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The adult-oriented science-fiction cartoon series Rick and Morty, shown on Cartoon Network as part of its late-night Adult Swim feature, is famous for its nihilistic anti-hero Rick Sanchez. Rick is a character who rejects God, religion, and meaning, but who embraces science and technology.This leads to a popular show that often presents a world view favorable to science and dismissive of spirituality. It is existentialism mashed up with absurdism with a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of dick jokes thrown in. Rick and Morty and Philosophy focuses on the philosophical underpinnings of the show.The authors explain and develop ideas that are mentioned or illustrated in various episodes, so that fans can get really solid evidence for what they know already: this show is awesome and deep. Rick has access to technology that allows him to jump between dimensions or realities. He brings his grandson, Morty, along with him on these adventures, often putting Morty in mortal danger. However, Rick’s attitude is that there are an infinite number of Mortys in the multiverse, so if his Morty dies, he can always replace his Morty with another Morty from a different dimension. One question that arises is, are these Mortys really identical to each other? And if one of them dies, can he really be replaced without loss?Another character in the show is Jerry, the husband of Rick’s daughter. Jerry is a complete and total loser with no self-respect, desperate to get any kind of respect from others. Why is it so important that he has self-respect? How does his lack of self-respect affect those around him? In one adventure, Jerry finds himself in a position where he can save one of the greatest civil rights leaders in the universe whose heart is failing. Jerry can save his life by donating his penis, which is the perfect organ to match the alien’s failing heart. Does Jerry have a moral obligation to do so? Recently, ethicists such as Peter Singer and Julian Savulescu have argued that people have a moral obligation to donate a kidney to people who need one. Why wouldn’t the same apply to Jerry’s penis? Is such a donation above and beyond a moral obligation, and consequently optional, or is it a basic moral obligation and therefore required, as noted ethicists like Singer and Savulescu suggest?This volume also includes chapters that examine the experience of watching Rick and Morty. One writer argues that many of the Rick and Morty episodes induce within viewers a state of “Socratic aporia,” or confusion. Viewers are forced to reflect on their own moral beliefs about the world when characters do something that seems good but results in horrendous consequences.

For the first time, serious thinkers explore the work of this towering genius of rock music. For fans of Tom Petty, this volume is an eye-opener, with fourteen music-savvy philosophers looking at different facets of Petty’s artistic contribution. They examine not only Tom Petty’s thoughts but also the thoughts we have while we listen. The authors, all Petty fans, come from every philosophical viewpoint: classical, analytic, postmodernist, phenomenological, and Nietzschean.Tom Petty’s body of work exists on a continuum between Folk and Rock, between New Wave and Americana, between Southern simplicity and West Coast chic. There is the legacy left to his main backing band, the Heartbreakers, but also bookended by Mudcrutch and his collaborations with his elders, such as Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash.Tom Petty’s songs hook and they captivate, but they are often profound in their understatement, their stark minimalism. His insight into the human condition conveys a powerful philosophical anthropology with a metaphysics of tragedy, gravity, and levity.Tom Petty’s ethics focuses on dilemmas of the outcast, downtrodden, and heartbroken with a view to the fallen and the sinful as our redeemable antiheroes of the everyday.His political thinking is that of the artist, enlivened by Southern hostilities and Californian futilities, culminating in a personal ethic that puts duty to the fans first. Petty’s theory of knowledge is psychological and interpersonal, both deeply meditative and delightfully skeptical. The dialectic of love and hate, abuse and recovery, poverty and power, triumph and loss provide the genuine objects of knowledge.Above all, Petty’s songs are the confessions of a poetic mind interpreting a wounded soul. Petty lived his life the way he wrote and the way he played. It was grit, drive, and just enough finesse, to make things nice, where they need to be nice. On stage, he put the schau in Anschauung.Petty stood up to corporate assholes in a number of precedent-setting legal maneuvers and album concepts, risking his career and fortune, but never backing down. He was the center of a musical community that endured over four decades. His ability to cultivate new generations of listeners while connecting himself backward to the heroes of his own youth have made him universally respected by the widest range of music fans.

