You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
HOUSE AND PHILOSOPHY Is being nice overrated? Are we really just selfish, base animals crawling across Earth in a meaningless existence? Would reading less and watching more television be good for you? Is House a master of Eastern philosophy or just plain rude? Dr. Gregory House is arguably the most complex and challenging antihero in the history of television, but is there more to this self-important genius than gray matter and ego? This book takes a deeper look at House to reveal the philosophical underpinnings of this popular medical drama and its cane-waving curmudgeon’s most outrageous behavior. What emerges is a remarkable character who is part Sherlock Holmes, part Socratic philosopher, part Nietzschean superman, part Taoist rhetorician, and not at all as screwed up as you might think. With everything from Aristotle to Zen, House and Philosophy takes an engaging look at everyone’s favorite misanthropic genius and his team at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital. To learn more about the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, visit www.andphilosophy.com
Shusterman’s Somaesthetics is a wide-ranging collection of penetrating essays by twelve scholars examining in rich detail the many dimensions of philosopher Richard Shusterman’s pragmatism and somaesthetics, complemented by his own chapter of responses to these scholars
In the course of fifty years, director Stanley Kubrick produced some of the most haunting and indelible images on film. His films touch on a wide range of topics rife with questions about human life, behavior, and emotions: love and sex, war, crime, madness, social conditioning, and technology. Within this great variety of subject matter, Kubrick examines different sides of reality and unifies them into a rich philosophical vision that is similar to existentialism. Perhaps more than any other philosophical concept, existentialism—the belief that philosophical truth has meaning only if it is chosen by the individual—has come down from the ivory tower to influence popular culture at large....
“Bond. James Bond.” Since Sean Connery first uttered that iconic phrase in Dr. No, more than one quarter of the world’s population has seen a 007 film. Witty and urbane, Bond seduces and kills with equal ease — often, it seems, with equal enthusiasm. This enthusiasm, coupled with his freedom to do what is forbidden to everyone else, evokes fascinating philosophical questions. Here, 15 witty, thought-provoking essays discuss hidden issues in Bond’s world, from his carnal pleasures to his license to kill. Among the lively topics explored are Bond’s relation to existentialism, including his graduation “beyond good and evil”; his objectification of women; the paradox of breaking the law in order to ultimately uphold it like any “stupid policeman”; the personality of 007 in terms of Plato’s moral psychology; and the Hegelian quest for recognition evinced by Bond villains. A reference guide to all the Bond movies rounds out the book’s many pleasures.
“Written for both fans of the Coen brothers and the philosophically curious, without the technical language . . . educational and entertaining.” —Library Journal Joel and Ethan Coen have made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, but no matter what genre they’re playing with, they consistently focus on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore “the life of the mind” and show that the human condition can often be simultaneously comic and tragic, profound and absurd. The essays in this book explore...
Fifteen philosophers representuing different schools of thought answer the question what is Woody Allen trying to say in his films? And why should anyone care? Focusing on different works and varied aspects of Allen's multifaceted output, these essays explore the philosophical undertones of Anne Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and reminds us that just because the universe is meaningless and life is pointless is no reason to commit suicide.
This entertaining collection of essays shows that Sherlock Holmes sees things others don’t. He sees the world in a different way, and by so doing, allows us to see that same world – and human behavior – in different ways as well. Oh, sure, there have been countless detectives who have followed in his footsteps and who seem to rival his abilities. Just turn on the TV or browse the local bookshop and you’ll find idiosyncratic super sleuths using forensics and reasoning to solve a whole host of crimes and misdeeds. And yet no one rivals our dear, dear Holmes. Why does Sherlock reign, even more than a century later, as king? Can this mystery be solved? Unable to reach either Holmes or Wa...
The contributors to Somaesthetics and Sport explore our embodied experiences of watching and playing sport, including sport’s beauty; the place of exercise in our sense of living a good life; and how we cope with pain and suffering.
Marvel, like other media "universes," is a collection of highly profitable and audience-satisfying products that exist not only as individual items of popular culture but coalesce to form a unique and all-encompassing identity. Within media studies, elements of popular culture once dismissed as low-brow entertainment are now studied with the seriousness that has always been afforded classics like Shakespeare's plays and ancient myth. Indeed, DC and Marvel might be thought of as competing myth systems. This book is a collection of diverse essays covering all aspects of the Marvel Universe, from in-print graphic novels to film and television variations. Contributors present in-depth, original ...
This book explores our corporeal connections to the past by considering what three theoretical approaches - somaesthetics, posthumanism, and the uncanny - may reveal about both premodern and postmodern terms of embodiment. It takes as its point of departure a selection of fifteenth-century northern European Books of Hours - evocative objects designed at once to inscribe social status, to strengthen religious commitment, to entertain, to stimulate emotions, and to encourage discomfiting self-scrutiny. Studying their kaleidoscopically strange, moving, humorous, disturbing, and imaginative pages not only enables a window into relationships among bodies, images, and things in the past but also in our own internet era, where surprisingly popular memes drawn from such manuscripts constitute a part of our own visual culture. In negotiating theoretical, post-theoretical, and historical concerns, this book aims to contribute to an emerging and much-needed intersectional social history of art. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, medieval studies, Renaissance/early modern studies, gender studies, the history of the book, posthumanism, aesthetics, and the body.