Could Eren have possibly committed the Rumbling just for Paradise?
What if Eren was not compelled to do the Rumbling for his own personal version of freedom? What if he only did it to protect Paradise? With the notion that Eren did the rumbling for freedom and that he did it for Paradise are seen as interchangeable, there are two premises needed for this interpretation to work:
- Committing the full Rumbling was a reasonable necessity for the safety and security of Paradise.
- The only requirement needed for Eren’s idea of freedom was the safety and security of Paradise Island, as said safety and security granted would reach him too.
Both of these must be true, and additionally, Premises 2 depends on Premise 1 to make sense, because otherwise, if Eren’s reasons for attempting a full Rumbling extended beyond the safety and security of Paradise Island, then so would his requirements for freedom.
Note this post’s objective is not intended to speak on the political circumstances surrounding the island nor dedicated to indefinitely determining whether the Rumbling was or was not necessary for Paradise’s survival; it’s only meant to highlight what operating under said interpretation would suggest for Eren’s freedom.
This post’s objective is to question whether the idea of Eren attempting the Rumbling just for Paradise’s safety is even logically possible.
I’m going to argue that while both of the established premises are necessary for the notion that Eren committed the Rumbling merely to save Paradise, they’re actually mutually exclusive. And while the notion that Eren committed the Rumbling merely to save Paradise is often used to argue against the claim that he’s “not free” in another sense of the concept, it actually does the opposite effect, all because of a line that Eren says in the table scene.
Eren considers himself Free, for whatever he does and chooses to do is what he believes to be of his own Free Will:
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Free Will is defined as “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate.” Therefore, Eren’s claim is that he is acting without the limitation or restriction of necessity. (Since “necessity” and “fate” are listed as a disjunctive, I can just focus on “necessity” for this argument).
It’s up to us to determine what Eren considers a “necessity,” something he claims to be unconstrained from, and therefore free.
- What I deem a “physical necessity.” In order to act unrestricted of physical necessities, Eren must have agent causation (aka origination); to enact entirely new causal chains in the universe. This is along the Incompatibilist notion of Free Will.
- What I deem a “moral necessity.” In order to act unrestricted of a moral necessity, Eren must not encounter any external circumstances that would compel or coerce him to act out of what he deemed necessary to prevent a worse consequence. This is along the Compatibilist’s notion of Free Will.
Either Eren’s claiming he’s free of physical necessities or moral necessities, if not both.
I’ve supplied useful definitions in the image below, but feel free to skip if you know the meanings of these terms already:
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Briefly ignoring Determinism’s view that every event is physically necessary due to causal laws that incorporate no randomness, if the Rumbling was deemed “necessary” by the moral standard, then Eren would not be claiming that he committed it of his own Free Will. The only way to make sense of this line is to deem that the Rumbling was not a moral necessity (which is to forfeit Premise 1) or to deem that when Eren was talking about his freedom, he was not considering moral necessities (which is to forfeit Premise 2).
Due to Eren’s claim, the only way to uphold the notion that the rumbling was morally necessary is to acknowledge that Eren’s notion of his own Free Will extends beyond the Compatiblist’s notion of the concept; that it extends to agent causation. This would mean solidifying that Eren is NOT a Compatibilist, someone whose definition of Free Will can logically coexist with a timeline set in stone.
If Eren’s notion of freedom requires agent causation, then he must be deemed to NOT have acted on his Free Will (despite what he may want to believe) because Aot’s timeline is set in stone by causal laws, and therefore the Rumbling was indisputably physically necessary.
- This case operates under the assumption that Eren at the table scene can inaccurately believe he has agent causation while not believing he’s free of moral necessities because physical necessities are not noticeable by our perceptions of the way moral necessities need to be. Moral necessities can only be of effect if they influence one’s conscious beliefs.
Believing that Eren’s freedom goes unimpeded by the timeline being set in stone means accepting that the Rumbling was not a moral necessity. As long as the Rumbling is considered “necessary” from both the physical perspective and the moral perspective, then Eren is neither way free.
To break it down:
Either way, premise 2 does not work. So, what does freedom mean for Eren?
An important clarification to make is that I'm not claiming that Eren attempted the Rumbling to gain free will or agent causation. Eren still yearned and committed the Rumbling for external freedom only, but the presumption that he already had agent causation, internal freedom, was an essential aspect of his rationale.
His killing motivation was power/control-oriented. He was trying to recover from the feelings of powerlessness he experienced as a child and compensate for the control he believed was justly taken from him throughout his life.
Think of the first time Eren deemed that he was unfree: It was not due to being under an immediate threat of death, but when he couldn’t seem to find the sense of fulfillment that Armin experienced when dreaming of the outside world. Eren automatically assumed it was because he couldn’t visit the outside world unimpeded and blamed his lack of satisfaction with his life on not being powerful enough to fight against the enemies that partook in it.
But as Eren failed to notice that Armin could still feel that sense of fulfillment despite facing identical external obstacles, he did not consider another set of important factors; internal restraints; his brain structures.
In actuality, there was no guarantee that the completion of Rumbling would lead to his emotional satisfaction. Still, when operating under the misguided belief that he had agent causation, Eren ought to have believed that becoming powerful enough to destroy all in his path and live an existence free of external obstacles (external obstacles that threaten the safety/security of Paradise ≠ external obstacles in general), whether actually detrimental to Paradise’s safety or not, would be all that was needed to solve his initial problem.
Thanks for reading :>
Posted Oct 8, 2023, 3:06 AM UTC