How fixed are the happenings in Nature and how are they fixed? These lectures address what our scientific successes at predicting and manipulating the world around us suggest in answer.One—very orthodox—account teaches that the sciences offer general truths that we combine with local facts to derive our expectations about what will happen, either naturally or when we build a device to design, be it a laser, a washing machine, an anti-malarial bed net, or an auction for the airwaves.In these three 2017 Carus Lectures Nancy Cartwright offers a different picture, one in which neither we, nor Nature, have such nice rules to go by. Getting real predictions about real happenings is an engineering enterprise that makes clever use of a great variety of different kinds of knowledge, with few real derivations in sight anywhere. It takes artful modeling. Orthodoxy would have it that how we do it is not reflective of how Nature does it. It is, rather, a consequence of human epistemic limitations. That, Cartwright argues, is to put our reasoning just back to front. We should read our image of what Nature is like from the way our sciences work when they work best in getting us around in it, non plump for a pre-set image of how Nature must work to derive what an ideal science, freed of human failings, would be like. Putting the order of inference right way around implies that like us, Nature too is an artful modeler.Lecture 1 is an exercise in description. It is a study of the practices of science when the sciences intersect with the world and, then, of what that world is most likely like given the successes of these practices. Millikan''s famous oil drop experiment, and the range of knowledge pieced together to make it work, are used to illustrate that events in the world do not occur in patterns that can be properly described in so-called "laws of nature." Nevertheless, they yield to artful modeling. Without a huge leap of faith, that, it seems, is the most we can assume about the happenings in Nature. Lecture 2 is an exercise in metaphysics. How could the arrangements of happenings come to be that way? In answer, Cartwright urges an ontology in which powers act together in different ways depending on the arrangements they find themselves in to produce what happens. It is a metaphysics in which possibilia are real because powers and arrangement are permissive—they constrain but often do not dictate outcomes (as we see in contemporary quantum theory). Lecture 3, based on Cartwright''s work on evidence-based policy and randomized controlled trials, is an exercise in the philosophy of social technology: How we can put our knowledge of powers and our skills at artful modeling to work to build more decent societies and how we can use our knowledge and skills to evaluate when our attempts are working.The lectures are important because:They offer an original view on the age-old question of scientific realism in which our knowledge is genuine, yet our scientific principles are neither true nor false but are, rather, templates for building good models.Powers are center-stage in metaphysics right now. Back-reading them from the successes of scientific practice, as Lecture 2 does, provides a new perspective on what they are and how they function.There is a loud call nowadays to make philosophy relevant to "real life." That''s just what happens in Lecture 3, where Cartwright applies the lesson of Lectures 1 and 2 to argue for a serious rethink of the way that we are urged—and in some places mandated—to use evidence to predict the outcomes of our social policies.

Spoilers get folks upset—really upset. One thing that follows from this is that if you pick up a book that’s all about spoilers, it may seriously disturb you. So anyone reading this book—or even dipping into it—does so at their peril.Spoilers have a long history, going back to the time when some Greek theater-goer shouted “That’s Oedipus’s mom!” But spoilers didn’t use to be so intensely despised as they are today. The new, fierce hatred of spoilers is associated with the Golden Age of television and the ubiquity of DVR/Netflix/Hulu, and the like. Today, most people have their own personal “horror story” about the time when they were subject to the most unfair, unjust, outrageous, and unforgivable spoiler.A first definition of spoiler might be revealing any information about a work of fiction (in any form, such as a book, TV show, or movie) to someone who hasn’t encountered it. But this isn’t quite good enough. It wouldn’t be a spoiler to say “The next Star Trek movie will include a Vulcan.” Nor would it be a spoiler to say, “The story of Shawshank Redemption comes from a short story by Stephen King.” There has to be something at least a bit unexpected or unpredictable about the information, and it has to be important to the content of the work. And you could perpetrate a spoiler by divulging information about something other than a work of fiction, for example details of a sports game, to someone who has tivoed the game but not yet watched it.Timing and other matters of context may make the difference between a spoiler and a non-spoiler. It could be a spoiler to say “There’s a Vulcan in the next Star Trek movie” if spoken to someone raised in North Korea and knowing absolutely nothing about Star Trek. It can also be a spoiler to say something about a movie or TV show when it’s new, and not a spoiler when it has been around for some years.This raises the distinction between “personal spoilers” and “impersonal spoilers.” Personal spoilers are spoilers for some particular individual, because of their circumstances. You should never give personal spoilers (such as when someone says that they have never seen a particular movie, even though the plot is common knowledge. You can’t tell them the plot).Sometimes facts other than facts about a story can be spoilers, because they allow people to deduce something about the story. To reveal that a certain actor is not taking part in shooting the next episode may allow someone to jump to conclusions about the story.Spoilers need not be specific; they can be very vague. If you told someone there was a big surprise ending to The Sixth Sense or Fight Club, that might spoil these movies for people who haven’t seen them.You can spoil by mentioning things that are common knowledge, if someone has missed out on that knowledge (“Luke and Darth Vader are related”), but you usually can’t be blamed for this. People have some obligation to keep up. This means that in general you can’t be blamed for spoilers about stories that are old. “Both Romeo and Juliet are dead at the end” could be a spoiler for someone, but you can’t be blamed for it. This is a rule that’s often observed: many publications have regulations forbidding the release of some types of spoilers for a precisely fixed time after a movie release.However, some spoilers never expire, either because the plot twist is so vital or the work is so significant. So, if you’re talking to young kids, you probably should never say “Darth Vader is Luke’s father,” “Norman Bates is Mother,” “Dorothy’s trip to Oz was all a dream,” “All the passengers on the Orient Express collaborated in the murder,” “in The Murder of Roger Akroyd, the narrator did it,” “Soylent Green is people,” “To Serve Man is a cookbook,” and finally, what many consider to be the greatest and worst spoiler of them all, “The Planet of the Apes is really Earth.”Some famous “spoilers” are not true spoilers. It’s not going to spoil Citizen Kane for anyone to say “Rosebud is his sled.” This piece of information is not truly significant. It’s more of a McGuffin than a plot twist.A paradox about spoiling is that people often enjoy a work of fiction such as a Sherlock Holmes story over and over again. They remember the outline of the story, and who did the murder, but this doesn’t stop them re-reading. This demonstrates that the spoilage generated by spoilers is less than we might imagine.It’s bad to spoil, but how bad? People do seem to exaggerate the dreadfulness of spoiling, compared with other examples of inconsiderateness or rudeness.Are there occasions when it’s morally required to spoil? Yes, you might want to dissuade someone from watching or reading something you believed might harm them somehow. Also, you might issue a spoiler in order to save the world from a terrorist attack (Yes, this is a philosophy book, so it has to include at least one totally absurd example). A more doubtful case is deliberate spoiling as a protest, as occurred with Basic Instinct.The book ends with three spoiler lists: the Most Outrageous Spoiler “Horror Stories”; the Greatest Spoilers of All Time; and the Greatest Spoilers in Philosophy.

