Think Inside The Box

The Sunday Age

Sunday October 3, 2004

Jane Sullivan

He's a glutton and he tells lies. He has no benevolence, no justice, no generosity. He has buddies but no friends, and his marital and parenting skills leave much to be desired. According to Aristotelian principles, if he fares so badly on the moral front, in what way is Homer Simpson admirable?

"Homer and Aristotle", an essay by Raja Halwani in The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'Oh! of Homer, is a classic example of our age's propensity to get serious about trivia.

The book is one of a canny popular culture series launched in 2001 by Open Court, an American publisher. A Pennsylvania philosophy professor, William Irwin, got together with academic colleagues to produce the first title, Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing. But it was the second book on the Simpsons that really took off, with more than 200,000 copies sold to date.

Since then there have been books of philosophical essays about The Matrix, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Lord of the Rings, Baseball and The Sopranos.

The series is partly an attempt to sell philosophy to a wider readership by talking the language of popular culture. As Irwin says, the books "speak to students and the general public about philosophy, a subject to which they ordinarily give little thought".

But these successful titles also show a growing interest in philosophy as a way of understanding our increasingly complex and alarmingly contradictory world. Probably this interest comes from a feeling there is more to life than rampant materialism, coupled with a reluctance to turn to religion.

Witness the huge popularity of Alain de Botton, a British philosopher who has made a career out of books and television programs based on the premise that Schopenhauer or Nietzsche can tell you something useful about your frustrations at work or your failing relationship.

One of the perennial questions of philosophy - are we really here or is this world just a dream, and would it be better to wake up? - gets a big work-over in The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Anybody who thought The Matrix movies were just splendidly orchestrated Hollywood science fiction with a few knowing references had better think again: by the time the philosophers have finished with it, it's an allegory for just about everything.

Like The Simpsons book, The Sopranos and Philosophy: I Kill Therefore I Am looks at the paradox of how we can like, admire and feel for characters who are morally reprehensible. At least Homer isn't a thug, a criminal or a murderer.

Is Mafia boss Tony Soprano a Machiavellian, or does he lean more towards the teachings of Sun Tzu on the art of war? Is his wife Carmela a feminist? The answer to the last question is no, but apparently Carmela practises what are known as "care ethics", where moral problems are seen as stemming from the conflicting responsibilities of caring for yourself and caring for your loved ones.

This has all been too much for Norah Vincent, a columnist for the Village Voice, who attacked the series when the first book on Seinfeld appeared. These "mostly third-rate philosophers from mostly substandard institutions" were part of a rush towards pop culture that was dumbing down the academy, she complained. "Television studies is the perfect postmodern project - us watching ourselves watching ourselves. It's couch potato-dom writ large."

Irwin and one of his contributors rushed into print to deny her claims. Vincent responded with another attack. I don't suppose this kerfuffle did sales any harm.

Watch out for future books in the series on Woody Allen, Harry Potter, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and - yes, they can't get enough of it - More Matrix.

jsullivan@theage.com.au