‘I am thou…’, thou art free: Persona 5 and Existentialism

32 min readDec 27, 2018

This essay will contain comprehensive spoilers for Persona 5. Reader caution is advised.

Introduction

Rather unsurprisingly, given its name, the Persona series has a reputation for exploring questions of personal and political identity. Who am I? What is the real me? What is the true self? These are all questions explored within the texts of these games. The series provides ripe contexts within which to discuss the self, identity, and more specifically the way in which these are constructed and lived out. Indeed, the very term ‘persona’ — an ancestor to the word ‘person’ — was originally Latin and referred specifically to the masks worn on stage by actors. The lineage of persona-qua-mask remains central to Persona 5. The series has a malleable mythology, with each of the games presenting a slightly different version, or experience, of a relatively singular set up. In each instalment,[i] a group of characters gain the power to summon personas, using these to fight battles within a cognitive world. The methods for summoning these personas vary, but in the latest instalment, Persona 5 the invocation of one’s persona comes through the ritualised tearing off of one’s mask to reveal what lies beneath.[ii] Personas are the forms our hearts take to impact the world — they are tools used to navigate the metaverse, where our protagonists — the Phantom Thieves — battle shadows to change hearts.

Indeed, our modern understanding of the term ‘persona’ largely derives from the work of Carl Jung — a Swiss psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Jung’s influence on the Persona series cannot be understated — particular in conjunction with Persona 5, where the central mechanics of the game are their most Jungian. However, the purpose of this essay is not to explore Jung’s influence on the series (partially because these comparisons have already been suggested)[iii] nor am I specifically going to discuss the game in the context of the philosophy of identity. Instead, my concern is with how the game presents the self in terms of choice. Persona 5 places specific emphasis on the role of personal and individual freedom, on the dynamics between power and resistance, and fundamentally on the nature and role of choice within our lives. We have an interplay between concepts of cognition, distortion, and choice Therefore, this essay shall instead examine Persona 5 through the lens of existential philosophy, reading the game through the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

As we shall discover, Persona 5 provides us with a useful context for exploring existential concerns about our lives — how we live, the choices that we make. Of central interest to the game is the question of agency, of how we choose our own freedom, and how we must embrace this freedom in a world shared by others.

Though these themes run throughout the game as a whole, they are most obviously presented within the game’s final chapter. Therefore, we must properly understand the ruin.

The Ruin

The eighth and final palace of Persona 5 brings the Phantom Thieves into the Depths of Mementos. Through the game, the party has spent no small amount of time exploring this warren-like maze of shifting paths (with Hebrew and pseudo-Hebrew names such as Chemdah and Qimranut), fighting hordes of shadows and fulfilling many ‘requests’ to change the hearts of wrongdoers. Despite the many days spent within it, the party know very little about Mementos. Originally brought there by Morgana, the Phantom Thieves know very little beyond its belonging to the metaverse: the cognitive reality wherein the Thieves are able to summon their personae to face shadows and change hearts. As we have learned throughout the game, the cognitive world is often a place of distortion — the result being the palaces created by singularly distorted hearts. From the perverted P.E. teacher to the corrupt would-be prime minster — the Thieves have seen their fair share of twisted hearts, each of which have taken the form of a distorted vision of some place in reality. Kamoshida thought himself the king of the castle, and this is the form taken by the school within his cognition. Likewise, Futaba’s inability to leave her room and her belief that she deserves to die transformed her house into a tomb. We know Mementos resembles the Shibuya metro system, that it is formed of train tracks that appear to collect shadows and deliver them further into its depths. Unlike the palaces we have encountered before, there appears to be no singular ruler to Mementos.[iv] It is instead connected to the collective unconsciousness — as the Twin Wardens tell us — if it is not itself part of this very unconsciousness.

Indeed, aside from the requests and the standard video game objective of grinding experience points and chasing sweet loot™, the main drive to explore Mementos comes from Morgana. The cat-like being encountered at the start of the game serves as the Phantom Thieves’ specialist, introducing Joker and the gang to the ways of the cognitive world. And yet, Morgana cannot remember his own past — left only with a sense that he should be human, and thus desires to return to his human form. The deeper one progresses through Mementos, the more unsettled Morgana grows, steadily expressing that he feels strange, as if its all very familiar. The deeper you go, the stronger his conviction becomes that knowledge of his true self lies within.

Of course, as any player of Persona 5 will know — progress through Mementos is limited. Each new stage, or path, only becomes accessible when the Phantom Thieves become well-known enough by the public. This serves as an excellent bridge between the simple game design desire to prevent the player from accessing higher-level areas early on, or engaging with things out of order, and the narrative thrust of the story in so far as it concerns public belief and internet culture. Each time the Phantom Thieves steal a heart, another path opens to them as they become recognised more deeply by the public.

