Our current MA in Philosophy student Ilgar Gapagov's article, “Nietzschean Self-Overcoming as Self-Annihilation: The Limits of Intelligibility in Bloodborne and Lovecraft,” has been published in "Games and Culture" (Sage Journals).
This essay provides an interpretation of "Bloodborne", with the aim of shedding light on an issue that late modernity is facing. The paper argues that "Bloodborne" exemplifies a tragic allegory of Nietzsche's philosophy within a Lovecraftian universe: the will to overcome the limits of intelligibility either leads to madness or self-annihilation. Through a careful examination of Lovecraftian horror via the notion of intelligibility, and drawing on insights from Western philosophers, the game is shown to exemplify a central Lovecraftian idea: that with greater knowledge comes the confrontation with the incomprehensible, and with it, the descent into madness. The Lovecraftian background is then combined with Nietzsche's philosophy to illuminate the themes of overcoming, greatness, and self-annihilation in "Bloodborne." The article concludes with a key insight: the path to greatness inevitably requires thinking beyond the “I,” an insight particularly relevant to the contemporary world marked by the absence of intergenerational thinking.
Thanks to CEU’s open access agreement with Sage, the article is freely available to all readers.