What is Truth? - Philosophy in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood is a show that some joke about saying that it's almost paradoxically good in spite of its popularity arguing that the most popular shows are subpar in terms of quality disregarding the truth of that statement though you can't deny that this is high praise for FMA as it implies that it's a much higher in quality than its peers and part of this consensus comes from its intellectual writing so no coincidence that a show that begins with the two main characters pursuing the Philosopher's Stone has a great amount of philosophical commentary we'll talk with one of those questions in another video coming soon but today we're going to talk about a huge similarity between a theme and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and Plato's system of beliefs one thing that always stood out to me about anime in general is how they often have unique interpretations of God and Code Geass God is the collective consciousness of all humanity in Death Note gods are just mortal creatures who extend their own tragically mundane lives by stealing years off of human lifespans in Naruto God is an alien I don't know the whole Kaguya subplot always confused me but one of the incarnations that I find most intriguing is of course the Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood portrayal of the idea one of the reasons that I find it so interesting is a sort of mystery surrounding the character for much of the show it isn't entirely clear what exactly he is why he appears the way that he does in the forms that he does but honestly I think I found my answers to that nagging question for those of you that somehow don't know anything about Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood first off how'd you even get to this video what series of events in your life led you to having both never heard of Full Metal Alchemist and arriving at this specific video about the anime before any of the several thousands of other videos about it I mean no judgment I'm just genuinely curious as to how that could have possibly happened with a show this hugely successful but just to bring you up to speed Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood follows two brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric who suffered the loss of their mother in their youth and foolishly attempted the forbidden practice of human transmutation to bring her back to life with alchemy however not only failed but Edward lost his leg and Alphonse lost his entire being traumatized by their failure and his loss Edward then sacrificed his arm to reclaim his brothers soul and bond it to a suit of armor the result left Edward crippled and Alphonse trapped in an inhuman body and so the brother sought out a method of restoring their full selves now if you haven't seen Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and that summary intrigued you I'd advise that you go and watch it now as there are spoilers ahead so I rambled a bit about God earlier where does he play into all of this Edda now perform human transmutation they're both taken into the gate of truth and there they both meet God their interactions with God are both entirely separate and we don't really see Alphonsus experience but the character that sat before ed and the scene between them that we see in Episode two informs us that he is the thing that humans know as the world or perhaps the universe but perhaps God or perhaps truth or perhaps all or perhaps one and all so you sure his reference to himself using any of these names is uniquely interesting but the name that we want to focus on today is truth because when I hear that name and that the name of the realm he inhabits is the gate of truth it brings my attention to a very deep similarity to one of plato's beliefs but I'll get to that in a moment first let's take a look at the clues whenever we see truth he's in an empty dimension it's completely devoid of any visible objects except for what appears to be his physical form and the gate of truth all that we see is truths reflection of whatever character is currently visiting he's like a white silhouette of whoever enters Israel and while that's conceptually harder to distinguish because everyone more or less looks the same when you remove all their features in some cases he possesses some of the features he's borrowed from his visitors for example he's appeared before Edward wearing a protagonist arm and leg and he's even appeared before Alphonse while wearing his entire body because no one ever sees these reflections of other characters with two exceptions both times that Ed saw Al's body inside the gate of truth it suggests that these forms truth takes on are not really his own they're all truly nothing but the reflections of the desire or the hubris or the real versions of the characters who visit his plane so you're probably wondering why I named Roth's play-doh earlier well he's been one of the most influential writers in the history of the Western world the Western philosophical community is largely accepted the idea that the physical world is not a proper object of knowledge since the work of Plato and a belief that abstract concepts are not only real but valuable is called Platonism knowledge about the truth of the universe can only be extracted from abstract ideas that apply universally like science and mathematics many of you may recognize Plato's being one of those popular philosophers from ancient Greece he's well known for having been the teacher of Aristotle who has a quick sidenote was the teacher of Alexander the Great and also for being the author of forty-seven dialogues many of which feature retellings of a man known as Socrates who is Plato's teacher however instead of a modern teacher their relationship was more like that of Jiraiya and Naruto but instead of teaching the prince and techniques of fighting Socrates top plate of the principles of philosophy in a number of his dialogues Plato discusses his theory of forms also known as his division of the line a diagram of this division is being shown on screen now though in his dialogues he presents them through conversations between other renowned philosophers of the time usually framing his mentor Socrates as being the wisest of the bunch and as such as belief that the ideas Socrates poses are the ones to which Plato himself subscribes Plato talks about two worlds the world of appearances and the world of forms he believes that there is a four-fold division between gods because a society was polytheistic and believed