Philosophy in The Twilight Zone

Noël Carroll is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics, and a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. He has published numerous books including the Philosophy of Horror (1990) and A Philosophy of Mass Art (1999). He has also worked as a journalist and has written five documentary pictures. Lester H. Hunt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has also taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and The John Hopkins University. He has written extensively on ethics, political philosophy, and the aesthetics of film, and is the author of Nietzsche and the Origins of Virtue (1990) and Character and Culture (1998). He is currently working on a book on anarchy and the justification of the state.

"The anthology's substantial entries offer the reader rigorous, lucid, and stylistically polished arguments about one of the best dramas ever to grace American television screens. This collection is, to invoke Serling's memorable prose style, worthy of one's perusal, consideration, and review." (Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 21 March 2011) “It acts as a guide to unearthing larger questions—from human nature to the nature of reality and beyond—posed in the series.” (Gnist.no, June 2009)

• Notes on Contributors. Introduction (Lester H. Hunt).1. “And Now, Rod Serling, Creator of The Twilight Zone ”: The Author as Auteur (Lester H. Hunt).2. Tales of Dread in The Twilight Zone: A Contribution to Narratology (Noël Carroll).3. Frame Shifters: Surprise Endings and Spectator Imagination in The Twilight Zone (Carl Plantinga).4. The Treachery of the Commonplace (Mary Sirridge).5. Where is the Twilight Zone? (Richard Hanley).6. Existentialism and Searching for an Exit (Susan L. Feagin).7. Through the Twilight Zone of Nonbeing: Two Exemplars of Race in Serling’s Classic Series (Lewis R. Gordon).8. Blending Fiction and Reality: “The Odyssey of Flight 33” (Thomas E. Wartenberg).9. Epistemology at 20,000 Feet (Sheila Lintott).10. Rationality and Choice in “Nick of Time” (Aeon J. Skoble).11. “The Little People”: Power and the Worshipable (Aaron Smuts).12. Nothing in the Dark: Deprivation, Death, and the Good Life (James S. Taylor).Index.