Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy Holy, Moses! The Pleasures and Perils of Revenge (Part II) George A. Dunn “Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered.” ~ Leviticus 24:19-20 Do you think Jax Teller…
Lucy and Philosophy Nietzsche and Human 2.0 Duncan Reyburn Okay, it’s true, Lucy’s entire plot is built upon a complete fallacy (that we use only ten percent of our brains), and, yes, the ever imaginative writer-director Luc Besson does ask us to suspend quite an awful lot of disbelief as we watch Scarlett Johansson…
Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy The Pleasures and Perils of Revenge (Part I) George A. Dunn “And where the offense is, let the great ax fall.” ~ Claudius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V In this current and final season of Sons of Anarchy, one thing has become unmistakably clear: Jax Teller’s…
Continuum and Philosophy The Lessons of Time Travel By Roger Hunt I’m willing to throw it out there that the TV show Continuum, if as successful a program as it should be, will affect our understanding of the lessons of time travel at the level of HG Wells’ The Time Machine and Spielberg’s Back…
Minecraft and Philosophy Kierkegaard Would Play Hardcore Mode by Ian Schnee Diamonds Aren’t Forever Minecraft is a building game: you place blocks, pistons, stairs, and electric wire to construct anything imaginable, from Gothic fortresses to carnival rollercoasters. In creative mode you have unlimited access to building materials, but in survival mode the player has…
Guardians of the Galaxy and Philosophy “We are Groot! Jeffery L. Nicholas Guardians of the Galaxy! What a film. Packed with action, story, special effects, humor, and a walking, talking tree. Much press release and on-line babble treated GotG as another super-hero movie, but I think the movie makes clear that, it’s, not a…
League of Legends and Philosophy Can a Videogame Be a Sport? Roger Hunt Ever since the day when Plato was a wrestler (for realz!) people of philosophical persuasion have been thinking about what counts as a “sport.” The underlying assumption is that a sport requires a kind of physical exertion, tempered by moderation,…
Louis C.K. and Philosophy Calling Us on our Cognitive Dissonance Roben Torosyan Cognitive dissonance is always triggered by blatant evidence that you are not as beneficent and effective as you would like people to think. The urge to reduce it is the urge to get your self-serving story straight. (Pinker, 2009, p. 423) Most of…
The world has elected its first heavy metal president, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo—a man who proudly turns it up to 11 when playing Metallica. Some may see this as the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine about the prospects of a headbanger in chief. Despite misperceptions, metal has had an…
The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Philosophy Let’s do the time warp again— By Jeffery L. Nicholas The Rocky Horror Picture Show is almost—almost—indescribable, unclassifiable. RHPS will celebrate its 40th birthday next year. After having a rough start, RHPS quickly developed cult status, and many of us, I am sure, have attended at least…
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series 