It is not until the very end of the game that the depths of Mementos are unsealed, and the Thieves discover where the trains have been terminating.

Entering into Mementos’ final path, the Phantom Thieves find themselves before a great gate. Indeed, though they are not present the words ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’[v] would not be out of place here, given what follows. Upon entering the depths, it is quickly revealed that Mementos itself is a palace — the palace of the general public. Whereas the previous palaces have been both the seat and manifestation of an individuals’ distorted desires, Mementos is universal: it is the distortion at the heart of all humanity.

This distortion takes the form of a great prison. Whether individually or in groups, the shadows encountered within are behind bars. Though this is visually striking, scenes invoking punishment and suffering, the shadows all openly express a desire to be imprisoned. They are willingly incarcerated — made clear from the first sight greeting the Thieves as they arrive: a crowd clamouring the get into the prison, demanding to be locked up. Not only are the shadows willingly imprisoned, but they express confusion, apathy, and anger at the presence of the thieves, either failing to understand why anyone would want to escape or being actively angry at them for threatening the order and structure of the prison.

“Are you guys escaped convicts? Hahaha… Maybe you should stop trying to hard to get out… […] Wouldn’t it be better if people just lived with the hand they’ve been dealt?” — shadow of a Wry-smiling Woman, trapped in Mementos

Tearing their way through the many demonic-themed shadows that guard the imprisoned (such as Kali, Belial etc.) the Thieves eventually reach the heart of Mementos where they find the treasure they’ve been seeking: the holy grail. This is the root of the distortion — the manifestation of the distorted desires of mankind. Unable to abscond with such a gargantuan object, the Thieves opt to destroy it — only to be mocked by the grail itself. No matter how many strikes they land, the imprisoned (caged around it in a manner reminiscent of the panopticon) fuel the Grail — making it immortal. This is not a fight that can be won.

After a brief stint of non-existence[vi] (the Purgatorio to Mementos’ Inferno), the grail reveals itself to be a false God: the product of mankind’s collective cognition. This false God — Yaldabaoth, one of the names given to the demiurge[vii] in Gnostic cosmology — brings Mementos and reality together, creating a nightmarish realm where the distortion of mankind becomes inescapably real. Within this Qliphoth world (the name given to the ‘shells’ that obstruct access to true divinity and wisdom within Kabbalist philosophy)[viii] — the Paradiso[ix] that completes Dante’s trinity — Yaldabaoth sees mankind’s greatest desire fulfilled.

What, then, is mankind’s greatest desire? According to the false God, we desire control, to be released from responsibility. We desire to be free of our own freedom.

And thus the final chapter of Persona 5 — a game that from the beginning has been concerned with freedom, justice, and resistance to corrupt power — brings its themes to a crux as the Phantom Thieves duel with Yaldabaoth, the false God of control.

In so staging its final confrontation against an embodiment and personification of control, Persona 5 draws together its narrative threads into a story that is deeply concerned with freedom and persona agency. As for what the game has to say about these, it is best to explore and understand Persona 5’s position from the perspective of existential philosophy.

Condemned to be Free

The desire to escape one’s own freedom is an existentialist quandry.

Beginning with the oft-considered father of existential philosophy, Jean Paul Sartre regards the individual as absolutely free.[x] According to Sartre, there are no limits on human freedom.[xi] This is not to falsely claim that human beings are omnipotent, there are clearly limitations on what we can and cannot do. For Sartre, human beings may have various limitations to their instrumental power — to their ability to do certain things — but Sartre’s conception of freedom is primarily concerned with existential projects.

According to this vision of existentialism, whenever we set ourselves goals, whenever we devote ourselves to particular ambitions, we are setting ourselves projects. Through these projects, we create and sustain meaning within our lives. For Sartre, meaning is never something that is given to us, it is not something to be discovered, it is something that is fashioned, something that one makes out of the way one lives one’s life. When Sartre claims that freedom is absolute, his claim is that the kind of existential project to which one devotes oneself can be anything one chooses. Whether or not one succeeds, or even if one’s goal is possible — we can set ourselves to whatever project.

Persona 5’s confidant system provides several clear illustrations of precisely the kinds of existential project Sartre is talking about. Over the course of the game, Joker will be able to develop bonds with many others, both his fellow Phantom Thieves as well as other persons of interest. As Joker spends more time with these allies, his relationships develop and whilst this serves as a method of character advancement (your confidants bestow mechanical abilities and advantages on you throughout the game) but many of these confidants stress the importance of choosing the course of one’s own life.

