Search results for ""Author Joshua Heter""

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” Karl Marx might have been thinking of punk rock when he wrote these words in 1847, but he overlooked the possibility that new forms of solidity and holiness could spring into existence overnight.Punk rock was a celebration of nastiness, chaos, and defiance of convention, which quickly transcended itself and developed its own orthodoxies, shibboleths, heresies, and sectarian wars. Is punk still alive today? What has it left us with? Does punk make any artistic sense? Is punk inherently anarchist, sexist, neo-Nazi, Christian, or—perish the thought—Marxist? When all’s said and done, does punk simply suck? These obvious questions only scratch the surface of punk’s philosophical ramifications, explored in depth in this unprecedented and thoroughly nauseating volume. Thirty-two professional thinkers-for-a-living and students of rock turn their x-ray eyes on this exciting and frequently disgusting topic, and penetrate to punk’s essence, or perhaps they end up demonstrating that it has no essence. You decide. Among the nail-biting questions addressed in this book:● Can punks both reject conformity to ideals and complain that poseurs fail to confirm to the ideals of punk?● How and why can social protest take the form of arousing revulsion by displaying bodily functions and bodily abuse?● Can punk ethics be reconciled with those philosophical traditions which claim that we should strive to become the best version of ourselves?● How close is the message of Jesus of Nazareth to the message of punk?● Is punk essentially the cry of cis, white, misogynist youth culture, or is there a more wholesome appeal to irrepressibly healthy tendencies like necrophilia, coprophilia, and sadomasochism?● In its rejection of the traditional aesthetic of order and complexity, did punk point the way to “aesthetic anarchy,” based on simplicity and chaos?● By becoming commercially successful, did punk fail by its very success?● Is punk what Freddie Nietzsche was getting at in The Birth of Tragedy, when he called for Dionysian art, which venerates the raw, instinctual, and libidinous aspects of life?

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The Godfather and Philosophy is comprised of twenty-eight chapters by philosophers, who reflect upon the ethical and metaphysical issues raised in The Godfather novels and movies, beginning with the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo and the 1972 movie by Francis Ford Coppola.The Godfather saga has had a profound impact on American cinema, storytelling, thinking about crime, and popular culture. Aimed at thoughtful fans of The Godfather franchise, among the questions tackled in these provocative philosophical chapters are the immigrant experience in America, the relation between ethics and the law, the nature of moral corruption, private justice and vigilantism, organized crime and the American Dream, betrayal and forgiveness, religion and family values, the difficulties of breaking out of a dysfunctional way of life, and the uncertain consequences of vice laws.Joshua Heter teaches philosophy at Jefferson College, Missouri. He co-edited Punk Rock and Philosophy (2022).Richard Greene teaches philosophy at Weber State University, Utah. He wrote the definitive and highly acclaimed book, Spoiler Alert! (It’s a Book about the Philosophy of Spoilers) (2019).

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Better Call Saul and Philosophy: I Think Therefore I Scam is a collection of twenty-three essays exploring the philosophical themes in the hit television show Better Call Saul, a prequel to the TV show Breaking Bad. The sixth and final season of Better Call Saul aired from April to August 2022. The central character is Jimmy McGill, whom we know from Breaking Bad as Saul Goodman. In Better Call Saul he first takes the name of Saul Goodman from the phrase “S’all Good, Man!” Jimmy/Saul is a natural con artist who not only scams from self-interest but also because he enjoys it. He has a strange relationship with his brother, the distinguished lawyer Charles McGill, who resents Jimmy’s delinquency and advantage in parental affection. Jimmy/Saul becomes a lawyer for a drug cartel, and most of the people he meets are criminals and other kinds of villains.Like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul raises a wide range of philosophical issues including the nature of good and evil, personal identity, free will and determinism, the law as it relates to morality, the ethical implications of the war on drugs, death and dying, and many more. Better Call Saul and Philosophy offers thoughtful fans of the show deeper and more provocative insights into the story and the characters. Topics covered include: the morality of keeping promises to wrongdoers, the nature of psychosomatic illness, difficult moral choices facing lawyers, just how good or bad are some of the compromised characters in the show, the unintended consequences of the War on Drugs, the similarities between drug cartels and governments, whether bad people are just unlucky, the perils of self-deception, and whether we ever really have much of a choice. Better Call Saul and Philosophy is Volume 8 in the path-breaking series, Pop Culture and Philosophy.

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Isaac Asimov’s Foundation is the most influential science-fiction epic of all time. Published as a series of books and short stories from the 1940s to the 1980s, the series has impacted most subsequent science fiction, and influenced sciences like sociology, statistics, and psychology. The story has now been made into a highly acclaimed TV serial (Foundation), on Apple TV, the second season now shooting in Prague. The story begins 45,000 years in the future, and spans centuries in which a vast and successful interstellar human empire is unknowingly headed for total collapse. Using an advanced mathematical technique called psycho-history, a brilliant scientist, Hari Seldon, predicts the collapse and establishes a “foundation” to bring about the resurrection of human civilization many generations in the future.Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy is a collection of twenty-four chapter by philosophers exploring the philosophical issues and puzzles raised by this epic story. Topics include whether one individual can make a big difference in history, the ethics of manipulating large populations of people to bring about a desirable future result, the Dao of non-action, the impact of education on future generations, whether human affairs are governed by predictable cycles, whether attempts to plan for the future must be thwarted by free will, the futility of empire-building, the ethics of cloning human beings, and the use of logic in analyzing human behavior.Joshua Heter teaches philosophy at Jefferson College, Missouri, and is co-editor of Better Call Saul and Philosophy: I Think Therefore I Scam (2022).Josef Thomas Simpson is an academic coach and part-time lecturer. He contributed chapters to Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown (2019) and Orphan Black and Philosophy: Grand Theft DNA (2016).

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