never got the impression they worked directly for the government.
The are defiantly a monastic order. Living in a temple (yes the place is called the jedi temple), forbidden material possessions, and emotional entanglements. Snatched away as babies, and raised in a mystical cult. How are they not monks? Think of them a a combination of the Knights Templar, and the Psi-corps.
The force seem to be the major driving religious idea in the Galaxy. Even those who aren't jedi have been heard to say "may the force be with you." Since the jedi are able to draw actual power from this force, they are devoted to studying, it and it's nature. Central to their belief seem to be the idea that strong emotion, anger, love hate, will automatically turn a force user to the dark side, so these emotions are suppressed.
Though even among the jedi some seem to have different ideas Qui-Gon Jinn, is apparently and advocate of a different view of the force than the mainstream of the jedi (this comes from material related to the movie). Again this constant study, and disagreement of the nature of the universe (or gods, or the force) is characteristic of a monastic order.
From the movies, and related materials not the EU though) we can gather that the jedi believe:
The force exists.
Power can be gained by channeling tis force.
It has a light side and a dark side.
Strong emotions lead to the dark side and must be suppressed.
Nute Gunray had apparently never encountered Jedi before Ep I and did not know what they could do. He’s the head of the Trade Federation, which got its dispensation directly from the Senate, so one would presume he’d been to Coruscant.
If there were so few Jedi to go around that even important political persons had no personal experience with them, then it is likely that Joe Schmoe would have known only wild rumors about them.
I suppose the Jedi are pantheists of a sort. The Force, at any rate, is never characterized as a sentient volitional being. They invoke it but they don’t pray to it.
I took that as a (forgive me) Prime Directive type thing. “We aren’t here to tell the locals how to run their planet,” along those lines. Which is, if you think about it, exactly the opposite of the Empire.
Wait, that would make the Jedi a kind of Libertarian Party. Maybe that needs re-thinking.
The Jedi do free slaves - in the Republic, where slavery is illegal. Tattooine is not in the Republic, and a couple Jedi starting a slave revolt on a sovereign planet would create a huge interstellar incident, at a time when the Republic politics were already extremely delicate. Plus, they were already in the middle of a vitally important mission, what with escorting the queen to the emergency session of the Galactic Senate, so as to prevent the hostile overthrown of her lawful government.
But Luke’s birth was the catalyst for the purge of the Jedi (in Vader’s mind). And his Uncle had no love for the Jedi. Why would he know anything substanstial about The Force?
And besides that, he knew about Jedi Knights (he knew his father was one). So while he might not have known the details, I’m sure he at least heard of it.
Plus, if I remember correctly, Tatooine was actually in Hutt space. The Hutt are immune to Force powers, and thus would probably have very little direct interaction with them. Thus, Luke not knowing much about the Force would make sense.
Like a few others in this thread, I’ve always seen it as a “huge galaxy, few Jedi” issue. If I were in their position, having been told for 20 years that people I’d never even met were actually frauds, I’d believe it.
It’s made clear that the Jedi have been losing numbers for a long time. They once had multiple training centers across the galaxy, but by Episode II, Yoda personally trained every Jedi. This has very bad implications for the Jedi order.
Secondly, Yoda has been remaking the Order in hsi own image for centuries, and been pretty sucessful at it, to. He’s the one who makes the rules, and that’s the problem. The Jedi are becoming rigid and dogmatic and generally useless, not actually helping people unless they’re officially allowed to.
Look at Episode I: Qui Gon could have gotten his parts, grabbed Anakin’s mom and run off the planet. But he was breaking the rules as it was and wound up facing censure for it. Faced with Anakin, Yoda basically welshes and tries to make the entire issue go away. That bit of stupidity on behalf of himself and Windu kept going on. The two incredibly wise and powerful tomfools wound up crucifying the galaxy because they were too busy being perfect to realize that Anakin was just plain important.
I’m actually more sympathetic to Anakin than Yoda and his crew anyway. Anakin, and Obi-Wan, were just plain better people than most of the Jedi. They actually cared about doing the right thing. Obi-Wan was much more than a model Jedi, and Anakin had real (if horrifically acted) love and was prepared to sacrifice a lot to protect those he cared about. The other Jedi walked around like Vulcans with laser-swords, having forgotten why they did anything anymore.
Some people think Palpatine was responsible for the rise in the Dark Side which weakened the Jedi. I think Yoda was responsible. He’d kneecapped the Force by removing all that was actually good about it. He only cared about some abstract ideal of civilization but nothing human really mattered. He and the Jedi spend most of their time in a literal Ivory Tower? Palpatine may have nailed the coffin, but Yoda put the galaxy in it.
Now, I can understand why Yoda might do what he did. It surely seemed “better.” After all, surely the greater good is served by purely rational decisions, right? Emotions and attachments only could judgement. There’s some stuff to admire in his philosophy, but it can never be anything more than a very shallow stoicism.
I’d say it was a mix of both. To use the analogy from above, the Jedi had become a police force for the Republic instead of a monastic order. They were out in the world trying to help so much they didn’t take the time to sit down and figure out when and why they should be helping.
You brought up Yoda and Mace, and their stories are part of why I like the novelisation of Return of the Sith so much; you get a bit from their perspectives, and you can see where they went wrong. Mace is going about preaching non-attachment, and being worried about Anakin because of his bond with Palpatine, but he admits himself that he has a similar attachment to the Republic itself, though he doesn’t recognise it as being bad. And Yoda gradually realises (especially towards the end) that he fucked up pretty badly in his handling of things.
The Jedi’s problem at the end of the Old Republic was that they’d taken their ideas of what was good and the will of the Force, applied to it to practical behaviour (as in protecting the Republic) and then got themselves stuck on it instead of reconsidering depending on the situation.
I’d tend to disagree. They do talk about the will of the Force, not in the sense of there being a being behind it, but at least the idea of intent. And I would certainly say they pray to it; what is “May the Force be with you” but “Go with God’s grace”?
Bingo. Anakin did restore balance to the Universe. The Jedi had obliterated what they called the “Dark Jedi”, or Jedi who also used the Dark Side in their quest for peace and enlightenment. They destroyed (almost) the Sith for just being evil, which was probably for the best.
But thousands of years of Jedi rule was a stagnation of the Force, and Anakin set it to right again, by essentially wiping the Jedi order out, setting in motion the chain of events wherein his son would re-found the order with more sensible and evenminded rules.
I was under the impression that Tattooine is a part of the Republic, just such a backwater planet that the Republic couldn’t be bothered to actually enforce its laws. Looking at the script, however…
… it looks like you’re right, which would also explain the fact that the planet is basically ruled by crime bosses.
I do wonder, however, having never read any of the novelizations of the movies - do they ever give a good reason as to why they left Shmi in slavery on Tattooine once they had rescued Anakin? It’s not like they hadn’t already broken their Prime Directive by meddling enough to liberate Anakin, and it seems totally monstrous to have left Shmi with Watto
