Product Description

"Everything I Know I Learned From TV" uses characters we all know and love and their TV worlds to explain the great questions of philosophy. The only qualifications you need to join in are ownership of a sofa, a remote control, a sense of humour and an enquiring mind. The philosophy discussed is very much 'life' philosophy, answering the questions we all want to know: How do you define what is a good life to lead? "The Simpsons" disagree over the right way to live with Nietzsche and Diogenes on hand to take sides. What is real happiness? Aristotle fights Descartes for the heart and mind of "Sex and the City's" Carrie Bradshaw. Can a good person do a bad thing? Kant and Socrates pay a call on Tony Soprano and his latter-day Mob to talk moral philosophy. Where does love end and friendship begin? Rachel and Ross ask Plato about the philosophy of emotions and wonder if they're just good friends. Is the pursuit of self-knowledge a good thing? Socrates helps Niles and Frasier Crane and their dad deal with the relative merit of the examined and the unexamined life. And much more. "Excellent- distinctly laddish- serves to inject a degree of passion into the bloodless halls of philosophy - not only is each chapter a model of philosophical exposition, conveying philosophical ideas with exemplary verve and clarity, the book also manages to connect the philosophy to the movies in a natural and convincing way." - "TLS". "Hugely entertaining...Rowlands knows his stuff and marries some of the tougher philosophical arguments to the more accessible conduit of popular entertainment...enjoyable and illuminating" - "Waterstone's Books Quarterly".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186820 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Independent
"its rigour and lucidity and persuavive, easy way...(it) stands far above most previous efforts to popularise philosophy"

YOU Magazine
"the author's delivery may be joky, but his philosophy is the real thing"

Observer
"Reading each chapter, there is a constant sense of discovering something
important"

Customer Reviews

Getting your head round it
I'm an academic at a business school. I have found this and the previous volume to be immensely useful in communicating abstract philosophical concepts to eighteen year olds in terms and with references they can understand. Needless to say, as a marketer, any reading on ethics and morality will be new to me :)

If I do prefer the first volume, it is probably because I prefer SF movies to these television shows, but the thinking and clarity are still top-noth and I highly recommend both of these books.

Enjoyable *and* enlightening
Written with a tongue-in-cheek style that nevertheless manages to hold the attention through teh whole book. I enjoyed it enormously, and will probably go back and re-read it in a few months.

If you like this you might also like (the slightly more serious) "The Moral of the Story" by Nina Rosenstand.

A Triumph
As a philosophy student, I really ought to be reading 'proper' books on the subject, with big thick spines and long, uninteresting chapters on nothing very much. But why should I, when Rowlands is just so much fun?
With each chapter, he offers a refreshing, stimulating look at a certain aspect of philosophy, perfect for either philosophy virgins or those who just need, say, Plato's theory of mind explained in terms of the Sopranos. A positively brilliant experience, this book is just as useful, fun, and interesting as his previous.