One last major aspect of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is how ethics are handled when it comes to love and hatred, and revenge and forgiveness, between characters. These serve as big motivations for several important characters and are responsible for many of the arguments and fights throughout the series.
I was trying to figure out a way to identify the kind of ethics portrayed in the show, especially when it comes to how violence/justice/revenge/forgiveness is reasoned, and then I came across an article talking about situational ethics in FMA. I realized that situational ethics actually appears many times throughout the show and becomes the reasoning behind some characters' actions and morality. The series even shows how some characters use or distort situational ethics (intentionally or unintentionally) for both good and bad purposes.
Here's the link to the article below:
http://jedablue.com/2013/10/30/beyond-the-inferno-situational-and-virtue-ethics-in-fullmetal-alchemist/
In FMA, there is war and bloodshed for various reasons, and there are characters that get swallowed up by their hatred, others that are driven by guilt and the desire for forgiveness, and others that have to learn about justice and to not let the drive for revenge consume them.
The ethics of revenge and violence are prominent throughout the entire series. The cause of so much pain is the number of wars and large, bloody fights that happen periodically. The war with Ishval is the biggest example of what could be seen as unjustified violence. The many innocent lives lost became just a means to an end for the military leaders of Amestris.
In class, we read through different viewpoints of whether violence is justified, and if so, in what circumstances. Yoder is a pacifist who believes violence never the answer. He asks for people to try to use reason and love instead, and if that does not work, suffer together but never raise a hand against the enemy. If you do, God will judge you, and you must remember that God will judge the person being violent to you in the afterlife.
Augustine speaks on just war and violence, and he believes in pacifism unless it is in defense of a defenseless third party. He strongly recommends attempting to use reason or any other methods first, and then resorting to violence/defense as a last resort, and even then show restraint.
Niebhur argues with realism. He justifies violence when it is used to seek peace out of love for another or love of justice. He describes the Jesus pacifism ideal that Yoder supports as an impossibility that will not solve the problem - it will only result in the violence continuing unchecked, and that when the going gets tough we need to be concerned with group self-interest (for our friends, family, country, etc.).
In FMA, we are confronted with what happens when violence and war happen without any proper cause whatsoever. There are times when people are killed by bad people just to get them out of the way and defeat them. There was no real need for those people to be killed, but they were. Those who choose pacifism (such as some of the Ishvalans), suffer under the merciless cruelty of those who seek only victory through whatever unjustified means (such as Wrath and the higher-ups in the military)
It is this merciless and unjust slaughtering of lives to win a war that begins a cycle of hatred, revenge, and guilt for many characters, such as Scar, Mustang, Hawkeye, and Marcoh.
Scar
Scar, after losing his brother and many others he cared about to the merciless slaughter by the State Alchemists, he became obsessed with hatred for Amestris and swore to kill every State Alchemist he could find.
To justify his desire for revenge, he used God's name and called transmutation a sin, despite the fact that he was using transmutation to act out his revenge. In this sense, for a while, he becomes a bit of a monstrous figure - a large, unbelievably strong and merciless figure driven by hatred and anger. He was even willing to kill Ed because he was a State Alchemist, even though Ed was still a young teenager.
He refuses to listen to his mentor when he tries to tell Scar to let go of his anger, and he ignores what everyone else says about him wrongfully using God to justify his murder spree when he doesn't have the right to cast judgement on all Amestrians and kill them.
This fits in with my earlier post about how letting our "sins" overcome us make us into monsters and take away our humanity.
That makes it all the more symbolic when he is the one that ends up fighting and defeating Wrath. Not only does he get to defeat one of the prominent homunculi behind the war and suffering of the Ishvalans, but he is finally able to metaphorically put an end to his own overwhelming "wrath".
His turning point is influenced by several key moments in the story. The first is when Ed jumps in to protect Winry from Scar, and he remembers his brother, protective and peaceful to the very end.
He is also confronted with the wrongness of his actions when Ed and the others capture him. Winry tells him she can never forgive him for killing her parents, but she refuses to hurt anybody and will help and heal others in honor of her parents. It's also during this time that he meets Miles, who instead of violence has chosen to use his Ishvalan-Amestrian experience to help Ishval and make Amestris a better place.
In the end, he realizes nothing good will be solved with the way he's going about things, so he lets his desire for revenge go and turns that drive into a determination to help his people and change Amestris for the better.