Stranger Things and Philosophy is an important book, the first of its kind to examine the fantastical world of this award-winning, widely beloved, phenomenal show with a philosophical lens. This is important precisely because the show rests so heavily on a complex and thought-provoking mythos based around secretive government experiments and a parallel dimension that darkly reflects readers'' own. The series as a whole has asked more questions than it has delivered answers, and the chapters in this volume will explore these topics.From the deepest recesses of the Upside Down, its tunnels snaking beneath the local bookstores of Hawkins, Indiana and who knows where else, this collection of philosophical musings on the world of Stranger Things promises to enlighten readers. This volume considers many of the philosophically related ideas that that come up in the show such as: What are the moral implications of secret government projects? What is the nature of friendship? Does scientific research need to be concerned with ethics? What might it be like to experience the world from the perspective of the Mind Flayer? Is it possible to understand the metaphysics of the Upside Down?

Blade Runner 2049 is a 2017 sequel to the 1982 movie Blade Runner, about a world in which some human-looking replicants have become dangerous, so that other human-looking replicants, as well as humans, have the job of hunting down the dangerous models and “retiring” (destroying) them. Both films have been widely hailed as among the greatest science-fiction movies of all time, and Ridley Scott, director of the original Blade Runner, has announced that there will be a third Blade Runner movie.Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy is a collection of entertaining articles on both Blade Runner movies (and on the spin-off short films and Blade Runner novels) by twenty philosophers representing diverse backgrounds and philosophical perspectives. Among the issues addressed in the book:What does Blade Runner 2049 tell us about the interactions of state power and corporate power?Can machines ever become truly conscious, or will they always lack some essential human qualities?The most popular theory of personhood says that a person is defined by their memories, so what happens when memories can be manufactured and inserted at will?We already interact with non-human decision-makers via the Internet. When embodied AI becomes reality, how can we know what is human and what is simulation? Does it matter?Do AI-endowed human-looking replicants have civil and political rights, or can they be destroyed whenever “real” humans decide they are inconvenient?The blade runner Deckard (Harrison Ford) appears in both movies, and is generally assumed to be human, but some claim he may be a replicant. What’s the evidence on both sides?Is Niander Wallace (the-mad-scientist-cum-evil-corporate-CEO in Blade Runner 2049) himself a replicant? What motivates him?What are the impacts of decision-making AI entities on the world of business?Both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 have been praised for their hauntingly beautiful depictions of a bleak future, but the two futures are very different (and the 2019 future imagined in the original Blade Runner is considerably different from the actual world of 2019). How have our expectations and visions of the future changed between the two movies?The “dream maker” character Ana Stelline in Blade Runner 2049 has a small but pivotal role. What are the implications of a person whose dedicated mission and task is to invent and install false memories?What are the social and psychological implications of human-AI sexual relations?