For instance, Ann Takamaki — one of the Phantom Thieves — sets herself the task of strengthening her heart at the beginning of her confidant line. She pursues this is a multitude of ways, many of which prove to be dead ends, before ultimately deciding to devote herself to becoming the best model she can be. Likewise, Ryuji Sakamoto — another phantom thief — sets himself the task of athletic training and reconciliation with his teammates. Many of the other confidants are the same, from Makoto’s desire to become a police commissioner, to Iwai’s desire to protect his son, to Futaba’s programmatic pursuit of overcoming her social anxiety.

Many of these confidants begin with the characters believing certain things about themselves or the world, beliefs that only serve to obscure their own freedom. Ann believes that she is weak, Ryuji that he is powerless, Makoto that she has to fashion herself into precisely the form society expects. The list goes on. As you strengthen your bonds with these confidants, they come to see themselves more clearly, they come to understand what it is they want, and most crucially they come to recognise their own agency. This heightened sense of freedom is visually reinforced within the game. Each time the player increases their rank with a particular confidant, this is visually represented by a chain being cut. Once the confidant achieves their maximum rank at the end of their subplot, the links of the chains shatter completely — their heart is freed, and they have recognised their own freedom.

Chains shatter as you unlock the first rank of the Fool confidant.

Now, hand in hand with Sartre’s’ contention that we can choose whatever projects we wish, that these projects are our unlimited freedom, comes another implication: responsibility. Not only are we able to choose for ourselves, we must always choose for ourselves. Our projects, the meaning we bring to our lives cannot be given to us, it has to come from us. For Sartre, nothing can constrain our freedom — nothing can determine our projects for us. Of course, we can be given instructions by others, encouraged or discourage towards or away from certain goals and ambitions — but when the chips are down it is our choice as to what projects we pursue.

It is not possible to avoid this choice. For Sartre, this is perhaps the only limit of freedom: one is not and could never be free from freedom itself. We are condemned to be free, we are inescapably responsible for our own lives, for our own decisions, for the choices that we make. For Sartre, this is a matter of authenticity and inauthenticity, of good faith and bad faith (mauvaise foi).[xii] Only be facing our own inexorable freedom can we live authentically. Each time we abdicate our freedom, each time we lose our sense of responsibility we sink into bad faith.

Bad faith is not a moral condemnation for Sartre so much as it could be considered a form of distortion, and this is precisely the form it takes within Persona 5. Mementos, the palace of the general public, is — as all palaces are — maintained by the treasure at its heart. This treasure initially presents itself as the Holy Grail, as that which grants the greatest wish of the people. Indeed, so potent is the public desire for this wish to be fulfilled that the treasure has become not merely sentient, but has taken the form of Yaldabaoth: a God.

What the public yearn for most, the thing that has brought Yaldabaoth into being is the desire to be controlled. What they (or perhaps we?) want is to be free of freedom, to escape the burden of choice and responsibility. We see this sentiment expressed both in the shadows willing incarcerated in Mementos and by the shadows of the Palace rulers. The shadows in Mementos clearly wish to be told what to do, they desire neither power nor agency. Conversely, whether they take the form of King, Shogun, Banker, Pharaoh, CEO/weird space emperor etc. each palace ruler desires power without responsibility. Both of these are forms of attempting to escape one’s own freedom, whether through a straightforward, bad faith abdication of one’s agency or the desire to be free from the responsibility of one’s own actions.

“The act of making decisions is accompanied by nothing but pain.” — Yaldabaoth

Yaldabaoth is the distorted heart of a humanity that cannot face their own freedom, of a humanity mired by bad faith. To invoke Sartre’s terms, they are human beings who see freedom as little more than a burden, as something that we are condemned to. And they are right to recognise that existential freedom is indeed a difficult thing. But in desiring an impossible escape from their own agency, they become so distorted that they birth an evil God — bringing the world to ruin.

As such, Yaldabaoth might be better named the God of bad faith which is to say that he is a lie. Despite being an illusion, the harm he causes if very real. According to Persona 5 it’s the ruin of the very world.

Guilt and Inauthenticity

So to deny one’s freedom, to pretend as if one is not free is to live in bad faith for Sartre. But the ruin is brought about by the existential suffering of mankind.

Thus, the ruin brought by Yaldabaoth can also be understood through another existential framework, that of Martin Heidegger. Though both existential thinkers, Sartre and Heidegger hold distinct positions as regards the self and agency. Heidegger’s existentialism is rooted within his phenomenological work, particularly his understanding that existential agents (beings that can call into question the nature of their own being — for which Heidegger uses the term Dasein) are beings within the world. Despite these differences, the existentialisms of both Heidegger and Sartre emphasise the role of existential projects, of individual’s making an active decision — for which they accept responsibility — over the choices and projects they devote themselves to. For both, it is a question of owning one’s choices.

