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.…
Enter The Expanse to explore questions of the meaning of human life, the concept of justice, and the nature of humanity, featuring a foreword from author James S.A. Corey The Expanse and Philosophy investigates the philosophical universe of the critically acclaimed television show and Hugo Award-winning series of novels. Original essays by a diverse international panel of experts illuminate how essential philosophical concepts relate to the meticulously crafted world of The Expanse, engaging with topics such as…
Ted Lasso and Philosophy Call for Abstracts Edited by David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series Please circulate and post widely. To propose ideas for future volumes in the Blackwell series please contact the Series Editor, William Irwin, williamirwin@kings.edu Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written…
Paradigm Shifts Epstein Drive, Eros, and Thomas Kuhn By Nathaniel Goldberg “My drive would give us the edge that we needed to finally break free from Earth and build a new world for ourselves. That’s the wonderful and terrible thing about technology. It changes everything.” “Paradigm Shift,” season 2, episode 6 of The Expanse, mixes…
Can They Consent to Play the Squid Game? By Corey R. Horn Netflix’s fall blockbuster in 2021 is a South Korean drama where children’s games take a deadly turn. Squid Game began streaming in September and it took less than four weeks to become the streaming platform’s most successful launch to date. One of the…
Midnight Mass Merits in Morally Ambiguous Media By Tylor Cunningham Often, interpretive disagreements about artworks are the very things that make those works interesting and worth engaging in further. When two people pull seemingly contradictory themes or messages from a story, that’s an opportunity to come together and compare notes; to see if there’s something…
On the Moral Status of Bloodbending Davis Smith Introduction During their travels around the world of Avatar, our heroes have encountered many people with strange or unique bending abilities. For example, they encountered Combustion Man, who could make things explode with his mind (“The Headband” 23:24-23:48and “The Beach” 15:21-16:16). None, however, are more troubling and…
Competing Ethical Systems in Ghost of Tsushima by Armond Boudreaux In its depiction of medieval Japanese culture, its astonishingly beautiful landscapes and imagery, and its hyper-realistic combat, Ghost of Tsushima is ground-breaking. One remarkable thing about the game that might have gone relatively unnoticed, however, is the way in which it invites a sophisticated…
Darkest Dungeon and Ethics Making the Most of a Bad Situation James Cartlidge Darkest Dungeon is a critically acclaimed, award-winning video game developed by Red Hook Studios which, since its release in 2016, has maintained a strong cult following. It tells a story of grim, medieval Lovecraftian horror and raises deep, difficult ethical questions in…
Black Panther, What if, and the Philosophy of Fathers and Sons Edwardo Raul Pérez Watching “What if … T’Challa Became a Star-Lord,” the second episode of Disney+’s What if, with my children, having just learned that my father died (but being emotionally unable to immediately tell my kids, because the words just wouldn’t come out,…
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