#hohenheim if I could’ve written a paper about you for philosophy I would’ve

[catlover-multifandom]

okay will do! just as a foreword, this happened back in late November/early December and my notes were pretty barren at that point due to the semester ending soon so what I say may not be exactly what I said, but I’m scraping my brain to remember it!

There’s this one section of my notes that has a nice unusually big wall of text and reading that confirms that was the week the discussion happened (I get passionate when it comes to things I like)

So I guess I’ll list the things from the class discussion, and then my own notes that got me thinking about hoho will be in parentheses.

Ismael and the ethical importance of death: he thinks it’s common to view death as a mistake and deny it, view it as a tragedy basically.

The alternative view of death: how death gives meaning to our lives. basically a really good meal vs a never ending meal, would you pick the finite limited meal or the infinite meal? (basically father and hoho. father didn’t care about what it took to reach immortality, he would kill the entire planet for it, basically the never ending dinner. hoho wanted to just have a satisfying life and saw immortality as a curse, just wanted something to give his life meaning and appreciate it, basically the really good single serving meal. they both view death differently, father sees it as a mistake and imperfection to be fixed, hoho sees it as a natural process and just wants his to be one he considers worth living with his family. ugh im getting emotional already. the grave scene is coming into mind… STOP IT MIND!) there was also the search for truth in my notes that the professor wrote on the board. SEARCH FOR TRUTH. (search for truth. that’s pretty blatant. father wanted to become god and that’s how he searched for the truth. literally gathered sacrifices so he could eat god and pursue the truth of the universe. and his gate was still empty. amateur. hoho found some truth in his life by living life and ed literally beat truth by realizing his friends and family gave his life meaning and no knowledge from the truth would tell him that. take that father.)

Nagel and absurdity. We are insignificant compared to the scale of the universe, but the scale of the universe isn’t the cause of absurdity, because if we weren’t small it would be more absurd. (it’s giving very much the whole “one is all, all is one” vibes…) ultimately humans will die, we are born and have no control over it, we can have some control over our death and how we die, but ultimately everyone dies so it doesn’t matter. Despite this humans still search for meaning in their lives, creating a chain of justification for why you are doing what you are doing such as grades get a degree, degrees get a job, job gets money, etc, and eventually the chain will end with something about living a fulfilling and meaningful life. (literally hohenheim. he couldn’t control his immortality so he was searching for a way to make sure his death was on his own terms, aka a natural one with his family [this poor man], and he justified what he did in his life to make life meaningful! he wanted to stop father, stopping father will lead to him freeing the souls of xerxes, freeing the souls will free him from immortality, no more immortality will let him age and grow old as a human.)

If given a philosopher’s stone, would you use it? Or would you leave it alone? (he really brought up the philosopher’s stone and told us basically what it was, a perfect substance that alchemists believed could make you immortal and transmute ordinary metals to precious ones like lead to gold, blah blah blah I’m sure you know what it is if you’re reading this. now this is where I stopped writing in my notes other than this one sentence here: “it’s the finiteness of life that gives its meaning, because if you’re immortal you will lose all your connections to the world eventually and can you even say you’re human still if you lose all those human connections?” class ended there and I dashed over to my TA to discuss.)

okay so basically after that I asked him if he ever heard of FMA. he said yes and said that many students recommended it to him to read in the past. I basically told him there’s a protagonist and stuff but that the dad is what I wanted to discuss. basically he’s called the philosopher of the west in universe, he’s a living philosopher’s stone and how the question about the philosopher’s stone was very much a present theme in the story and that despite him being immortal he hated it and wanted to be mortal because everyone wants something and anyone who becomes immortal will want to experience something a mortal person does. this man was immortal for 400+ years and called himself a monster because he lost what made him human and all his connections, he basically was the epitome of the whole finite vs infinite meal in that he wanted the finite meal over the infinite meal because the infinite wouldn’t taste as good over time if it’s all you eat. he wanted to finite meal so he could savor and enjoy it. I also said a lot of what I said above in the parentheses… then reiterated the recommendations he got to read the manga and that hohenheim is literally the epitome of this philosophy class.

okay I think that’s it!! now that I’m done I remember that I still have my papers and could probably dig some of what I wrote out to explain more if needed!

Hohenheim is a shit dad but GOD i love him he’s like a pathetic miserable wet cat i just want to hug him like look at the man he cried in a family photo. He was scared of touching his own kids because he thought he’d ruin them. I love that man so much. HE DISAPPEARED FOR TEN YEARS AND WHEN HE GOT HOME AND HIS HOUSE WAS GONE HE SAID “pinako i seem to have lost my house??” He actually makes me so sad i want to cry i wish he didn’t have to leave so that he could just have been happy with his family LIKE LOOK AT HIM CRYING IN THE FAMILY PHOTO HE���S SO HAPPY TO HAVE A FAMILY I’M GENUINELY TEARING UP OVER THIS