If Sartre’s existentialism provides us with a way of understanding what the ultimate distortion of Persona 5 is, then Heidegger helps to provide us with an understanding as to why this comes to be a distortion.

The question becomes — why do the general public depicted in Persona 5 resist their freedom? Why do they willingly allow their hearts to be interred within Mementos?

For Heidegger, the answer is guilt.

Heidegger’s work is replete with technical or jargonistic terms. Often these are drawn from everyday parlance, though used within his philosophical writing to denote something quite specific. When Heidegger uses terms such as authenticity, anxiety, and guilt, there is an immediate temptation to understand him in terms of the everyday uses of these words. But this may lead to a misleading reading of Heidegger’s position.

When considering the individual’s existential freedom, Heidegger speaks of thrownness. Rather than subscribing to absolute freedom as Sartre does, Heidegger’s existential agent — the Dasein — always already exists within a world filled with meanings. Meaning is thrust upon us from the moment we are born — we inherit understandings and perspectives from our cultures, our families, and — in contemporary life — from the media we consume. As free agents, we have to navigate these meanings, we have to live within the context they create. As we live our lives, we move through various contexts, through various sets of possible actions that become opened up to us. Whichever of these we choose — and we must choose, that much is inescapable — further possibilities may be opened up and others may become closed off. As finite beings, we cannot do everything, and each time we decide to pursue one project, this comes at the expense of another.

This is what Heidegger means by guilt. It is the experience of closing down one’s possibilities through the choices that one makes.[xiii] It is not something that can be avoided, for guilt is part of the very structure of action. To act is always to act in one way over another, to close off some possibilities in favour of others. To act is to experience guilt. Guilt for Heidegger is not so much a feeling of regret or remorse, it’s a sense of one’s own limitation.

This is in part conveyed through Persona 5’s gameplay. When one is not raiding Mementos or one of the other palaces, Joker is spending his time developing his skills, working for money, and building his relationships with his confidants. Each day, you only have time to do two things and you’re often forced between, for example, preparing for that upcoming boss battle by brewing coffee or developing your relationship with someone you care about. Both have their own rewards, but by picking one you rule out the other options. Of course, you could always brew the coffee later — but you might not have it when you need it, and you could always try to see your confidant tomorrow instead of today — but they might not be free to see you. As you playthrough the game, you have to select what projects you’re going to pursue and, unless you’re playing with the help of a guide, it’s impossible to do everything on one playthrough.

So, to return to the question as to why the general public willingly imprison themselves within Mementos, the answer is a desire to escape their existential guilt. Of course, one cannot act without guilt and thus we see so many of the shadows in Mementos standing behind the bars, absolutely abdicating their own freedom and will. And yet, even this is no true escape from their guilt. Through abdicating their freedom, these shadows have not escaped the burden of choice — they have merely chosen not to decide. They have not escaped their guilt — their guilt now rules over them in the form of Yaldabaoth.

In this sense, the public of Persona 5 are living their lives inauthentically. This holds both in a Sartrian sense — they continually refuse to acknowledge their own freedom and instead live in bad faith — but also in a Heideggerian sense. This is to say that the shadows of Mementos have become what Heidegger refers to as ‘the they’.[xiv]

“There are standards. Laws. Rules. Manners. Common Sense. Following those things is the only correct way of living. What is there to be confused about?” — shadow of a Stern Businessman, trapped in Mementos.

For Heidegger, ‘the they’ is a state of being opposed to the individual, and the distinction between the two is a matter of inauthenticity vs. authenticity. Much like Sartre’s account of bad faith, Heidegger’s view on authenticity centres around taking responsibility for oneself. When one chooses one of the possible courses of action presented to them, one must choose for oneself if one is to be authentic. We must not simply take a course of action between we have been told to take it, we cannot choose something because it is easy or popular. If any of these are used to explain away one’s reason for doing something — we are acting inauthentically and, for Heidegger, we have become part of ‘the they’.

‘There are many upstanding citizens. However, they merely take the sole path before them.’ — Yaldabaoth

Persona 5 represents the shadows within Mementos as largely faceless crowds, shuffling in unison. Using the imagery of a metro train, the game depicts these shadows wordlessly following one another, robotically boarding the trains to bear them to the prison deep in the heart of the distortion. All these shadows look alike, it is impossible to tell one from another. They have faded into a mass of indistinguishable people.

