Sauron, the Dark Lord of The Lord of the Rings, is not a villain with human motives: he seeks neither wealth, nor revenge, nor even pleasure. He seeks a single thing —to dominate— and he seeks it absolutely. He forges the One Ring to subdue every other will, manifests as an Eye that watches everything, and corrupts all who brush against the power it offers. Tolkien strips him of almost everything psychological to leave only the pure drive: the will to dominate made entity. For the criminological evolutionism of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Sauron embodies, taken to a mythical extreme, something biology recognizes in many social species: competition for status, dominance hierarchies and aggression as strategies that natural selection shaped. But he also embodies, with equal force, the ethical warning that framework demands: explaining where dominance comes from is in no way justifying it.
// The theoryThe dominance that evolution sculpted
Criminological evolutionism starts from an uncomfortable but fertile idea: many human behaviors —aggressive ones included— have roots that natural selection favored because, in ancestral environments, they increased reproductive success. In Homicide, Daly and Wilson showed that seemingly chaotic patterns of violence follow predictable logics: competition among young males for status, conflicts tied to reputation, territorial defense. Dominance hierarchies are a deep trait of social species: whoever occupies the summit controls resources, access and wills. Sauron is that summit taken to infinity —he does not compete for a place in the pyramid, he aspires to be the whole pyramid, to have no other will exist except as an extension of his own—. The One Ring is the perfect metaphor for the drive toward total dominance: an instrument for collapsing every hierarchy into one. The theory explains why that drive resonates so deeply in us: we recognize in it, amplified into myth, a tendency evolution etched into species that compete for rank. But the theory immediately adds its condition: explaining a drive is not approving of it. Natural selection also shaped fear, deception and cruelty; that something is "natural" says absolutely nothing about whether it is good.
The naturalistic fallacy and social Darwinism
The most dangerous error stalking any evolutionary reading of behavior is the naturalistic fallacy: leaping from the is to the ought, from "evolution produced dominance" to "dominance is legitimate". Sauron is the limit case where that fallacy becomes visible. If we accepted that the dominance hierarchy is "what is natural", Sauron would be its logical culmination —and his tyranny, a biological destiny—. Serious criminological evolutionism flatly rejects that leap. Daly and Wilson insisted that describing the ancestral function of a behavior neither excuses nor recommends it: biology explains why the drive exists, it does not authorize us to obey it. Social Darwinism —the ideology that turned natural selection into a justification for the domination of the strong over the weak— is precisely that fallacy raised to doctrine, and it was the pseudoscientific dressing of some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century. Sauron, read from here, is not proof that "domination is the law of life"; he is the warning of what happens when someone decides that the law of dominance must be fulfilled without restraint. The same evolution that gave us the drive to dominate gave us empathy, cooperation and the capacity to say no to our impulses.
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// The subjectThe will with nothing human to temper it
What makes Sauron terrifying is not his power, but what he lacks. In most social beings, the drive to dominate coexists with counterweights that evolution itself selected: empathy, bonds, the fear of isolation, the need for reciprocity. Those brakes mean that competition for status rarely becomes total extermination. Sauron is dominance without those counterweights —pure will, without attachment, without inner limit, with nothing human to temper it—. That is why Tolkien represents him as barely an Eye: no face, no biography, no vulnerability; only surveillance and the craving to subdue. He is the narrative demonstration that the drive to dominate, isolated and absolutized, ceases to be an adaptive strategy within a group and becomes pure destruction. Evolution shaped dominance within a social fabric that limited it; torn from that fabric, it becomes the horror Sauron embodies. And yet —a decisive nuance— Sauron is not an excuse: in the real world there are no beings reduced to pure drive. The people who dominate and oppress retain the capacity to choose, and that is why they answer for what they do.
