The Good Place and Philosophy: Everything is Forking Fine!

Front Cover
Kimberly S. Engels
John Wiley & Sons, Sep 23, 2020 - Philosophy - 320 pages

Dive into the moral philosophy at the heart of all four seasons of NBC’s The Good Place, guided by academic experts including the show’s philosophical consultants Pamela Hieronymi and Todd May, and featuring a foreword from creator and showrunner Michael Schur

  • Explicitly dedicated to the philosophical concepts, questions, and fundamental ethical dilemmas at the heart of the thoughtful and ambitious NBC sitcom The Good Place
  • Navigates the murky waters of moral philosophy in more conceptual depth to call into question what Chidi’s ethics lessons—and the show—get right about learning to be a good person
  • Features contributions from The Good Place’s philosophical consultants, Pamela Hieronymi and Todd May, and introduced by the show’s creator and showrunner Michael Schur (Parks and Recreation, The Office)
  • Engages classic philosophical questions, including the clash between utilitarianism and deontological ethics in the “Trolley Problem,” Kant’s categorical imperative, Sartre’s nihilism, and T.M Scanlon's contractualism
  • Explores themes such as death, love, moral heroism, free will, responsibility, artificial intelligence, fatalism, skepticism, virtue ethics, perception, and the nature of autonomy in the surreal heaven-like afterlife of the Good Place
  • Led by Kimberly S. Engels, co-editor of Westworld and Philosophy

 

Selected pages

Contents

I Just Ethicsd You in the Face 1
3
Doug Forcett
15
Luck and Fairness in The Good Place 25
25
Virtuous for Virtues Sake
35
The Good Place and The Good Life
47
Belongs in The Bad Place
57
All Those Ethics Lessons Paid Off
65
Third Space Morality
75
Absurdity Needs to Be Confronted 13 Marginal Comforts Keep Us in Hell 131
131
Architects and Existentialism in The Good Place
141
Searching for Meaning Is Philosophical Suicide 15 Death Meaning and Existential Crises 153
153
Simone
166
The Dalai Lama Texted Me That
189
Who Are Chidi and Eleanor in a PastAfterLife?
202
Oh Cool More Philosophy That Will Help Us 22 An Epistemological Nightmare? Ways of Knowing
237
The Embodied
260

What We May Learn from Michaels Solution
87
The Good Other
110
A Tale of Two Women
121
Index
283
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

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About the author (2020)

KIMBERLY S. ENGELS is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Molloy College, Rockville Centre, New York. She is the author of numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles, and is the co-editor of Westworld and Philosophy.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Good Place and Philosophy: Everything is Forking Fine!
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series
EditorKimberly S. Engels
ContributorWilliam Irwin
PublisherJohn Wiley & Sons, 2020
ISBN1119633281, 9781119633280
Length320 pages
Subjects › 

Philosophy / General
  
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