Power to Unity: Nietzschean framing between Kaiba and Atem
Previous: Zarathustra and the Judge
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? (...) Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
-The Gay Science by Nietzsche
Nietzsche had a grudge against christian based morality because those were predominant values in western society, but his goal was to deconstruct moral systems as a whole. Whether religious or philosophical, the foundation of a moral system lies in an assumption of objective truth: for instance, the foundation of christian morality lies in the assumption that God is good, so what is demanded and expected of you in service of God and the architecture of values built under this objective truth is, therefore, good. This truth is obviously not objective —beyond whether the existence of a god needs to be proven, the assumption we start with is that He is the authority that validates these values as good, that they are following an unquestionable truth.
You don’t need to question if what you understand as good is a universal truth because an omnipresent all-knowing figure of authority validates them as objective truth. For this post, if your god is not the abrahamic God or other type of divine entity, let’s understand “god” as any other concept that assumes the authority of objective truth; for example: happiness (maximizing pleasure and the absence of pain) in utilitarianism.
Nietzsche’s “God is dead” quote can be interpreted as an observation of western society during the Enlightenment period, where intellectual and scientific advancements had called into question the very existence of the christian god and, therefore, its authority on the validity of the values imposed on european society. Nietzsche considered the response to this revelation made people fall into nihilism (the loss of purpose/meaning), either resigning themselves into following false values (do nothing) or become pessimistic (do nothing but worse). But ☝️ he prophesied and encouraged the emergence of a man (no women aloud), a superman (übermensch), capable of transcending the need for an outer source of validation, and instead become the one who would create new values —in practice, becoming the “god” that granted authority on these new values for his own self.
Back to Yugioh, in the duel between Ishizu and Kaiba during the Battle City semi-finals, let’s interpret the future that Ishizu saw with her Millenium Tauk —fate— as the values assumed under the guise of objective truth:
And Obelisk as the figure of authority that validates those principles while granting Kaiba a sense of meaning or value; when he willingly sacrifices the god of the old values to create new ones, a new future, Kaiba successfully becomes Nietzsche’s idea of the übermensch.
In Kaiba’s previous life as a royal priest, Set had a similar goal: finding a more powerful god than the god cards, while his father intended for him to usurp the throne.
Pharaohs, as a divine representation of power (especially during the Amarna period, real life Akhenaten’s reign), had the duty of upholding Ma’at, the ideal of justice and righteousness that maintained cosmic and social order. We can say Akhenaden’s plan was essentially to replace the authority of Ma’at, the objective ideal of “truth” on which values were constructed.
So what about Atem? Why doesn’t he kill god like Kaiba?
Atem is on the other side of the coin, where he must uphold the values he represents because he believes in them and only him, as the pharaoh, must attend to this duty. He sacrifices his life, his body, his identity, and even his afterlife, with this purpose.
When Thief King Bakura confronts him about the true nature of the Millenium Items and its origins, later questioning the values on which the royal system imparts “justice” as an assumed objective truth, Atem hears the voice of his father telling him “justice is in the name of the god(s)”.
Under this Nietzschean framing, I interpret this line to mean that justice is made on behalf of the authority that upholds it: justice is defined by the god(s) that validate the royal institution which grants authority to the king, ergo, the king defines justice on behalf of the god(s). Although Atem is faced with the revelation of a terrible crime, he must stand by the values of his father and his own in order to reaffirm them.
You don’t need to kill god if you believe god is indeed good.
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