This is long.....hope you have time to read.....or...i hope you like to read.....
Ansem's Report
Ansem's report seems at first to be an analysis of whether darkness is innate in us or not. Ansem started examining this in the beginning, way before the events of Kingdom Hearts. The question of darkness being innate in people's hearts ('innate' meaning we are born with it) is the primary question that Ansem tries to tackle in his reports, but a lot of other questions are raised as he continues his research.
Apparently Ansem was doing experiments of some description within Hollow Bastion. After the experiments fail, he casts the now seemingly-useless bodies to the dungeons under the castle. Later on he will discover there is a distinction between the Heart and the physical body & it's soul. The heart can be separated from the soul, but he does not realise this yet.
Ansem starts to figure out his hypothesis when he becomes aware of the creatures of darkness multiplying under the castle. Somehow he is able to replicate the design of these creatures and create artificial ones. Does he do this thanks to his previous study....the study that caused the bodies to be left under the castle in the first place? (i did notice a strange room in Hollow Bastion before fighting the Behemoth...as far as I can remember anyway, it may hold some clues on what Ansem was using in previous experiments.)
Anyway, Ansem is able to replicate the Heartless, as he has named them, introducing the question of 'exactly what does it entail to create something living', if indeed the Heartless are living. It seems to eradicate the notion of God, or higher power, from the game. Either that, or it indicates that Ansem is reaching a god-like stage where he can replicate the creation of life. Whether it is just replication is never answered in the game.
The other problem with Ansem's creations is: he said in his report that all 'his' heartless were marked with a symbol. A lot of the Heartless in the game had this mark, but the only ones that seemed to be lacking it were the small ant-like creatures first encountered at the start. Are these the 'true' forms of the heartless then?
Somehow Ansem has to reach the stage where accepting darkenss to find out the truth is the only route to truth. This epistemological search for truth does not appear to include any morality or ethical values. Light and darkness are treated without a clear moral standing on either side, that is, without reference to 'right' or 'wrong'....although darkness is traditionally seen as a 'bad' thing, it os not seem this way in any of the Reports.
But Ansem does highlight that darkness is an important part of the heart, and the fact that the Heartless kept trying to return to the 'heart' or 'core' of each world, what Ansem termed as 'the source', seems enough to justify this point in Ansem's mind.
Back to Ansem's dualist view of the body. The normal image of a dualist thinker is one that thinks the mind and the body are two separate things contained as one. After death, the mind and the body will be truly separate again. Ansem's thinking can be labelled 'dualist' because he has this view of two separate parts that make up the Whole, the living creature. However the two separate parts he was thinking of were a little different. He called the first 'Heart' and the second 'Body & Soul'.
Surely now it should be clear that if the Heart is separated from the Body&Soul, then the thing cannot be alive as it does not constitute a Whole. So surely the Heartless are not alive?
But if we take a look at exactly what these two separate parts are, we see Ansem grouped body and soul under one category. Does this mean that Ansem thought body and soul are the same thing?
I realise I have made the assumption with Dualism that the two separate parts are Necessary conditions for living. I have made this assumption without first considering that Ansem may have just been describing how a 'thing' is constructed, not prescribing the necessary conditions for a thing to be alive. So it may be possible for the heart to be separated and for the thing to continue living, because the necessary conditions perhaps do not include 'heart'.
Having established what a 'thing' consists of, Ansem then concerned himself with where the heart goes after it is separated from the body.
Ansem was already aware that there was more than one world, especially after talking with the strange visitor after the meteor shower. He figured that there might be a world for all the hearts, and there might be a world for all the heart-less bodies and souls too. This hypothesis seems likely as he observed the Heartless under the castle trying to reach an energy 'core' which seemed like the 'heart' of that world. To get to the core, a door had to be opened, which Ansem did open; the significance of the door is that it can be interpreted as a gateway into another world. Logically, to get to another world, there would have to be some sort of a gateway.
Ansem then jumped to the conclusion ratehr hastily that, the heart-less bodies must accumulate in this dimension, and since this dimension is not in a place we can exist, these empty bodies and souls, these 'husks' he called the Non-Existent. Which was an illogical jump, because due to the fact that they don't exist in Ansem's world, does not mean they don't have their own existence in their own world. It is a conclusion based on insufficient premises:
Premise 1: These heart-less bodies do not belong to our world
Premise 2: In my world, I exist
Conclusion: Therefore, these heart-less bodies are not in our world, therefore they do NOT exist.
