The Philosophy of Persona 5 Royal: How Do We Find Meaning in Suffering?

This post and the above video contain spoilers for Persona 5 Royal and the original Persona 5

What does it mean to live? This is the question at the center of the third semester in Persona 5 Royal. At its core, the confrontation between Dr. Maruki and the Phantom thieves is a conflict between two radically different ways of answering this question. This is an examination of the philosophical themes at the core of Persona 5 Royal’s final chapter.

Starting with Dr. Maruki, I think he’s a fantastic character and one of the best additions to Royal. I thought it was pretty obvious that Maruki was going to end up the antagonist of the third semester. I was under the impression that Maruki would play out in a similar way that Adachi from Persona 4 did, as this wacky, light hearted character that ends up being the real mastermind. But I have to say that I was really pleasantly surprised with how Maruki’s character developed. Your confrontation against Maruki is such a wonderful, thematically appropriate final boss in a way that Yaldobath was not. While most the villains in Persona 5 are just generally evil for the sake of being evil, Dr. Maruki is the only person who has a genuine reason for doing the things he does. While Shido is a power hungry politician with an inflated sense of self, Dr. Maruki is fundamentally just a scientist who wants to protect others from suffering the same way he has. What makes Dr. Maruki so fantastic is that the player can understand and empathise with where he’s coming from. During his time at Shujin academy, he listened to the troubles of the phantom thieves and is trying to create a world where none of them have to suffer. Maruki’s philosophy is basically a version of hedonistic utilitarianism taken to its most extreme. While the term hedonism carries baggage in common language, philosophically, hedonism is the belief that maximising pleasure and minimizing suffering are principle drivers of well being.

The philosophy of utilitarianism can be traced to the English philosopher Jeremy Bentahm. In the opening to his book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, he writes: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain, and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.” Maruki more or less subscribes to this understanding of the human condition, after all his goal is to create a world in which no one suffers. When you consider Maruki’s backstory, it’s easy to understand why he might come to such a conclusion. He saw his fiance, Rumi, fall into a catatonic depression after her parents were murdered. His research was trashed and stolen for nefarious means by Shido. When he sees how both Rumi and Sumire are able to live largely normal lives after being previously completely unable to cope with the loss of their family, it’s no wonder that he ends up concluding that it should be his goal to use cognitive psience to reduce people’s suffering. Maruki’s plan of creating a world in which no one suffers is basically utilitarian hedonism taken to its logical extreme. Bentham created an algorithm known as hedonic calculus to determine how much pleasure or pain an action is likely to cause, taking into account factors like the intensity of a pleasure, how long it will last and how likely it is to occur. To him, an action is only morally justifiable if its “tendency to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it” In this view, what Maruki is doing can basically be seen as the most moral action possible because Maruki is quite literally, maximizing, to the greatest degree to the greatest number of people their happiness and diminish their suffering to basically none.

But anyone who has ever played Persona 5 Royal can tell you that the game goes to great lengths to stress that accepting Maruki’s reality is the “bad ending”. But it is worth seriously considering the moral implications of the world that Maruki is trying to create. Returning to the lense of utilitarianism, it’s undeniable that Maruki’s reality would end up probably helping more people than it hurts. While the phantom thieves acknowledge this moral dilemma, it’s really not something the game grapples with to any serious extent. Bentham would probably tell the phantom thieves that they are insane. While there may be groups of people, like them, who would derive more utility from living in reality than in Maruki’s fake reality, the fact of the matter is that most people would probably opt into Maruki’s reality. While the Phantom Thieves seem pretty staunchly convinced in the utility of confronting suffering, the reality is that most people never bounce back from traumatic experiences. If not for Maruki’s intervention, it’s unlikely that Rumi or Sumire would ever really have been able to live normal lives, which is probably why Sumire still seems concerned for Maruki after the final boss fight. Is Shiho really better of having been sexual assaulted at the hands of a teacher and being crippled after an attempted suicide? Furthermore, if we take what Maruki says at face value, his reality would probably include the end to global poverty, warfare and disease, after all those things bring about a great deal of suffering which I would imagine that most people would be in support of. Fundamentally, utilitarianism is a consequentialist moral philosophy, which means that the morality of an action only depends on consequences of that action. In this case, because the end result is that because the net happiness of society has increased far more than the suffering, Maruki’s plan is moral regardless of the means he uses to achieve that goal .

Not only would utilitarian philosophers argue that not only is Maruki’s plan ethical, he even has a moral obligation to carry it out. As John Stuart Mill, a contemporary of Jeremy Bentham explains in his book Utilitarianism, a utilitarian conscience is actually a natural result of human existence, writing in Chapter 3 “The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends to make him feel at one with his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims of those of his fellow creatures.” Maruki’s actions seem to basically follow from this line of thinking. His plans were born out of a desire to prevent people from suffering in the same way that he saw Rumi and Sumire. To Mill, it is a sign of moral progress when the happiness of others, even those of complete strangers, becomes a priority. If Maruki has the ability to reduce the suffering of others, he has a moral obligation to see that through. Consider the contemporary philosopher Peter Singer who became famous for his positions regarding combating world poverty. In his well know 1971 essay Famine, Affluence and Morality he asserts that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” There’s a certain argument to be made that what could possibly ever be of comparable moral importance as the end of all of human suffering. Though that question of what it means for something to have comparable moral importance becomes the crux that defines the phantom thieves’ opposition to Maruki.

