PROLOGUE: Where Have All the Heroes Gone (and Are They Nearer Than You Like to Think)? 

Consider two quotations from the wiki *Fandom*; which do you believe to be the outlook of the Villain, and which outlook is the Hero’s point of view?

A. “This world is rotten, and those who are making it rot deserve to die. Someone has to do it, so why not me? Even if it means sacrificing my own mind and soul, it's worth it. Because the world... can't go on like this. I wonder... what if someone else had picked up this notebook? Is there anyone out there other than me who'd be willing to eliminate the vermin from the world? If I don't do it, then who will? That's just it: there's no one. But I can do it. In fact, I'm the only one who can. I'll do it. Using the Death Note, I'll change the world.”

B. “It's not a sense of justice. Figuring out difficult cases is my hobby. If you measured good and evil deeds by current laws, I would be responsible for many crimes. The same way you all like to solve mysteries and riddles, or clear video games more quickly. For me too, it's simply prolonging something I enjoy doing. That's why I only take on cases that pique my interest. It's not justice at all. And if it means being able to clear a case, I don't play fair, I'm a dishonest, cheating human being who hates losing.”
Now, you might think, of the latter, that, “At least he’s honest. He does not believe he’s doing the right thing, but that is why he’s not deluded. He must be the Hero.”


Think you have the answer? Then consider two more quotes from this same website, yet another work of fiction:


C. “I am not crazy! I know he swapped those numbers, I knew it was 1216; one after Magna Carta, as if I could ever make such a mistake, never! Never! I just... I just couldn't prove it! He-he-he covered his tracks, he got that idiot at the copy shop to lie for him. [...] You think this is something, you think this is bad? This, this chicanery? He's done worse. That billboard! Are you telling me that a man just happens to fall like that? No! He orchestrated it! Jimmy! He defecated through a sunroof! And I saved him! And I shouldn't have, I took him into my own firm! What was I thinking? He'll never change. He'll never change! Ever since he was nine, always the same! Couldn't keep his hands out of the cash drawer! "But not our Jimmy! Couldn't be precious Jimmy!" Stealing them blind! AND HE GETS TO BE A LAWYER?! WHAT A SICK JOKE! ...I should've stopped him when I had the chance! And you, you have to stop him! You--“

D. “I will land on my feet. I will be okay. But you? Far from it. You two... you two are soulless. Jimmy, you can't help yourself. Chuck knew it. You were born that way. But you—one of the smartest and most promising human beings I've ever known, and this is the life you choose. You're perfect for each other. You have a piece missing. I-I-I thought you did it for the money, but it-it—It's so clear. Screw the money, you did it for fun! You get off on it! You're... you're like... Leopold and Loeb. Two sociopaths. (...) Oh, you know it's true, you just don't have the guts to admit it. […] I’m going to make it clear to everyone, because I’m going to dedicate my life to making sure everybody knows the truth... believe it... you can’t hide who you really are forever.”

It seems as if both men express the selfsame sentiment, identical intent, and indignation; it is even that the latter verifies and vindicates the former. How is one the “Hero” and the other just another “Villain”?

If we are to answer this, let’s travel back in time to a more reasonable age, in Ancient Athens, where our modern drama was first born. What follows is a quote from Aristotle as he writes in the *Nicomachean Ethics*:


“Again, it is unreasonable to think that someone who does unjust actions does not wish to be unjust, or that someone who does intemperate actions does not wish to be intemperate. If a person does what he knows will make him unjust, he will be unjust voluntarily. […] For how the end appears and is determined — by nature or whatever - is the same for both the good and the bad person, and it is by referring everything else to this that they do whatever they do. […] If, then, as we suggested, virtues are voluntary (because we are in some way partly responsible for our states of character, and it is by our being the kind of people that we are that we assume such and such as our end), vices also will be voluntary; they are on the same footing.”
"Plato, chill. Now check this out..."

