Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough (11 page)

In short, then, whether Mill would approve of the lives led by player-characters in
Final Fantasy XI Online
would depend on how they use the freedom the game gives them. They might be anything from magnificent heroes to the most wicked of villains.

So much for the characters. What would Mill think of the players? One interesting feature of Mill’s account is that it implies that there is something good about playing games in the first place. Mill regards pleasure as something valuable in itself, so simply enjoying a session of
Final Fantasy XI Online
is a morally good act. But before you get too proud about spending all night leveling your Dragoon, keep in mind that just because there is something good about enjoying yourself online, that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be better occupied doing something else. However much fun you are having, it is a good bet that you could be more effectively making the world a happier place if you were helping the needy, rather than playing games. Worse yet, you will recall that not all pleasures are equal for Mill and that the intellectually challenging “higher pleasures” are more important than the other, “lower pleasures.” How intellectually challenging is
Final Fantasy XI Online
? I suppose it depends on how you play it. Mechanically grinding your way through monsters is clearly a lower pleasure. Studying party tactics and calculating the best way to fight effectively, on the other hand, might have a better chance of being considered a higher pleasure. So might appreciating the game as a work of art, because Mill certainly regards some art as providing higher pleasure.

Of course, the fun any player gets is no more valuable than the fun gained by anyone else, so Mill is not simply going to be concerned with whether players are having a good time, but whether they are contributing to other people having a good time. Players who aid confused newcomers to the game will surely score highly by this measure. So will those who team considerately with others, being conscientious about their characters’ contributions to the group and dealing with their comrades politely and flamelessly. The lowest of the low, on the other hand, would be the griefers, who deliberately try to ruin the fun of other people for their own enjoyment. So, for example, Mill would have contempt for those who slaughter or claim monsters they do not want, who block access to Notorious Monsters, who lure monsters to places where they will attack other player-characters, who wake monsters that other players have put to sleep, or who engage in any of the other nasty tricks players have invented just to annoy strangers.

Aristotle Conquers the Elvaan

I’m not just going to find a job. . . . I’m going to be the best there is.

—Cloud Strife, Final Fantasy VII

Aristotle has yet another take on how life should be lived, and he would have very different things to say about the characters of
Final Fantasy
. He stated in his
Nicomachean Ethics
that the best existence for anything is an existence in which it is performing its function well.
⁶
A knife that cuts well is being put to good use, because cutting is the function of a knife. Thus, the good life for a human being will consist of performing one’s function as a human being well. To determine the function of something, we must consider what it does best. A knife cuts things better than anything else does, so we can tell that the function of a knife is to cut. What a human does better than anything else is to reason, so reasoning well is the function of a human being, thus a life of reasoning well is the good life for a human. Having said that, Aristotle doesn’t think that reasoning well is the only important thing in life. Pleasure is worth pursuing, and being actively virtuous is extremely important. Even wealth and friendship can be important, if only because they help us perform virtuous acts. To take an example from
Final Fantasy
, the best intentions in the world won’t get your quests completed if you can’t put together an adventuring party of allies to help you.

Aristotle believed that we could determine which characteristics were virtues because virtue always lies in the state of moderation between an excess and a deficiency in one’s character. For instance, if we are too confident, we are rash, whereas if we are not confident enough, we are cowardly. The moderate state between the two extremes is courage, so courage must be a virtue. To put it another way, imagine that you are playing
Final Fantasy XI Online
and your teammate charges every group of monsters she sees, drawing all possible aggro down on the party, whether the party is ready or not. Your teammate’s character isn’t being courageous. She’s just being foolish. Similarly, if you have a teammate who runs away from every single combat no matter how straightforward, his character isn’t being courageous. He’s being cowardly and useless. Courageous characters will be those who have a moderate reaction to danger, who don’t lightly put themselves at risk but are capable of standing their ground in the face of reasonable danger.

Before we can start a systematic application of Aristotle’s moral system to
Final Fantasy
, we have to decide whether the races that live on Vana’diel have the same function as human beings on Earth. Aristotle never met a Galka or a Tarutaru or any of the other player races, with the possible exception of Humes, if we may call them humans. We don’t know whether Aristotle would say that the nonhuman races have the same purpose that humans have or not. In
The Politics
he claimed that it is natural for Greeks to rule over foreigners, so he might also decide that it is natural for humans to rule over other intelligent species, but all we know is that we are supposed to be able to determine the function of something by considering what it does best. Does the size of the Galka indicate that its function involves physical work? Does the Mithra’s natural aptitude for hunting indicate that hunting is part of its function? Or, more disturbingly, might it be possible that a race like the Tarutaru is better suited to thinking than the Humes are? If so, would is Humes be left with any function at all?

I’m going to take my best guess and assume that real humans and all of the player races are similar enough to one another, compared to other forms of animal life, that if Aristotle got to study them all closely, he would say that they all have the same function. After all, strong as a Galka is, what distinguishes it most from the majority of animal species on Vana’diel is its intellect, so I’m betting that its intelligence is its most significant characteristic in an Aristotelian model.

