Here’s a late night thread no one wants: what’s the most evil kind of magic (Specifically in D&D 5ed)?

The stock answer is usually necromancy. After all, desecration of a corpse is widely considered a ‘bad look’ in western ethical theory. But... is it the most evil magic?

No, of course not.

Premise 1. Mind-Body Problems
D&D subscribes to a pretty strong theory of mind-body dualism, as we can see into the metaphysical ramifications of Astral Projection and the Astral Plane.

One’s essence in a D&D world is not in the body, but the mind, which can be completely divorced from the body in multiple ways. Astral Projection, of course, but also in death. Ghosts and spirits are the remnants of a mind severed from its body by death that hasn’t passed on.

Meanwhile, a corpse that has been reanimated as a skeleton, wight, or zombie has no real life. The soul has passed on and the body is essentially a puppet beholden to the will of the necromancer. Ethics aside, it’s not functionally different from an animated object.

Higher level necromancy spells mostly focus on causing bodily death and even Soul Cage merely catches a soul temporarily. Necromancy is, in this view, the magical school that focuses on the body as a machine, rather than the embodied person.

True Resurrection is an exemption to this rule. I would go so far as to contend that since it doesn’t fit this clear pattern, it shouldn’t be a necromancy spell. Rather it should be an evocation or abjuration one like other healing spells

Premise 2. The Purpose of Souls
The soul in D&D is functionally Greek. It is the animating principle of the body. Without it, the body doesn’t becomes inert. again, we see this in the Astral Projection spell.

We also see this in the behaviour of necromantic magic that primarily effects bodies and not minds. Thus, we must naturally encounter an ethical question: is harm to the body or the mind more evil?

Premise 3. What is Evil?
D&D has bad and dumb ethics. So we’re not going to consider them at all. Instead, we will recourse to the same Greek philosophy that WotC recourses to constantly.

What then does an evil magic look like? Well, it would be one without a use case that is ‘good’. Once again, curbing from the Greeks here, we will define a good magic as having as it’s end the absolute benefit of not only the self, but the community, and, if possible, the world.

Since we have a platonic separation of kind and body, we can reason that if one of the two parts of the person is absent, the person will cease to be. And since we know that a person remains themselves without their bodies while projecting or while dead, we know that...

the soul must be the principle of personhood. Thus, damage to the body is largely immaterial to one’s personhood. Further, once one is done with one’s body, it ceases to be their concern.

(Of course, damage to a body will change the embodied person’s perception of their self, but the self in of itself is not harmed in such cases)

So, if there is going to be ethical or moral challenges to this manipulation of the dead, they would not be cosmological, but political. That is to say, the moral laws of the universe are rather permissive of necromancy because it ultimately harms objects, not persons.

Raising the dead is, in a sense, a natural byproduct of a universe that allows inanimate objects like bodies to be given a simulacrum of life.

Ethical challenges to necromancy naturally will be based not on the effect of the magic on its bodily subject, but rather based on the effects it has in a communal context.

Within a society, necromancy can produce a host of challenges to civic peace, to justice, and to the common good. Namely, desecration of graves may be anathema to civil religion and having a zombie around is likely to spread disease.

So, is this evil? It is perhaps disruptive to the polis, sure, but it could also be immensely valuable to the common good. Skeletons are less likely to be carriers of disease and thus could be employed to do menial labour for the community.

Wights and Zombies housed away from a water supply could make an effective replacement for a citizen militia. Both options free up citizens to pursue art or craftsmanship, pursuits often considered ‘civic goods’.

There is most certainly an ethical case for necromancy.

Part 4. The Case Against Enchantment
So necromancy is evil only contextually, but enchantment has no real use cases I can see that do not violate our definition of good magic. Unlike necromancy, it primarily targets not only the soul, but specifically the will.

The principle of enchantment magic is bending the will of another to suit one’s own. Even spells like Hold Person, which seemingly target the body, function to dominate the will of another by simply preventing them from successfully willing anything at all.

The will is the a key element of a person, allowing one to turn reason into action. Without it, one is little more than a puppet of the will of another. Thus, if enchantment can strip a person of their will, it is logically possible that it can strip them of their personhood.

Are you seeing it yet?

Necromancy asserts the magician’s will over inert matter. Enchantment asserts the magician’s will over the immaterial substance of another’s soul.

Working in reverse, the contextual political evil at work is obvious. A citizen without a will is not a citizen. They are a drone. The only social context this is valuable in is necessarily going to be a repressive one.

Broaden the scope back to the metaphysical and we see the truth of this. A being with no will cannot be said to be responsible for its actions. Thus, even if it’s actions are good, they aren’t the good actions of the being that preformed them.

So any metaphysical brownie points one could score for doing good while under an enchantress’s sway are null. They weren’t earned. Thus, this fact de-incentivizes magicians from using enchantment to do good for others.

Even if one approaches enchantment altruistically, one must defile the very personhood of another to do so.

Which, philosophy aside, just feels wrong to me. Am I doing a good thing of to do so I must steal the very will that allows a person their personhood?

So that’s it. There’s more, so much more, but that’s the basic argument.

Enchantment is the most evil magic because it is a violation of our most intimate being, our self.