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Conversations with 15 contemporary writers and philosophers provide an accessible and exciting account of Western philosophy and its greatest thinkers. Includes contributions from A.J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle. 28 halftones.
In 1951, the eight o’clock nightly news reported on Jean-Paul Sartre for the first time. By the end of the twentieth century, more than 3,500 programs dealing with philosophy and its practitioners—including Bachelard, Badiou, Foucault, Lyotard, and Lévy—had aired on French television. According to Tamara Chaplin, this enduring commitment to bringing the most abstract and least visual of disciplines to the French public challenges our very assumptions about the incompatibility of elite culture and mass media. Indeed, it belies the conviction that television is inevitably anti-intellectual and the quintessential archenemy of the book. Chaplin argues that the history of the televising of...
The author interviews modern philosophers and writers such as Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer on the major figures in the history of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Russell and Wittgenstein.
Based on a highly successful BBC television series, this book presents fifteen dialogues between author and broadcaster Bryan Magee and some of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. Isaiah Berlin considers the fundamental question, "What is philosophy?," A. J. Ayer reviews logical positivism, and Iris Murdoch talks about the relation between philosophy and literature. Moral philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science are all treated in depth by the thinkers who have shaped these fields--including Noam Chomsky, W. V. O. Quine, and Herbert Marcuse. Written in an informal, conversational style, even the most difficult philosophical ideas are made accessible to the general reader.
An in-depth look at the philosophical issues behind HBO's Game of Thrones television series and the books that inspired it George R.R. Martin's New York Times bestselling epic fantasy book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the HBO television show adapted from it, have earned critical acclaim and inspired fanatic devotion. This book delves into the many philosophical questions that arise in this complex, character-driven series, including: Is it right for a "good" king to usurp the throne of a "bad" one and murder his family? How far should you go to protect your family and its secrets? In a fantasy universe with medieval mores and ethics, can female characters reflect modern feminist ideal...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy provides an excellent way of looking at some intriguing issues in philosophy, from vegetarianism and Artificial Intelligence to God, space and time. This is an entertaining yet thought provoking volume for students, philosophers and fans of The Hitchhiker's series.
Everything I Know I Learned From TV uses characters we all know and love and their TV worlds to explain the great questions of philosophy. The only qualifications you need to join in are ownership of a sofa, a remote control, a sense of humour and an enquiring mind. The philosophy discussed is very much 'life' philosophy, answering the questions we all want to know: How do you define what is a good life to lead? The Simpsons disagree over the right way to live with Nietzsche and Diogenes on hand to take sides. What is real happiness? Aristotle fights Descartes for the heart and mind of Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw. Can a good person do a bad thing? Kant and Socrates pay a call on Tony Soprano and his latter-day Mob to talk moral philosophy. Where does love end and friendship begin? Rachel and Ross ask Plato about the philosophy of emotions and wonder if they're just good friends. Is the pursuit of self-knowledge a good thing? Socrates helps Niles and Frasier Crane and their dad deal with the relative merit of the examined and the unexamined life. And much more.
Not only is Doctor Who the longest-running science fiction TV show in history, but it has also been translated into numerous languages, broadcast around the world, and referred to as the “way of the future” by some British politicians. The Classic Doctor Who series built up a loyal American cult following, with regular conventions and other activities. The new series, relaunched in 2005, has emerged from culthood into mass awareness, with a steadily growing viewership and major sales of DVDs. The current series, featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, is breaking all earlier records, in both the UK and the US. Doctor Who is a continuing story about the adventures of a mysterious alien known as “the Doctor,” a traveller of both time and space whose spacecraft is the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space), which from the outside looks like a British police telephone box of the 1950s. The TARDIS is “bigger on the inside than on the outside”—actually the interior is immense. The Doctor looks human, but has two hearts, and a knowledge of all languages in the universe. Periodically, when the show changes the leading actor, the Doctor “regenerates.”
Alain de Botton pairs six philosophers - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - with six everyday problems to which they are able to give the most helpful and fascinating answers.
The Washington Post Notable Non-Fiction of 2013 “I can imagine few more enjoyable ways of thinking than to read this book.”—Sarah Bakewell, New York Times Book Review, front-page review Tackling the “darkest question in all of philosophy” with “raffish erudition” (Dwight Garner, New York Times), author Jim Holt explores the greatest metaphysical mystery of all: why is there something rather than nothing? This runaway bestseller, which has captured the imagination of critics and the public alike, traces our latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. Holt adopts the role of cosmological detective, traveling the globe to interview a host of celebrated scientists, philosophers, and writers, “testing the contentions of one against the theories of the other” (Jeremy Bernstein, Wall Street Journal). As he interrogates his list of ontological culprits, the brilliant yet slyly humorous Holt contends that we might have been too narrow in limiting our suspects to God versus the Big Bang. This “deft and consuming” (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times) narrative humanizes the profound questions of meaning and existence it confronts.