I want to get Yas Forums’s opinion on the ethics of the egoistic champion of master morality, Sakura Kyoko!
I understand Kyoko to be a great refutation of libertarian and Darwinistic modes of being. You may be a powerful, cold and completely rationalistic individual, even a true John Galt, but the challenges that Kyoko faces through her arc will inevitably shatter your table of values. >(1) There is the chance that you will care for something other than your self and your pursuit of status, power and capital (keep fighting or be destroyed by the system). For Kyoko this happened when she met Sayaka, saw her naive self reflected in her and began to care for something greater than herself. >(2) You may face age, weakness or simply unfortunate circumstance, you may stack everything in your favor and work through the system entirely, but in the event of not being at the top of your game, bad luck, or a black swan event you may lose your purpose, everything you worked for, or even become a slave. Alternative ethical systems move beyond these material conditions and into the realm of the ideal, giving you religious faith or a higher purpose like the one that Homura moved towards in her Nietzschean struggle with fate. >(3) The appearance of someone stronger than you (or believing yourself to be on the top of the food chain and realizing that you are not). This unfortunate truth is revealed to Kyoko when the truth of the witch system and the realization that Sayaka’s curse is irreversible is exposed to her. She does not even think to continue to fight for the futures of any other magical girls. When she realizes she cannot have what she wants she simply self destructs and leaves others to clean up the pieces (shades of the boomer generation echo here).
Through Kyoko's example one can see that egoists and Darwinists are trapped in the hollowness of their pursuits and stuck in a pathological cycle of convincing themselves that the things they value (grief seeds or capital based on fiat money) will bring them satisfaction, while repeatedly sacrificing other sovereign individuals to beings higher in the food chain without even asking why. They delude themselves into enjoying themselves in a brutal and disgusting system with no way to look beyond it. In some cases they may actively perpetuate the system, because it is the only thing that gives them meaning. In other cases when they realize what they really are, the system will happily turn on them and end them, just like the magical girl system drove Kyoko to destruction. This tragic scene is ironically punctuated by Kyoko finding God in her final moments and pleading for a happy dream.
Overall, I still believe that Kyoko's ethics are healthier than Sayaka's Deontological slave morality. However, I now think that egoism is not the correct path for individuals looking to self actualize and find meaning in their lives. I have also made peace with the fact that I lack the will and trajectory to follow Homura’s path towards the Ubermensch, as I cannot think of any goal that I would truly embrace my suffering to achieve.
Are there any anons here that share Kyoko's libertarian view on reality that can claim that this is the correct way to move forward through life and has anyone found meaning through the other philosophies presented in this amazing show?
People who unironically think like Kyoko are either genuine psychopaths who lack the capability to feel empathy with others and are effectively speedrunning through life by maximizing material gain at all costs, or are people who have convinced themselves that they're just one more betrayed individual or ideal short of "making it" and won't stop until they do or it all comes crashing down. Either way, they don't have enough self awareness to look at a morality play about why this kind of thinking is stupid and apply it to their own situation. So I doubt anyone who genuinely shares Kyoko's point of view is capable of observing the takeaways you noticed in your post.
Ryan Lewis
Kyoko's the gay one but I always felt she'd enjoy being dicked more than Sayaka. Uhh... - Immanuel Kant
Josiah Rodriguez
kek
Jordan Clark
samefagging and pseudo intellectual tripe? Sasuga madokiddies
So who's ethical system is ultimately the healthiest to live by in your opinion? I already claimed that I cannot find it in myself to follow Homura's path, although I would instantly if I could find something that I could truly sacrifice myself for. I find it extremely difficult and against my own desires to follow Sayaka's slave morality or Kyubey's master morality cloaked in justification invoking utilitarianism. I used to be a libertarian and think just like her, but now I am doubting my own moral code.
Urobuchi literally made people schizophrenic with his little melodramatic magical girl show. I cannot believe it. It's not even a hard show to understand, but the fact its fans become like... this? Saddening. Something must be done about the state of the world to prevent such mentally fucked people from continuing to dwell on this cynical quasi-Christian pseudo-philosophical rubbish. Anime truly was a mistake.
Yeah bro we need more faggots on Yas Forums jerking off to traps and arguing about powerlevels, fuck philosophy
Luis Morgan
Threads like this one are unironically some of my favourite on here. Thank you, OP.
Ultimately, I think Homura is the most correct, though whether it can be called healthiest is another matter. I can't find the words to express it, but her sacrifice for another seems to be the most self-satisfying thing (in all senses of the term) done in the series.
Leo Howard
>trying to have an intellectual discussion on Yas Forums Huh?
Cheers OP, I appreciate the effort. But if you want an even deeper exploration of Darwinism, ethics, human nature,morality, structuralism, existentialism, meta cognition and phenomenology, i would recommend to pick up Hunter x Hunter.
I wanted to make another thread later discussing her, because she is easily the most interesting and complicated character, but I unfortunately don't think that her ethics are possible for me or for almost anyone alive today. Therefore, I just want to see what other anons think about Kyoko's views on morality and their opinions on my take on them.
Thanks user! HxH is on my bucket list as well (but it is a very long one)!