Instead of authentically choosing something for oneself — a member of the they makes a decision because that ‘is simply what one does’, it’s ‘the done thing’. When we confront the shadows in the depths of Mementos — so many of them look down upon the Phantom Thieves, regarding us as nothing but trouble, as outcasts that threaten the social order they seek to maintain and exploit. Of course, we know their true fate — they are empty, dull reflections of their ‘true’ selves. Compared to the glistering power of our Personas — they are shown to be of little to no substance.

Inauthenticity and authenticity are not descriptive of two different ‘sorts’ of people, for Heidegger. It is not that the prisoners of Mementos are essentially inauthentic, nor is it the case that the Phantom Thieves have chosen authenticity once and for all. For Heidegger, there is no such choice that we make once and for all — each decision we make can be authentic or inauthentic and no individual could live their lives in a state of total authenticity. After all — if the game’s key depiction of inauthenticity is the Shibuya metro, we cannot ignore how much of the game we spend taking the very same trains alongside the very same people who willingly consign themselves to Mementos. Instead, the Phantom thieves are marked by their continued commitment to living authentically — what Makoto’s persona, Johanna, calls ‘the path of strife’.

‘Have you decided to tread the path of strife?’ -Johanna to Makoto, during her awakening.

Let us dwell somewhat more on precisely what these shadows are contrasted to: the phantom thieves and their personas.

When we first meet each member of our party (barring Morgana, though he is more than human) — each of them are living inauthentically in the Heideggerian sense. Thrown into the world, each of them are drowning in a world of meanings and possibilities imposed upon them. Their agency is absolutely vacated.

Ryuji and Ann have been thoroughly abused by Kamoshida, both manipulated into silence and complicity with his regime. Ryuji has become a pariah, hated by everyone for his attempt to speak against Kamoshida’s crimes — he has sought justice through blowing the whistle and been met with pure scorn. Ann is manipulated into flirting with him (if not more) in order to protect her friend and is viewed as a ‘slut’ for doing so, she is only ever shown as having one close friend and this relationship is exploited by her abuser. Yusuke has his artistic talent exploited by Madarame, his plagiaristic art teacher. Makoto is constantly told to shut up and do as she’s told by her sister, the school principle, and by Kaneshiro. Futaba is lied to and manipulated such that she feels that she is to blame for her mother’s death, believing this to the degree that she hides herself away from the world and believes she deserves to die. Haru is treated as a bargaining chip by her father in order to consolidate his corporate empire.

Each of these antagonists distort our party members, they convince them to abdicate their own agency. And yet — it is through an encounter with and a rejection of the very source of their oppression that each character finds their strength.

‘What denies you is an illusion… Who will you obey? Cursed words spat out by a seething illusion or the truth of your own soul? ’ — Necronomicon to Futaba, during her awakening.

As each character is brought to face the bare truth of the one deceiving them, the one trying to convince them to forget their freedom, each Phantom Thief is pushed to make a decision. Either they accept this distortion sinking into the inauthentic existence of ‘the they’, or they instead claim their own agency. We know that each choses the latter — and within the plot of Persona 5, this reclamation of freedom comes as the awakening of one’s persona.[xv]

“Now you understand, nothing can be solved by restraining yourself.” — Carmen, during Ann’s awakening.

The awakening of one’s persona within Persona 5 is presented as a mythologization of what Heidegger names the call of conscience.[xvi] Thrown as we are into the world and its various meanings and possibilities, we often lose ourselves in the inauthenticity of the they. We become scattered into the world, diffused. Yet even lost as we may be in this state, we can experience the call of conscience. This call is a silent demand to face oneself, a wordless demand that one returns to oneself and acknowledges one’s existential condition, which is to say one’s freedom. For Heidegger, the call never gives us instructions — it never tells us what we should or should not do, and is thus silent — it instead summons us to make a decision.

Within Persona 5, this call is represented as the voice of the character’s persona, asking them to form a contract. The voice never provides instructions, never sets a course of action. They come asking questions, offering observations, vocalising the thoughts of the character who then recognise themselves within this call. When the Persona addresses its character, it speaks in a familiar tone, repeating the sentiment of ‘I am thou, thou art I’ echoed throughout the game. The voice arrives as the character reaches the pressure point of their choice. They’re facing someone who has or would rob them of their agency and freedom, and the persona functions as the call of conscience to say ‘they tell you that you’re not free — are you buying that?’

‘I see you’ve finally made up your mind, my dear, fated princess.’ — Milady to Haru, during her awakening.

