The Human Instrumentality Project In Evangelion Analysis
The Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion has a distinguished forerunner in the history of contemporary thought – here ‘contemporary’ stands for ‘subsequent to the French Revolution’ – who anticipated some of the themes set out all over Anno’s mag-num opus and explained (even if only partially) in the last episode of the TV series. I am alluding to Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814), the precursor of German idealism and the first prominent figure high-school students of philosophy meet, after Kant.
Fichte (1794, p. 34) in The Vocation of the Scholar wrote: ‘Could all men become perfect, could they attain their highest and ultimate end, they would all be equal to each other, – they would be only one – but one single subject’. Is it not …show more content…
The Subject does not merely perceive the Object, in fact creates it. When Shinji is suspended in noth-ingness, lies in ‘a world of nothing’ and is pointed out that is ‘the world of perfect free-dom (…) in which you have no restrictions’. Just so: Shinji’s condition is a sort of meta-phor for the infinite I of first step, in which
‘l’io pone se stesso, c’è solo l’io: (…) l’io originario, essendo solo, è assolutamente libero, è ‘assoluto’ appunto, è sciolto da vincoli, è libero. All’origine per Fichte c’è l’io, ma questo equivale a dire che all’origine c’è la libertà, perché l’io non è con¬dizionato da niente fuori di sé, nel primo momento logico non ha un non-io che lo limiti, quindi è assoluto, è del tutto …show more content…
The horrors of World War I and the crisis of Western cul-ture in the Interwar period promote the birth of a new line of thought – Existentialism – that is to flourish (becoming quite vogue) in the post-Last War era. Early Existentialism originates in Central Europe – celebrated names include Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) and Karl Jaspers (1883 – 1969) – whereas full-blown Existentialism is most definitely French, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) being the undisputed leading proponent. Many have already written about the parallelism between Evangelion and Sartre’s theories: we can smoothly find online a lot on the matter , so I will not dwell any longer upon a road so much beaten. I shall focus rather on analogies between Eva and Heidegger’s master-piece Being and Time
Fichte (1794, p. 34) in The Vocation of the Scholar wrote: ‘Could all men become perfect, could they attain their highest and ultimate end, they would all be equal to each other, – they would be only one – but one single subject’. Is it not …show more content…
The Subject does not merely perceive the Object, in fact creates it. When Shinji is suspended in noth-ingness, lies in ‘a world of nothing’ and is pointed out that is ‘the world of perfect free-dom (…) in which you have no restrictions’. Just so: Shinji’s condition is a sort of meta-phor for the infinite I of first step, in which
‘l’io pone se stesso, c’è solo l’io: (…) l’io originario, essendo solo, è assolutamente libero, è ‘assoluto’ appunto, è sciolto da vincoli, è libero. All’origine per Fichte c’è l’io, ma questo equivale a dire che all’origine c’è la libertà, perché l’io non è con¬dizionato da niente fuori di sé, nel primo momento logico non ha un non-io che lo limiti, quindi è assoluto, è del tutto …show more content…
The horrors of World War I and the crisis of Western cul-ture in the Interwar period promote the birth of a new line of thought – Existentialism – that is to flourish (becoming quite vogue) in the post-Last War era. Early Existentialism originates in Central Europe – celebrated names include Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) and Karl Jaspers (1883 – 1969) – whereas full-blown Existentialism is most definitely French, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) being the undisputed leading proponent. Many have already written about the parallelism between Evangelion and Sartre’s theories: we can smoothly find online a lot on the matter , so I will not dwell any longer upon a road so much beaten. I shall focus rather on analogies between Eva and Heidegger’s master-piece Being and Time