Bioshock: A Philosophical Review.

With the highly anticipated release of Bioshock Infinite (the third installment of the 2K game series), you will find below a review/analysis of the first game, complete with philosophical 

jargon and pictures and whatnot.

[All Screenshots From Personal Gameplay. Image Rights Owned by Irrational Games]

Released in 2007 by Irrational Games, Bioshock is seen as one of the Highest Rated First Person Shooters of All Time* The Gamer is immersed in the world of Rapture; an underwater city that is drowned in history. With what appears to be a longing for the past, the game design mirrors that of 1950’s/60’s America.

Amidst a plane crash, we are plunged into the depths of a Utopia; a sort of broken Atlantis. It is the end of an Idealistic Society said to have been dominated by “hand-picked” Scientists, Artists and Industrialists; a society which is now on the brink of war. You can alter your own biological structure with so called “Plasmids” (controlled by your own “will to power” – Nietzsche’s “Ubermensch”/Superman) and determine your own ending based on the choices you make throughout the game (Existentialism).

With awards such as Best Game of the Year (British Academy Video Game Awards), Best Original Game (Yahoo! Games Best of 2007) and Best Artistic Design (IGN E3 2007 Awards), Bioshock is a game like no other.

“To understand it’s philosophy, we must understand the age and nation, therefore, to some degree, we are the philosophers.” [Russell]

Caption (above): The Authority Figure of Rapture; Andrew Ryan.

A person “is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar.” [John Stuart Mill, page 226, AK].

Rapture as a Dictatorship ruled by Andrew Ryan, a “God-Like” Figure; the “Perfect Being” (Leibniz), a symbol of what is good and what is true. “God would not allow such a cruel state of affairs” [Hegel]. There is a collapse of order in a world of chaos. Society leaves us Alienated (Marx) – “Splicers” as failed experiments/outcasts. Pre-Socratic belief that mankind is the measure of all things – sent to save the city from destruction; Man, Freedom, Right. Against Hobbes and “Natural Law”, instead there are no natural rights (Rousseau) and no secure knowledge of outside world. “I am, therefore I fight” as the foundation of any natural system: the “Survival of the Fittest” (Darwin). 

Caption (above): "The Way The World Sees It"; Ethics and Aesthetics.

“Human beings could not live without accepting logical fictions… to give up false judgements would be to… deny life.” [Nietzsche, page 239, AK].

Aesthetics, not in the sense of “taste” but of “self-indulgence”. The definition of an imperative/“command” as a reflection of Nietzsche’s “Master Morality”; the poor and weak resenting the higher power. Writing smeared in blood shows the sick to be “parasites” of society. This acts as a prime example of Egoism, whereby the individual attempts to make themselves centre; they are guided by their pleasures, when in actuality, according to Schopenhauer and there is no great hope for contentment. For him, these people are ‘The Bad Man’; people who are ethically evil and therefore don’t do what is right for the collective (anti-Utilitarianism). The so-called “Splicers” are the physical representation of the ‘bad’. They attack the good as an act of “bad conscience” and by doing this, they lose the will to be human (Nietzsche). 

Caption (above): "Eve's Apple"; Civilisation Can Go Backwards.

“You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to all and the Earth to no-one.” [Rousseau]. 

Eve is represented as a “devil-like” figure, with the garden being derivative of the biblical “Garden of Eden”; paradise. The apple is symbolic of the ‘forbidden fruit’, picked through Eve’s own Value Judgement.  “Nothing other than my own choices gives authority to my moral judgements.” [R.M. Hare, page 224, AK].  By making this choice, Eve asserts her own ‘will to live’ and therefore she is ethically wicked. It is not noble to put your own happiness before another (Mill) and through ‘Ethical Hedonism’ (Bentham) people should know the standard of right and wrong. Christianity is no more justified by reason (Nietzsche) as it hinders human progress. The only way it will be saved is by reversing its values. On the other hand, Elizabeth Anscombe saw God as the “lawgiver” with Christianity introducing a moral/ethical law. This is derivative of Aristotelian Ethics, whereby Christianity is Key. 

Caption (above): Humanism as "Art" (Da Vinci); Sander Cohen in Fort Frolic.

 “How could an artist recognise the perfect sample to imitate if he did not have an a priori pattern of beauty in his mind?” [Schopenhauer, page 257, AK]

Sander Cohen is a character stimulated by “Pleasure Seeking” (Addison). Bentham and “The Greatest Happiness Principle”; the idea that people are controlled by their level of pain (‘pure’) and pleasure (‘fecund’) and they seek perfection in all their choices (Plato). This is a type of ‘Psychological Hedonism’, whereby pleasure determines all action; against Locke’s theory of Natural Rights. In this sense they do not exist, instead we are guided by our desires. In terms of Asceticism, people become self-indulgent and diminish the happiness of others; “The Greatest Misery of the Greatest Number”. John Stuart Mill was opposed to Bentham’s idea that life had no higher purpose than pleasure. Instead, people keep as far away from pain, the world of Rapture opposite, with Cohen’s mission to kill the key figures for his own personal pleasure. 

Caption (above): "Would You Kindly"; Hypnosis to Control Action.

“I fell insensibly into a most unaccountable reverie, that had neither moral nor design in it, and cannot be so properly called a dream as a delirium.” [Joseph Addison, “The Adventures of a Shilling” 1710].