To awaken to one’s persona is to acknowledge that one is free, to claim one’s agency and power. And so each of the Phantom Thieves makes their choice — they choose their freedom, they choose to rebel. The contract they sign with their personas is not a once-and-for-all attainment of authenticity, but an awakening in answer to this call. It’s the beginning of living one’s own life.

But what does one do once one is awakened? What end does one pursue through one’s persona?

Why — one pursues one’s justice, of course!

‘For Your Justice’

Throughout its narrative, Persona 5 makes continuous reference to justice. What the narrative does with this concept is quite interesting — for it is rarely treated as an abstract concept, as an impersonal virtue or some plan from on-high that the characters are seeking to uncover. Within Persona 5 justice is always personal — it always belongs to someone, to an individual or a group of people. The characters continually talk about ‘my justice’ and, when speaking of the Phantom Thieves, ‘our justice’. Additionally, Joker frequently talks to his confidants about ‘your justice’. Justice is something that is expressed by an individual, something that is maintained by an individual’s dedication.

‘You have finally found your own justice. Please…never lose sight of it again.’ — Johanna to Makoto, during her awakening.

This is to suggest that a single, universal definition of justice is not really something that is sought within Persona 5. We very rarely hear characters speaking giving us formal definitions of justice or grand pronouncements about the way the world should be. Of course, we do hear the various villains spouting their views on the world, detailing their distorted perspectives, twisted to justify their various crimes and transgressions. The narrative makes no excuses for them, it does not attempt to blur the lines or represent their actions as central to some greater discussion about morality. Instead, it’s clear that these people are ‘broken’ in some sense, that they are unwell and out of balance. Nor does the game spare us a damning commentary of contemporary society — adopting a distinctly Japanese perspective (and object of critique), though its point is undoubtedly more far reaching. Internet fandom, fanaticism, and the way that technology has empowered the court of public opinion are all tackled by the narrative. Regardless, we are not given a positive account to contrast this with.

Persona 5 critiques certain notions of justice, particularly those based on authoritarian appeals to the status quo. These are clearly presented as deficient, as false. Yet — it does not attempt to provide us with an alternative account of justice. Instead, the game seeks to reground justice in the context of the individual agent and the lives they live amongst others. This is to say that it provides us with an existential account of justice.

When a character reflects on their own justice, what they’re fundamentally considering are their own values and, by extension, the kind of world they wish to live in. Existentially speaking, this is to speak of the kind of world each character would like to create, to bring into being through their own actions. It is the global implications of an individual’s existential projects. It is seeing the world as full of resplendent beauty because you’re devoted to becoming a master artist, as Yusuke is. It is the strength you find in strengthening your heart to best support your friends, as Ann does. It is creating quiet spaces of peace and tranquillity — around which communities can flourish and grow, as Haru desires. All of these are examples of the kind of justice Persona 5 promotes, one that is highly personal, tied to the lives of individuals and the choices they make in living alongside one another.

This personal vision of justice as a matter of persona value, expressed through the way in which one lives one’s life, is reminiscent of two intertwined ideas discussed in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Another existential thinker — Nietzsche’s work conceptualises one of the central elements of human beings in terms of the ‘will to power’.[xvii] This forms something of the main driving force for human beings — we are defined in terms of our ambitions our desire for achievement. Rather than the desire for self-preservation, we are fundamentally defined by a desire to achieve. We set ourselves goals and projects, and seek to overcome those conditions that prevent us from realising these ends.

Now, for the sake of clarification it is well worth noting that Nietzsche does not provide a comprehensive or systematic account of the will to power. What is not intended by the will to power is merely the desire for domineering force or control over other people. We could say that the will to power is not necessarily the will to overpower others, nor is it the desire for the subjugation of others through the use of force or violence. The will to power does imply contest and competition, wherein different individuals struggle against one another to realise their goals and ambitions — but this contest does not need to be warlike or antagonistic. It can take the form of healthy competition, such as the kind that is eventually achieved between Ann and Mika. Nietzsche’s philosophy is not based on narcissistic self-obsession. Such readings have been largely influenced by the Nazi appropriations of Nietzsche’s work.

For Nietzsche, our lives are to be understood in terms of creative force — in terms of passion and drive. We are encouraged to view ourselves as works of art, to live as fully as we can. For Nietzsche, we are fundamentally procreative beings — we want to create, to bring new things into the world. We can think of this creative force in terms of value — as it is fundamentally concerned with the kind of person that one wishes to make oneself into. When refined in such a way, we can speak about a transition between the will to power towards the will to justice.

