Fasteriskhead

[QUOTE=Aaryanna][COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]The problem with waiting to expand into another area of living until we are ready to just live in and live with it, is we will never go there. On some level we have to find a way for it to help us survive or otherwise we won?t be able to just live there. You can?t just live somewhere if the means to support yourself are not there. Though it would be more idealistic if we moved into space because it was not a complete need but rather a gradual one. Where on some level we are there because our means to survive are being taken care of elsewhere. [/COLOR][/QUOTE] I think you slightly misunderstand me. I feel that it's certainly possible that one day we may be "ready" for the use of space, but more than likely we're going to be out there long before that ever happens. Or, to put it in a clearer way: we won't be ready for space, but probably we'll be out there regardless, and I have no idea whether this is a good thing or not. On the other hand, I don't see any necessary connection between the kind of "supporting ourselves" in space you suggest and the technological thinking which demands that everything deliver the maximum output to us at all times. Even a dumb intellectual like me won't object to our subsistence and supporting ourselves as a foundation for our living - the larger question is how we will treat space beyond that, whether as something to be lived in or something to be challenged. (and yes, most of the above post is stolen wholesale from Heidegger; [URL=http://www.culturaleconomics.atfreeweb.com/Anno/Heidegger%20The%20Question%201954.htm]click here[/URL] if you get particularly bored one day)

This is an interesting question, although more in terms of [i]how[/i] it is asked (as an issue of "need," "benefit," "waste," "improvement," etc.) than the content itself. I won't go into a discussion of opportunity costs, i.e. whether or not the resources spent on the space program could be better used elsewhere, or into talk about a kind of manifest destiny where it is somehow essential to what mankind is to expand itself outwards until it fills all available room. Actually, I would see both these thoughts as indicative of something that's much more fundamental: here we think of outer space only in terms of how it can be [i]used[/i]. I tend to agree with John when he says, "Man kinda sorta has a knack for overcoming problems.... It's an issue of 'when', not 'if'." Barring a true catastrophe of the kind that either completely destroys or disables the species or fundamentally changes the core of humanity (neither of which can be discounted, I will admit), one day we're going to break free of the earth and move out to the new frontier of space. But to me the question isn't so much when this is going to happen, or how "useful" it's going to be, but whether we're going to be [i]ready[/i] for it. This isn't really a new question, even if the question of space colonization makes it all the more urgent. Human being uses technology to achieve its ends, falls back on instrumentality to extend its reach to all things. As technology grows so does that reach, which will arrive at its widest length yet once the use of space (as more than just hopping from adjacent rocks collecting dirt samples) finally becomes simple and everyday. So when I ask "are we [i]ready[/i] to use space?" I really ask "are we really prepared for the day when technology (and here I do not mean only specific tools or machines, but rather what technology is and does at its heart) has stretched us out that far?" This is a question that anime in particular has always been very good at thinking into: Akira is of course the most famous example of this, although it's certainly not alone. For Akira, the question is what happens when human being, as a creature (Akira most often sees humans as animals driven by base instincts) whose strength is given to it by technology, uses that technology to take up the power of god. Of course, everyone who's seen the movie knows the results. And, while it can be taken most obviously as a cautionary tale, more subtle and perhaps more meaningful is the quiet suggestion it seems to make that, in order to be worthy of the immense power granted to it by technology, human being must itself undergo a very deep kind of transformation. But none of us thinks of technology, including the technology of space travel, in these terms - we think of technology merely as something useful. This is not merely a kind of flawed or uncautious consideration, though: that's only the tip. As technology (which is, again, NOT merely specific tools) develops and spreads, everything in its reach begins to be thought in terms of the technological - that is, in terms of its use for a specific end. Our cars, a common piece of technology, are something to get us to work and back. We work in order to make money. We make money in order to buy things, including food. We buy food to eat. We eat to survive. We survive to... [i]what?[/i] What's the point? Experience pleasure, continue the species, improve mankind? Well, what's meaningful in any of [i]that?[/i] Technological thinking, taken to its greatest extreme (which we approach every day), says: nothing. Technological thinking also says: the purpose for going out into space must be either specific benefits to the human species or because the species, in a kind of Nietzschian will to power, has no choice but to expand itself. Both of these mean the same thing - growth and extension, endless and constantly on the verge of starvation, which is kept up only because it cannot be stopped. Everything that is becomes technological, a tool for mankind, until like a cancer technology even begins to make "useful" what it was supposed to be "serving" in the first place. This is not something we can get rid of by simply smashing our machines and returning to the bronze age: the fact that we think about such a smashing as an "in order to" means it itself is fundamentally based in what it hopes to do away with. Today we think technologically - we think of the use of things. This is why, when we do eventually go out into space, we will almost certainly do so because space is useful for us; we will use space for its zero-g (advantageous for industry), for colonization, for new kinds of research. A scant few years ago, some of us as children may have looked up at the starry sky on a clear night and been awestruck at how anything could be so unimaginably huge: if we do this at all anymore, it is mostly only nostalgia. Now, by no means do I suggest a [i]regression[/i] to this kind of idyllic childhood conception of space (a trap easy enough to fall into)... but we should put a great deal of thought into precisely [i]how[/i] this transformation in our thinking, from awe and wonderment to utility and cost analysis, could have taken place, and what it means. The danger is not in my machines, or my travelling into space, or even technology itself: the danger is in the illusion of my control, in thinking that everything that is can and must, though technology, be made to serve me. This danger cannot be overcome by any purposeful action on my part, which will only seek to grab ahold of things anew: the danger can only be surpassed once I [i]grow up[/i], and discover the possibility of my meaningfully living in attunement with the cosmos. It is possible, at that point, that I may be able to think technology as something other than the merely useful: zero-g manufacturing, planetary colonization, and all else, though "beneficial" to me, may one day be done not for some other reason but as a way of living life and contentedly habitating space. This is not new-agey sentimental crap by any means. On the contrary, it is the only hope I have of not crushing myself under my own weight. To answer the question above: we will be "ready" to go into space when we have thought through the meaning of technology and are ready to approach space as something to be [i]lived in and lived with[/i], rather than something to be made servile. If this seems excessively abstract and idealistic, it could just be because I'm an intellectual dope who's read too much and whose views have nothing to do with the topic because they are "not useful." For much thinking, this judgment is absolutely correct.

It's interesting the way the title of this thread is phrased - "[i]what[/i] makes us like anime" rather than "[i]why[/i] do we like anime." It's only a slight shift of meaning, but still food for thought. I would say that anime [I]itself[/I] makes me like anime. I like anime because it [I]speaks[/I] to me, and I like anime because I find myself caught up in it. I'm not sure if it would be prudent to question beyond that, as doing so would probably involve ascribing general qualities and characteristics to what anime is that may not apply in all cases (and if they [I]don't[/I], then whatever happens to our liking anime?).