Anyway, aside from pointing out Ansem's all-too-rapid conclusion, it is interesting to see how these themes are utilised in KH2. In the preview, Deep Dive, we see the phrases 'They are the Non-existent'. Who are 'they'? The nonexistent seem to have become a separate group of beings. I think the Nonexistent are not the same as the Heartless, although I believe they lack hearts. I think that what Ansem was trying to say is that the Heartless are born of the darkness in a being's heart after it is separated from the body, and the Nonexistent are the leftover bodies, only the soul keeping them functioning. Moreover, Ansem recorded the Heartless as having basic intelligence but he described them more as robots, with little or no awareness. The Nonexistent, one would expect to be more aware, having the 'soul' faculty available to them.
Ansem does mention another report as he reaches the last three of his 13 reports in KH1. This is just as he is figuring out what the Nonexistent are, and he says he will record more findings of these other dimensions and existences in another report which we never find out about.
This other report is mentioned again in the secret movie 'Deep Dive', so I am expecting there to be more information about these existences in KH2. I also expect KH2 to be a lot more metaphysical than the first game. Kingdom Hearts was mostly about establishing these philosophical concepts and theories, I expect KH2 to have an even wider scope, examining the theories behind the theories examined in KH1. What was perceived as the ultimate darkness in KH1 will probably turn out to be a small part of something much greater, or it will turn out to be totally different from all that Sora and his friends have learnt in the first game.
Ansem's role may be far from over...even though he was destroyed at the end of KH1 I believe he may be able to come back. After he did the so-called 'turning to darkness' he wrote in his report that he discarded his former being and only his soul/his will was sustaining him, and that unlike the other Heartless he had some concept and awareness of who he was and where he was. He was in another world, but still able to keep hold of the perceptions and awareness that the Heartless lack. This makes me think that Ansem could be a Nonexistent, or something like it. After all he was wearing the monk's cloak at the start of KH1 and the numerous figures seen in the trailers for KH2 are wearing similar cloaks.
Maybe it's not true. Maybe Ansem really did die at the end of the first game. But his reports still hold a lot of significance in relation to dualism, life after death and physicality.
Not to forget darkness being innate, of course, which is what we started off with.
Ansem's Report
Ansem's report seems at first to be an analysis of whether darkness is innate in us or not. Ansem started examining this in the beginning, way before the events of Kingdom Hearts. The question of darkness being innate in people's hearts ('innate' meaning we are born with it) is the primary question that Ansem tries to tackle in his reports, but a lot of other questions are raised as he continues his research.
Apparently Ansem was doing experiments of some description within Hollow Bastion. After the experiments fail, he casts the now seemingly-useless bodies to the dungeons under the castle. Later on he will discover there is a distinction between the Heart and the physical body & it's soul. The heart can be separated from the soul, but he does not realise this yet.
Ansem starts to figure out his hypothesis when he becomes aware of the creatures of darkness multiplying under the castle. Somehow he is able to replicate the design of these creatures and create artificial ones. Does he do this thanks to his previous study....the study that caused the bodies to be left under the castle in the first place? (i did notice a strange room in Hollow Bastion before fighting the Behemoth...as far as I can remember anyway, it may hold some clues on what Ansem was using in previous experiments.)
Anyway, Ansem is able to replicate the Heartless, as he has named them, introducing the question of 'exactly what does it entail to create something living', if indeed the Heartless are living. It seems to eradicate the notion of God, or higher power, from the game. Either that, or it indicates that Ansem is reaching a god-like stage where he can replicate the creation of life. Whether it is just replication is never answered in the game.
The other problem with Ansem's creations is: he said in his report that all 'his' heartless were marked with a symbol. A lot of the Heartless in the game had this mark, but the only ones that seemed to be lacking it were the small ant-like creatures first encountered at the start. Are these the 'true' forms of the heartless then?
Somehow Ansem has to reach the stage where accepting darkenss to find out the truth is the only route to truth. This epistemological search for truth does not appear to include any morality or ethical values. Light and darkness are treated without a clear moral standing on either side, that is, without reference to 'right' or 'wrong'....although darkness is traditionally seen as a 'bad' thing, it os not seem this way in any of the Reports.
But Ansem does highlight that darkness is an important part of the heart, and the fact that the Heartless kept trying to return to the 'heart' or 'core' of each world, what Ansem termed as 'the source', seems enough to justify this point in Ansem's mind.