So if there are all these good reasons to believe that what Maruki is doing is just and morally good, then why does the game go to such great lengths to oppose his reality?

Persona 3, 4 and 5 all revolve around some central thematic tennant. Persona 3 is about learning to face death. Persona 4 is about learning to face the truth and accept one’s true self. Persona 5 is about learning to rebel against an unjust status quo. All of your party members and social links must combat some kind of trauma or suffering from their past. Futaba, Makoto and Haru must confront the passing of their parents. Ryuji has to come to terms with having his dream of running track being crushed forever. Ann must learn to cope with the tragic reality of what happened to Shiho. Yusuke has to learn what it means to pursue artistic beauty in a world that seemingly has no use for such an ideal after being betrayed by the man who he looked up to, who raised him. The entire game of Persona 5 is a rejection of the binary understanding of happiness versus suffering that Maruki espouses, which is probably why the game goes to such great lengths to emphasize that what Maruki is doing is ultimately wrong, even if it comes from a place of good intentions. Persona 5 teaches that learning to confront suffering and not letting yourself be shackled by said suffer is an essential part of living.

Consider this famous thought experiment put forward by the American philosopher Robert Nozick. Imagine that in some distant future a bunch of big brain scientists make a machine that could stimulate your mind into whatever pleasurable experience you wanted. Sound familiar? The third semester basically sees you living inside an experience machine of Maruki’s design. Nozick argues that there is reason, as the phantom thieves demonstrate, to not plug into such a machine, it then follows that hedonism as a world view is false. After all, if receiving pleasure and avoiding pain were the only thing that mattered, clearly everyone would have no reason not plug into such a machine. In rejecting Maruki’s world, you as the player essentially play out this argument as it’s put forward by Nozick.

So why is it the case that people, like the phantom thieves, are so vehemently against living in a seemingly perfect reality. After all, it doesn’t sound half bad. In his book Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick puts forward three reasons why we would choose not to plug into the experience machine. One, we want to do certain things and not just have the experience of having done them. The phantom thieves have only been able to grow because they managed to take control of their lives in a way that would never be possible in Maruki’s reality. Second, we want to be certain people. To plug in is to commit a form of “suicide.” This is especially relevant to the case of Sumire. If you choose to embrace Maruki’s reality, Sumire is effectively erased from the world. Third, plugging into such a world would limit you to a man-made reality. You would be constrained by Maruki’s designs and his vision. The world would have no deeper meaning than what Maruki wants for it.

But even if we accept the utilitarian framework, it’s evident that happiness built on a lie is less valuable than its genuine bona fide alternative. Consider this other thought experiment put forward by Shelly Kagan. Imagine you have two businessmen, one who receives a great amount of pleasure from being successful in his career, respected by his colleagues and having a loving wife and kids. The second is a nearly identical businessman who is experiencing the same amount of pleasure. The only difference is that this businessman is being deceived about the nature of reality. His colleagues only pretend to respect him, thinking he’s really quite a dunce and that his wife and kids don’t truly love him, they just use him for his money. Most people would say that this second businessman lives a worse life than the first much in the same way that most people would agree that Sumire living a false life as Kasumi is worse than if she lived a genuine life as herself. Ultimately, all of the members of the phantom thieves, despite living their “perfect” lives end up realising something is wrong and opt out of the reality Maruki created. This poses a serious problem to quantitative hedonists like Bentham because it’s evident that not all pleasures are intrinsically valuable for reasons other than the mathematical amount of pleasure received.

But even if Persona 5 Royal is able to establish these limitations with a hedonistic understanding of the world, we are still left with the central question I posed at the beginning. What does it mean to live? Sure, it might not just be the pursuit of pleasure, but what then makes life worth living? I think Akechi in particular provides an incredibly interesting lense from which to view this question. Because in Akechi’s case, it’s not simply a question of which reality is better, Maruki’s or the real world, it’s a question of life and death. As we learn on the final day, Akechi didn’t really survive Shido’s palace. He was only brought back as a result of Maruki’s machinations. If Marukui’s reality is destroyed, so too will Akechi. In Akechi’s case, the question is perhaps not, what does it mean to live? But rather, under what circumstance is life not worth living?

This is essentially the question that animated most of the writings of Albert Camus, the French philosopher and author. In the beginning of his essay The Myth of Sisphyus, he famously posits that “there is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide.” Camus was principally concerned with the idea of the absurd, or the tension that forms between humans desire for order and purpose in the world and the cold, uncaring reality of the universe. The question then is, how should we respond to the absurd. If life is truly without any meaning or purpose, why shouldn’t we just kill ourselves.