How alien this line of thinking is to those “postmodernists” who say, “the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions”!! From the point of view provided here by Aristotle, all those people must be Evil, for they’re ignorant, by choice, of what Morality requires. Being “blameless” through inaction or possessing a “good nature” never is enough; one has to *act* in such a way as to *improve* both Self and one’s Society. So, given that all righteous action is a change in character as well as World, two principles become apparent:


  1. 	That one cannot remain as one once was, however charming, and
  2. 	One has to seek to change the World.


To fail in either of these precepts is an Evil in the Classic sense. We must pursue a righteous end, of our conscious will, if we are to be truly Good. To fail to act in the defence of innocence, in opposition to the guilty, is a sin, and letting our World descend in ruin is to be a party to its ruin. We are obligated to take action, even if that means we have to sacrifice the “beauty of our Souls”.

It follows, then, that in confronting a dilemma we are always:


  1. 	Choosing in between conflicting goods and evils,
  2. 	Doing something *necessary*, thus

  3. 	Pursuing righteous ends, or leastwise ends we have identified as Good, by conscious willing.
In this context, our Ethics may be “relative”, yet never in a pluralistic and subjective way. It’s rather that “the Greater Good” is just “the lesser of two Evils”, and by choosing such a lesser Evil we advance the Good. No action can be independent of the ends which it pursues nor the intent of one who acts. The ends don’t justify the means, yet what determines if the means are just must always be implicit in the ends. We cannot reach the Good “by any means”, but by those which are truly *necessary* towards that End. Morality is relative, yet it is only in the sense that what is greater in its Good or Evil must be *weighed against* what’s lesser to determine its true value.


How, then, do we vilify those characters who seek the Greater Good, who thus do harm to guilty parties, and who thus protect the innocent, achieving all of this by exercising “lesser evils”? How do we then glorify their adversaries, whose intent is *not* concerned with Justice nor with Law and Order, but who seek to stop “the villain” out of fun, regardless of the consequences for the World, by any means that they elect, regardless of the Ends?


At any rate, if we concede that sometimes we are wrong about the nature of the Good, it only underscores the fact that there *exists* a Good that one *is wrong about*. Denying the existence of objective Good and Evil is a folly which is inconsistent with the seeming wisdom that “the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions”.
Aristotle does say, of the person who’s unjust, “It does not follow, however, that, if he wishes, he will stop being unjust and be just.” However, he goes on to say: “For neither does the ill person become well like this; but he is ill voluntarily, by living incontinently and ignoring his doctors, if that was what happened.”


In other words: yes, you can mean well and be Evil. Yet that is because you *chose* a path of foolishness, resisting the advice of your superiors. Once you have chosen that, redemption may be lost to you; you reap just what you sow. Light Yagami can be a Hero, but Jimmy McGill cannot. (It also follows that *Chuck* is the hero in the latter story, as L is the villain of the former. This is only *aggravated* by the fact that L and Jimmy both admit that they’re no heroes.)
It is obvious, therefore, that such a line of thinking is True Evil. Even if the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions, it is not the only Road to Hell, and, of the two, the well-intentioned Road remains the high road. At its ultimate extreme, denial of these facts becomes a willful ignorance of Good and Evil altogether, a renunciation of the principle of Good Intent, resolved to let the World fall into ruin. From this base perspective, either Good does not exist, (so all things are permitted) or it’s never known to one who does it. 


Yet who knows it, then? If I surrender all my conscientious moral reasoning to the authority of God or to some angry mob, I am a party to the worst, most thoughtless crimes in history. We can’t confine morality to some secluded Noumenal Domain wherein we need no longer think about it. Aristotle said it best: 


“A person is thought to be great-souled if he thinks himself worthy of great things — and is indeed worthy of them (anyone who thinks like this when he is not worthy is a fool, and no one who lives in accordance with virtue is foolish or senseless).”


In other words: strive to be great, and do not be an idiot. The former is the Hero, and the latter is another Villain.
Let us hope we find the courage to remember this, before a Death Note falls into the World or Goodman comes up out of it.

**[({R.G.)}]**

[Works Cited:]

Aristotle. *Nicomachean Ethics*. Trans. Roger Crisp.

"Chuck McGill". *Villains Wiki*. https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Chuck_McGill

"Howard Hamlin". *Heroes Wiki*. https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Howard_Hamlin



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