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Supervillains & Philosophy
16 years ago
General
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supervillai.....cm_cr-mr-title
It's a truism that superheroes are only as interesting as the villains they fight, and at the root of comic book supervillainy is the philosophical problem of evil -- a problem, liberated from its theological context, of value judgments, free will, and right and wrong actions. While the book Supervillains & Philosophy (edited by Ben Dyer; Open Court, 2009) focuses on superhuman morality, resulting in a pretty thin book (one that could've been titled, with much less commercial impact, "Comic Book Utilitarianism & Its Discontents"), most of the nineteen essays here have something interesting to say about our moral and intellectual fallibility; that is, our common experience, magnified and exaggerated for the larger than life stories we enjoy in comics, movies, and television.
Things start off well with Ben Dyer's close reading of the graphic novel Wanted and the perverse moral education of its protagonist, Wesley Gibson; the nihilistic life examined. Robert Arp reads V for Vendetta and argues that its anarchist hero and the fascist government he opposes subscribe to equally evil versions of utilitarian justice. Christopher Robichaud bases a comparison of moral objectivity, moral nihilism, and moral relativity on a careful viewing of the movie Superman Returns. Daniel Moseley asks what the Joker has in common with Friedrich Nietzsche. Libby Barringer analyzes the Hobbesian political dilemma of Marvel's Civil War. Andrew Terjesen argues that Dr. Doom's "benevolent" despotism would be preferable for most of us to the rule of the murderous superhero team, the Authority. But my favorite piece in the whole book is a short story by veteran comics writer Dennis O'Neil, who revisits Two-Face's origin story, imagining a strictly religious upbringing for Harvey Dent. If the question most writers seem to ask themselves about the character is "what could turn a good man into a monster?", O'Neil, no slouch at philosophy himself, considers it a loaded question; what if Two-Face's monstrosity was a matter of perception all along?
I frankly lost interest in the geeky metaphysical questions that provoked the book's last four essays. Omnipotence, artificial intelligence, and personal identity are interesting topics, but when I read a question like "just how intelligent is Brainiac?", my mind starts to wander. This is an enjoyable book for the most part, but it would've been even more enjoyable if there hadn't been so many damned typos in the text. Couldn't Open Court afford a proofreader?
reviewed by Roochak
http://www.amazon.com/Supervillains.....cm_cr-mr-title
It's a truism that superheroes are only as interesting as the villains they fight, and at the root of comic book supervillainy is the philosophical problem of evil -- a problem, liberated from its theological context, of value judgments, free will, and right and wrong actions. While the book Supervillains & Philosophy (edited by Ben Dyer; Open Court, 2009) focuses on superhuman morality, resulting in a pretty thin book (one that could've been titled, with much less commercial impact, "Comic Book Utilitarianism & Its Discontents"), most of the nineteen essays here have something interesting to say about our moral and intellectual fallibility; that is, our common experience, magnified and exaggerated for the larger than life stories we enjoy in comics, movies, and television.
Things start off well with Ben Dyer's close reading of the graphic novel Wanted and the perverse moral education of its protagonist, Wesley Gibson; the nihilistic life examined. Robert Arp reads V for Vendetta and argues that its anarchist hero and the fascist government he opposes subscribe to equally evil versions of utilitarian justice. Christopher Robichaud bases a comparison of moral objectivity, moral nihilism, and moral relativity on a careful viewing of the movie Superman Returns. Daniel Moseley asks what the Joker has in common with Friedrich Nietzsche. Libby Barringer analyzes the Hobbesian political dilemma of Marvel's Civil War. Andrew Terjesen argues that Dr. Doom's "benevolent" despotism would be preferable for most of us to the rule of the murderous superhero team, the Authority. But my favorite piece in the whole book is a short story by veteran comics writer Dennis O'Neil, who revisits Two-Face's origin story, imagining a strictly religious upbringing for Harvey Dent. If the question most writers seem to ask themselves about the character is "what could turn a good man into a monster?", O'Neil, no slouch at philosophy himself, considers it a loaded question; what if Two-Face's monstrosity was a matter of perception all along?
I frankly lost interest in the geeky metaphysical questions that provoked the book's last four essays. Omnipotence, artificial intelligence, and personal identity are interesting topics, but when I read a question like "just how intelligent is Brainiac?", my mind starts to wander. This is an enjoyable book for the most part, but it would've been even more enjoyable if there hadn't been so many damned typos in the text. Couldn't Open Court afford a proofreader?
reviewed by Roochak
http://www.amazon.com/Supervillains.....cm_cr-mr-title
Sounds interesting.
I don't view morality that way, but then, I don't have much of a moral grounding. The curse of being a scientific sort and putting too much stock in logical positivism. Though my utilitarianism gives me some ideas. And my firm belief in a social contract.
Our morality is a shared conventional value system arrived at, though numerous overhauls and prunings, by a system of largely rational decisions based on our basic properties. As we are gill-less, organic, RNA/DNA, protein-based, metabolic, metazoic, neucleic, diploid, bilaterally symmetrical, endothermic, digestive, triploblast, opisthokont, duterostome, coelemate with a spinal cord and 12 cranial nerves connecting to a limbic system in an enlarged cerebral cortex with a reduced olfactory region inside a jawed skull with specialized teeth including canines and premolars forward-oriented, fully enclosed optical orbits and a single temporal fenestra attached to a vertibrate, hind-leg dominant tetrapoidal skeleton with a sacral pelvis, cklavacle, wrist and ankle bones and having lungs, tear ducts, body-wide hair follicle, lactal mammaries, opposable thumbs and keratinized dermis and chitonous nails on all five digits of all four extremities in addition to an embryonic development in amniotic fluid leading to a placental birth in a highly social lifestyle, we have developed this understanding that others like us are affected, by and large by similar things. I'd rather not be killed or have my resources stolen (Because lost resurces cost me expended energy I don't get refunded, and can potentially lead to death.) So, someone else decides the same thing. And as social creatures, we can figure out ways to ensure this, though contracts and general ideas about actions.
Slavery, to be practical for a moment, is brilliantly beneficial for the slave-owner. The way you can tell it's immoral, however, is to ask a slave. You find out they aren't deriving much of a benefit. At the base of it, we do these things to ensure we suffer less. And as we can do that as a mass, we help ourselves as we help each other since, and this is the vital bit, we're all part of "us." We all belong to that universal set.
But, I can be ignored, I'm a proponent of negative freedom. I have long favored focus on "freedom from." Reducing suffering is more beneficial than increasing happiness. Happiness ebbs and flows with stable suffering. Reduced suffering allows for a greater capacity for stable happiness.
(AronRa of YouTube created that... Almost unbelievably detained rundown of what a human is, originally made to show that humans are, indeed, primates.)