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Who am I?

You can look at my home page for more information, but the short answer is that I'm a dilettante who likes thinking about a variety of subjects. I like to think of myself as a systems-level thinker, more concerned with the big picture than with the details. Current interests include politics, community formation, and social interface design. Plus books, of course.

Blogs I read

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Recent posts

Mon, 22 Sep 2003

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, ed. by James B. South
As a fairly rabid devotee of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as somebody who likes thinking about deeper issues on occasion, this book was irresistible: a collection of articles by philosophy professors and students discussing how various philosophical theories are exemplified by Buffy. It's interesting how many different ways the same episodes can be viewed. We have feminist ethics, Kantian categorical imperatives, Platonic ideals, Freudian thinking, the Nietzschean will to power, and the most entertaining one, Buffy as a fascistic ideal, with the young brave Aryan girl leading her troops against the mixed-blood demon vampires in an unholy campaign of genocide. I enjoyed reading it - I'd read of many of the philosophical concepts before but it helped my understanding to see how they could be applied to a canon that I knew well. I'm not sure it would be as entertaining to somebody who didn't know the series inside and out, though. As a note, it's part of a book series called Popular Culture and Philosophy, including Seinfeld and Philosophy, The Simpsons and Philosophy, and The Matrix and Philosophy, in case any of those bits of popular culture fit your tastes better.

posted at: 00:39 by Eric Nehrlich | path: /books/nonfiction/fun | permanent link to this entry | Comment on livejournal