The Good Place is a fantasy-comedy TV show about the afterlife. Eleanor dies and finds herself in the Good Place, which she understands must be mistake, since she has been anything but good. In the surprise twist ending to Season One, it is revealed that this is really the Bad Place, but the demon who planned it was frustrated, because the characters didn’t torture each other mentally as planned, but managed to learn how to live together.In ,i>The Good Place and Philosophy, twenty-one philosophers analyze different aspects of the ethical and metaphysical issues raised in the show, including:● Indefinitely long punishment can only be justified as a method of ultimately improving vicious characters, not as retribution.● Can individuals retain their identity after hundreds of reboots?● Comparing Hinduism with The Good Place, we can conclude that Hinduism gets things five percent correct.● Looking at all the events in the show, it follows that humans don’t have free will, and so people are being punished and rewarded unjustly.● Is it a problem that the show depicts torture as hilarious? This problem can be resolved by considering the limited perspective of humans, compared with the eternal perspective of the demons.● The Good Place implies that even demons can develop morally.● The only way to explain how the characters remain the same people after death is to suppose that their actual bodies are transported to the afterlife.● Since Chidi knows all the moral theories but can never decide what to do, it must follow that there is something missing in all these theories.● The show depicts an afterlife which is bureaucratic, therefore unchangeable, therefore deeply unjust.● Eleanor acts on instinct, without thinking, whereas Chidi tries to think everything through and never gets around to acting; together these two characters can truly act morally.● The Good Place shows us that authenticity means living for others.● The Good Place is based on Sartre’s play No Exit, with its famous line “Hell is other people,” but in fact both No Exit and The Good Place inform us that human relationships can redeem us.● In The Good Place, everything the humans do is impermanent since it can be rebooted, so humans cannot accomplish anything good.● Kant’s moral precepts are supposed to be universal, but The Good Place shows us it can be right to lie to demons.● The show raises the question whether we can ever be good except by being part of a virtuous community.

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which began as The Children's Corner in 1953 and terminated in 2001, left its mark on America. The show s message of kindness, simplicity, and individual uniqueness made Rogers a beloved personality, while also provoking some criticism because, by arguing that everyone was special without having to do anything to earn it, the show supposedly created an entitled generation. In Mister Rogers and Philosophy, thirty philosophers give their very different takes on the Neighborhood phenomenon. ? Rogers s way of communicating with children has a Socratic dimension, and is compared with other attempts to cultivate philosophy in children. ? Wonder is the origin of philosophy and science, and Mister Rogers always looked for wonder. ? Did Mister Rogers unwittingly create the Millennials by his message that everyone is special?? What Martin Buber s I-Thou philosophy can tell us about Fred Rogers s attempt to rehabilitate children s television. ? X the Owl obsesses, Daniel Tiger regresses, Lady Elaine displaces anger, King Friday controls how puppets can be used to teach us about feelings. ? Fred Rogers s indirect communication is key to the show, and most evident in the land of make-believe, where he doesn t make himself known. ? How Mister Rogers helps us see that the ordinary world is extraordinary, if we re willing to open ourselves up to it. ? How does Mister Rogers s method of teaching compare with Maria Montessori s?? Fred Rogers and Carl Rogers have a lot in common: The Neighborhood is observed in the light of Rogerian therapy. ? Mister Rogers s view of evil is closer to Rousseau than to Voltaire. ? Fred Rogers gave a non-philosophical interpretation of the philosophical approach known as personalism. ? Daoism helps us understand how Fred Rogers, the antithesis of a stereotypical male, could achieve such success as a TV star. ? In the show and in his life, we can see how Rogers lived the ethics of care. ? Puppets help children understand that persons are not isolated, but interconnected. ? Mister Rogers showed us that talking and singing about our feelings makes them more manageable.