What a brilliant way to circumvent all of the "hello I'm new here!" threads that would otherwise be popping up. I'm Scott, a somewhat pudgy 23-year-old male with unmanageably curly hair and hazel-green eyes. Currently I live in Virginia. In person I am extremely quiet and prone to sitting back rather than interacting, essentially the opposite of the usual "wild and crazy" ways that people my age are supposed to subscribe to (you will never meet anyone more boring than me). I got out of college last May, and am currently doing temp work while I wait to hear whether any of the grad schools I've applied to have accepted me (eventually I'd like to get a doctorate and teach at a college level). I'm one of those people who tends to define themselves in terms of what they know and what they think about. I study religion, with dabblings in philosophy and literary criticism, all pretty much in my free time now. Currently I'm completely stuck on Heidegger and unable to pull away, although I also have my present side jaunts in Kant, Hegel, Plato, Levinas, Derrida, Habermas, Wittgenstein, and others (as well as things that don't quite fall into the same heap as them). My own poor attempts at serious writing nearly always gravitate towards considerations of justice, responsibility, love, and Being - though this may change in the future. I also study music, and once entertained the idea of becoming a professional composer or musicologist - my understanding of music ultimately starts with 20th century classical stuff (which hooked me back in high school before anything else had a chance to), and while I've broadened my horizons since then I still base how I think about music in those terms. Obviously, I like anime, and have been watching it for well past a decade at this point. I'd say,with little exaggeration, that just about everything I've done (with music excepted) since high school can be viewed as an attempt to understand Evangelion better. I headed over to MyO and OB in order to see, on the one hand, if I could still manage to interact with people I didn't know after years of keeping myself limited to only a few trusted friends (I am not easily outgoing), and on the other, in order to begin subjecting the serious writing I've been doing on anime to eyes other than my own. This is because, first, I desperately need to relearn how to write in such a way that I maintain an honesty to my topic but also remain readable (my writing has been opening up a little bit since my densest moments midway through last year, but I'm aware that it's still extremely difficult to take). Second, because if I'm simply flat-out [I]wrong[/I] in the way that I'm reading anime, I can be corrected by those as deeply concerned with respecting the source material as I am. Third, because I can hopefully begin, if not [I]teaching[/I] others how to think more deeply into anime than we have previously, then at least letting learning occur. I hope, ultimately, to start others on the process of thinking, even if their thinking is different than mine and even if they end up thinking I'm completely full of it (actually, nothing could please me more). This is beginning to read more like a manifesto than an introduction, so I'll stop here. Frankly you'll probably learn more about me from my serious writing than from whatever biographical data I can push.

[quote name='Par-Fait']I'm not a genius, but it just seems like you're using big words to make yourself sound smart.[/quote] Aww, heck, people aren't [I]always[/I] just wadding in tissue paper (although most have done this on occasion, myself included). I know next to nothing about fusion stuff, but what you theorize does seem plausible and quite interesting. I'm assuming this is basically the same as the deuterium-tritium reaction (which is more well-known) and all you're doing here is replacing the tritium with helium-3, which results in an alpha particle (i.e. helium-4) and a proton (i.e. hydrogen-1) rather than an alpha particle and a neutron. I'll lay aside for right now the question of how plausible it is that we're going to be able to find the helium and hydrogen isotopes that you name in quantities large enough to power armies of giant robots (one has to allow science fiction to have its fun [I]sometime[/I]). The main question I have about this kind of fusion is that, assuming you're getting most of the energy from the reaction out of the escaping proton, what then do you do with the alpha particle? Unless I'm missing something, it would seem to just end up as either radiation or some kind of waste material. Granted, alpha radiation is (relatively speaking) not all that dangerous, but there is a question to be raised about having radioactive robots flying around blowing each other up. Again, I'm not really qualified to be asking about this and I fully admit my own ignorance in the area. Nifty topic, though.

"Brigadier General Armitage!! P-p-please marry me!" [i](Haruka blushes)[/i] "WOW, LOOK AT THIS UNEXPECTED SIDE OF HER! BRIGADIER GENERAL EVEN POSSESSES WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A MOE CHARACTER!! SHAMELESS! HOW SHAMELESS OF YOU, ARMITAGE!!" This may have even topped Arika's "Puni puni puni puni BANG" from the last DVD special.

Well, Marx proposes a completely different kind of "world government" from the kinds we've been talking about. You really shouldn't get me started on this stuff. [quote name='Tigervx][FONT=Arial][COLOR=Teal]"Karl Marx stated that a revolution would spring up on one side of the world, and then there would be a world wide revolution... Followed by magic Marxist pixie dust that stabilized everything."[/FONT'][/COLOR][/quote] Okay, let's go on a tangent here. Actually, "magic Marxist pixie dust" isn't a bad way of putting it, since what Marx proposes eventually has to happen in history is itself halfway magical. So, part one. If I understand him correctly (and there's no guarantee that I do; I'm much more familiar with the earlier, more thoughtful Marx than when he takes his more practical turn later on), the ultimate goal of history is the reconciliation of me, as a human being, [I]with my own labor[/I], that is, with the objects I create (for Marx, labor isn't just "work," it's the moment to moment realization of who we are through our creating). At the moment, my labor is alienated from me. When I work, it's never purely as a realization of my own self but always goes into the fueling and accumulation of the abstract force called "private property" (which achieves its greatest abstraction as money), and thus stands apart from me as something alien. What defines who I am, then, is [I]not[/I] my own labor, but this thing called money which is outside of myself but completely determines me (this is easy enough to understand if you've ever met anyone who only thinks you're worth anything if you're loaded; or, just watch a couple of really bad hip hop videos). For Marx, [I]money[/I], as the alienation of myself from my labor, is the real source of greed, corruption etc., not something intrinsic in human nature. This leads ultimately to class struggle, and thus the famous quote about all history being just that. What Marx proposes is that, if we are ever to have our labor brought back to us (which means nothing less than to arrive at [I]who we essentially are[/I] as human beings), it will have to involve our removing money to its proper place, that is, returning it to us as our labor and, thus, our self-realization as human beings. If this ain't a feat of magic, nothing is. Now, part two. Marx thinks this can only happen with the end of class struggle as the triumph of the workers over the business owners, and while I'm not entirely convinced of this, it does need to be understood properly before we all go making fun of it. For Marx, this revolution can only happen after the triumph of industrial capitalism, after capitalism has [I]already won[/I]. I won't go into the technics of this too deeply (you can read about them elsewhere), but the idea is that constant competition eventually concentrates all money in the hands of a very few, workers' wages drop more and more as that competition grows increasingly frantic, the workers reach the greatest possible point of alienation (they become animals, cogs in a machine), until finally they revolt and put the awesome power of capitalism (which is ultimately their own labor) under their control. After that it's more of a question mark - Marx's latest thinking, as far as I know, was that the state (now controlled by the workers) would provisionally take control of all private property, but that at some point it would no longer be necessary as the workers were increasingly brought back to their own labor. There have been too many criticisms of part two for me to even get started on them; personally, I think Marx was a better philosopher than he was a political economist, although he would probably punch me for saying that (for him, philosophy isn't useful in itself). Anyways, the point is: for Marx, world government isn't determined by laws or anything like that. It's the result of an unavoidable historical progression determined by economics and, ultimately, by the nature of human labor. So, if sometime in the future (when we've all been long since turned subhuman by our crappy jobs) you happen to revolt and establish state control over private property, give Karl props for knowing it was going to happen. I hope this has been at least [I]slightly[/I] interesting; I'll shut up now.