Whereas Hobbes would have regarded most of the heroes of the
Final Fantasy
games with disdain and Mill would have regarded most of them with admiration, Aristotle would come to very different conclusions about the various heroes. Just for starters, he would be concerned about whether they are living lives of intellectual achievement, and this will vary a great deal from case to case. Frankly, we often don’t know very much about the intelligence and education of
Final Fantasy
characters. It is a fair bet that Sorcerers such as Strago Magus, Vivi Oranitia, and Yuna have studied hard and are learned beyond the technical details of casting magic spells. It is likewise a fair bet that poor individuals like Gau and Vaan or individuals who have devoted their lives to fighting, such as Cloud Strife and Zidane Tribal, haven’t had a lot of time for study. In most cases, though, we are simply in the dark.

There is no question that most of the heroes have plenty of virtues that Aristotle would admire. Most obviously, they tend to be brimming with courage.
Final Fantasy
plots repeatedly expose their protagonists to terrible danger. In fact, there has never been a
Final Fantasy
game that wasn’t focused heavily on violence, and the heroes usually get into more fights over the course of the game than any real people have had in their lives. The heroes also tend to be just, at least insofar as they are always opposing forces who are unjust. We might add that they tend to be compassionate toward those who need help, steadfast in their purpose, loyal to their friends, and true to their word.

These traits are not universal, however. For example, although Cloud Strife’s character evolves somewhat over the course of
Final Fantasy VII
, he is often shocking in his lack of concern for other people. He is even at first uninterested in the ambitions of AVALANCHE, despite the fact that they are trying to help the entire world. Similarly, the military cadet Squall from
Final Fantasy VIII
, while dutiful and stoic, is cold and unsympathetic toward other people for much of the game. Similarly, the urchin Vaan from
Final Fantasy XII
supplements his income by picking pockets and so cannot have a particularly great sense of honesty and justice.

Other characters will fail against Aristotle’s standard simply for having personalities that are too extreme. After all, for Aristotle, the virtue always lies at the point of moderation between an excess and a deficiency, so any characteristic that is immoderate must be a vice. What can we say, then, about the generosity of the average
Final Fantasy
hero, the kind of person who is prone to dedicating his or her life to a noble cause, even in the face of probable (and sometimes certain) death? How, for example, could the Summoner Yuna’s commitment to sacrificing her life to hold off the monster Sin be at a point of moderation between a deficiency and an excess? If that were the state of moderation, what could the excess possibly be? Aristotle would have no patience for such selfless and obsessively driven people. He would be better impressed by someone like Princess Ashe, who is at least looking to gain a kingdom, as well as rescue one.

Like Hobbes, Aristotle would show much more approval for the lives of most player-characters in
Final Fantasy XI Online
. We can’t say much regarding their intellectual lives, of course. Presumably, most Summoners and Black, Red, and White Mages have had a thorough education and most Beastmasters, Thieves, and Warriors have not. That is an assumption, however, and I cannot even guess at what sort of education is possessed by the average Bard, Monk, or Paladin.

There is much more evidence to go on when it comes to the cultivation of virtues. Although clandestine quests might show a lack of honesty and criminal ones might reveal a lack of justice, the average quest involves helping someone (a mark of compassion) or righting some wrong (a mark of justice), almost always in the face of physical danger (a mark of courage). Better yet, the player-characters don’t usually seek to help others in an immoderate way. Far from being naive idealists, the characters tend to keep their own interests very much in mind as they perform their heroic acts. They fastidiously collect gils, loot, and fame, while choosing foes who will best give them the experience they need to improve their abilities. In fact, the idea that one must improve one’s own position in life in order to better be able to help others would be very familiar to Aristotle. He might not have heard of leveling up in order to defeat ever more terrible threats, but he did stress that one can only practice virtues when one has secured the practical means, whether that comes in the form of wealth, friends, or the right set of skills.

Of course, those who choose to advance simply by grinding through hordes of monsters will rate less highly. They might have courage but can hardly be said to concern themselves with virtues like compassion and justice. Rather than acting in moderate self-interest, they seem to have become excessive in their greed, living only to increase their wealth and power. Such self-centered characters would be scorned by Aristotle even more than the obsessive altruists of some of the solo games would be.

That only leaves the players to stand trial. Like Hobbes and Mill, Aristotle would have little to say about the players in situations that don’t involve other real human beings, although I’m sure he would advise that video games should be played in moderation, a standard that many of us spectacularly fail to live up to. His advice for how we interact with other human beings in the virtual world would be the same as for how we interact with them in the real world: behave virtuously in accordance with moderation. Some of Aristotle’s prized virtues, however, simply can’t be practiced by a real human in a virtual setting like Vana’diel. We can’t genuinely be courageous, for instance, because we aren’t really in any danger. Nor can we show real temperance to the imaginary food and drink of the game world. On the other hand, we can still treat other people with compassion and justice. Anyone who helps other players complete a quest, gives them loot, or simply provides information to help them orient themselves in the game is genuinely cultivating compassion. Anyone who refuses to do things such as cheat other players in virtual trading, take part in the forbidden trade in real money, grief others, or in any way deceive other players when arranging to team with them can likewise be said to be genuinely cultivating justice. As always, acting with moderation is the mark of finding the right balance. If you give away all of your loot to others, leaving nothing to equip yourself, then you have passed beyond the moderate state of compassion and have reached the excessive state of self-denial. If you refuse to go back on your promise to help a friend hunt Bogys on Qufim Island, even though a friend in the real world has suffered a tragedy and needs your help, you have gone beyond the moderate state of justice and reached the excessive state of rules-worship.

Doing Things Your Way. Ghaa Haah Hah Hah!

Now I’m doing things my way! Ghaa haah hah hah!