As RuPaul has said, this is the Golden Age of Drag—and that’s chiefly the achievement of RuPaul’s Drag Rac,/i>e, which in its eleventh year is more popular than ever, and has now become fully mainstream in its appeal. The show has an irresistible allure for folks of all persuasions and proclivities. Yet serious or philosophical discussion of its exponential success has been rare.Now at last we have RuPaul’s Drag Race and Philosophy, shining the light on all dimensions of this amazing phenomenon: theories of gender construction and identity, interpretations of RuPaul’s famous quotes and phrases, the paradoxes of reality shows, the phenomenology of the drag queen, and how the fake becomes the truly authentic.Among the thought-provoking issues examined in this path-breaking and innovative volume:● What Should a Queen Do? Marta Sznajder looks at RuPaul’s Drag Race from the perspective of rationality. Where contestants have to eliminate each other, the prisoner’s dilemma and other well-known situations emerge.● Reading Is Fundamental! Lucy McAdams analyzes two different, important speech acts that regularly appear on Drag Race—reading and throwing shade.● The Values of Drag Race. Guilel Treiber observes two competing sets of values being presented in Drag Race. The more openly advertised “charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent,” advancing the skills of every single contender, are opposed by the fading set of “acceptance, support, solidarity, and empowerment,” which has historically been the cornerstone of the LGBTI+ community.● The Importance of Being Fabulous. Holly Onclin challenges the preconceived notion that drag queens are mainly about female impersonation and instead proposes to understand drag queens as impersonators of celebrity.● RuPaul Is a Better Warhol. Megan Volpert compares RuPaul and Andy Warhol in their shared pursuit of realness.● Is Reading Someone to Filth Allowed? Rutger Birnie asks whether there are ethical restrictions on reading someone, since reads are ultimately insults and could cause harm.● Serving Realness? Dawn Gilpin and Peter Nagy approach the concept of realness in Drag Race, to discuss the differences between realness, authenticity and the nature of being.● Death Becomes Her. Hendrik Kempt explores the topic of death both in philosophy and in Drag Race, starting from the claim that “Philosophy is training for death.”● We’re All Born Naked. Oliver Norman follows up on Ru’s mantra, “We are all born naked and the rest is drag.”● Fire Werk with Me. Carolina Are looks into the fan-subcultures of Drag Race and Twin Peaks, which have come together to form a unique sub-subculture, in which members of both fan-subcultures create memes and idiosyncrasies.● Towards a Healthier Subjectivity? Ben Glaister looks at the way Drag Race contestants adopt their drag personae almost as second selves, without finding themselves violating their other self.● RuPaul versus Zarathustra. Julie and Alice van der Wielen ask the question, Who would win an intellectual lip-sync battle—RuPaul or Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?● Playing with Glitter? Fernando Pagnoni and pals explore the game and play elements of Drag Race.● The Origins of Self-Love. Anna Fennell expounds upon RuPaul’s question, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”● The Sublime. Sandra Ryan thinks about Kant’s concept of the sublime and explores how we find its applications in Drag Race.● You Want to Be Anonymous? You Better Work! Alice Fox watches Drag Race through the lens of criminal law and the problem of decreasing anonymity through ubiquitous data surveillance. Drag Race can teach us how to create misleading patterns of online behavior and public presentation to render the blackbox persona useless.● Drag and Vulnerability. Anneliese Cooper contrasts Drag Race’s demand for vulnerability and perceived authenticity with the inherent inauthenticity of creating a new persona.

Conspiracy theories have become a major element in modern opinion formation. From the theory that the killing of President Kennedy was masterminded by a powerful conspiracy to the theory that 9/11 was an inside job, from the story that Barack Obama wasn’t born in America to the story that Donald Trump was a Russian asset, conspiracy theories have become a major element in opinion formation and an ever-present influence, sometimes open, sometimes hidden, on the daily headline news.In Conspiracy Theories, philosophers of diverse backgrounds and persuasions focus their lenses on the phenomenon of the conspiracy theory, its psychological causes, its typical shape, and its political consequences.Among the questions addressed:● What’s the formula for designing a contagious conspiracy theory?● Where does conspiracy theorizing end and investigative reporting begin?● What can we learn about conspiracy theories from the three movie treatments of the Kennedy assassination (The Parallax View, JFK, and Interview with the Assassin)?● Does political powerlessness generate conspiracy theories?● Is conspiracy theorizing essentially an instinct that lies behind all belief in religion and all striving for a meaningful life?● Can we find conspiracy theories in all political movements for centuries past?● What are the most common types of fallacious reasoning that tend to support conspiracy theories?● Is there a psychological disorder at the root of conspiracy theories?● Why is the number of flat-earthers growing?