>philosophy if you mean pure abstract eurocentric ethics wank (derived from a failed western school of metaphysical exploration stemming from greek philosophy/art, because the idea that human beings aren't actually any better than animals, because of the original implication of all these stupid fucking arguments being that humans are divine beings or just somehow are inherently Different to animals, can be seen as fucking mind-blowing) combined with a piss-poor understanding of entropy skimmed from japanese wikipedia as well as absolutely no basis in scientific reality because it's a shitty melodrama filtered through various concessions to both mainstream and otaku audiences because of its utter fucking distrust of the audience to be engaged in the core story of homura (hence the immense reliance on shock and twists to cutely designed anime girls, all underlying a seemingly innocent facade, and the delegation of her arc to the final third of the anime, instead of making it the entire show), and count all of that as philosophy, then rather go read any actual book on philosophy and science, rather than have it spoon-fed to you by some dipshits obsessed over some shitty anime, go talk to any actual fucking person that isn't some idealized being formed from this terrible shit (impossible, because this is all anime, and somehow anime faggots cannot even think that people can be people, that they somehow cannot operate on idealistic systems consciously thought of 24/7) and quit feeding into this schizophrenics' obsession with this garbage. go to fucking /lit/ or /his/ if you want "philosophy". at least we can both agree a lot of anime and its subculture is shit but that's a result of the anime industry.
Luke Adams
Thanks for the read, user. I will check it out!
Connor Ross
What are your three favorite works of philosophy and your three favorite manga / anime? I am interested in how you understand the world without using abstractions, being an anti humanist (I guess you are some kind of speculative realist?) and rejecting the entire western philosophical canon (presocratics, eastern philosophy?).
absolutely based madokiddies btfo eternally for the nth time, 10 years of reading too far into gen "hackerman" urobutcher tripe. truly madoka is becoming the next evangelion.
Julian Gomez
Are you sure that Kyoko's initial libertarianism and Darwinism is refuted by the show as a whole? [One can doubt the internal consistency of such things, but let's leave that out.] While what you've said is true about what happens with her and Sayaka, I'm not sure it's consistent with the portrayal of Homura, insofar as the latter /also/ - as a matter of fact if not intention - ends up with the Darwinistic worldview.
Was Kyoko only shown to be wrong because she ultimately lacked power to rewrite the universe as Homura did in Rebellion? What if Kyoko had that power, and saved Sayaka? Would that then be vindication of her worldview? If so, are her ethics not vindicated in the character of Homura even if not in her own case?
Jace Jones
Very interesting post. I guess that would be like an Objectivist turning into a Nietzschean which is not something that I have seen explored before. I think the two schools share much in common, but that Homura (and Nietszche) ultimately believed in sacrificing others and herself towards a particular cause and ultimately embracing their suffering as a source of strength as we saw in Rebellion. Kyoko only cared about herself and Sayaka at her final moments, she couldn't give a damn about the rest of the world or their desires.
Therefore, I do not believe the refutation to be simply a question of power, but of values. Kyoko could have not placed her gem in the way of her final attack, and took Homura's offer to fight Walpurgisnacht, but she didn't because she remained true to her libertarian philosophy to the end (although interestingly praying for salvation to God, something that most rationalistic libertarians and objectivists deny exists). The objectivists define their differences from Nietszche in this article if you are interested: atlassociety.org/objectivism/atlas-university/deeper-dive-blog/4426-nietzsche-and-ayn-rand
Nathaniel Ward
Madoka has nothing to say. It has cute girls and excellent art direction. Everything else is surface level. You could have just as easily written some bullshit about the ethics of Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Evan Nguyen
I'll bypass the semantic debate of whether or not committing suicide is a form of "moving on" from Kyoko's initially presented ideological standpoint, but ultimately she had consciously decided to die while acting out the pretense of idealism because her perspective of reality could not reconcile living idealistically, and that she could no longer indulge the self-deception of her egocentric hedonism. Therein lies the key difference between Kyoko and those who would live by such an ideology: Kyoko fundamentally realizes it to be self-deception, while others more likely embrace it with full sincerity. This is consistent with the other girls in the series, who all have an idealistic bent to the philosophies they express.
I contend that Homura's worldview isn't Darwinist in the least. Darwinism implies a hierarchical connection between the strong and weak, whereas Homura has an ideological disjunction between herself and others. The concise description would be that Homura sees that good is Madoka as a matter of tautology, but is individualistic to the extent that she only imposes this reality upon herself.
Furthermore, I would argue that Kyoko's death does not indicate her wrongness. And if Kyoko had saved Sayaka, that would be the ultimate refutation of her previous worldview, because she chose to attempt to save Sayaka knowing it would end in failure in defiance of said worldview.
Dominic Cruz
Very insightful post!
I disagree that Kyoko was ever cognizant that she was engaging in self-deception. After her tragedy I believe that she was 100% content to project her will to power onto lesser beings (by sacrificing humans to familiars). Futhermore, she posseses almost no resentment towards Kyubey or the magical girl system itself. This leads me to believe that she was sincere about her ideology of treating humans as a means to an end (grief seeds) up until the moment she met Sayaka who inverted her values and led to her downfall by magical girl system (see point 1 in the OP). Think of the transvaluation of values that occured when the Roman empire met with the values of Christianity for reference.
However, taking your argument at face value do you believe that practicing self-deception while outwardly projecting master morality is a viable way to live in the modern world?
Blake Ortiz
She wasn't 100% content, and the source of discontent was loneliness. That is why she was so quick to attempt to sororize with Sayaka when she saw an opportunity for mutual empathy. She outwardly states that the revelation about soul gems does not bother her, but her actions indicate the exact opposite. Rather than Sayaka inverting Kyoko's values, she causes her to shed the veil of deceit and engage with her true values.
As for your question, it depends on what you mean by viable. It would certainly be possible to live in such a manner to old age with financial prestige, but assuming self-deception, there will be discontent as a result. To what degree depends on circumstance. Though I made a point that such practice is likely done so in sincerity, not self-deception, though I'm not sure how much that would change my answer.