If the will to power is a general principle, governing both the world (in Nietzsche’s view) and individual psychology, then the will to justice is the incorporation of this into one’s existential life. It is the noblest centre of humanities desire to establish knowledge, the desire to create a world.[xviii] Nietzsche’s comments on the will to justice are minor, but the thrust of his distinction between this and the will to power more broadly is that the will to justice is far more difficult. According to Nietzsche, everyone can concern themselves with power, but it takes a person of singular excellence to be truly attentive to the will to justice. This is not because justice is something that is difficult to understand or discover, but because the will to justice requires that one overcomes oneself. Justice, for Nietzsche, is about one’s personal values, about an individual’s vision as to how they want the world to be.

When we consider the villains of Persona 5, each of them has their own particular preoccupation with power. From Kamoshida’s desire for control over the bodies of his students — as objects for physical and specifically sexual abuse — to Shido’s desire to consolidate his stranglehold over the Japanese government, the defining feature of a palace ruler is implicit with the very term ‘ruler’: they are one that desires power, and control.

And yet if we consider the values that each of the palace rulers embodies, we find very little originality at all. Each palace is built as a temple of worship to one of the seven deadly sins, and each ruler desires nothing more than to sustain the broken order of the world as it is, and to then climb up those structures. The structure of the public as it is shown to us in Persona 5 is one that is, as we have seen, mired in inauthenticity where individuals are lost in ‘the they’. Likewise, the sins are hardly unique to the villains, they are generic, a shared distortion.

‘You’re nothing but a criminal who rose above others by climbing a staircase of sin.’ — Makoto to Shido.

These palace rulers may be individualists, they may be obsessed with themselves and their individual desires, but they make no authentic choices for themselves. They seek power in the Nietzschean sense, as we all inescapably do, but they can only understand power in the terms that society gives them. The villains accept the world as it is, they lack the vision to even consider challenging it. And this is precisely why they are complicit with the ruin of the world.

The villains of Persona 5 are egotistical, self-absorbed, narcissistic, and vain — they have become completely overwhelmed by their own egos. And yet, despite this individualism these palace rulers are pale reflections of the greater metaphysical states brought to the fore in Persona 5’s final plotline. The values expressed by their actions, the great sins of mankind that are then turned upon the Phantom Thieves in their final confrontation with Yaldabaoth, are handed to them by society, internalised, and falsely regarded as necessary.

When we face down Kaneshiro’s shadow, he justifies his gluttony by claiming that he had no choice, that this is the way of the world — that he’s a victim too. The Phantom Thieves see through this bad faith, they see Kaneshiro’s choice for it is: freely chosen. This is not to deny that there are social pressures, or to ignore the way that those in more precarious[xix] positions are exploited by those in power. This is, after all, one of the central reasons the Phantom Thieves act as they do. But in refusing to view Kaneshiro as a victim, the Phantom Thieves affirm that he freely chose to become the person he is, that he could have chosen otherwise. Truthfully, the overwhelming pressures exerted on someone, the influences exerted on the choices one makes — particularly the obstacles that oppose the decisions one wants to make, all of these factors only serve to stress the importance of the choice itself. Rather than making the choice easy, rather than making the decision into something banal — the intense pressure only makes the choice more important.

The will to power, refined into the will to justice, is fundamentally concerned with a recognition of one’s own freedom — of a comparable kind to those presented in both Sartre’s and Heidegger’s accounts. But the will to power is always a will for resistance, the desire to face something that opposes their will in order to test the very power they seek. For Nietzsche, human beings do not avoid obstacles, limitations, or sources of displeasure, they exist in continually need of these — for it is only when faced with such a barrier to what one wants that one is required to grow. What precisely must be overcome if one is to grow? One’s self! One must overcome a limited vision of oneself in order to become someone new, in order to grow.

Persona 5 provides a symbolic representation of this account of existential growth through the awakenings of the Phantom Thieves, in the titular personas themselves. But it furthermore embeds this notion of growth into the confidant system — particularly with regard to those confidants who are also Phantom Thieves. Even for a persona user, continued growth is possible. Each Phantom Thief is able, if Joker deepens their bond as much as possible, to grow their original persona into an ultimate form. The individual’s conception of their self can always be superseded by another form. There is always room for change and growth, crucial to the ability to overcome oneself is the ability to see the self for what it truly is: a mask.

As we come to understand our power and limits, and then to challenge those limits, we shed old masks in favour of new ones.

Conclusion

Persona 5 is a game that encourages us to always acknowledge our own freedom, despite constant attempts by others, society, and our own distorted hearts to convince us of the contrary. We are reminded not to take things at face value, to be wary of those who would try to dictate our choices for us, or whatever is presented as necessity. This is not because we are being called to resist society itself, nor is it a call to individualism or hedonism. The game does not pretend that we can exist outside of society, that we can simply be ourselves isolated and alone. Instead — the ruin of the world, a drama played out in each individual heart every day, is seen as very much our problem, despite our considerable efforts to prevent it. Indeed, Persona 5 does not so much call us towards anything in particular. It draws us to the structure of choice itself.

