Read Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough for Free Online Page A

Our Heroes will struggle in this new world, but their biggest struggle will also be the most rewarding, for it is the banner under which philosophers have always served: the struggle to find meaning itself when none is given.
    NOTES
    1 For more on Nietzsche’s critique of religion, see David Hahn’s “Sin, Otherworldliness, and the Downside to Hope,” chapter 11 in this volume.
    2 For more on Nietzsche’s response to the death of God, see Christopher R. Wood’s “Human, All Too Human: Cloud’s Existential Quest for Authenticity,” chapter 12 in this volume.

3
    JUDGING THE ART OF VIDEO GAMES: HUME AND THE STANDARD OF TASTE
    Alex Nuttall
     
     
     
     
    The Malboro appears in almost every Final Fantasy game as a very dangerous enemy, usually taking the form of a giant plant with a gruesome mouth and slimy tentacles. Its Bad Breath attack causes many status effects, including confusion, blindness, and charm. Yet, in a sense, the Malboro is artistic in its disgustingness. Furthermore, being confused, blinded, and charmed are the metaphorical states we are in when we first start to evaluate the quality of art in Final Fantasy . As players we are blinded by our biases, confused by inexperience, and muddled by poor senses. Unfortunately, we don’t have a potion of remedy to overcome these ailments, but we do have the philosopher David Hume (1711-1776).
    Hume argued that we can overcome our limitations to become good judges of art. 1 “Art” for Hume is a broad concept that included not only painting, but music, literature, dance, and so on. In this chapter we’ll broaden the concept a little further to include video games. After all, who could deny that Final Fantasy is a work of art?
    Beauty Is Not in the Eye of the Evil Eye
    Before falling back on the tired conclusion that beauty is simply in the eye of the beholder, let’s look at how we evaluate the artistic merit of video games. When we talk about general artistic qualities in video games, we applaud similar things. We think higher detail is better, as well as pretty visuals and interesting-looking 3-D models of monsters or characters. But when we look at a particular game, we may disagree entirely about whether those good qualities apply. I might find Sin’s attack on Kilika Island in Final Fantasy X to be a great example of the Playstation 2 era, whereas you might see it as far too pixellated. Although we may agree on the general qualities of a good game, we may end up disagreeing entirely about any particular instance of one. Because of such disagreement, Hume believed it is natural to seek out a standard by which we can reconcile our various sentiments. Sentiment is Hume’s term for our feelings or preferences.
    It’s odd that we should have any disagreement, though, as Hume suggested that beauty is not actually in objects. For example, the color red is not in an object. Such a statement might seem odd, but consider that when we see red, it is a sensation in our minds. The qualities that produce red are part of the physical world outside of us, but the experience of red is not. This is, of course, why people who’ve never seen color don’t truly understand what it is. The beautiful rendering of Sin in Final Fantasy X is not in the image of Sin. The object “Sin,” depicted as a giant floating creature, is just digital information translated into various wavelengths of light. It’s hard to see where beauty would be in that object, and all art “objects” can be similarly broken down in terms of their physical components.
    The next obvious place to look for beauty, then, is in the beholder—the person who sees the beauty. While Hume agreed, as a metaphysical point, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we should be cautious of misinterpreting what he took this view to mean. 2 When we say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” it is usually to end disputes or conversations about whether something is beautiful. If I say that Final Fantasy