āHawks/Dabi did everything right.ā
[Or: Dabi and Hawks are ideological masterpieces and picking a side explains your kind of moral-justice.]
Letās take off our fandom-glasses for a moment and look at the gorgeous canon conflict between Dabi and Hawks and āthe injustice of moralityā.
Now, the goal is to destroy an āunjustā society. Which will inevitably kill many innocent people. Though: Some of the leagues members are genuinely good people (Twice) or just got abused by the system (Dabi) and see no other choice. Dabi sees his action as ājusticeā, since he longs for revenge against the man/system who did him wrong. [- But this brings him in conflict with his understanding of moral-pain, as he knows the people he kills have family. - To the point where he cried blood.]
His moral ideology is the extreme opposite of Hawksā.
When Hawks joined the league, he acknowledged the problem of āinjusticeā. He saw the flaws of the system and felt genuine sympathy for Twice. But he is unwilling to risk a single civilian life for changing it.
The bloody fun starts when Hawks is gets confronted with the āTrolley-Problemā.
This is a version of an ethical dilemma from 1967, surrounding the question: Do I stick to the āmoral codeā by not hurting a criminal or do I choose the ābestā outcome, by causing a criminalās death?
In a survey around 90% of the respondents said: āItās okay to let one person die, to save the larger number of people.ā This is the natural human ideology of āUtilitarismā and also occurs in social animal-species behavior.
BUT If you make it more āpersonalā, letās say: You like the person and you have to kill them yourself ā And Hawks liked Twice. - Even if it still saves a thousand lives, the reaction is completely different now: Only 10% of the respondents would still do it. Because now it āfeelsā wrong.
Even if ānot killing this person, because you donāt want to feel wrongā would lead to āletting thousand people die, but feeling rightā.
Well, Hawks does not feel āheroicā - Even before he killed Twice, he had huge doubts about his own dignity.
[He jokes he doesnāt want to be No. 2. He thinks his back isnāt broad enough. He jokes he isnāt āTop-heroā-material. (ref: ch. 188; ch.185)]
Hawks is one of the most intelligent characters within the MHA Universe, and his way of approaching problems is not influenced by āsituational factorsā but by ālogical weight.ā
Hawks took the harder choice and forced himself to suppress his own moral instincts for this. [Remember, he saved Twiceās life risking his own out of pure reflex. Hawks is a selfless hero, to a point where Dabi relied on it:]
[In fact, Hawks is so selfless, that he sacrifices his own āwish to feel like a good personā so save the larger number of people. ]
āAh. Cool motive, still murder.ā
Does the end really justify the means?
Letās say (solely hypothetical) Hawks killed Twice ā but Toga copies Twiceā quirk, and over hundred million civilians of Japan die nonetheless. Hawks has now killed a good man, without direct logical weight behind it.
Someone could (or will, because Iām fucking going to) conclude that the righteousness of Hawks action might solely depend on its success.
( ā At least till we include numbers in Hawkās imaginary litigation. Because Twices quirk included āexponential growth of fighting powerā, the heroesā chances of winning would run asymptotic to zero, which would result in the death of over a hundred-million people. Not taking the āriskā of beeing injustice would therefore have been illogical from Hawksā perspective.)
So was Hawks āinjusticeā?
From Dabis point of view: āWell- Yes of fucking course.ā
Because Dabiās character personifies the exact opposite ideology: ādeontological theoryā, which focuses not on the product of his acts, but the intrinsic value of the act in and of itself. Dabi approaches problems complete and utterly āselfishā. Ā - No, this does not mean that he canāt do things for others out of sympathy- It means that he acts bird-free after his own instinctive moral-code and makes his decisions because he feels like they are the right thing to do. - Like a normal human - just a little more extreme.Ā
[See, Dabi recruited Hawks into the inner circle of the League, without trusting him - because he doesnāt trust the League either. (He said this and acted like this several times.) Just like Hawks, Dabi is a lonely and paranoid man. But other than Hawks, he is driven by the injustice he experienced. He uses on his own pain as fuel to fight for the things he right now sees as āgoodā.)
- Dabi got exploited and abused by the hero-system?
-> He will destroy said hero-system as revenge, to create momentary ājusticeā for himself.
- Dabi gets the chance to benefit from a hero?
-> He will recruit him without much caring for long-term consequences.
- Dabi loses a valuable ally/partner trough a hero?
-> He will kill/torture said hero as revenge. Ā
Dabi is more ājusticeā fixated than Hawks.
Dabi would never kill a man he likes for the āgreater goodā. (He also does not care about the āliberationā-ideology, or anything regarding the āfreedomā of regular civilians. Which is shown in his fight against Geten and again in his monologue in chapter 267.) He only cares about the āinjusticeā of the hero-system.
Dabi clings to his āhumanityā more than Hawks does and he reacts to his own pain with highly emotion-driven actions. He clearly does not care about the long-term effects his actions have on him- or everyone else.Ā
[Neither Hawks nor Dabi expect a long life, but both deal with it very differently.]
From Dabiās point of view, Hawks is injustice, because he killed a good man, right here and now and the consequences ā good or bad ā do not matter. (āThe action in itself was amoral.ā)
[It is very interesting to see the reactions within the fandom, paralleling Dabiās exact ideology to the point where some wanted Dabi to punish Hawks in the name of justice. Dabiās moral-code is to lesser extents portrayed in many shonen-protagonists (e.g. Gon from HxH) ā and sometimes criticized as immature.]
Actually, both sides can be reduced to:
Dabiās: āThink for yourself and do whatever the hell you recognize as righteous right now.ā
and Hawksā: āThink for the others and do whatever the hell is necessary to bring the maximum good to society.ā
ā¦And I also think thats pretty fucking cool.
