The Most Villainous Philosophy

[Mindfire]

How do you go about thinking up your villains? Obviously they need goals and whatnot, but I'm thinking more along the lines of personality and beliefs. How do they think? How do they rationalize their actions? That sort of thing. When it comes to shaping the villain's mind and motivations, what's your favored method? What philosophy best lends itself to villainous behavior?

Personally, I favor objectivism for this purpose, with a dash of materialism/naturalism. In my opinion, this is the ultimate one-two punch of philosophical villainy. Once you believe there is no power greater than yourself and that all other men are nothing but meat, all bets are off morally speaking.

 

[Sheriff Woody]

I just create characters who have a different point of view. Some may lack scruples and morals, but their goals must make sense from their point of view. They are the hero in their own mind.

 

[Ireth]

Fae villains tend to be easy to write -- they never feel the need to justify anything they do. XD Any action they take freely is rationalized by one of two notions: a) "I'm bored and this looks fun/interesting." b) "This will work to my benefit and/or that of my Court." Or both. Needless to say, my human protagonists get pretty ticked off at them for their lack of justification. It's their sheer unpredictability that makes them so dangerous. To most of the Fae, especially the Unseelie, the majority of humans are little more than playthings to be toyed with and then abandoned.

 

[Graylorne]

My Scarfar villain is in fact no more than an ordinary Northern jarl under a foolish king, who thinks he can do it better and starts a rebellion. Very historical. He has a bad eye for choosing his personnel, though, and hires a bunch of war shaman who are truly bad and work with their own agendas. They ruin his reputation and turn the land against him.

My Revenaunt villains are the truly depraved 'crazed priest' kind. Vessels full of human vice. They are corrupted by a Goddess who wants the universe destroyed to build her own one instead. She made the villains mad, powerhungry, jealous etc. With the main antagonists I show how they got this way. None of them were nice people to begin with, but I describe their fall.
They rationalize their actions with the thought that everybody is going to be wiped out anyhow (our universe was a terrible mistake), so what does it matter if some die a bit earlier. Ofc every one of them believes the Goddess will save them (singular, not plural), because they're better than all the other fools in their Order.

 

[Xaysai]

I've always enjoyed villains who do bad things because they truly believe they are right, just and good. A difference in matter of perspective if you will. Villains who think they are the good guy are often times the best bad guy!

 

[Amanita]

I don't really have a "villainous philosophy" because as far as I'm aware of, most philosophical appraoches can be used to justify both Good and Evil depending on the interpretation. Jeremy Bentham's writings have put me off most, but I have to admit that "Objectivism" doesn't really play a role as a philosophical position on German universities. Therefore my knowledge about it is limited to things I've gathered from the internet which probably aren't too reliable.
For me, one of the most evil things is considering an entire group of people worthless because of race, poverty, gender etc. Therefore that's why I tend to have my villains do this. I'm avoidung sexist villains though because I'm too emotionally involved in this subject and therefore I don't think I can portray it properly without forcing my opinions on readers. I have societies with different gender roles but I prefer to have good and bad people of both genders coming from all of them.

My main villainess wants both power and revenge and most importantly doesn't value human life at all. She's not a sadist or anything but she doesn't really have a conscience and doesn't mind killing.
She especiall hates the main character's people because they tended to persecute magic users and give women little respect. According to her beliefs the men there deserve to die because they're evil anyway and the women are better of dead. Besides that, many of them are very poor and living under bad conditions which leads to "better of dead" as well in her opinion. Therefore she tends to test her weapons and terror plans on them first telling herself that dying for her goals was the best thing that could have happend to them becaus it's given their lifes a purpose.
She wants revenge against her own nation as well though because she's been treated badly by their security or so she thinks. (Actually because she wasn't obeying orders during a war she was involved with and caused severe trouble for her people through this behavior. She still doesn't grasp that though.)
She manages to seize power in a corrupt country and doesn't mind ordering terrorist attacks against another nation either though because the people she's in charge of now want revenge against them for past wrongs.
She does not kill her own supporters for small mistakes and she's also making a serious effort to improve the living conditions of the people she's in charge of. That's mainly for selfish reasons but I hope to show that way that people do have a reason to support her. Something which is missing in case of many fantasy villains.

 

[Penpilot]

Well I usually make my villains at least in part right. I try to make it if the reader were put into the same circumstances the path the villain takes would be a legitimate and honest choice. This makes rationalizing a lot easier. I make my villains conscious what they're doing may be considered evil but they do it anyway, because they believe they're right. Each evil deed is weighed and chosen, but understandable. They don't do anything cruel, but only what's necessary in their eyes to achieve their goals.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I tend to approach villains as a combination of ambition, narcissism and lack of empathy for others. I like my villains to have standards, so they are often honorable to some degree, rarely cruel for no reason (though they may be cruel for specific reasons) and usually rather proud. I tend to strive to make them entertaining and in some way respectable.

I wouldn't go as far as say they consider themselves heroes, but they will have some grand ambition that they want to achieve and do not particularly care about anything or anyone else else.