I apologize, that was out of place. And I will take your "arrogant prat" comment to heart, since at least being thought an egotistical set of hindquarters means I'm not being [i]totally[/i] ignored. However, I would wonder if a person who calls a moral dilemma "hardly a philisophical ([i]sic[/i]) question" on the basis that he is "in a college philosophy class right now" (and thus apparently knows better than us) has yet been taught in that class about a logical fallacy usually called [url="http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/fallacies/appeal_authority.htm"]"the appeal to authority."[/url] And as a matter of courtesy if nothing else, please pay attention to the portions of people's posts (e.g. "...if you'd like to propose a way for us to fruitfully discuss the essential being of things or the meaning of human rationality, I'm all ears and I don't think anyone else would object in the least.") that are [i]not[/i] cheap insults that said poster shouldn't have made. At the very least, this should keep you from, for example, accusing them of deeming "the last questions [about essence, rationality etc.] too easy for [them] to immerse [themselves] in" and declaring that they "don't care or don't know" about those questions. And by the way, that Socrates quote, which I believe is borrowed from somewhere in the Apology (he says it a couple of times, as I recall; I'll go check the original text later), is frequently misunderstood, or at least taken out of context. He's not at all saying, "We can never know anything for sure!" then sitting in place and plugging his ears because mankind can never learn. This is how it's usually taken and is to completely miss the point, and plus it's simply contrary to any everyday experience (I KNOW how to drive, for example). For Socrates, human beings do not have [i]true[/i] wisdom, despite anything else they may know - this has to do with the Platonic seperation of essence from existence, which I won't go into. True wisdom, for Socrates, is only possible for God, and is thus something beyond mortals. But what makes human beings [i]unique[/i], especially the highest of human beings (i.e. the philosophers), is their ability to [i]know[/i] that they don't have this kind of wisdom. That is, they are dimly [i]aware[/i] of "how things really are," essentially [i]connected [/i]somehow to the wise, even though they themselves cannot hold it. Far from throwing him into apathy (which is, again, how people who use the quote typically mean it), knowing that he doesn't know puts Socrates on the [i]quest[/i] to find true wisdom. He chases after wisdom, makes that chase for wisdom the sole meaning for his life - hence the name [i]philosophia[/i], the love of wisdom. Thus for Socrates, knowing that you don't know, properly understood, is exactly the opposite of a reason to give up: it is to fully understand for the first time the purpose of human life, that is, to seek after true wisdom. I will repeat what I said in my previous post, the one which didn't have "anything constructive to bring to the conversation," albeit in a clearer way: if you have some way for us to begin talking about one of these questions you pose (I'm not asking for an answer, I'm asking for a way to [i]start the process of thinking about the question[/i]), then I ask you to start us off on it. The questions, as they stand, seem so wide-ranging that I feel like my arbitrarily starting somewhere would probably miss the point of what you're getting at with them. Plus, frankly, I'd probably start in on phenomenology or something if you gave me free reign on them, and we'd all be lost like two sentences in. ~~~~ Welp, you've had a little less than a week and haven't started us out yet. That being the case, I'll see if I can begin tackling your questions myself, although this probably isn't a good idea. Ultimately two of your questions, "What makes a chair a chair? What is the essence of chairness?" and "What makes a dog different than a cat?" are asking about the same thing. They ask about the essential nature of things. More properly, they ask about being ([i]essential[/i] is related to the Latin [i]est[/i]: when we ask about essence we literally ask about the is-ness of something). This is not some new issue: the question of the being of particular things has been one of most important questions of philosophy, possibly [i]the[/i] defining issue. Philosophy seeks for the ground which allows things to settle into their nature. Throughout history, thinkers have continually asked: "What is essential to this thing? How is it that this thing is what it is, instead of being something else entirely or something nonexistent? Why is there anything at all rather than simply nothing?" Or, if you prefer: how is it that we can ever say of a thing that "it is"? I dare not rattle off a quick answer and expect to solve the whole issue; it's perhaps more worthwhile to briefly go into how the essence of things has been thought throughout history, and see if that tells us anything. Current Anglo-American philosophy conceives being in terms of how language is used and in terms of metaphysics. Bertrand Russell, talking about the essence of chairs, might formulate it like this: "There is only one type of object with the list of qualities A, and chairs are this type of object. Object X has all of the qualities in list A, therefore X is a chair." In other words, a chair is a chair because it conforms to a number of qualities that chairs have. For example: we can sit in it; it has a back that can support our weight if we lean backwards; it has legs of some kind to support the seat. We can even extend this kind of thinking to [i]particular[/i] chairs - we might say, for example, "There is only one chair that Fasteriskhead is sitting in right now, and [i]this[/i] chair, chair X, is that chair." Only recently has this notion of essence become a problem. Kripke, [i]pace[/i] Russell, might say that while chair X is in fact the chair I am sitting in, this did not [i]necessarily[/i] have to be the case. I could be sitting in an entirely different chair, and yet despite this chair X still remains chair X. Better: there is something [i]essential[/i] to chair X that makes it what it is even if it is no longer the chair that I'm sitting in, or lacks any number of other qualities. Kripke proposes (and I'm barely making a caricature of his idea here) that the referencing of a particular thing by us should not depend on a list of qualities that thing has, but is instead accomplished by a widespread agreement (by way of a kind of dissemination) among a large group of people that a certain thing is what it is. That is, chair X, even if it somehow turns out that it's not the chair that I'm sitting in, necessarily remains what it is. This sense of "agreement," though arrived at in a different way, is actually not all that different from what Wittgenstein proposes as far as how we "know" things, e.g. how I "know" that a tree is a tree. For Wittgenstein, my knowing that a chair is a chair is not reliant on some kind of special transcendent wisdom that I have about chairs, but is only because the status of the chair is obvious, that is to say, I don't doubt it. Or more precisely, I [i]can't[/i] doubt it. I can imagine, for example, "mistaking" a very good picture for a real chair if I don't have my glasses on, but I cannot imagine the chair that I sit in every day being anything but a chair. This is [i]not[/i] because that could never turn out to be the case, but only because I fundamentally cannot [i]doubt[/i] that it's a real chair; its status as a chair is as deeply entrenched in my conception of the world as my name or the fact that the earth existed before I was born. These things I learned long ago and I take them for granted, i.e. they ground my world as it is; surely I can speculate about other things, but these speculations always have to have an un-doubtable ground which is only justified by my saying "I know it's so because I know." Doubting things like my chair's chairness fundamentally means that there's [i]nothing that can't be doubted[/i], which makes absolutely no sense in our everyday lives and our everyday use of "language games." Wittgenstein's take on how we approach certainty can be summed up by saying that if I were to walk by someone in a store who pointed out a chair and said, "Maybe that's not a chair," I would think he was nuts. It's not that it's not [i]possible[/i], but such ponderings have no place in our usual conversations about things (because those conversations are precisely what are [i]grounded[/i] by our assumptions about how things are). Both Kripke and Wittgenstein point to how we think about essence nowadays, but we can go further back to get a clearer idea of what's new about this. Arbitrarily, let's start with Augustine, because I think if I went any earlier we'd be here all day. For Augustine, things attain what they are by being [i]created[/i], that is, by being formed by