in many gods and men the world of appearances makes up the world of men which is only a reflection of a more perfect world and is also made up of the two lowest divisions of the line meanwhile the world of forms makes up the perfect world of gods sensible things things that you can see or hear or taste or smell or touch those are all things of the worlds of appearances to Plato they're worth very little because they're only temporary sensible things will all eventually decay given enough time purely through their own nature this of course includes our own bodies from clearness perspective because all of it is temporary and subjective none of it can truly be known to be real today we live in a very materialistic world we know someone has worked because of the money they've earned which is demonstrated by the material things they buy with that money to Plato none of this matters and none of it will bring you any closer to truth or to knowledge to him the goal of man is to climb higher along the line the top represents everything good it represents knowledge it represents truth ultimately it represents God we see a manifestation of this in full metal alchemist which features a personification of God which is also known as true humans who commit human transmutation are given a glimpse of another world a world in which the truth resides they gain knowledge about alchemy proportionate to their sacrifice during their time in this other world look at the world we see every time we see truth there's nothing in it it's the home of all knowledge but there are no physical objects the seemingly empty dimension is actually full of more than we as a species will likely ever fully understand that's because the only things naturally present in the world that the character known as truth inhabits are ideas or facts which are not sensible things there are no sensible things in the world of forms only truth knowledge and whatever the human or homunculus character present brings along with them almost like a visual representation of the world of forms the world in which as Plato describes God lives even in Plato's division of the line God and truth are practically one in the same and it's made abundantly clear that truth is God throughout the series and just in case there's literally any doubt that truth is meant to be Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood God the homunculus father tries to steal God's power for his own and in the end the one who punishes him is the exact same character in the exact same world known as truth and that's to say nothing of the fact that the character himself literally identifies himself as truth and God in the same sentence there's such a direct parallel between Plato's descriptions and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood illustration that it seems practically intentional to draw further connections between the representation of truth in Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood and Plato's description there exists the Philosopher's Stone sure the Philosopher's Stone represents a highly coveted item by real-world alchemists but it's still an interesting name obviously men belong to the world of appearances according to Plato's division of the line but what about Philosopher's well he believed that philosophers were higher on the line than the rest of humanity he saw it as their duty to gaze into the world of forms grasp what knowledge they can and bring it back to educate men and improve the world of appearances we could say that alchemy operates similarly to that description an obvious example is what happens to humans who attempt human transmutation they're literally dragged into the gate of truth they gain knowledge and they're sent back to their worlds just a place philosophers with alchemists of course the process is less pleasant than Plato probably envisioned but otherwise there are a lot of similarities and all of alchemy operates in the same way just to a lesser extent every time alchemy is performed the gate of truth is involved as evidenced by Edward Elric inability to use alchemy of any sort after he sacrifices his personal Gate of truth to regain his brother Alphonsus body the Philosopher's Stone acts as an amplifier of an alchemists abilities and allows them to transmute without any sacrifice it eases the alchemists ability to grasp the truth and use it to change their world which is a direct parallel to the goal of a philosopher as described in Plato's dialogues however I also think there's a connection to truths motivations here the homunculus known as father spends the entire series attempting to gain the power of God after he fails in doing so he's personally berated by truth it seems that truths goal is to teach him a lesson in humility when Edward Elric sacrifices his own gate of truth knowing that he will no longer be able to perform alchemy truth congratulate Edward and says that he's found the answer symbolically Edward and is giving up his position as a philosopher someone attempting to climb up the ladder by giving up his gate of truth accepting his place in the world of appearances it appears that the lesson that truth is trying to impart is that humans should not aspire to be him but aspire to be themselves of course I cannot speak with certainty for whether or not her America were intended for these parallels to be drawn try as I might I couldn't find any interviews with among Gawker yourself confirming or denying any direct platonic inspiration but the idea that it could be a coincidence is kind of interesting in itself really I like to think that Hiromu Arakawa a Japanese woman of the 20th century is somehow in the same wavelength as this ancient Greek patriarchal philosopher who knows whether Hiromu Arakawa read any of the Platonic dialogues well she probably does ask her for me next time you see her hey if you liked the video please leave a like or consider subscribing stay tuned for next week's video which will be on another full metal alchemist point

Channel: Kato

Views: 3,426,033

Keywords: Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Fullmetal Alchemist, FMA, FMA B, Alphonse, Edward, Elric, Truth, God, Plato, Platonism, Philosophy, Kato, Anime, Anime Analysis, Zero And Hoodie, The Philosophy of Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood OP, What is Truth?, Meaning of truth, Alchemy, FMA Analysis, Dwarf in the flask, brotherhood analysis, Father, Arakawa, FMA Philosophy, fullmetal alchemist review, religion in anime, god in anime

Id: MohAKdL4ftE

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2017