Product Description

This is a new edition packed with good old-fashioned, high-octane, high body count, alien ass-kicking, robot-wrecking- philosophy! "It's Schopenhauer and the will. It's Plato, it's Hume, Baudrillard and the concept of the Nietzschean superman!" - Keanu Reeves on "The Matrix". "The Philosopher at the End of the Universe" allows anyone to understand basic philosophical concepts from the comfort of their armchair, through the plots and characters of spectacular blockbusting science-fiction movies. You can learn about: the Nature of Reality from "The Matrix"; Good and Evil from "Star Wars"; Morality from "Aliens"; Personal Identity from "Total Recall"; The Mind-Body Dilemma from "Terminator"; Free Will from "Minority Report"; Death and the Meaning of Life from "Blade Runner"; and much more. As someone once said, things must be said and knowledge known, and the cast list assembled to tell us does not disappoint: Tom Cruise, Plato, Harrison Ford, Immanuel Kant, Sigourney Weaver, Friedrich Nietzsche, Keanu Reeves and Rene Descartes. From characters in the biggest films (with lots of explosions and bad language) to Ludwig Wittgenstein (no explosions and too much language in general), hear all the arguments. I think, therefore- I'll be back! Author Bio: Mark Rowlands is the Director of the Centre for Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He has written seven books, including the forthcoming "Everything I Know I Learned From TV" (Ebury, 2005). He has also appeared on television and radio. "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: #62105 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"'It's Schopenhauer and the will. It's Plato, it's Hume, Baudrillard and the concept of the Nietzschean superman!' Keanu Reeves on The Matrix"

From the Publisher
New edition packed with good old-fashioned, high-octane, high body count, alien ass-kicking, robot-wrecking- philosophy!

About the Author
Mark Rowlands is the Director of the Centre for Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He has written seven books, including the forthcoming Everything I Know I Learned From TV (Ebury, 2005). He has also appeared on television and radio.

Customer Reviews

Picture Arnie shaking hands with Plato!!
This is a great book! For ages I had a passing interest in philosophy but never had the time to really grasp it's basics. This book allowed me to do so while still enjoying a great read. Rowlands explanations are fantastic and what surprised me was the humour that is littered throughout the book. I can honestly say that I will never look at Arnold Schwarzenegger in the same light again. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, it is a book that will make you look at some of your favourite movies in an entirely different way. I just hope that there is a follow before long!

philosophy - accessible and enjoyable
I am relatively new to philosophy and really enjoyed this book.Subjects that had been covered in my lectures finally started to make sense and I found revising much easier , I no longer needed to learn things off by heart as I understood them and just had to think back to the movies if I got confused.Incidently , my boyfriend loved the book aswell even though he had never read any philosophy before. Definately looking forward to the follow up.

A bit of a gimmick ..... but really fun
"Philosophy explained through science fiction films", as stated on the cover, is a somewhat misleading introduction to what is an otherwise excellent book. The author manages to pick up on 1 or 2 basic concepts from each of 9 films and explains each in a useful mannger without putting us to sleep with long winded detail. While the method of introducing the reader to concepts like 'the meaning of life', 'free will', and 'personal identity' remains unique, the actual content wanders from the path of science fiction frequently and may leave the reader a bit lost as to how some of these concepts relate back to the film that was used to introduce the concept at the start of the chapter.

Despite this small drawback, I found the direct and simple language easy to follow and detailed reference to famous philosphers (with due respect to these people) minimal throughout the book. I thouroughly enjoyed watching these movies again after freshly reading about the philosphical issues involved and wish that more books used direct language and everyday experiences to explain what are normally difficult issues to grasp.

You won't figure out the Matrix with this book (that last 10 minutes in Matrix 2 has us all stumped!), but for a great read and a fresh view on some of your favourite movies, get this book now. Its interesting, direct, practical, understandable, and most importantly .... fun.