God. Things in themselves are dry husks without the presence of God which allows them at each moment to achieve their essence; there's a wonderful passage in the Confessions where he imagines the world as a sponge, which soaks up the essential substance which is God and thereby achieves its full nature. The later medieval scholars thought in much the same terms: in order for us to be able to say of something that "it is," that thing must conform to the divine will. We sum this up by saying: the chair is a chair because God wills it. Descartes was the first to truly begin to shake this up: starting from the assumption that the [i]appearances[/i] of things do not necessarily represent what they truly are, he found that, though he could always say of the "appearance" of a thing that it might be something else or might not exist at all, the one thing that remained constant was that [i]there was something capable of experiencing and doubting these appearances[/i], and that something was himself. Being, no matter how distorted its appearance, is always confirmed by way of my being able to experience it, hence the infamous [i]cogito[/i], "Because I think, I must be." Or, better: my thinking is the confirmation that there is anything at all. Descartes, for his part, also grounded his "thinking thing" (i.e. himself) in the reality of God, who as an infinite being acts as the foundation for my own thinking (this part usually gets forgotten). For Descartes, in order to find the essence of the chair, which is "guaranteed" by its relationship to the God whom I am aware of, I must clear away the mere outward appearance of the chair by way of rational investigation in order to discover the chair's matter. The important thing to note in all this is that, for the first time since the Greeks, essence is now thought of as tied up in cognition, which is at the very least the [i]confirmation[/i] of essence (if not essence itself). In other words, it always takes a thinking thing to be able to say "it is" (haw haw, and [i]you[/i] thought that this idea was NEW when quantum physics dropped it). Anyways, skipping Spinoza and some of the others, Berkeley is the one for whom cognition becomes even more important. Berkeley rejects the split that Descartes makes between the appearance of a thing and its essence; for Berkeley, all that is can be said to be ideas perceived by the mind in sense experience. In other words, what we perceive is [i]already real[/i]; the essence of a thing is its presence in experience. There [i]is[/i] an external world outside of human perception, but this world is, once again, ideas which are conceived and held in the mind of God, and not any kind of unseen self-existent "matter" which somehow causes my sense experiences to happen. For Berkeley, there is no chair or chair essence outside of how the chair immediately shows itself in sense experience; the chair presenting itself to me in that moment IS its essence. Hume extends and radicalizes what Berkeley's doing, but Kant is the one who truly makes the break. Kant takes to heart the Berkelian objection that all we can know and say is real is our immediate perceptions, and uses this to flip the usual materialist conception on its head. Our conscious perceptions, rather than conforming itself more or less to what is "really out there" (still believed by most), instead does exactly the opposite: what we perceive is [i]made[/i] to conform to the transcendental structures of our consciousness. Thus, for Kant, even if we can't know what may be out there beyond our sense perceptions, we [i]can[/i] understand the fundamental structures of our own consciousness, and, thus, how it is that we can come to experience anything at all. Kant, then, would not see any possibility in discovering a "chair-in-itself," but would find HOW it is that we are first able to say "the chair is..." in the nature of human subjectivity. For Kant, subjectivity is what grounds a thing's being. After Kant, things grow increasingly frantic. For Schelling and Schopenhauer, the ground of being is will; for Hegel, it becomes the dialectical self-movement of consciousness; for Marx, it is human labor; for Nietzsche, it is the will to power; for Husserl, it is intentionality (I can't go into any of these too deeply). What's important to note is that after Kant, the essence which grounds things is increasingly thought of in terms of my subjective experience of them as objects; that is, I'm able to say "it is" of something because I perceive it. "Man is the measure of all things," Protagoras declared: the ground of being is now thought in terms of the human experience of the world. This returns us to Kripke and Wittgenstein. Human being as the ground is true of Wittgenstein too: a human being is the only one who can say, "That's a chair." But Wittgenstein has something else going on: I don't perceive the chair as a chair just because it [i]is[/i], or because I will it. No: I have LEARNED what a chair is, I was told what it was as I was growing up, and I will never think otherwise unless heavily persuaded (i.e. bullied). Now that we've begun to think of being as dependent on human experience/perception, not only philosophy but the [i]sciences[/i] have begun to investigate what it is that fundamentally makes up (that is, grounds) what a human being is. Thus, if we were to ask an educated person on the street why they thought a chair was a chair, assuming they took the question seriously they would probably report, "Because that's how I've always thought," "Because I was raised to think that." The chair appears to us as a chair, that is, it IS a chair. But we now begin to think of our perception of the chair as being determined by some external force outside of our consciousness: societal influence, genetic factors, memories stored in the brain. Man is the measure, but he now finds [i]himself[/i] calculated, examined, and determined. We now understand, thanks to psychology and the behavioral sciences, that we need not necessarily perceive the world in the way we do, and that were culture/neurochemistry/whatever different the entire totality of things that are would be altered or dismantled. Why is a chair a chair? No reason at all, save for this external force which has told me that it is. In other words, for modernity the essential ground of things, including my own perception, is never anything except [i]authority[/i]. And authority, moreover, only conceives meaning in terms of usefulness and utility. Thus, the chair being a chair (that is, my perceiving it as a chair) is only ever the case because it is [i]useful[/i], and in turn I as a being am only I because I am useful to my genes, to society, to the economy, to my CNS, etc., which are all driven by greed and the pleasure principle. The chair is there as a tool for performing a number of useful tasks, and the same goes for the earth, for my family, for my own body. Any "perceptions" I have of particular beings are entirely arbitrary and meaningless except for how they may be useful for external, alien forces which I can barely identify, let alone control. This, in a nutshell, is how modern thinking considers essence nowadays: the chair is a chair because it's useful as a thing for me to sit in (just as I am useful for... etc.), or the chair is a chair because some authority outside of myself has arbitrarily told me that it is, and it has no meaning beyond that. The only question now left to be answered is whether physics, biology, information technology, culture, religious law, global economics, or something else will ultimately decide the final usefulness of things; even now they all butt heads and mark out their territory. Fundamentally, though, usefulness and authority have won: the truth of this should be self-evident. There is no way out that can't be explained in terms of a move into just another structure of naked power and brute authority... unless, perhaps, another possibility entirely exists. It's possible, I think, that we [i]still[/i] haven't caught on to the truth of what being is and what brings things into what they are, though it's difficult to see how we might begin to move in that direction. If such a possibility does exist, and indeed we can smell it on the horizon, then there may still be hope for things such as love (outside of the propagation of the species and the spread of genes), art (outside of creating advantageous moods for laborers), and justice (outside of the maintenance of a beneficent social order). There may even be room for something as simple as knowing what a chair is - though this may be too much to hope for. [color=DarkGreen][font=Trebuchet MS]Fasteriskhead, as double posting is against OB's rules I've had to merge your two consecutive posts. If you have something to add, but no one else has yet posted, use the EDIT button in the bottom-right of your post, instead of posting twice in a row. [/font][/color] [right][color=DarkGreen][font=Trebuchet MS]-Raiyuu[/font][/color] [/right]

