Better to be Loved or Feared?

Homelander resolves the perennial debate between Smith and Machiavelli

Machiavelli says it’s better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both. Adam Smith disagrees. The Boys star-spangled antagonist proves even the most vicious among us seek the affection of our fellow man over his subjugation.

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith explains that people “pursue riches and avoid poverty… to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation” (I.iii.2.1). When we strive, we are not doing so in order to achieve the material objects of that effort per se, but to become “the object of the observation and fellow-feeling of every body about [us]” (I.iii.2.1). According to Smith, we don’t just wish to become respectable but respected.

Earlier today, I stumbled upon this clip from The Boys. In short, Starlight threatens to release footage of Homelander so damning that it would destroy the cult of personality he had spent decades building. Homelander frankly acknowledges that he’d “lose everything” and “have nothing to lose.” He then describes the horrors he would inflict upon the public if Starlight were to cost him their love.

For Homelander, the decision is binary: he can be loved or he can be feared. If Starlight withholds the video, he’s loved. If she releases the video, he’s feared. There’s no middle ground. Yet, despite being an amoral sadist with the omnipotence to overawe all earthly powers, he would prefer not to. In Smith’s language, he would prefer to elicit sympathy than wield the aegis.

If someone as abominable as Homelander prefers love to fear, then it must be so for those men who are only commonly vicious. However, what about those uncommonly virtuous men? Are men who are secure and proud of their respectability concerned with being respected by the masses? Rand thinks not.

To be continued…