So the other day my buddy Phoenickfire and I were having a friendly argument as what the events at Kotomine's Church during the Fate route's "Go along the cheek" mean in respect to Shirou's morals and personality.
My friend argues that Shirou's refusal of Kotomine's suggestion to use the Holy Grail to "redo what happened 10 years ago" means that he is entirely opposed to saving people through changing the past as "a superhero only exists to straighten out what has already happened." He went as fair to claim that, even if given the opportunity, Shirou wouldn't go back in time and shoot Hitler in the face.
I, on the other hand, argued that Shirou opposed "undoing" the Fuyuki fire (and Saber undoing the destruction of Camelot) for several reasons:
A: Even if Shirou were to wish that the Fuyuki fire never happened and change reality around him, he, the "Shirou who was adopted by Emiya Kiritsugu and vowed to become a hero" would still remember the events of the original timeline, and thus to him the suffering of the victims would still exist. For him (and the victims who's lives had been changed or ended by the fire,) the dead wouldn't have come back, but instead people who were very similar but still ultimately not them would be wandering around in their place and bearing their names.
B: Time-travel is not a method where you can save everyone. If Saber had had her wish granted, and, in exchange for an eternity of servitude to Alaya, she was erased from history so someone else could have been crowned King and somehow save Camelot when she wasn't able to, then as a result all the people who would have died in "Altria's history" would have lived but also vice-versa, as those who conquered Camelot and lived in "Altria's history" would have been defeated/killed in "New King's history."
Add in the Butterfly Effect/Chaos Theory, and countless people throughout history will live instead of dying, and die instead of living (or in the case of the descendants of Camelot's inhabitants/conquerors, either born when they weren't before or never existed at all.) Therefore, Saber would not be able to claim to have "saved" people, but merely switched who lived and died on a grand scale, just to alleviate her feelings of guilt by "saving the people who were in front of her" (at the cost of a similar number of people,) and Shirou would not be able to tolerate an action that has so little or (even no) "net benefit" being carried out for selfish reasons.
However, that doesn't disprove that Shirou would make use of time-travel for something that could be said to have a colossal "net benefit," and thus I argued that Shirou would totally be on board for travelling back in time and shooting Hitler (or decapitating him with a sword, as that would be more "in-character.") Especially as his decision wouldn't be motivated by Survivor's guilt, but pure altruism.
What do you guys think?