Oh, a [I]college philosophy class[/I], eh? I guess the rest of us should hang it up, then. Ladies and gentlemen, shall we stop our discussion? The sir wishes to tell us what a syllogism is. Seriously though, as much as I find these kinds of hypothetical dilemmas somewhat silly, insofar as philosophy has traditionally been divided into logic, physics, and ethics* that kind of question (typically set out as "if you do not perform immoral action x, undesirable consequence y will result") would pretty clearly find a comfortable place in the third category without any difficulty. Moral dilemmas, whatever I may think of their [I]worth[/I], have been a part of the tradition from Plato onwards. On the other hand, if you'd like to propose a way for us to fruitfully discuss the essential being of things or the meaning of human rationality, I'm all ears and I don't think anyone else would object in the least. (Because, honestly, we might have just about exhausted this first topic by now) * Being the loser that I am, I can't let this go without noting that these words, in their original Greek formulations of logos, physis, and ethos, originally meant a heck of a lot more than they do as we take them today. Although another question still is whether any Greek thinking, from Pythagoras on up to Wittgenstein, has ever been able to think of these things, especially ethics, in the correct way (i.e. in a way representative of their essential truth). I'm not up for answering this one today, folks.

[quote name='Boo][size=1']I didn't read a single post except the first one, just on a side note. [/size][/quote] Well, at least you're willing to [I]admit[/I] it. Kudos!

13th - First off, you should probably take back that bit about me "knowing a good deal about philosophy": at best I've only just put my foot into the pool. As for links, you can read more about Kant's moral philosophy [URL=http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kantmeta.htm#H8]here[/URL], social contract stuff [URL=http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/soc-cont.htm]here[/URL] (you can probably skip down to Locke onward), and Mill's utilitarianism [URL=http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/milljs.htm#Utilitarianism]here[/URL]. You can probably hunt down all the original texts (the [I]Groundwork[/I], etc.) on your own if you want to, as most of them are online. They are [I]hard[/I], though (well, except for Mill, who would be easy even if most of us weren't already following him without knowing it). I don't see why it is so important to answer the question with my own "preference," unless I am to be myself judged on which one I pick. Or are you counting up the votes here? In any case, I and a number of the other posters have layed out a number of possible arguments for either of the two solutions, some of which seem better argued than others; I'm sure I could come up with more on the spot, if I had to. Now, I do find a Kantian treatment (see my first post) most appealing, honestly, but that's only because it strikes me as the most coherent of the bunch. Frankly, we're never going to be forgiven for either given choice. So, what's the [I]right[/I] argument out of all of these possible solutions? Heck if I know. Some of the greatest thinkers in human history have spent their lives tackling just this kind of a problem, and yet it remains a problem. To me it seems presumptuous to think that I might determine the correct answer in a single message board post and sweep the whole issue away at once. So, forgive me for thinking that it seems more interesting to step back from the piling up of arguments and counterarguments and move instead to [I]questioning[/I] the question rather than just answering. We might ask the dilemma: why are you such a problem for us at all? why, instead, can't we just take a best guess (like any other problem) and walk away? why do you seem to [I]matter[/I] so much? Answer: because we, as human beings, are fundamentally concerned with the moral. This prompts the question of why [I]that[/I] is, i.e. why we are moral rather than not. There have been a slew of quick answers to this, usually physicalist (morality is a useful evolutionary adaptation, etc.). Rather than take up one of these, though, I would instead try to clarify what "moral concern" is in the hopes at arriving at a more thorough answer... which means trying to describe it. In other words, the question to start with, for me, is how does it [I]feel [/I]to be given over to moral concern? In lieu of the hypothetical dilemma in the first post on the thread, I would propose a situation and a question which is much simpler. I am walking down the city street at night, with no one else around. Looking into an alleyway by chance, I see a man lying there against the wall (arbitrarily let's say he appears to be in his early '30s, of medium build, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt) who appears to be injured. He's trembling and clutching at his thigh, where blood has stained his jeans blackish. The question is: as I see this person and the situation he's in, [I]how do I feel?[/I] I'm not asking what I should try to do (which should be obvious), I'm asking what it is that [I]prompts[/I] the obligation to help out in the first place. For surely I do not, for example, first think "oh, he's got an injured leg," then "I guess I would be in pain if I was injured like that," then "In that situation I would want to have that pain taken care of," then "I should probably help this guy out, as I myself would want to be helped." We have nothing resembling this train of thought - the injured man's body IMMEDIATELY, as soon as I see it, prompts me to help, before he can say a word or I can weight my options. So, how is this figure [I]presented[/I] to me in such a way that I feel a moral concern towards him? What is he, really, as he lies there? What does his body, as it slumps there, say to me? And lastly, how does it [I]feel[/I] to be, in that moment, prompted with the responsibility for the welfare of another being? This is not just empty words and "deep" pondering. No matter how many solutions to the first dilemma we can think of or how well we can justify our particular decision, I believe we are behaving with utter irresponsibility if we do not clearly think through what it is that [I]calls[/I] on us to make the choice (to either kill another or disenfranchise mankind) in the first place. It is upon this (whatever it is) that the weight of any decision we can make rests, and yet we so easily fall into the habit of giving this issue no thought at all and simply calculating out (to three decimels, even!) what we think the best answer is. It is possible to think morality more deeply than than we have been.