Maruki’s answer to this question is that he is going to become a god and create a world without suffering. Maruki intends to replace the absurd with a new reality, a seemingly perfect one where no one has to suffer. That is his answer after being confronted with the tremendous and arbitrary suffering in the world. What Maruki wants is for the phantom thieves to believe in him. He stresses throughout the game that he wants the player to trust him and to accept his reality willingly. In this sense, Maruki becomes a god like figure, one that the player can choose to believe in as an answer to the irrationality and pain of existence. It’s no coincidence that Maruki’s persona is Azathoth, the lovecraftian embodiment of the universe and Lovecraft’s own existential dread.

But Camus rejects this belief in the divine as the correct response to the absurd. To Camus, the only real answer is to confront the absurd, to embrace it and continue to live. Consider the case of Sisphyus who is cursed to forever roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it tumble back down for the rest of eternity. To most people, this fate must seem like a nightmare, a living hell. But not to Camus. Camus believes that Sisphyus is, in fact, living a meaningful life. Sisyphus continues to roll the boulder, knowing full well that his efforts are futile. He embraces his fate and lives with a sense of purpose, embodying heroism in the face of the absurd. As Camus explains “All Sisyphus’s silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing”.

The companion to Camus’s notion of the absurd is the idea of Revolt. To revolt is to live with defiance in the face of the absurd. In choosing to reject the chains of oppression that once controlled their lives, the phantom thieves embody Camus’s notion of the spirit of rebellion. But Akechi is the one who has most come to embrace the absurd. In the third semester, we come to meet the real Akechi, not the sincere detective prince, but the carnal Akechi, filled with unbridled rage, who can’t be bothered to give a damn. In the final battle, when Maruki attempts to reason with him, Akechi simply tells him to fuck off with his “high and mighty bullshit”. Akechi, more than any of the other phantom thieves, has faced the bleak nature of the universe. His mother commits suicide after being ostracised by society. He’s bounced from institution to institution, nothing more than a problem to be dealt with. He spends his life trying to get revenge on his biological father, Masayoshi Shido, and is one day randomly gifted with the ability to enter the metaverse. Right when it seems like he’ll enact his vengeance against the man who despises so much, he ends up dying at the hands of Shido’s cognitive version of himself. Akechi spends his entire life motivated by a desire to get revenge against Shido but in his final moments, as he’s about to be killed by his own self, he realises the absurdity of this entire situation. Akechi’s life is the embodiment of the absurd.

I think that Akechi’s philosophy can perhaps be best summed up in this quote from the Myth of Sisyphus. “I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death — and I refuse suicide.” Whereas Camus refuses suicide and desires to a live a life of revolt against the absurd, Akechi chooses to die for the same reasons. Akechi spends his entire life consumed by his desire to get revenge against Shido, only for this same desire to eventually lead to his death. During the third semester, Akechi is finally able to live a truly authentic life, one that isn’t dictated by the whims of others but one that is lived for himself. Consider the moment when Akechi awakens to his third Persona. It’s after Akechi confronts Joker about his life and their mutual acceptance to fight Maruki, even if it means his own death. It’s no coincidence that his Persona’s ultimate skill is “Rebellion Blade”. This is Akechi’s ultimate act of rebellion, to choose death rather than to live under Maruki. Akechi joins Joker not out of some grand moral objection to what Maruki’s doing, but out of an unbreakable desire to continue living life on his own terms. Akechi sees Joker as someone who shares this vision which is why he’s so disgusted if you end up accepting Maruki’s proposal. To live a life under the thumb of another man, never able to make one’s own decisions or able to confront any deeper meaning of reality, perhaps that is a fate worse than death. Or as Akechi puts it, “what is life worth in a reality that was cooked up just to satisfy someone else?”

Persona 5 Royal improves upon what I found to be one of the most disappointing aspects of vanilla Persona 5. When compared to Persona 3 or even Persona 4, Persona 5 just didn’t seem as thematically compelling. The game was really focused on rebelling against “rotten adults” in a way that didn’t come off as especially nuanced or complex. None of the antagonists from the original Persona 5 are really meaningfully morally complex characters except for Sae Nijima. By having Maruki, someone who isn’t unambiguously a rotten adult, the ultimate antagonist, Persona 5 royal is able to bring a level of depth to its story that the original didn’t have. Royal is able to tie the ideas of rebellion into a commentary about what it means to live a meaningful life. Rebellion is not just a means to get back at an unjust society, it’s an understanding of how we can live an authentic life in the face of seemingly arbitrary and unjust pain. Life is not just about this binary view of suffering as bad and pleasure as good. Life is about taking ownership of your decisions and living in a way that you find meaningful. In the words of Toranosuke Yoshida, “To betray my ideals would be to betray myself and everyone who believes in me”