Heroes & Philosophy: Will Our Questions Ever Be Answered?

Will Our Questions Ever Be Answered?

Although Heroes is mainly a show about humans with supernatural abilities (or evolved abilities depending on which way you look at it), within this backdrop the creators have used this platform as an arena to explore some of the basic questions we all have about life and philosophy. Questions like:

Why do so many among us go so horribly wrong? What makes some walk the path of darkness while others choose the light? Can we ever hope to understand the force that shapes the soul? Does the hero or the villain inside us win the day? What happens when trust is lost? Where do we run, when things we believe in vanish before our eyes?

Sci-Fi in particular has always been a playground for philosophical speculation because there's the ability within fiction to create similar worlds with just enough difference (whether it's the future or another planet or a dystopia) that we can detach ourselves from our current situation and explore issues of humanity with an open mind.

That said, a constant theme in Heroes is our understanding of good and evil. With each episode, new depth is added to every character- making them good one moment and then evil the next. We are always left wondering: Is Sylar really a bad guy or is he simply misunderstood? Is Nathan Petrelli going to further his career or look out for those in need? Is Noah really protecting Claire or is his harboring her for his own benefit? And is "the Company" an entity of evil or is it really making the world a better place?

While it seems confusing at times, the struggle within each character over their "dark side" really echoes the world we live in. It would be nice if everything were black and white with a firm divide between good guys and bad guys- but the reality we live with is that each one of us has a little good and a little evil dwelling within us.

We aren't perfect and we aren't perfectly bad, either.

And so throughout history, humans have asked these questions and wondered about what the answers are. And after a few thousand years of asking, we're no closer to solid answers than when we began. We can argue until we're blue in the face about whether God made us this way or whether we choose this ourselves or whether there is no ultimate meaning to anything other than living and dying well. Every answer, no matter how thoughtful and researched leaves some room for doubt.

No, we won't have answers- but we can still ask the questions. And that's what makes philosophy fun. It's a practice of prying into the human condition and figuring out what sort of puzzles we can get ourselves into.

Philosophy takes faith, too. Faith that even if we don't have all the answers, we can continue to ask questions even when resolution eludes us.