I can only talk briefly on this topic; needless to say, Kant's [URL=http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm]Perpetual Peace[/URL], which is some two centuries old, remains [I]the[/I] key text to approach in any argument for or against the concept of a world government. It's important to note first that what's being proposed by Kant (and really anyone else trying to be taken seriously on this) is NOT a centralized state which oversees individual nations in the same way that, for example, the federal government of the U.S. oversees the individual states. DeadSeraphim is quite right in the unfeasibility of this kind of direct governance. The "world government," even under the best conditions, would simply not work as a set of old guys in Brussels (or wherever) controlling the local police forces and street maintenance in Hanoi. But this isn't the intent. The idea here is to find some way to settle disputes between states outside of "might makes right," as those disputes being conclusively settled in some way other than military force or any other use of political power. No justice can be said to exist when I declare my state right and another state wrong because they cried uncle first; this is only unilateral and arbitrary action not guided by any kind of law. The goal of world government is, then, to gradually establish a commonly-held international code agreed upon by all parties, with the express goal of having a normative basis from which moral action can be arrived at by individual states, and from which punishment can be enacted on states not conforming to that basis. We already have something like this in the United Nations, as well as in more location-specific territorial alliances, so it's nothing particularly new. The problem with this, of course, is power. Certainly the institution of international law is an improvement, because at least now there is a normative basis of [I]some[/I] kind to resolve issues in a way other than ICBM diplomacy. However, nations can still act unilaterally or prevent the workings of international law [I]if they are in a position to do so[/I]. Hence, even though a particularly powerful nation may have to tread much more carefully than they would have a century ago, they can still push around the rest of the international community fairly easily if they have something to hold over their heads. A nation with enough pull is also able to legitimate its actions even though they may be entirely [I]contrary[/I] to law. And this is to say nothing about corruption on a smaller scale. Is it feasible to have a world government (which I mean to be synonymous with international law and, at the greatest extreme, universal justice) where the issue of power is, if not nonexistent, then at least negligible? Not at the moment, no - this should be obvious just looking at the headlines. Even getting on the way to something like that would require something entirely new, a fundamental change in how human beings determine themselves and their place in things. In his last years Derrida wrote on occasion of something he called "the democracy to come," which is very close to this: it would require that we begin to think justice on a global scale and to consider, more deeply than we have ever done before, what exactly justice [I]means[/I]. Will this ever happen? Possibly. It may be a long ways off, though.

Wow, folks, I can't believe there isn't already a topic on this show. So far I've only seen up to episode 30 (the fansubbers, bless their hearts, are nowhere near fast enough to provide enough material to sate me), but good god what a series. I won't risk trying to say everything in an introductory post, but suffice it to say that this is the best take on the "young boy grows up by piloting a big robot" formula in years. There really hasn't been a pure coming-of-age anime since FLCL that I can remember being this good. It's directed by Tomoki Kyoda, whom a few of you may remember as the gentleman mostly responsible for the later direction of Rahxephon (he did a bunch of the later episodes, plus the ova and the movie). Frankly, though, Eureka Seven hasn't even hit its peak yet and it's already (for me, anyways) completely left much of Zeffie in the dust (albeit it doesn't have the Maya-inspired designs to fall back on). So, quick summary of the first two episodes: boy hero Renton Thurston, living in a backwater town and helping out in his granddad's mechanic shop, dreams of getting the heck out of there and joining up with a mercenary group called Gekko State. Now, Gekko State is a bunch of dudes who (seemingly) just like to go around in their rad punk rock warship, the Gekko-Go, flouting the government, publishing their own magazine, and "reffing" (which is basically a kind of sky surfing on pretty green particle waves called Trapar). Anyways, Renton's dream comes through when a Gekko State LFO (i.e. big robot that can ref; geek points if you vintage synthesizer fans recognize where they got the name from) crashes his granddad's shop and a green-haired girl named Eureka (whom Renton instantly goes nuts for) pops out and asks for a tune-up. This particular LFO, the Nirvash typeZERO, is unique: it was the first LFO ever discovered, and the prototype for all future designs. Consequently, it turns out Eureka and the Nirvash are being chased by the military, so after the Thurstons are done fixing things she high-tails it out of there. PLOT POINT: it turns out Renton's granddad had been hanging on to a phenomenally powerful device, the Amita Drive, for Renton's father; Renton gets his hands on it, and in the midst of a battle goes and delivers it to the Nirvash. The Nirvash, controlled (unknowingly) by Renton, goes and crushes a whole squad of military LFOs in one of the most beautiful mecha battles I've ever seen, and follows this up by frying the entire area with something called the "seven swell phenomenon." After this, Renton joins up with Eureka and the rest of Gekko State and the series proper starts. This isn't even scratching the surface of where the show is now, but is enough to get you started. (although I cannot let the summary go without mentioning Anemone, the bad guys' pink-haired answer to Eureka, who is cute as all get out and probably certifiable but only shows up later in the series) The show is really something wonderful, and 30 episodes in it has still yet to hit a slump of any kind (if anything it keeps getting better). The characters are extremely deep and well-sketched; the mech fights range from gorgeous mid-air balletic displays to vicious close range grinds; the music is consistently wonderful; the designs, while quite traditional and never approaching the same kind of gleeful abandon you get in Rahxephon, are always at least serviceable; the story, incredibly, seems likely to not only maintain itself through fifty-some episodes but to actually knock its message entirely out of the park. Despite some stiff competition (Noein, and maybe Kashimashi if you can even compare such a series to a mech show), Eureka is probably the best new anime series currently airing. The domestic release of the first episodes is coming out next month, and it's already on my wish list. In the meantime (and I THINK this is legal for the otakuboards, but if not I ask one of the mods to correct me), you can go and YouTube the show's four ops so far, which are fantastic (no spoilers as far as I can tell, unless you count a number of changes in hairstyle): -[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GFtFFVP7pg&search=eureka]First Opening[/URL] (check the Eva influences, and also that ungodly great op song) -[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL5d8k-KTCo&search=eureka]Second Opening[/URL] (my least favorite, saved only by that fantastic Itano Circus) -[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzYj0qIiz9w&search=eureka]Third Opening[/URL] (the cheapest-looking of the four but my favorite by far. Features an even better Itano Circus than op2, and Anemone's priceless

