- Thread starter
- #41
Mindfire
Istar
But isn't the usual objectivist opinion of the Scrooge/Cratchit relationship simply that Cratchit is lazy and irresponsible and therefore deserves the low wage he is being paid?
But isn't the usual objectivist opinion of the Scrooge/Cratchit relationship simply that Cratchit is lazy and irresponsible and therefore deserves the low wage he is being paid?
Regardless, I think I've come to realize that "objectivism" isn't the right name for what my villain personifies. Perhaps what I've been searching for is "Machiavellianism" or "Nietzsche-ism"?
I know next to nothing about Objectivism as preached by Ayn Rand, so I don't consider myself qualified to comment on it. I do dislike "libertarian" capitalism, which people stereotypically associate with Objectivism, but that's more to do with my general dislike for capitalism than anything particular to Objectivist philosophy.
Well, there is a word - 'evil.'
I just don't think there's ever been a philosopher who advocated for that.
while that attitude is evil, what I'm looking for is a word to describe what flavor of evil it is. Which in retrospect is probably a better description for what I intended this thread to be about: "evil flavors". There's something of a difference, at least in the story that results, between the evil propagated by a fascist and an anarchist for example.
Well maybe there just isn't a word for what I'm trying to describe and what my villains so often exhibit: that grasping, egotistical, callous, maleficent spirit that sees in other human beings nothing more than tools for constructing or fuel for sustaining the the great machine of ambition and war. The spirit that motivates a man to "save humanity" by destroying it.
I think you might be putting too much stress on philosophy, since no philosophy can really be evil as it is little more than a method for understanding the world around you. An evil person can have objectivist trappings, Nietzschean trappings, etc. and still not be a real advocate for the actual philosophy, just as one could have the trappings of Platonism, Positivism, Epicureanism, etc. and do evil.