Back to Ansem's dualist view of the body. The normal image of a dualist thinker is one that thinks the mind and the body are two separate things contained as one. After death, the mind and the body will be truly separate again. Ansem's thinking can be labelled 'dualist' because he has this view of two separate parts that make up the Whole, the living creature. However the two separate parts he was thinking of were a little different. He called the first 'Heart' and the second 'Body & Soul'.
Surely now it should be clear that if the Heart is separated from the Body&Soul, then the thing cannot be alive as it does not constitute a Whole. So surely the Heartless are not alive?
But if we take a look at exactly what these two separate parts are, we see Ansem grouped body and soul under one category. Does this mean that Ansem thought body and soul are the same thing?
I realise I have made the assumption with Dualism that the two separate parts are Necessary conditions for living. I have made this assumption without first considering that Ansem may have just been describing how a 'thing' is constructed, not prescribing the necessary conditions for a thing to be alive. So it may be possible for the heart to be separated and for the thing to continue living, because the necessary conditions perhaps do not include 'heart'.
Having established what a 'thing' consists of, Ansem then concerned himself with where the heart goes after it is separated from the body.
Ansem was already aware that there was more than one world, especially after talking with the strange visitor after the meteor shower. He figured that there might be a world for all the hearts, and there might be a world for all the heart-less bodies and souls too. This hypothesis seems likely as he observed the Heartless under the castle trying to reach an energy 'core' which seemed like the 'heart' of that world. To get to the core, a door had to be opened, which Ansem did open; the significance of the door is that it can be interpreted as a gateway into another world. Logically, to get to another world, there would have to be some sort of a gateway.
Ansem then jumped to the conclusion ratehr hastily that, the heart-less bodies must accumulate in this dimension, and since this dimension is not in a place we can exist, these empty bodies and souls, these 'husks' he called the Non-Existent. Which was an illogical jump, because due to the fact that they don't exist in Ansem's world, does not mean they don't have their own existence in their own world. It is a conclusion based on insufficient premises:
Premise 1: These heart-less bodies do not belong to our world
Premise 2: In my world, I exist
Conclusion: Therefore, these heart-less bodies are not in our world, therefore they do NOT exist.
Anyway, aside from pointing out Ansem's all-too-rapid conclusion, it is interesting to see how these themes are utilised in KH2. In the preview, Deep Dive, we see the phrases 'They are the Non-existent'. Who are 'they'? The nonexistent seem to have become a separate group of beings. I think the Nonexistent are not the same as the Heartless, although I believe they lack hearts. I think that what Ansem was trying to say is that the Heartless are born of the darkness in a being's heart after it is separated from the body, and the Nonexistent are the leftover bodies, only the soul keeping them functioning. Moreover, Ansem recorded the Heartless as having basic intelligence but he described them more as robots, with little or no awareness. The Nonexistent, one would expect to be more aware, having the 'soul' faculty available to them.
Ansem does mention another report as he reaches the last three of his 13 reports in KH1. This is just as he is figuring out what the Nonexistent are, and he says he will record more findings of these other dimensions and existences in another report which we never find out about.
This other report is mentioned again in the secret movie 'Deep Dive', so I am expecting there to be more information about these existences in KH2. I also expect KH2 to be a lot more metaphysical than the first game. Kingdom Hearts was mostly about establishing these philosophical concepts and theories, I expect KH2 to have an even wider scope, examining the theories behind the theories examined in KH1. What was perceived as the ultimate darkness in KH1 will probably turn out to be a small part of something much greater, or it will turn out to be totally different from all that Sora and his friends have learnt in the first game.
Ansem's role may be far from over...even though he was destroyed at the end of KH1 I believe he may be able to come back. After he did the so-called 'turning to darkness' he wrote in his report that he discarded his former being and only his soul/his will was sustaining him, and that unlike the other Heartless he had some concept and awareness of who he was and where he was. He was in another world, but still able to keep hold of the perceptions and awareness that the Heartless lack. This makes me think that Ansem could be a Nonexistent, or something like it. After all he was wearing the monk's cloak at the start of KH1 and the numerous figures seen in the trailers for KH2 are wearing similar cloaks.
Maybe it's not true. Maybe Ansem really did die at the end of the first game. But his reports still hold a lot of significance in relation to dualism, life after death and physicality.
Not to forget darkness being innate, of course, which is what we started off with.
