SEARCH PARTY Searching for Meaning on the Eve of the Apocalypse By Robin Bunce What is Search Party? Trust me: this is a multi-million-dollar question. Right now, scientists and TV execs are closeted in labs across America dissecting each episode, sequencing it’s genome, hoping to crack the formula. Search Party is an everyday story of…
Check out this video of volume editor David Kyle Johnson talking about his passion for Black Mirror and philosophy.
Check out this video of volume editor Jeff Nicholas talking about his passion for The Expanse and philosophy.
Diversis Viribus: Diversity in the XCOM games By Udi Becker With an economic value that exceeds Hollywood, the video game has established itself as both an industry and an art that are as much a part of our culture as any other form of media. As the narratives offered by games become more and more…
Avatar the Last Airbender and the Enframing Benjamin N. Parks “The sun’s warmth is challenged forth for heat, which in turn is ordered to deliver steam whose pressure turns the wheels that keep a factory running.” This quote from German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) on the steam turbine could just as easily describe the Fire…
R. Kelly Meets Catullus Biases and The Art-Artist Distinction By Davis Smith The art-artist distinction, as I am calling it, is a wall between the content of the art and the character of the artist who made it. This distinction has had its defenders since the days of Ancient Rome and has value even today.…
A Stoic Wouldn’t Play the Squid Game by Konstantin Pavliouts Stoicism is a philosophy that calls for great self-control, concerning one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions. This is not a matter of making a simple intellectual decision. Rather, it demands practice, and role models are particularly helpful in inspiring practice. The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher…
The Ethics of Avasarala By Gerald Browning The complexity of the characters and the moral ambiguity of the storylines on The Expanse create compelling programing. And no character is as morally ambiguous and mysterious as the cool, calculating Chrisjen Avasarala (played exceptionally well by Shohreh Aghdashloo). With a stroke of a pen or a whisper…
“We had a garden and we paved it” The Expanse and the Philosophy of the Anthropocene Diletta De Cristofaro *Note: This essay is excerpted from The Expanse and Philosophy. Captain Martens, of the MCRN Scirocco, had warned Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper about a “dirty” ocean, whose “stench [is] like the recycling vat” (“The Weeping Somnambulist”). Arriving…
Humanity’s Dilemma before Abaddon’s Gate Leonard Kahn *Note: This essay is excerpted from The Expanse and Philosophy. James Holden, that hot-headed rogue, manages to convince an alien technology—Abaddon’s Gate, created by the protomolecule—that human beings are not a threat. It opens up 1,300 Einstein-Rosen bridges, providing humanity access to at least as many habitable worlds.…
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series 