Bloodborne: The Myth of Enlightenment

A brief overview by BobafrigginFeet

    Here I will be going over some of the reasons why Bloodborne is not simply an adaptation and amalgamation of Dracula and the Lovecraft mythopoeia, but going towards the roots of these horror stories, why it is also a parody of the tragic failure of the philosophy of the European Enlightenment or Age of Reason akin to Doctor Faust.

Setting: 

For most people today it is easy to shrug off the setting because most people do not see its significance. The gas lit cobblestones of Yharnam and its architecture that is distinguishably influenced by real world settings of late 18th century cities of London, Paris, Edinburgh, Cologne, Transylvania, etc. are a testament as to how one could describe the zeitgeist of its fictional population. There is undoubtedly 18th century European fashion, 18th century European accents, an original soundtrack inspired by classical music particularly those of the Romantic era, 18th century European language and mannerisms, 18th century European architecture, weapons, technology, monsters and creatures and people with characteristics inspired by old European Christian stories, and European Christian themes.  

Quick Run Down: 

By the middle of the 1700s, Western philosophy had reached an ethical and epistemological cul-de-sac. The Enlightenment or Age of Reason was based on a static view of human nature, an increasingly mechanical view of the universe (based on: - Copernican astronomy, - Galilean mechanics and - Newtonian physics) and - a linear view of the progress of scientific knowledge (the mechano-material, reductionist approach). 

The exclusively rationalist approach, was termed by Ernst Lehrs as the 'one-eyed, color blind' perspective of the world

An exclusively rationalist approach to life raises fundamental issues about "God, freedom and immortality" (Kant) of growing concern to a culture undergoing significant economic, political and cultural transformation.

The Rationalist scientific method, which had worked well with inert nature (Bacon's natura naturata), was less successful in seeking to understand vital nature (natura naturans). At the same time, the rational-empirical model based on the predominance of mentative thinking (German: sinnen) via the intellect (German: Sinn), started by Descartes and advanced most notably in France, was leading to confusion and doubt rather than clarity. Especially in subjective topics, equally rational arguments could be made for widely divergent propositions or conceptions.

The more Empirical approach favored in Britain (Hume) had led to viewing reality as sense-based, including the mind; how, what we perceive is only a mental representation of what is real, and what is real we can never really know.

As one observer summarizes, there were two 'games' being played in philosophy at the time – one Rational and one Empirical, both of which led to total skepticism and an epistemological crisis..

Kant's writings made a radical division between the subject and external objects. Because the subject constitutes its experience of reality, what we really know when we study our experiences are the subjective conditions of those experiences, not their objective character in the external world. "Objectivity" is a function of the subject imposing uniformity on its experiences and universality on its judgments. This saves the uniformity and universality of science, at the cost of saying that science is not a science "of" true reality but of our experience of it. All we know of the external world is that it's "out there."

Lore:

Blood is a central feature in the world of Yharnam and is the most important element to the story.

The Old Blood is a term often used by many characters in Bloodborne, to refer to the blood of the Great Ones and the powerful Kin that can be considered Great Ones, cosmic horrors who are very similar to the Lovecraftian "Great Old Ones", a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities.

The Old Blood was discovered by the Byrgenwerth Scholars within the tombs of the Gods, carved below Yharnam. The blood has great potent healing properties and also the capability of evolving mankind. The first experiment must have had mixed results as Master Willem, the senior administrator of the school, feared it and took the phrase "Fear the Old Blood" as his mantra. However, Laurence, one of the scholars, saw the potential usage of the blood and departed from the school, forming the Healing Church where he studied the blood and spread it to the public as miraculous treatment, with the promise the sacred blood can cure any disease. However, misuse of the Old Blood is theorized to be the primary reason for the outbreak of the Beastly Scourge which plagues Yharnam.

Paleblood is undoubtedly one of the most mysterious elements in the entire lore of Bloodborne. It is referenced in a few moments, but never in a way that explicitly states what it is, what it does, or where it comes from. When players finish creating their Origin, and after being administered blood by a Blood Minister, they awake in Iosefka's Clinic, in a room with a mere note that says:

"Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt."

And so, regardless of its origin, utilities, or even the form it takes, Paleblood becomes the goal of the player. 

Blood Echoes are the echo of someone's will. Like how a ghost is the lingering image of a person, Blood Echoes are the lingering presence of their will that stays long after the person has passed away.

Abstract:

The idea of human rights originated from Christianity. Christianity conceives the idea that every human has a soul, originating from God. This gives each human a direct relationship to God. One views a person's soul as something distinctive from the community he is in, or the special qualities he posseses. Therefore, the possession of a soul implies an abstract human value or worth innate in all people who also possess a soul. Because the soul is both universal and immortal, human beings can be seen as something beyond time and space, independent from the position they occupy in the community. 

William of Ockham argues that if the moral law is inherent in the order of things, then God has no free will since he has to obey the moral law for the sake of the order. After this realization, some time later, the notion changed from the moral law being inherent in the order, to the moral law being inherent to God's will. The moral law is now God's incentive, something he projects towards the world, instead of something distinctive from him and overpowers him. Eventually, this creates further juxtaposition as we now start to see implications between this and our position. Because humans are created in the image of God, we all possess a fragment of his essence, it just takes a small step to see the moral law as God's will to be also ours. 

Thus, we arrived at the notion of universal human rights which is generated by the will of each individual, by virtue of a shared human essence. We arrive at a full-fledged Enlightenment conception of human rights.

In the Age of Enlightenment, Descartes postulates that the world is divided into two substances, Mind and Matter. All of human errors stems from this unstable mixture of intellectual needs and bodily needs like oil and water. Error is our sense perceptions funneling knowledge of the Absolute to fit within our bodily capacity. 

The Absolute is the World of pure ideas like cause and effect, the noumenal world. Hegel says that what has utmost reality for Spinoza is the absolute (or the infinite substance) and that anything else (finite modes, in particular) are ways of negating this absolute. 

Master Wilhelm's beliefs represents the Faustian thriving to understand what Kant calls "things-in-themselves" or Absolute idea that are "out there", and in this case cosmic horrors that human beings could never understand or control. We could never see external objects, and this is why Master Wilhelm desires the biological faculty, eyeballs, to see them completely and tangibly in the most literal sense.