Praise the Sun: The Metaphysics of Dark Souls from the First Flame to the End of Fire

Through the philosophies of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and François Laruelle, this paper deconstructs the metaphysics of the sun that undergirds the worlds of the three Dark Souls games developed by FromSoftware, while also identifying the internal critique of this metaphysics that the Dark Souls games successively elaborate. Indeed, as inversions of the western fantasy model, the three Dark Souls games also labour to invert western philosophy, striking at the heart of Platonic idealism and its variations throughout history.