Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
I believe Segev's use of the phrase "evil philosophies" contains examples you are excluding but otherwise found reasonable. I think the following list is relatively safe but I do have to lead with the complicated amoral one.

1) Moral Error Theory is a philosophy that morality is an erroneous question. People that believe that philosophy, even if they don't know about it, will be driven by personal philosophies that are framed using amoral terms (ex Survival of the Fittest). If they are wrong and morality is not an erroneous question, then those personal philosophies using amoral motivations might be causing moral, amoral, or immoral behavior. This includes both the villain that says good and evil don't exist and the moral exemplar that does not believe in good or evil.

2) Mistaken Moral Theory: Ever see an evil character think their actions are the right thing to do in the circumstances? This includes the self righteous villain following the greater good.

3) Everyone draws the line right below what they do: In a moral grey area, people will rationalize excuses for whatever outcome they choose. If they are consistent about those rationalizations it will turn into a philosophic belief about why ____ is not immoral because XYZ.

4) I am special: Normally ____ is immoral, but because I am XYZ it is okay for me to do it.

5) Everyone is doing it:

6) We need to do _______ to survive:

7) What do you mean? No, _____ is not immoral:
I once played a supervillain who was so self-centeredly egomaniacal, he was both 2) and 4) at the same time, believing himself the world's eternal savior for all time so of course he thinks he is the most special person in the world and at the same time all his actions are justified in his mind because he is most special person ever to exist. He claimed himself to be above selflessness and selfishness because by being selfish he thought he WAS being selfless because to help himself was to help the universe because he thought all of reality revolved around him and thus his own excellence would somehow radiate out by example to everyone else so they would be like him. Which could lead to examples of 7) or 6) because he believed that whatever he said was true and right, so he thought he was the one who decided whether all actions were right or wrong at his whim, and whether any action was necessary could be only be decided by himself, the perfect being.

Basically he thought he was truly the absolute most perfect ever to exist or ever will and had the morality to match, it was just he was completely wrong about being perfect. If your creative enough, you can have combinations of these kinds of villain philosophies.

But 1) is the one I've seen most often in fiction though. Particularly the Survival of the Fittest idea, as its a convenient philosophy for a villain to have to make them do something pointlessly cruel in a short amount of time to establish how evil they are.