“Hawks/Dabi did everything right.”
[Or: Dabi and Hawks are ideological masterpieces and picking a side explains your kind of moral-justice.]
Let’s take off our fandom-glasses for a moment and look at the gorgeous canon conflict between Dabi and Hawks and “the injustice of morality”.
Now, the goal is to destroy an ‘unjust’ society. Which will inevitably kill many innocent people. Though: Some of the leagues members are genuinely good people (Twice) or just got abused by the system (Dabi) and see no other choice. Dabi sees his action as “justice”, since he longs for revenge against the man/system who did him wrong. [- But this brings him in conflict with his understanding of moral-pain, as he knows the people he kills have family. - To the point where he cried blood.]
His moral ideology is the extreme opposite of Hawks’.
When Hawks joined the league, he acknowledged the problem of “injustice”. He saw the flaws of the system and felt genuine sympathy for Twice. But he is unwilling to risk a single civilian life for changing it.
The bloody fun starts when Hawks is gets confronted with the “Trolley-Problem”.
This is a version of an ethical dilemma from 1967, surrounding the question: Do I stick to the “moral code” by not hurting a criminal or do I choose the “best” outcome, by causing a criminal’s death?
In a survey around 90% of the respondents said: “It’s okay to let one person die, to save the larger number of people.” This is the natural human ideology of “Utilitarism” and also occurs in social animal-species behavior.
BUT If you make it more “personal”, let’s say: You like the person and you have to kill them yourself – And Hawks liked Twice. - Even if it still saves a thousand lives, the reaction is completely different now: Only 10% of the respondents would still do it. Because now it “feels” wrong.
Even if “not killing this person, because you don’t want to feel wrong” would lead to “letting thousand people die, but feeling right”.
Well, Hawks does not feel “heroic” - Even before he killed Twice, he had huge doubts about his own dignity.
[He jokes he doesn’t want to be No. 2. He thinks his back isn’t broad enough. He jokes he isn’t “Top-hero”-material. (ref: ch. 188; ch.185)]
Hawks is one of the most intelligent characters within the MHA Universe, and his way of approaching problems is not influenced by “situational factors” but by “logical weight.”
Hawks took the harder choice and forced himself to suppress his own moral instincts for this. [Remember, he saved Twice’s life risking his own out of pure reflex. Hawks is a selfless hero, to a point where Dabi relied on it:]
[In fact, Hawks is so selfless, that he sacrifices his own “wish to feel like a good person” so save the larger number of people. ]
“Ah. Cool motive, still murder.”
Does the end really justify the means?
Let’s say (solely hypothetical) Hawks killed Twice – but Toga copies Twice’ quirk, and over hundred million civilians of Japan die nonetheless. Hawks has now killed a good man, without direct logical weight behind it.
Someone could (or will, because I’m fucking going to) conclude that the righteousness of Hawks action might solely depend on its success.
( – At least till we include numbers in Hawk’s imaginary litigation. Because Twices quirk included “exponential growth of fighting power”, the heroes’ chances of winning would run asymptotic to zero, which would result in the death of over a hundred-million people. Not taking the “risk” of beeing injustice would therefore have been illogical from Hawks’ perspective.)
So was Hawks ‘injustice’?
From Dabis point of view: “Well- Yes of fucking course.”
Because Dabi’s character personifies the exact opposite ideology: “deontological theory”, which focuses not on the product of his acts, but the intrinsic value of the act in and of itself. Dabi approaches problems complete and utterly “selfish”. - No, this does not mean that he can’t do things for others out of sympathy- It means that he acts after his own instinctive moral-code and makes his decisions because he feels like they are the “right” thing to do - but way more extreme than any normal human.
[See, Dabi recruited Hawks into the inner circle of the League, without trusting him - because he doesn’t trust the League either. (He said this and acted like this several times.)
Just like Hawks, Dabi is a lonely and paranoid man, who got used and abused by the system. But other than Hawks, Dabi is driven by the injustice he experienced. He uses on his own pain as fuel to fight for the things he wants, mood-driven, but always with his goal in mind:)
- Dabi got exploited and abused by the hero-system.
-> He will destroy said hero-system as revenge, to create momentary “justice” for himself.
- Dabi gets the chance to use a hero.
-> He will recruit him without much caring for long-term consequences, because right now it’s beneficial.
- Dabi loses a valuable ally trough a hero.
-> He will kill/torture said hero as revenge without hesistation.
Dabi is way more “justice“ fixated than Hawks.
Dabi ignores the logical weight and fixates on the pain inflicted by bare injustice towards the weak minority, he was part of.
(This is why Dabi hates the “liberation”-ideology, because lawlessness would mean the “prerogative of the stronger”… Which was Endeavors approach to the hero ranking system, and the purest form of “injustice”:)
But don’t misunderstand:
Dabi does not hesistate to kill weaker villains, that “act like trash”, or to kill weaker heroes (like Snatch), or to harm weaker kids (like Tokoyami, when they stand between him and his revenge) - because, in Dabi’s own words:
“A single Person with a single conviction, has the power to change the world.”
Dabi is convinced that his moral code is strong enough to judge about life and death The “power” he talks about has nothing to do with “phisical quirk-strengh”. This is about who is rightious in their actions- according to Dabi’s judement.]
Dabi would never kill a “good man” for the “greater good”.
Dabi clings to his “humanity” more than Hawks does and he reacts to his own pain with highly emotion-driven actions. He clearly does not care about the long-term effects his actions have on him- or everyone else.
[Neither Hawks nor Dabi expect a long life, but both deal with it in opposing extremes.]
From Dabi’s point of view, Hawks is injustice, because he killed a good man, right here and now and the consequences – good or bad – do not matter. (“The action in itself was amoral.”)
[It is very interesting to see the reactions within the fandom, paralleling Dabi’s exact ideology to the point where some wanted Dabi to punish Hawks in the name of justice. Dabi’s moral-code is to lesser extents portrayed in many shonen-protagonists (e.g. Gon from HxH) – and sometimes criticized as immature.]
Actually, both sides can be reduced to:
Dabi’s: “Think for yourself and do whatever the hell you recognize as righteous right now.”
and Hawks’: “Think for the others and do whatever the hell is necessary to bring the maximum good to society.”
…And I also think thats pretty fucking cool.