I've always enjoyed villains who do bad things because they truly believe they are right, just and good. A difference in matter of perspective if you will. Villains who think they are the good guy are often times the best bad guy!

One of my all-time favourite bad guys is Tai-Lung from Kung Fu Panda, because he literally considers himself the hero of the story. Not just the hero of his own story, but the hero of the story period. And the great thing is that you can look at his backstory and character arc in a three act narrative structure - the first act was him growing up an learning how to fight, the second act was his years in prison, and the movie is the third and final act where he makes is great comeback. So from his perspective, he is literally living through this epic tale about himself.

Note that he doesn't necessarily consider himself a good guy, because he doesn't consider being "good" to have anything to do with it. He's simply the protagonist, and anyone standing in his way are antagonists. He believes the world already owes him a great destiny, so naturally he doesn't feel he needs to be a better person.

I don't think a villain needs to consider his actions to be good, as long as he can justify them in some way: "I deserve to succeed in my ambitions. My enemies deserve to be destroyed."

 

[Feo Takahari]

I'm a hardcore Utilitarian, so naturally I loved Bioshock. Evil Objectivists? Makes sense! Then along came Bioshock 2, a game about evil Utilitarians, and even if it wasn't quite as well-written, its villains made just as much sense.

I think everyone has something to gain from, at least as an experiment, writing one story in which their own philosophy forms the basis for the villain's ideas. But from there, branch out to write about whatever sort of villains you want. Fanaticism comes in infinite varieties.

(Just please don't write an entire society of people who're evil for no other reason than to be evil, and who can therefore be slaughtered en masse without guilt. Please.)

 

[Anders Ämting]

Well I usually make my villains at least in part right. I try to make it if the reader were put into the same circumstances the path the villain takes would be a legitimate and honest choice.

I personally don't like my villains actions being determined by their immidiate circumstances, because usually my villains are the ones forcing the circumstances in the first place. I don't think I could write my villains reacting like normal people in extreme circumstances, because the fact that they are not at all "normal" is what makes them villains in the first place.

Rather, my approach is to ask myself: "If I was immensely powerful, had a goal I prioritized higher than anything, and didn't consider other people to be important... how would I act?"

I had this one villain who's entire motivation was that he couldn't experience human emotion. This was not, I should stress, what made him evil - he could still be a good person in a purely intellectual sense. Rather, his desire to understand what an "emotion" is was the reason he became a villain, and being "evil" by normal person standards was just more beneficial for that endevour.

 

[Rullenzar]

When I create my villains I start by making what happened to them. Most heroes are shaped by the lives they have led and experienced and so, the same concept can be applied to villains. The questions that need to be asked when making villains IMO are; What type of life did they lead?
Who/What did they lose?
How would they intersect with your MC?
Do they have pshycological trauma?
Do they have a powerful standing?
Has their standing in society corrupted them?
Do they have morals? Have these morals been twisted? Why have these morals been twisted?
Why do they believe their way is more sound?

The list goes on but, answering just a couple of these and putting them together can start to shape personality and beliefs.

 

[Steerpike]

I agree with those who say you can make a convincing villain, or good guy, using any philosophy. Utilitarianism can be used to justify great evil. I think it is in some ways easiest to use Utilitarianism as a root for an evil philosophy because it ultimately disregards the autonomy of the individual and uses human beings as a means to an end. Objectivism isn't inherently evil, in fact I don't think it lends itself to evil very well unless you mischaracterize it. Objectivism doesn't allow for the subjugation or mistreatment of individuals because it is meant to elevate ideals of justice, integrity, honesty and so on. In other words, if you want to make a truly villainous objectivist character, he won't be really be an objectivist any more, at least not as Rand would have defined once, and since she created the philosophy I'll go with her statements of the philosophy as a guide. The evils she left behind in Russia were justified along utilitarian lines.

To present a hypothetical, suppose a villain had arranged for 1000 people to die and would only stop the killing if the MC executed an innocent child. For purposes of the hypothetical, assume that if the child dies the 1000 people will be saved, and if the child does not die the 1000 people will not. The objectivist MC cannot execute the child. Under a utilitarian approach, the answer, arguably, is to execute 1 to save 1000.

Regardless of which philosophy you subscribe to, if you approach it with a ham-fisted attempt to villainize an opposing philosophy with a broad brush I think readers are likely to see through it. The villainous characters in such stories quickly become caricatures, and that's not good for the story.

 

[Mindfire]

Actually, I think the objectivist response would be, "Kill the lot of them. Why should I care?"

 

[Wanara009]

My stories don't have true 'villains' because I don't believe "Good vs. Evil" (I personally believe in the philosophy of "Knowledge vs Ignorance" and "Balance between Order and Chaos"). Rather, the antagonists in my stories are people who had the goal that interferes/work against the goal of the protagonist. When I do create villains, I want them to always have sympathetic side ala Genghis Khan (Genghis genuinely cared for his people and wanted them to live in the best condition, but he looked down on anyone else with utter disdain).

