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The Good Place is a fantasy-comedy TV show about the afterlife. Eleanor dies and finds herself in the Good Place, which she understands must be mistake, since she has been anything but good. In the surprise twist ending to Season One, it is revealed that this is really the Bad Place, but the demon who planned it was frustrated, because the characters didn’t torture each other mentally as planned, but managed to learn how to live together. In ,i>The Good Place and Philosophy, twenty-one philosophers analyze different aspects of the ethical and metaphysical issues raised in the show, including: ● Indefinitely long punishment can only be justified as a method of ultimately improving vicious...
Few vocations share more in common with preaching than stand-up comedy. Each profession demands attention to the speaker’s bodily and facial gestures, tone and inflection, timing, and thoughtful engagement with contemporary contexts. Furthermore, both preaching and stand-up arise out of creative tension with homiletic or comedic traditions, respectively. Every time the preacher steps into the pulpit or the comedian steps onto the stage, they must measure their words and gestures against their audience’s expectations and assumptions. They participate in a kind of dance that is at once choreographed and open to improvisation. It is these and similar commonalities between preaching and stan...
"In the early Roman empire, Christians were seen by pagans as overthrowers of ancient gods and destroyers of the prevailing social order. Allegations that Christians recognized each other by secret marks, met at night and made love to one another indiscriminately, worshipped the head of an ass and the genitals of their high priests, and ate children were widely believed. In examining these charges and the Christian response to them, Benko has provided a persuasively argued and refreshing, if controversial, perspective on the confrontation of the pagan and early Christian worlds."[book cover].
A light take on the darkly comic show The Good Placeand its lasting impact on American television culture. "Pobody's nerfect" - or whatever the saying might be! As humans we are constantly worried about how our actions may come back to haunt us. The Good Place(2016–2020) is a high-concept American sitcom that brought light to the dark topic of the afterlife, and the show tackled this worry head-on. Although it had a life span of only four seasons, The Good Placemade a lasting impact on American television culture and garnered many accolades for producer Michael Schur (also producer of The Office, Parks and Recreation,and Brooklyn Nine-Nine). Author Erin Giannini argues that the show redefi...
All humans laugh. However, there is little agreement about what is appropriate to laugh at. While laughter can unite people by showing how they share values and perspectives, it also has the power to separate and divide. Humor that "crosses the line" can make people feel excluded and humiliated. This collection of new essays addresses possible ways that moral and ethical lines can be drawn around humor and laughter. What would a Kantian approach to humor look like? Do games create a safe space for profanity and offense? Contributors to this volume work to establish and explain guidelines for thinking about the moral questions that arise when humor and laughter intersect with medicine, gender, race, and politics. Drawing from the work of stand-up comedians, television shows, and ethicists, this volume asserts that we are never just joking.
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 H...
Should technology be used to improve human faculties such as cognition and longevity? This thought-provoking dialogue between "transhumanism" and religion examines enhancement technologies that could radically alter the human species. "Transhumanism" or "human enhancement" is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates the use of emerging technologies to change human traits. Although they may sound like science fiction, the possibilities suggested by transhumanism are very real, and the questions they raise have no easy answers. If these enhancements—especially major ones like the indefinite extension of healthy human life—become widely available, they would arguably have a more...
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence, ICAT 2006, held in Hangzhou, China in November/December 2006. The 138 revised papers cover anthropomorphic intelligent robotics, artificial life, augmented reality, distributed and collaborative VR system, motion tracking, real time computer simulation virtual reality, as well as VR interaction and navigation techniques.
This book presents an original worldview, Homo risibilis, wherein self-referential humor is proposed as the path leading from a tragic view of life to a liberating embrace of human ridicule. Humor is presented as a conceptual tool for holding together contradictions and managing the unresolvable conflict of the human condition till Homo risibilis resolves the inherent tension without epistemological cost. This original approach to the human condition allows us to effectively address life’s ambiguities without losing sight of its tragic overtones and brings along far-ranging personal and social benefits. By defining the problem that other philosophies and many religions attempt to solve in ...
"This is the first collection to bring together previously unpublished essays exploring James's depictions of gender and his use of sexual imagery that is balanced, objective, and critically diverse. Nine articles examine James's fiction, films made from his works, his own literary criticism, letters, and travel writing. These essays represent a range of theoretical perspectives - cultural studies, feminist and gender studies, queer theory, Lacanian and deconstructive psychoanalytic studies, and historicism." "This volume will be a valuable resource for readers in the fields of James, American literature, the novel, and gender studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved