The Formulations
Debate 3

For those of you who have a real thirst for the resolution to this provocative question, fasten your seatbealts because the philosophy student is here to compound the issue! I (like the majority of DBZ fans) took Toriyama at his word and assumed (a big no-no, BTW) that Burori was insane according to Movie 8's plot-line. However, discussion on the Burori Message Board has called this into question.

So, it appears as if it is in the fan's best interest to decide for him or herself if Burori is, in fact, nuts. The following is a guide which is designed to get you to critically think about the issue.

First of all, we must ask "What does it mean to be insane?"

My response: "To be absent of rationality."

What is rationality?

There are two main theories which I shall present in an effort to untangle this. These theories are NOT necessarily compatible with each other. In fact, they oppose each other more often than not. So, where one theory may say "yes" to a given question, the other may say "no." I will breifly present and explain these theories; the optimum result is one in which both theories's criteria for rationality will be either satisfied or rejected. Hopefully, when we eventually ask the question "Is Burori insane?" we get either two "yes"s or two "no"s. So, let's begin.

The first theory is one that originates with Immanuel Kant. He believes that the rationality of a given act is dependent upon the nature of your final goal. According to Kant, there are good goals and bad goals. This objective standard by which goals are measured is vital in Kant's philosophy. A person's goals are rational if they are MORAL goals and if the motivations behind them are MORAL motivations.

The second theory belongs to David Hume. Hume states that the nature of the goal is irrelavant to one's sanity. It is not the goal itself which makes an act rational or irrational, but the way in which you go about achieving that goal. If you act in such a way as to defeat your own goals, then you are not acting rationally.

So, the questions which we must ask in order to determine Burori's sanity are: 1. With regard to Kant, are Burori's goals moral? AND 2. With regard to Hume, does Burori effectively work toward achieving his goals?

Now, it would be helpful to list the goals which it is commonly thought that Burori has. 1. To kill Kakarotto. 2. To destroy, in general, without discrimination.

Since we don't have Burori here and therefore can't ask him what his goals were and are, it is difficult to get any more specific than that. It seems then that it would be wise to pick a specific goal (e.g., killing Goku) and then evaluate the morality of that goal and then evaluate his actions with regard to that goal.

SIDE NOTE: We can see in the movies that there are times when Burori is in a mindless rage versus times when he articulates his intentions and proceeds to make definite, conscious steps toward following through on those intentions. Here, we are talking about conscious awareness and intent, NOT morality or effective strategy. This is an entirely different concept altogether, and, in fact, I think what this is concerned with is more proving the existence of "conscious intent" (say for the sake of filing an appropriate charge in court) rather than rationality. One can have conscious intent and still not be rational. (Anyone who has read or seen Silence of the Lambs and is familiar with Hannibal Lecter's character knows what I mean.)

However, it should be noted here that I am imposing HUMAN philosophy on a saiya-jin. Whereas we may consider an act (e.g., destroying a planet) as immoral, they may disagree. (In fact, they probably would disagree.) So, there is that to consider, also. What we may view as insanity may be something completely different to a saiya-jin (intensity in battle, for example).

I realize that this doesn't help to provide definate answers to the original question. What I have hoped to do is to get you to organize your thoughts on this subject into two categories. First, I wanted people to be able to realize that there are several definitions of rationality and that the answers each theory gives for a particular situation may differ. And second, I wanted people to realize that we can either evaluate Burori's sanity by human standards or by saiya-jin standards (of which we know very little).