In Avengers Infinity Saga and Philosophy, philosophers explore the momentous issues and the fascinating puzzles raised by Marvel's compelling series of movies:? Is the Thanos snap truly an answer to overpopulation and famine, or is it simply indefensible mass murder on a cosmic scale?? Are the Avengers who try to stop Thanos dishing out justice or merely fighting a man who is himself just?? Captain America or Tony Stark which leader holds the key to a civilized society?? Dr. Strange claims to sees 14,000,605 possible futures, in one of which Thanos is defeated. What does this tell us about the true nature of reality?? Sometimes your best just isn t enough. How can we cope with inevitability?? How can the Soul Stone and the Binding of Isaac by Abraham help us understand the Infinity War saga?? Is Thanos a utilitarian? And if so, is his utilitarian calculus logically sound?? Would it be possible for a group like the Avengers to amass enormous power to fight for humankind, without themselves becoming a corrupt ruling class?? Can the past Nebula shooting the future Nebula cause her to cease to exist? Can you change the future by communicating with yourself or your family in the past?? Can Thanos be seen as the epitome of non-self-serving behavior, or is Thanos masking his own egoism with the lie that his altruistic mission is to bring the universe into balance?? Does Thanos show us the danger of living by an absolute moral compass, which allows us to see only what we believe to be the right with no variations or nuances?

The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva is the latest addition to the highly acclaimed series, The Library of Living Philosophers. The book epitomizes the objectives of this acclaimed series; it contains critical interpretation of one of the greatest philosophers of our time, and pursues more creative regional and world dialogue on philosophical questions. The format provides a detailed interaction between those who interpret and critique Kristeva’s work and the seminal thinker herself, giving broad coverage, from diverse viewpoints, of all the major topics establishing her reputation. With questions directed to the philosopher while they are alive, the volumes in The Library of Living Philosophers have come to occupy a uniquely significant place in the realm of philosophy. The inclusion of Julia Kristeva constitutes a vital addition to an already robust list of thinkers.The Philosophy of Julia Kristeva exemplifies world-class intellectual work closely connected to the public sphere. Kristeva has been said to have “inherited the intellectual throne left vacant by Simone de Beauvoir,” and has won many awards, including the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.Julia Kristeva’s autobiography provides an excellent introduction to her work, situating it in relation to major political, intellectual, and cultural movements of the time. Her upbringing in Soviet-dominated Bulgaria, her move to the French intellectual landscape of the 1960s, her visit to Mao’s China, her response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, her participation in a papal summit on humanism, her appointment by President Chirac as President of the National Council on Disability, and her setting up of the Simone de Beauvoir prize, honoring women in active and creative fields, are all major moments of this fascinating life. The major part of the book is comprised of thirty-six essays by Kristeva’s foremost interpreters and critics, together with her replies to the essays. These encounters cover an exceptionally wide range of theoretical and literary writing. The strong international and multidisciplinary focus includes authors from over ten countries, and spans the fields of philosophy, semiotics, literature, psychoanalysis, feminist thought, political theory, art, and religion. The comprehensive bibliography provides further access to Kristeva’s writings and thought.The preparation of this volume, the thirty-sixth in the series, was supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In 1933 the crime writer Erle Stanley Gardner, himself a practicing lawyer, unleashed the character Perry Mason in the novel The Case of the Velvet Claws. Perry Mason entered into public consciousness as a new conception of the role of the defense lawyer, so that millions of Americans came to expect every criminal trial to have its "e;Perry Mason moment."e;In the 1950s the Perry Mason TV show had a phenomenal success, and Mason came to be identified with Raymond Burr. Now Perry Mason has again been restored to life in the HBO series starring Matthew Rhys and John Lithgow. Meanwhile, the eighty-two original Erle Stanley Gardner novels continue to sell thousands of copies each week.Perry Mason gave America a new conception of the trial lawyer, as someone who was always loyal to his client and always prepared to use dirty tricks such as misdirection and withholding of evidence to protect the innocent and secure the ends of Justice. The Mason of the novels is less scrupulous than the Raymond Burr Mason, and would sometimes be in danger of going to jail if the trial didn t turn out right which it always did, largely because of Mason s cleverness. The Perry Mason icon raises many philosophical issues explored by seventeen different philosophers in this book, including:? Can we defend Paul Drake s claim (The Case of the Blonde Bonanza) that Mason is a paragon of righteous virtue despite his predilection for skating on thin legal ice?? Can complex murder cases be solved by facts alone or do we also need empathy?? The most convincing way to give a TV episode a surprise ending is by the guilty person suddenly confessing. But in reality, is a confession necessarily so convincing?? Does Perry Mason represent the Messiah?? How does the Raymond Burr Perry Mason compare with the more recent TV character Saul Goodman (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul)?? Is it morally okay to mislead the police if this helps your client and your client is innocent?? How does Perry Mason help us understand the distinction between natural law and positive law?? Do the Perry Mason stories comply with Aristotle s recipe for a good work of fiction?? Does life imitate art, when Perry Mason is cited in real-life courtroom arguments?? How much trickery can be justified by loyalty to one s client?? Can evidence in murder trials be evaluated by probability theory?? Perry Mason is officially a lawyer and unofficially a detective. But isn t he really a historian and a psychgoanalayst?? Della Street is a competent legal secretary, but is she something more?? Mason often says that Eye-witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence and occasionally that Circumstantial evidence is the best evidence we have. Can these claims be defended?

