Video Games and Philosophy Episode 1: Final Fantasy VI

This post serves the singular purpose of marrying my two favorite hobbies: video games and philosophy. As denoted by the title, this is only the first of many to come, so I thought I’d start with a game from my childhood.
If you were a geek, like I was growing up, then the Christmas season of 1994 was very, very exciting for you, because you likely got a copy of Final Fantasy VI under your tree (or Final Fantasy III as it was in the US). I’ll tell you right now that this was and still is a hell of a game, with dozens of characters, all of which get a significant amount of development, an epic story, and sidequests and Easter eggs spanning many hours of gameplay.
The philosophical aspect of the game comes mainly from the main villain, Emperor Gestahl (yes, my online pseudonym comes from a transliteration of the name when it was originally ported to the states in ’94 which, in turn, is a transliteration of the German word gestell). In the game there is an evil empire attempting to resurrect ancient technology that mythologically ravaged the world a thousand years ago, the protagonists that you play as are part of a rebel alliance called The Returners who are try to stop Gestahl and his empire from repeating the mistakes of the past.
In this fantasy world there exists creatures called Espers that are depicted as anthropomorphic nature spirits, they literally are the essence of nature enshrined within a corporeal body. The empire seeks to capture these Espers, place them in pneumatic tubes and suck the energy out of them thereby harnessing their life force in order to power their “Magitek” army, The Returners, of course, realize this is exactly how the world was nearly destroyed 1000 years ago and try to stop them.
At least one of the writers at Squaresoft knew his German philosophy well, in naming the ruler of this evil empire Gestahl, he or she infused the game with a potent amount of philosophical juice. If you don’t believe me that this is intentional then go and play Final Fantasy VII in which there is a side character actually named Heidegger. The name Gestahl comes from the German word gestell, which roughly translates into “enframing”. The term was coined by the legendary (yes, legendary) existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology”, one of my favorite all time philosophical essays.
In this essay, Heidegger muses about that fact that the Greek word “techne” (root for the modern word technology) was intimately tied to the Greek word “poesis” (root for the modern word poem). To the ancients, technological advancements were fundamentally considered art; it was that the craftsman was revealing something that was inside of the materials he would use to create his “techne”. Heidegger noted that there was something harmonious about the harnessing of technology to the ancients; it wasn’t about exploitation of naturally occurring resources, but rather the revealing of their nature in man’s hands. But looking around the early to mid 20th century he realized that technology was both no longer an art form, but also was exploitive. He uses the example of a windmill vs. a hydroelectric power plant. The windmill, an ancient technological device, sits benignly in an open plain, merely utilizing the path of the wind for our own purposes without destroying or taking away from this natural force, whereas a hydroelectric power plant involves damming up the river, diverting its course, and severely impacting the surrounding environment. In the former instance we remain in touch with the fundamental value of nature, in the latter case we see nature as a means to our own ends.
This is what gestell, or enframing, means. When we enframe, we fail to see nature’s value as it is, but only see its use value. For example, one who enframes sees a forest as merely lumber, a waterfall as hydroelectric power, or open plains as agro-farms or landfills. Heidegger notes that this way of viewing the world, not only has serious environmental consequences, but also has serious consequences to our existential relationship to our environment. Objectifying nature is only one step away from objectifying ourselves; it’s a slippery slope. He argued that the shift in how we view our “techne”, i.e. away from art and toward utility, marked a shift in the way we view ourselves. He chief concern was that, soon, we would enframe our own bodies; to a large extent we already have.
Back to Final Fantasy VI, note that Emperor Gestahl’s entire world dominating plot was centered around taking the Espers (the corporeal embodiment of nature) and converting them into raw energy, killing them in the process. Gestahl is the literary embodiment of enframing; note too that this enframing had already occurred once in this fantasy world’s history and HAD ALMOST DESTROYED THE PLANET! The philosophical message is clear, enframing is not just bad, but it is the “bad guy”, the one we should be rallying against, as the efforts of enframing will lead us to destruction.
Also, one of the main protagonists is a woman who is the child of a human mother and Esper father and her name is… Terra, who, at the beginning of the game, is brainwashed by Gestahl and used as the general for his army only later to be freed from her mind control and fight to thwart Gestahl. The message there: using the Earth (Terra) for the ends of enframing is a perversion of its natural inclination, i.e. we must “brainwash” the Earth in order for it participate in enframing.