The game pushes us to recognise the choices that we are making, even if we may not consider them as choices. Our excuses and our bad faith distractions must be overcome if we are to grow beyond who we currently are and become who we could be. Denying our freedom, denying how we can reshape the world through our choices, these are nothing but chains and restraints on our hearts — prisons that we make for ourselves, and from which we must break free. This is the ruin, the domain of Yaldabaoth, and it is precisely this cognition we must challenge

What the game stresses is responsibility — not merely in the sense of owning our choices (although it does this too) — but also in the sense of response-ability: having a sense of oneself as being within a world one shares with others, of living within conditions that we must respond to. It is about the connections we make to others, the kind new world we can reimagine and bring into being.

Persona 5 speaks to the prolific anxieties of modernity, to the fear of living in a fallen world we cannot change or challenge. In the face of such worries, it serves to call mimic the call of conscience drawing us back to ourselves. It reminds us that our actions, our choices, and our cognitions can reshape the world — that we are free to challenge the conditions of our lives and to seek to bring a new world into being.

For if we choose to embrace our own power and agency, we can be confidant that life will change…

Notes

[i] At least in the modern Persona games, from Persona 3 onwards.

[ii] Of course, to some degree this misunderstands or misrepresents Jung. For Jung, the persona is the mask — it’s not what lies beneath it.

[iii] See: Paul Walker-Emig, ‘The Real Psychology Behind the Persona Games’, Kotaku, 2017 <http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/06/08/the-real-psychology-behind-the-persona-games>; Alex Tisdale, ‘“Persona” Takes Jungian Psychology and Runs With It’, Inverse, 2016 <https://www.inverse.com/article/22672-persona-carl-jung-psychology-matthew-fike-interview>.

[iv] Of course, we learn that this is not quite the case. The Holy Grail appears to serve as both treasure and ruler of the Palace of Mementos — though importantly its power is derived from the cognitions and belief of the general public.

[v] The words etched above the gates of the Inferno in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Also a fitting sentiment given that Morgana is an avatar of hope.

[vi] You can see what happens here.

[vii] The creator of the material world, as opposed to the true God who is the creator of the spiritual world.

[viii] Qliphoth are that which prevents access to the Sephiroth — the emanations through which God’s light shines into creation.

[ix] The main foes faced here representations of the four Archangels: Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael.

[x] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes (UK: Routledge, 2003), chap. The Origin of Negation.

[xi] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes (UK: Routledge, 2003)

[xii] Sartre, chap. Bad Faith.

[xiii] Martin Heidegger, Joan Stambaugh, and Dennis J Schmidt, Being and Time (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), sec. Understanding the appeal, and guilt.

[xiv] Heidegger, Stambaugh, and Schmidt, chap. Being-in-the-world as Being-with and Being-one’s-self, The ‘They’.

[xv] The awakenings can be viewed here.

[xvi] See: Heidegger, Stambaugh, and Schmidt, sec. The character of conscience as a call.

[xvii] This concept doesn’t receive a systematic explanation within Nietzsche’s corpus, but is largely mentioned in the following texts, see: F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. by Bill Chapko, trans. by Thomas Common (Feedbooks, 2010); F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966).

[xviii] See: F. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, ed. by Daniel Breazeale, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chap. On the uses and disadvantages of history for life.

[xix] I use this term in the sense outlined by Judith Butler, see: Judith Butler, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (USA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso Books, 2006).

Works Cited

Butler, Judith, Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (USA: Harvard University Press, 2015)

— — — , Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso Books, 2006)

Hashino, Katsura, Persona 5 (Atlus, 2016)

Heidegger, Martin, Joan Stambaugh, and Dennis J Schmidt, Being and Time (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010)

Nietzsche, F., Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966)

— — — , Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. by Bill Chapko, trans. by Thomas Common (Feedbooks, 2010)

— — — , Untimely Meditations, ed. by Daniel Breazeale, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes (UK: Routledge, 2003)

Tisdale, Alex, ‘“Persona” Takes Jungian Psychology and Runs With It’, Inverse, 2016 <https://www.inverse.com/article/22672-persona-carl-jung-psychology-matthew-fike-interview>

Walker-Emig, Paul, ‘The Real Psychology Behind the Persona Games’, Kotaku, 2017 <http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/06/08/the-real-psychology-behind-the-persona-games>