"I'm not saving your country. I'm changing it." - Scar
He is able to begin helping others and making Amestris into a better place when he helps to calm Mustang's anger and prevent him from possibly becoming a future Fuhrer of Amestris that is easily swayed from the good path by vengeance.
Mustang
Mustang himself is already plagued with the guilt of killing enemies and innocents during the war with Ishval, even when he did not see the justice in it. At the time, he was driven to follow and obey, and there really was nothing he could do to stop it.
This event, despite it ruining some of his initial idealism, pushed his determination to lead the country even more, to make it a better, safer, and more equal place for everyone.
There are several moments in the anime where his ethics about justice are questioned, such as when Ed and the others thought he'd wrongfully killed Maria Ross (who was accused of killing Hughes), but he manages to stay a morally strong character up until the very end, where his friends have to step in and stop him making a potentially huge ethical mistake.
There is a difference in how his defeat of Lust is depicted compared to his defeat of Envy. When he killed Lust, he did it to save his friends from her. In that moment, she was a real and dangerous threat to all of them. Envy did a lot of horrible and unforgivable things, but when Mustang easily defeated him, he drew out his attack to make Envy suffer and wanted vengeance against Envy for killing his friend. He wasn't doing this to save anybody; he was merely satiating his desire for revenge.
This brings to light the article I mentioned at the beginning, about situational ethics. This is why there was a marked difference between Mustang's killing of Lust and his attempt to kill Envy. One was justified and supported for the moral reasons behind it, and the other makes you fear for Mustang's sanity and anger because of the immoral reasons behind it.
The link below his Ed, Scar, and Hawkeye stopping his brutal, fiery torture and killing of Envy. The important part is basically from 12:20-15:30.
"Is that what you want to be, Colonel, another monster?!" - Ed
Here we see Ed throwing the idea of becoming a monster back in Mustang's face, since he was the one who had initially said that he only feels like he isn't a monster when he's fighting true ones like the Homunculi.
Scar says he won't stop Mustang if he truly wants to, since he of all people has no right to stop someone else from taking vengeance.
"But still, I shudder to think what kind of world a man held captive by his own hate would create, once he becomes its ruler."
All three of them manage to shake him from his rage and show him that this kind of anger and revenge is not the way to go, especially for someone who plans on ruling and bringing peace and justice to an entire country.
Forgiveness and Guilt
To counteract the moments of immorality and hatred, we see moments where characters work to overcome their guilt or forgive and turn their sorrow/anger into something good for themselves and others. These are the characters that prove there is more to solving a problem and helping than blind violence or selfishness.
Marcoh, Hawkeye, Alex Armstrong, and many other characters in FMA are still filled with guilt over their actions during the war against Ishval. Marcoh, in particular, is plagued with guilt over his part in sacrificing many lives to create the Philosopher's stone, the very thing that is now being used for various dark purposes. He runs away from the military and becomes a small-town doctor to help others with their illnesses. When Scar finds him, he sets out to stop the horrible plan the Homunculi are fulfilling, to save people and fix the problem that he helped to create in an attempt at redemption.
Ed and Al from the very beginning are against killing others to get what you want, and they are able to uphold this value despite all the suffering and bloodshed going on around them. That is the reason they refuse to make a philosopher's stone of their own, since it would cost human lives, even though they would be able to use the stone to easily get their original bodies back.
In the end, love and forgiveness were what won out in the end. Father and the other Homunculi were willing to toss away hundreds of lives to fulfill their selfish plan, and they had no problem with hating and making humans suffer. They created many wars and fights between countries and amongst Amestrians simply in order to create enough bloodshed to feed their transmutation circle. However, in the end they were defeated by Ed, Al, and everyone else. Despite their differences, and the fact that there are some wounds that will forever be scars, everyone was able to work together to save Amestris, the people they cared about, and the entire world.
In this story, the side that pushed for understanding, forgiveness, love, and the saving/valuing of humanity was the side that won out, because those are the values that were meant to be emphasized.
The differences between everyone were able to be worked through, and love and friendship overcame the hard times and bonded many of these people together.
Even in the end, there is still a lot of unjustified damage done, a lot of sorrow and anger to overcome, and a lot left to fix and forgive, but everyone in the FMA Brotherhood series came out these challenging and difficult experiences a heck of a lot stronger. They came out these hardships with an awesome "Fullmetal heart".
And now they can use their newfound strength, care, and determination to make the world around them a better place.