Retribution - You misunderstand me, I believe. By asking "Why are we even having this dilemma?" I mean the question quite literally. I'm [I]not[/I] asking the question rhetorically, that is, I'm not saying that this kind of issue is somehow worthless. I'm trying to ask: what [I]grounding[/I] is there that this dilemma is able to present itself [I]as[/I] a dilemma at all? Better: through [I]what[/I] are we as human beings inescapably [I]moral[/I] creatures? My objection to the hypothetical dilemma of the topic is more one of emphasis than anything else. The emphasis, on both the topic's issue and the classic train track problem, is almost entirely on a choice between two positions that both seem at least somewhat immoral. And yes, it is conceivable that either situation, or any other such problem we could dream up, could actually happen, and so should be taken seriously. (as an aside: what [I]does[/I] seem frequently unfair about these dilemmas is what is usually a lack of any options other than answer A or answer B; they seem rigged, in other words, for the impossibility of avoiding an immoral choice, and thus in Kant's sense entirely dispense with human freedom. But I digress, as this is beside the point). But the problem is not with the impossibility of the situation as such, rather in how the issue is presented. Our posing the question in such a way, as a choice, is not [I]wrong[/I] in itself; however, as we "weigh our options" in whatever way, we tend, I think, to pay no attention whatsoever to [I]why this is a problem in the first place[/I]. In other words, we tend to ignore what [I]brings[/I] us into our being morally concerned in the first place as we focus on calculating out the right (or least-wrong) action for this one particular situation. You say: "What makes either choice good or bad or better than the other? Your values." Yes! That's a fine answer. But, well, where do those [I]come[/I] from? The situation as a choice generally doesn't care how the math is set up beforehand, and (I think) doesn't emphasize any prior examination of it. It just wants an answer. So generally we just "plug and chug" using whatever method we like, without thinking once [I]why[/I] it is that this situation could or does matter to us in the slightest degree. [I]That[/I], for me, is the real mystery, and as we argue back and forth between whether killing old people or a baby is better we tend to cover that question over. You say: "What is the ethical 'status' of the person you might kill? Does it matter?" Yes, nothing could matter more. Which is precisely the problem: in these kinds of dilemmas the "statuses" as such are usually taken as more or less set in stone, and there's generally no incentive to think the problem any further than weighing one status against another. When we only ask about who I would or wouldn't kill we ignore the elephant in the room, which is: "Why are we morally concerned [I]at all?[/I]" This covering over and ignoring is what I mostly object to, not anything essential in the questions themselves.

As one of those other "arrogant" people who like to "talk about philosophy every now and then" (although most of the time when I talk about it, frankly I do nothing more than butcher it), I'm probably obligated to weigh in on this. I will restate the situation as follows: "I am given the opportunity wherein, if I sacrifice the life of one person, I receive a cure which will immeasurably improve the lives of all other humans alive. Do I perform this action or not?" (I restate it this way to avoid the above entanglements re: population issues, etc.. And no, I'm NOT going to weigh in on that topic) So let's start from Kant and work our way back from there. Now, first off, Kant cares not a whit for what the final "results" of any particular moral action is going to be - remember, he's working off of Hume's assertion that causality (one thing causing another to happen) is not tied down to necessity, hence we can never guarantee that the "results" of our actions are going to follow from our intentions (and, by the way, "guaranteeing" the positive result in the scenario above already tilts it out of Kant's favor). Thus, for Kant, the only "good" thing is a [I]will[/I] that, guided by reason, wills a moral action. An action is "moral" only if it is [I]categorical[/I]. For Kant, this means three things: 1) that the action, when universalized and applied to all possible situations, is not self-contradicting (i.e. if I want to cheat at cards, I have to imagine a world where EVERYONE cheats at cards: I cannot then morally cheat at cards, because having [I]everyone[/I] cheat at cards all the time would make playing a card game impossible), 2) that the action does not use another rational being (i.e. a human) as a means for a particular end, and 3) that, in acting, I recognize that am actually willing my action to become a universal law in a "kingdom of ends," that is, of rational beings. Now, guaranteeing the result is cheating a little, but let's look at the possible actions in this situation. Can I kill someone to better the world and still act categorically? No. Not only would killing be a violation of the second statement up there, but universalized it is incoherent: if EVERYONE decided to kill someone else in order to make a better world, there would be no one left to enjoy it, and Kant doesn't allow for little exceptions here and there. On the other hand, let's say I will the maxim whereby I ignore a cure for whatever given ills are in the world in order to save someone's life. This is a tougher one than the previous. For the moment, let's universalize the action: what would happen if everyone was given the same choice, and everyone decided in favor of not killing over getting the cure? Well, hunger and disease etc. would still remain, which is kind of crappy, but no one would have gotten killed (unlike in the previous action) and the result doesn't seem self-contradictory. So that choice would be acceptable. Refusing a certain given beneficial thing for myself, someone else, or everyone, would be [I]unfortunate[/I], but would not in itself constitute an immoral action. On the other hand, you could sharpen the situation and say, for example, that not killing the guy blows up the earth - this kind of thing gives Kantians fits, and got constant use being trotted out by Sartre and others. I won't touch on that kind of thing here. Incidentally, most of the other social contract philosophers before and after Kant (Locke, Rawls etc.) would probably agree with the above conclusion, albeit for different reasons. They tend to say that every individual person has these things called "inalienable rights" that cannot morally be shunted aside for any reason, no matter how good (I won't go into these folks with too much more depth, although they deserve it). Most folks seem to think this is a bunch of idealistic nonsense, despite it being written into a number of somewhat important government documents which I will not name. Now, Mill on the other hand seems to be the "default" position for morality among most folks nowadays: he's the big man of utilitarianism (and, more widely, moral consequentialism), and famously declared: "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." Now, from a Kantian perspective this is incoherent: if I try to bomb a school, fail, and somehow accidentally end up solving the Congo refugee problem in the process, my action is still moral because of its result. Utilitarians don't really see a problem with this, though (can you tell I'm not a big fan of this position?). Anyways, from this perspective the problem's a no-brainer: off the guy, improve the world. Nothing more to it. I could go into this more deeply (anyone want to hear about what Moore might think?), but I've probably already bored everyone to tears. Frankly, this kind of controlled sitation used for ethical questions isn't my thing, as I find them rather artificial and prone to the ignorance of their own ground. Why, we may ask, are we even having this dilemma? What makes either choice seem good or more good, bad or more bad? What is the ethical [I]status[/I] of this person I may or may not kill, and this cure I may or may not take? How does this creature whose wellbeing I am responsible for [I]approach[/I] me so that I can find myself in an ethical situation in the first place? This isn't the right place for working that kind of thing out - but I hope I've at least placed some light on the situation and opened it up to more discussion.

Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with the game Ges/Und Heit here is based on, so I can't at all comment on how faithful the adaption is. However, given the quality of the anime so far, I can't imagine the fans being happy with it - more than likely this recalls the Tsukihime fiasco from a few years back. If nothing else, they managed to take the wonderful, quirky orchestral drum and bass grandness of the game's theme song, This Illusion, and completely gut it (Kenji Kawai is the one responsible for this, by the way - one day I'm going to figure out how the same guy was able to do both the GITS movie soundtracks as well as any amount of totally forgettable BGM and soulless jazz-pop. But I digress). Ges/Und Heit really isn't a [I]bad [/I] series, but it's seriously bland. The main character, when he's not being unforgivably naive and idiotic (as Dagger mentions), is a dramatic black hole, a cipher. I suppose we, the (male) viewers, are supposed to identify with him as he goes and learns about life and probably ends up saving the world or something, all while apparently rooming with at least two gorgeous women so far (the show gives just enough to the traditional harem setup that it's recognizable, but not actually made interesting). Perhaps we could do this more easily if he had any meat on him at all other than being "a nice guy." Look for him to suffer some kind of personal crisis a couple of episodes from now and come out MORE HEROIC THAN EVER, and presumably with a few more girls in his stable. The other characters shine in comparison, of course, yet they're really nothing special either for the most part: Saber and Rin are by far the most interesting of the bunch, but Saber only seems to have two expressions (firey and determined, firey and determined but sensitive) while Rin tops her at three or maybe four. Aww, but who am I kidding, I can't help but like them anyways. The [I]design [/I] work, on the other hand, is fantastic; all of the characters are beautifully set out and very memorable, especially some of the servants (Rider is my personal favorite so far). The fights are also fairly spectacular [I]when they happen [/I] - the disclaimer being there because Ges/Und Heit, like seemingly every other action-oriented series in recent memory, can apparently only hold up to one skirmish every two episodes or so, with a major battle thrown in every half-dozen. Them's the breaks when you're doing TV anime, I guess. The plot strikes me as silly, although it's a good excuse to dig up some truly inspired character designs, and if they pushed it they could probably get a good story out of the deal. Well, we'll see what happens. So far it's been just interesting enough to keep me watching. It's nowhere near the upper ranks of the action/adventure series currently showing: Noein crushes just about everything else in the field, Black Cat has been doing steadily better than its pedigree would indicate, Blood+ seems to just keep improving as it goes along, Solty Rei has hit some snags but remains fantastic, and despite my disappointments with Mai Otome and Shakugan no Shana they still have occasional moments (there's also Eureka Seven, but I'd have to go into a seperate post to talk about [I]that [/I] thing). I've been wrong before about shows just starting out - Blood+, for example, had a VERY rough first couple of episodes - so maybe Ges/Und Heit will surprise me. For the moment there's very little that's exciting there, but there's certainly room to work with. So here's hopin'.

Frankly, I have no idea whether Evangelion should be considered a "classic" or not. I have no idea what criteria would qualify it for that position. However, I do get the sense that calling it a classic is something similar to putting it at the head of our top ten lists or giving it an award (complete with embossed plaque!). It's just posturing, and tells us nothing about what the series means. On the other hand, if we were to take "classicalness" in the sense of the historical impact on the history of anime (saying nothing about its quality), then there's not much that would qualify as [I]more [/I] classic than NGE. I may be speaking too generally here, but at the risk of overstating my case: Evangelion made it respectable to do televised anime again. If you're curious, you can take a look at the anime that was coming out in the early '90s: while there's a lot of good stuff there, most of it is in movies or OVAs. The TV series, in contrast, are nearly a wasteland - there's some excellent material there, but it's mostly relegated to either the remakes (e.g. Tekkaman Blade) or the shows that had already proven themselves as OVAs (e.g. Tenshi Universe). Only very rarely do you get something that can stand on its own (e.g. Nadia), and even the good shows are hampered by low budgets, throwaway episodes galore, and good ideas that simply go unrealized. And then, by '98, you've got Cowboy Bebop. What happened? While it's unfeasable to credit it all to NGE (certainly the advent of the American market had something to do with this as well), I'd say it was one of the most defining factors. Eva itself suffered under the same kinds of budget constraints as all the other shows, and it too was a throwback to the mecha shows of the '80s, but crucially it made it possible to take televised anime [I]seriously [/I] again. Without Evangelion, or at least something with a similar kind of impact in terms of the market situation, televised anime may well have remained a ghetto. But who cares about any of that history stuff anyways. I won't go into the kind of artistic impact it had on the scene, but if you've been paying attention at all to the past decade or so the scope of that should also be pretty obvious. All of this, of course, is to say nothing about what Evangelion actually means. In recent years (since about '00-'01, say) it's been fashionable to regard the series as something silly, as a mishmash of important-sounding words and ridiculous imagery that ultimately results in nothing more than a big whine-fest that falls apart by the end, where it tries to get "artistic." Thankfully, the tide seems to be turning against this kind of thinking (which is strange, because it's recognizably easier to laugh at something trying to be meaningful than it is to take it at all seriously, warts and all). Were Evangelion really reducible to just a collection of Christian imagery, psychoanalysis and Kierkegaard, it truly would be something silly no matter how well it was put together. It isn't, however, and any attempt to reduce it as such falls apart upon watching, say, the scene in episode 9 (the episode furthest removed from the mood of the later series!!) between Asuka and Shinji the night before the show's battle. Frankly, we don't have anything more than an inkling of what this scene means. We assume it's about "loneliness" or whatever and move on, maybe assuming it's just "pretentious," and that scene is by no means alone in this. If there's any reason to say that NGE isn't a classic, it's that we haven't even started to think about it; at best we've dissected it into a Freud reference here, a Kabbalah reference there, and that's not even getting out of the gate. None of this is to say that NGE's a perfect show by any means (go watch Lilliputian Hitcher is you don't believe me). But it does have something to say, and it's something we're not listening to if we're trying to figure out whether it or Rahxephon has the better mech design, etc..

Good god, this thread's been brought to life back more times than several of the Dragonball Z cast. No, the anime pretty much just hits a wall right there; it's a "failure" if you have to keep score on these things, but then again a failure by the Gainax crew is usually still immeasurably better than, well, most anime series one would care to name. There's a long story behind the Kare Kano anime that I'm still not entirely clear on (I'm not sure if anyone is). The short version, from what is pretty well agreed on: the author of the original manga and the show's sponsors got upset with Anno and forced him out, leaving Tsurumaki in the driver's seat. Anno, still in full-on existential examination mode after Evangelion, apparently wanted to take the story off in a different direction from what the manga author was planning; add on top of that your typical golden age Gainax difficulties with budget and deadlines, and they apparently wanted him gone asap. After that, Anno messed around with Ghibli, naughty hamster cartoons, and live action before returning to revive Cutie Honey with a movie and new series (which are both fantastic, by the way). So to answer your question: no, there isn't really an ending, and although you can go and read the manga, it's really a very different beast. All being said, though, it's a heck of a series. Watching it is really like seeing a torch get passed from the old schoolers who made Gunbuster, Nadia, and Evangelion over to the dudes who would later turn in FLCL and Abenobashi. Plus, my god, it's traditional shoujo fare done Gainax style; we'll never again see its like on this earth.