Sauron
// The crackExplaining dominance is not surrendering to it
The most dangerous crack with a character like Sauron —and with misunderstood criminological evolutionism— is to slide toward fatalism: to think that if aggression and dominance have evolutionary roots, then tyranny is "natural", inevitable, almost excusable. That slide is social Darwinism, and it is a fallacy, not a science. Evolution explains why the drive to dominate exists; it does not dictate that we must obey it, nor that whoever obeys it is absolved. To reduce a tyrant to "biology" is to hand him the perfect alibi —"I couldn't help it, it's in my nature"—, and no honest criminology accepts that alibi. The opposite crack also exists: to deny outright that biology has any influence, to imagine that we are blank slates where power and aggression have no root at all. The honest reading holds the tension: evolution gave us drives of dominance and the capacity to govern them; explaining the origin of tyranny is the best tool to combat it, not to surrender to it. Understanding why the drive to dominate resonates so deeply is what lets us build institutions, limits and counterweights that prevent a Sauron —human, this time— from reaching the top.
That Sauron lacks a face and a history is not an oversight of Tolkien's: it is his thesis. Absolute domination, with no empathy or bond to limit it, leaves behind not a complex subject to empathize with, but a void that devours everything. Evolution made us capable of dominating; it also made us capable of recognizing the horror of unchecked domination and of organizing against it. That second capacity —not the first— is what defines a civilization.
Biological determinism is the tyrant's alibi
Sauron matters because he exposes the political danger of misreading biology. Every time an ideology claims that hierarchy, the domination of some over others or inequality are "natural laws" inscribed in our genes, it is committing Sauron's fallacy: turning a drive into a mandate, an is into an ought. Biological determinism —the idea that our behavior is fixed by nature and we cannot and should not alter it— has historically been the favorite alibi of tyrants, slaveholders and eugenicists: if domination is natural, resisting it would be unnatural. Properly understood, criminological evolutionism says exactly the opposite. Daly and Wilson explained the origins of violence precisely in order to prevent it: knowing that competition for status triggers aggression allows us to design societies that reduce that destructive competition. Biology is a starting point to be understood, not a destiny to submit to. The lesson of Sauron is that the summit of the dominance pyramid is neither a goal to admire nor a destiny to accept: it is a horror that exists so that we learn to keep anyone from reaching it.
Three key ideas
- Sauron is the summit of the dominance pyramid: the pure will to dominate that forges the Ring to subdue every will. Criminological evolutionism (Daly and Wilson) explains why the drive to dominate and compete for status has roots that natural selection shaped.
- To explain is not to justify: that aggression and dominance have an evolutionary origin does not legitimize them. Social Darwinism —turning "evolution produced it" into "tyranny is natural and good"— is a naturalistic fallacy, not a science.
- Biological determinism is the tyrant's alibi. Evolution gave us the drive to dominate and also empathy and the capacity to govern it. Understanding the origin of dominance serves to combat it with limits and institutions, not to surrender to it.
Sources · further reading
- Daly, M. & Wilson, M. (1988). Homicide. Aldine de Gruyter.
- Buss, D. M. (2005). The Murderer Next Door. Penguin Press.
- Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate. Viking.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Sauron?
Sauron («el Señor Oscuro») es un villano de El Señor de los Anillos, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. He wants neither money nor revenge: he wants to subdue everything.
¿Por qué Sauron (el Señor Oscuro) se convierte en villano?
Sauron and criminological evolutionism: the pure will to dominate made entity. He forges the Ring to control every will. What evolution explains about hierarchy and status —and what it can never justify—.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Sauron?
El caso de Sauron se analiza desde la Evolucionismo Criminológico. The criminological evolutionism of Daly and Wilson studies why aggression, competition for status and dominance hierarchies are strategies that natural selection shaped in our species. Sauron, the Dark Lord of The Lord of the Rings, is the apex of that pyramid: the pure will to dominate that forges the One Ring to control every will. His case illustrates the evolutionary framework —and its unbreachable ethical limit: explaining the origin of dominance does not legitimize it. Social Darwinism, which turns "evolution produced it" into "tyranny is natural and good", is a fallacy.
