Bill Willingham: Turn me evil once, shame on you--turn me evil twice, shame on me!

In a new interview on Newsarama, comics writer (and sometimes artist) Bill Willingham discusses many things, including Fables of course, but also why he left JSA after twelve issues (contained in the trades shown to the left, The Bad Seed and Axis of Evil). In particular, he cites issues with accommodating crossovers and editorial interference, which have bedeviled many a creative writer in the event-crazed status quo of modern comics. (See also: Dwayne McDuffie and JLA.)

I found this passage particularly interesting:

And then comes along this crossover in which the whole plot revolves around just about every member of the JSA turning evil for a couple of issues.

I couldn’t bring myself to do that because, you know, one time something takes control of you and you accidentally turn evil but it’s not your fault? That can be understood. Maybe the second time something takes possession of you and you turn evil, maybe that can be forgiven as well. But by about the third or fourth time that something takes over this person and he becomes evil, you have to ask yourself, like, well, maybe there’s just something wrong with this fellow from the beginning. Maybe he is just evil. Maybe that’s what evil is, is people that are just accessible to being taken over by whatever cosmic hobo happens to be passing through today.

This is very similar to the Kantian description of weakness of judgment and the will that I first laid out in my chapter in The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination, and again in my book Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character, coming out in May. 

In a nutshell, a person's autonomous decision-making--in which she makes choices according to moral principle, with no influence from internal or external pressures--can be corrupted, or made heteronomous, in two different ways. In the first, she makes the right decision, but has trouble carrying through with it because her will is weak; I call this "simple weakness." For example, a person may be dedicated to healthy eating, and for the most part he sticks to his diet, but nonetheless he slips once in a while. In other words, his judgment is sound, but his will is weak; this does not make him a bad or "vicious" person, but simply lacking a bit in "virtue" or strength.

A person can stay "simply weak" his entire life--and indeed, all of us are a little weak (which is to say, none of us is perfectly strong or resolute, at least not in all areas of our lives). But the worse type of weakness, what Kant calls the "impure will," occurs when judgment itself is corrupted, or when the person lets improper incentives and considerations into her decision-making itself. So the dieter who rationalizes cheating for reason based on the pleasure of tasty but unhealthy food is making the wrong decision, not just failing to carry through with the right one.

And as Kant wrote, it is the impure will that signals viciousness, since it "involves a conscious choice to be heteronomous, a surrender in the endless fight against inclination, as opposed to simple weakness, which represents merely a temporary loss of control" (Kantian Ethics and Economics, p. 59). It's also more susceptible to corruption, because once a person lets nonmoral considerations into her moral decision-making once, it becomes easier and easier to let it happen again:

The impure will involves a deliberate submission, a choice to admit the influence of inclination—as evidenced by the fact that "the calm with which one gives oneself up to it permits reflection and allows the mind to form principles upon it"—and is therefore more blameworthy than simple weakness... (ibid., quoting from Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p. 408)

Willingham could have been talking about Kant's version of the impure will when he said that when someone becomes evil once, it might not mean anything, but if he becomes evil again and again, then there's something wrong with him--"maybe he is just evil."