KISS is the most outrageous and yet the most enduring of rock bands, with an unparalleled, almost religious level of devotion from millions of die-hard fans. In KISS and Philosophy, professional thinkers of diverse outlooks provide much-needed insights into the motivating ideas and metaphysical foundations of the KISS take on life. According to some, the true message of KISS is self-actualization through the hard work of following your dreams. Others focus on the existential aspect of KISS thinking, drawing upon Camus and Sartre to show that KISS is preoccupied with empowering the individual to achieve self-greatness. By contrast, there is a view of KISS which identifies a destroyer attitude, leading some listeners to reject KISS outright, while encouraging others to become the most dedicated of followers. Yet another view sees KISS s letting loose as essentially Dionysian. Some chapters gain access to KISS thinking by tracing the band s cultural and historical impact, finding meaning in the way generations of fans make sense of KISS s always evolving output, the changing line-up, and the archetypal characters represented by the band s use of make-up and presentation. Other chapters look at the aesthetic quality of the band s output, especially their most controversial album, Music from The Elder. Several chapters examine KISS s orientation to bodily pleasures, notably sex, extracting the band s philosophy of sex and love from different clues and indications. How does KISS s unashamed indulgence relate to various pleasure-governed ethical systems throughout history? Is getting the most out of pleasure key to living the good life? And does a life of gratifying one s body ultimately yield fulfillment? What are the limitations and hazards of a pleasure-oriented lifestyle? The biography of band members also provides material for reflection, looking at the nature of forgiveness through the lens of KISS s notorious feuds, and determining how to reconcile the apparently conflicting accounts of some famous squabbles. The changing line-up of the band raises questions about the meaning of KISS and whether KISS could last forever

This collection of incisive articles gives a leading team of international philosophers a free kick toward exploring the complex and often hidden contours of the world of soccer. What does it really mean to be a fan (and why should we count Aristotle as one)? Why do great players such as Cristiano Ronaldo count as great artists (up there alongside Picasso, one author argues)? From the ethics of refereeing to the metaphysics of bent (like Beckham) space-time, this book shows soccer fans and philosophy buffs alike new ways to appreciate and understand the world''s favorite sport.

At the head of The Colbert Report, one of the most popular shows on television, Stephen Colbert is a pop culture phenomenon. More than one million people backed his fake candidacy in the 2008 U.S. presidential election on Facebook, a testament to the particularly rich set of issues and emotions Colbert brings to mind. Stephen Colbert and Philosophy is crammed with thoughtful and amusing chapters, each written by a philosopher and all focused on Colbert''s inimitable reality — from his word creations (truthiness, wikiality, freem, and others) to his position as a faux-pundit who openly mocks Fox News and CNN. Although most of the discussion is centered around The Colbert Report, this collection does not neglect either his best-selling book, I Am America (And So Can You!), or his public performances, including his incendiary 2006 White House Press Correspondents'' Dinner speech.

With both young and adult gamers as loyal fans, The Legend of Zelda is one of the most beloved video game series ever created. The contributors to this volume consider the following questions and more: What is the nature of the gamer’s connection to Link? Does Link have a will, or do gamers project their wills onto him? How does the gamer experience the game? Do the rules of logic apply in the game world? How is space created and distributed in Hyrule (the fictional land in which the game takes place)? How does time function? Is Zelda art? Can Hyrule be seen as an ideal society? Can the game be enjoyable without winning? The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy not only appeals to Zelda fans and philosophers but also puts video games on the philosophical map as a serious area of study.

Jimmy Buffett and his music have touched the lives of millions of people around the world, spanning generations and genres. But is Buffett''s music just a good time, or is there a deeper level to it? Jimmy Buffett and Philosophy shows the philosophical side of this self-proclaimed non-philosopher''s work. The articles in this book provide an accessible approach to thinking about Buffett''s music philosophically and to thinking about philosophy from the perspective of Jimmy Buffett''s music. Along the way, questions are raised about figures in the philosophical tradition from ancient to contemporary — Epicurus, Diogenes, Heidegger, Josiah Royce, William James, John Dewey, and Judith Butler. In addition, questions about a wide range of traditional philosophical issues, including aesthetic theory, identity, knowledge, culture, and being, are explored.