Main character controlled by hypnosis from a higher authority, his actions are triggered by a certain word or phrase “Would You Kindly”; a process of ‘Free Association’ (Freud) that eliminates his freedom of choice. He is trapped inside a mental prison; a kind of virtual reality that affects who he is and how he thinks. “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes). From a Rationalist perspective, it is mind over matter. According to Spinoza, in this sense, there can be no free will as mind and matter are separate phenomenon (Leibniz and “Monads”). “I am, therefore I think” (Hume; opposed to Descartes). Idea that the mind tricks itself into thinking one thing causes another. “Nothing is more free than the imagination of Man…” [“Essay Concerning Human Understanding” 1751]. Logically, there can be no such thing as Causality. 

Caption (above): "Is All That We See Or Seem, But A Dream Within A Dream?" (Edgar Allan Poe)

“The scenes of the universe are continually shifting… but the power of force which actuates the whole machine is entirely concealed from us.” [Hume, “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, 1751].

Random perceived ‘flashbacks’ that appear from key events in the past. People appear as ghost-like figures that haunt the world of Rapture; mankind as a collection of different perceptions in flux (a continuous cycle). It never quite becomes clear as to what causes these ‘flashbacks’, but to Hume, they aren't even logically possible. There is no such thing as an “impression” and therefore there can be no “idea” of it. This is a highly Empiricist viewpoint; that we gain knowledge from our own sensory experience; "Habit of Association" It is ‘probable knowledge’ to think that one thing causes another.   Hume opposes Descartes belief in Causation; “What begins must have a cause.” For Hume, Descartes’ theorem was never rational since we can know nothing. What we do know, however, is derived from experience; aposteriori (Kant).

Caption (above): "Who Is Atlas?"; The Imaginary Being.

“We willingly call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height… which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature.” [Kant, page 253, AK]

Character of Atlas as a kind of ‘mythical creature’; the supposed saviour of Rapture until the bitter end. To Berkeley he is the "unperceived"; if you can't see it then it doesn't exist. From a further Idealistic perspective, all our perceptions are an ‘illusion’. Kant, however, would disagree. It was his belief that existence is the necessary condition of thought – if you’re thinking about it then it must exist.  The struggle for control over Rapture leads to the outbreak of war, with the introduction of Frank Fontaine, the epitome of Rousseau’s “rebel” of the state.

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AESTHETICS (page 250, AK) 

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. (1714-1762)

• Coined the word 'Aesthetics' in 1735.
• Believed the purpose of Art is Beauty - Beauty derived from Nature.

Immanuel Kant. (1724-1804)

• "Critique of Judgement" (1790) - Humans possess the innate (Chomsky) capacity for taste.
• 'Disinterestedness' as key to the aesthetic response.
• 'Free Beauty' (no value judgement) vs. 'Derivative Beauty' (perfection).
• "Animals enjoy pleasure, but only humans appreciate beauty." (page 251)

Arthur Schopenhauer. (1788-1860)

• "The World as Will and Idea" (1819) - Art intended for aesthetic pleasure/desire of audience - created under the influence of Will - 'Idea Known'.
• "The Dynamical Sublime" as threatening - objects that represent the insignificance of the individual in comparison to the universe - people become "hostile" to the Will. 
• Wrong to think that Art imitates Nature - Nature never produced 'The Perfect Human' (Plato) but instead presents a "Half-Uttered Speech" which relies on imagination of artist.
• "The sculptor 'expresses in the hard marble that beauty of form which in a thousand attempts nature failed to produce.'" (page 257)

Friedrich Nietzsche. (1844-1900)

• "The Birth of Tragedy" (1872) - Influenced by Schopenhauer.
• Art as escape from reality - human ability to "mask" suffering - "The Horrors of Existence".
• Apollo: The God of Light (Dreaming) and Dionysus: The God of Wine (Intoxication) - combined to create Art - Music as highest artistic expression - metaphysical action of man - our imagination 'poisoned' by rationality.
• "The best of all things is quite beyond your reach; it is not to have been born, not to be at all, to be nothing. The next best thing is to die as soon as may be." (page 261)

John Ruskin. (1819-1910)

• Art has a moral purpose to reveal fundamental features of Universe - Beauty is objective - tells us what is true, divine and incorrupt.
• Industrialisation (with division of labour, Ricardo) made type of perfection impossible.
• 'Imaginative' Faculty (Painting, Seek Perfection) vs. 'Theoretic' Faculty (Architecture, Limit Free Will). 
• Believed Romanticist (Gothic) Architecture superior to that of Renaissance as reflected the "appreciation of man's place in a divinely ordered universe." (page 264)
• "Art... is no recreation, it cannot be learned at spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do... it must be understood and undertaken seriously, or not a all." (page 263)

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Stay tuned for #2; A Review of Bioshock Infinite.

Release Date: 26th March 2013.

"Scripture does not tell us how heavens go, but how to go to heaven." (Copernicus)

Sources:

• http://www.bioshockinfinite.com/the-game/  [23/03/2013]
• http://downloads.2kgames.com/bioshock/site/us/index.html [23/03/2013]
• http://essays.quotidiana.org/addison/adventures_of_a_shilling/ [24/03/2013]
• Russell, Bertrand "The History of Western Philosophy" (1996)
• Kenny, Anthony "Philosophy in the Modern World" (2007)