FF IX, Existence, and Other Persons
At least in the English version, in the opening cinematic of Final Fantasy IX, the character Vivi utters the words "How do you prove that you exist…? Maybe we don't exist." Of course, translated this way, Vivi's words are dumb. If you act, then, as if by definition, your action IS, which means it exists; but nothing comes from nothing, as every effect, or everything that proceeds from something else, depends, as if by definition, upon that something prior whence it proceeds (deny this, and you deny the intelligibility of the world; it is our confidence in the intelligibility of the world that has allowed us to develop the various sciences and the technologies that these sciences have made possible). Furthermore, if you truly know that you act, then you know that you are the source of that act, which entails that you know that you ARE. And in fact, in every act of knowing, truly knowing, one implicitly affirms one's existence as a condition for the possibility of that knowing. For it is YOU who know, and not another; It is YOUR knowledge, and not another's. One can play verbal games, or one can play coy; but, really, if one has any aspirations to be taken seriously at all as an intelligent being, if one truly wishes to commit to the bit that one cannot know whether he exists despite the fact that he clearly knows the acts even in questioning his existence (and expects us to accept his question as a real, legitimate act), he should fall into a dumb silence — and remained there.
So, as given in the English version, Vivi's line is dumb, and I was going to delight in mopping the proverbial floor with it. I was going to argue, however, that the line does raise interesting questions, if only obliquely, about how existing for others, as being known to exist and appreciated for this by other persons, seems to have a strange but profound impact on how worthwhile, how valuable, we find our own existence to be — how worthwhile, how valuable, we know our existence to be, which knowledge is so important in galvanizing us to act as fully what we are, and thus to exist as fully what we are. It is because it is known and affirmed by his parents that it is good that he exists, good that he is what he is, which affirmation and knowledge is expressed through verbal and nonverbal acts, that a child comes to know, comes to really know, that it is good that he exists, comes to know in a deeply felt way that is very being and place in the world is good; it is out of this deep sense of the goodness of his being that he is able to strike out into the world with confidence and flourish. Without that deep sense, that deeply felt knowledge of the goodness of one's existence — a truly accurate knowledge of one's existence — one is set for a lifelong struggle against the deep sense that existence is not worth it, that life is not worth it — that one's own existence is not worth it — which leaves one unable to be, arguably, in the way that he could have been if, from others, he had received and had planted within himself the knowledge, the true knowledge, of his existence as it is. "Do I exist?" Meant as a question about whether I exists for others, then, is not only not a dumb question, it is a vitally important one as well. Taking this way, Vivi's question is a good one.
As things go, Vivi's question in the original Japanese is, apparently, much closer to what I have argued would be a non-dumb version of the English language version's line. It reads: "生きてるってこと、証明できなければ 死んでしまっているのと同じなのかなぁ... ('If you can't show proof that you're living/alive, it might as well be the same thing as being dead.')" If "proof" is taken as "recognition by others of your own personal acts as personal, as proceeding from a personal existential center that has the intrinsic competence to give birth to good and worthwhile acts that can be recognized as such by others," then it basically gets us thinking along the lines I sketched above. In any event, what other sort of proof could possibly matter? if one construes "proof" as something generated out of oneself that one can recognize for himself as such, as proof that he is alive, that he exists, if he struggles with a sense deep down at the core of his being that he somehow isn't alive or that he somehow doesn't exist (in some sort of full way that matters), what good could such proof possibly do him? How could he, who struggles at the deepest level with a sense of worthlessness or non-full existence extricate himself from the vicious cycle of doubt by himself? That would be to draw something out of nothing; to affirm the possibility of that entails a denial of the intelligibility of the world.
Fin.
(This is where I found the original Japanese of Viv's line and the translation thereof: https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/2zczsh/some_interesting_things_i_learned_playing_ff9s/)
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