Yeah that always bothered me. The reason Bruce becomes Baman was, like you said... "to shake the people put of apathy". In TDK he condemns all the copycats. The whole point was to get the city of Gotham to the point where "it no longer needs Batman", as him and Rachel said in TDK. In Rises, all of ...

1. I think, while his methods are morally questionable, he does instill hope into the people of Gotham and motivate them to do something to save their city. In Batman Begins, Jim Gordon had all but given up and succumbed to the notion that the bad guys (the mob) run the city. Batman instilled in him...

...you can only be a hero for so long, before society turns on you, or you are corrupted by society...so you either die while you're a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain in TDK, both Harvey and Dent became villains...Dent to the audience, and Batman to Gotham Agreed 100%...