Time magazine called Mortimer J. Adler a "philosopher for everyman." In this guide to considering the big questions, Adler addresses the topics all men and women ponder in the course of life, such as "What is love?", "How do we decide the right thing to do?", and, "What does it mean to be good?" Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Western literature, history, and philosophy, the author considers what is meant by democracy, law, emotion, language, truth, and other abstract concepts in light of more than two millennia of Western civilization and discourse. Adler''s essays offer a remarkable and contemplative distillation of the Great Ideas of Western Thought.

This unconventional and lighthearted introduction to the ideas of the major Western philosophers examines The Simpsons — TV’s favorite animated family. The authors look beyond the jokes, the crudeness, the attacks on society — and see a clever display of irony, social criticism, and philosophical thought. The writers begin with an examination of the characters. Does Homer actually display Aristotle’s virtues of character? In what way does Bart exemplify American pragmatism? The book also examines the ethics and themes of the show, and concludes with discussions of how the series reflects the work of Aristotle, Marx, Camus, Sartre, and other thinkers.

Designed for philosophers as well as readers with no particular philosophical background, the essays in this lively book are grouped into four amusing acts. Act One looks at the four Seinfeld characters through a philosophical lens and includes Jerry and Socrates: The Examined Life? Act Two examines historical philosophers from a Seinfeldian standpoint and offers Plato or Nietzsche? Time, Essence, and Eternal Recurrence in Seinfeld. Act Three, Untimely Meditations by the Water Cooler, explores philosophical issues raised by the show, such as, Is it rational for George to do the opposite? And Act Four, Is There Anything Wrong with That?, discusses ethical problems of everyday life using Seinfeld as a basis. Seinfeld and Philosophy also provides a guide to Seinfeld episodes and a chronological list of the philosophers cited in this book.

The comic book naratives of superheroes wrestle with profound and disturbing issues in original ways: the definitions of good and evil, the limits of violence as an effective means, the perils of enforcing justice outside the law, the metaphysics of personal identity, and the definition of humanity.Superheroes and Philosophy tackles these and other philosophical questions in an intellectual yet engaging way suitable for any comic book fan.

In Harry Potter and Philosophy, seventeen philosophical experts unlock some of Hogwarts'' secret panels, and uncover surprising insights that are enlightening both for wizards and the most discerning muggles.

From the 1970s cult TV show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to the current hit musical Spamalot, the Monty Python comedy troupe has been at the center of popular culture and entertainment. The Pythons John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam are increasingly recognized and honored for their creativity and enduring influence in the worlds of comedy and film. Monty Python and Philosophy extends that recognition into the world of philosophy. Fifteen experts in topics like mythology, Buddhism, feminism, logic, ethics, and the philosophy of science bring their expertise to bear on Python movies such as Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Flying Circus mainstays such as the Argument Clinic, the Dead Parrot Sketch, and, of course, the Bruces, the Pythons’ demented, song-filled vision of an Australian philosophy department. Monty Python and Philosophy follows the same hit format as the other titles in this popular series and explains all the philosophical concepts discussed in laymen’s terms.

Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) in videogame history, World of Warcraft is everywhere — from episodes of South Park and The Simpsons, to online series like Watch the Guild, accolades and awards from game critics, and prime-time commercials with Mr. T. Inevitably, such a cultural phenomenon triggers deeper questions. When does an assumed identity become real? Does the Corrupted Blood epidemic warn us of future public health catastrophes? What are the dangers when real life is invaded by events in the game? What can our own world learn from Azeroth’s blend of primitivism and high-tech? In these lively essays, a specially commissioned guild of philosophers, including Yara Mitsuishi, Monica Evans, Tim Christopher, and Anna Janssen, tackles these and other complex questions arising from WoW.

Since their breakthrough hit "Creep" in 1993, Radiohead has continued to make waves throughout popular and political culture with its views about the Bush presidency (its 2003 album was titled Hail to the Thief), its anti-corporatism, its pioneering efforts to produce ecologically sound road tours, and, most of all, its decision in 2007 to sell its latest album, In Rainbows, online with a controversial "pay-what-you-want" price. Radiohead and Philosophy offers fresh ways to appreciate the lyrics, music, and conceptual ground of this highly innovative band. The chapters in this book explain how Radiohead’s music connects directly to the philosophical phenomenology of thinkers like Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, the existentialism of Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, and the philosophical politics of Karl Marx, Jean Baudrillard, and Noam Chomsky. Fans and critics know that Radiohead is "the only band that matters" on the scene today — Radiohead and Philosophy shows why.