Example: The main antagonist of my current story "The Warrior and The Healer" is the king of a nation facing a social turmoil that might lead to a revolution that will certainly end in a bloody regicide. The protagonist is working to actually make the revolution happens so the country will be weakened and more susceptible to outside interference from the protagonist's home kingdom. The protagonist doesn't see that he's doing anything wrong because he is blindly loyal his country while the antagonist is simply defending the stability of his nation (and also his and his family's life).

 

[Shockley]

Actually, I think the objectivist response would be, "Kill the lot of them. Why should I care?"

Not that I have any drive to defend the Objectivists, but by-the-book (that book being anything Ayn Rand wrote, naturally) Objectivists tend to define themselves as pacifists. Rand could relish in killing off a character in a book, but she was very strictly non-violent in real world situations and even opposed American entry into World War II after Pearl Harbor.

That said, in my honest opinion, I don't think sincere contemplation on morals, ethics, etc. can result in someone becoming truly evil. I really buy into the idea that evil is fundamentally an error, really nothing more than an absence of the good and knowledge of the good. In much the same way I don't buy that evil, with a strict definition, can exist in humanity. We do bad things - very bad things - but I'm not willing to condemn anyone as evil - just in a state of error.

There are some people (Hitler, por ejemplo) who are so bad that we could define it as a human evil, but I still think it boils down to an error (a racial theory common for the time mixed with industrialized killing techniques) that could have been corrected. I think had even someone like Hitler devoted time to studying ethics, morals (in essence, philosophy) he would have had no trouble coming to many of the same conclusions about morality and ethics that 99% of people do when they ask these questions in a serious, thoughtful manner.

So in my mind, the most villainous ideology is a non-philosophical or anti-philosophical movement. Rabble rousing, appeal to the basest instincts of humanity, etc. Or, to use a simpler term, politics.

 

[Mindfire]

Not that I have any drive to defend the Objectivists, but by-the-book (that book being anything Ayn Rand wrote, naturally) Objectivists tend to define themselves as pacifists.

Right, so passively allowing people to die from, say, starvation is okay, but killing them is a no-no. Please. This is just primeval barbarism with a thin veneer or dishonesty to make it palatable.

And that's what makes objectivism, or rather objectivism's ultimate logical implications if we must be technical, such a great villain-creator. Once someone is willing to sell out the world for their own selfish whims, while simultaneously viewing others as weaklings and moochers, the stage has been set for some spectacular feats of villainy. And while Rand may not have intended her philosophy to be used this way, in reality, that's how it would be used if anyone actually tried to practice it consistently. (Or as consistent as humans have the capacity to be.) I have lurked on objectivist boards and seen some astounding comments. I know this to be true.

 

[Jabrosky]

I believe most, possibly all, evil in the world stems either from selfishness or an inflated sense of personal superiority over certain others. Actually the former could be considered an outgrowth of the latter, since selfish people consider their own wants and needs "superior" to those of everyone else. Anyway, a lot of evil behavior would never come to pass without dehumanizing the victims as less worthy individuals who don't deserve the same rights as their oppressors. Dehumanization provides rationalization for evil actions. I don't mean to say that any sense of self-worth is inherently evil, but too much of it explains a lot of evil.

The main villain I am writing right now is the sort of rich and powerful individual who resents having to share some of his wealth with the more destitute, working-class members of society in a time of economic crisis. He accuses the heroine (the ruler of the country) of tyranny when he is in fact the less compassionate and altruistic character in the equation and fails to see that he owes his own privilege to the working class's economic support in the first place.

 

[Steerpike]

Mindfire:

You don't understand Objectivism. There's probably not a single villain in fantasy literature that would be an Objectivist, because it would be extremely difficult to do. If you called your villain an Objectivist the educated reader would realize quickly that you failed to do your homework.

Utilitarianism, on the other hand, can be used to justify a great deal of evil because the justification comes down to how you frame the cost versus benefit. In the hypothetical I posted above, a Utilitarian might go either way and have a Utilitarian justification for it. For an Objectivist, there is only one answer - they can't execute the child.

 

[Steerpike]

Not that I have any drive to defend the Objectivists, but by-the-book (that book being anything Ayn Rand wrote, naturally) Objectivists tend to define themselves as pacifists. Rand could relish in killing off a character in a book, but she was very strictly non-violent in real world situations and even opposed American entry into World War II after Pearl Harbor.

The only guy I know personally who is essentially a practicing pacifist is an Objectivist. And a good guy, I might add. He contributes more time and money to charity than just about anyone else I know. I believe he adheres to Rand's own view regarding the use of force, which is (in her own words about Objectivism):

" It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. "

 

[Steerpike]

And while Rand may not have intended her philosophy to be used this way, in reality, that's how it would be used if anyone actually tried to practice it consistently.

This is nonsense. As I said above, I know someone personally who practices the philosophy, and since he doesn't approach it that way at all, your statement is demonstrably false. If you're taken in by comments on an internet message board, then I say again that you haven't done your homework and an educated reader would see that. If you are going to utilize a philosophy as a source of evil in your writing you ought to at least understand it first. I've seen comments by self-proclaimed Christians that are pretty hateful and/or "astounding," but I have enough knowledge not to confuse their sentiment with the actual teachings of Christianity.