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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
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 and the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. Her research centers on Sartrean existentialism as a contemporary lived philosophy, and the application of ethical philosophy to contemporary ethical issues in the news and media.
William Irwin is Herve A. LeBlanc Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of Philosophy at King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Intentionalist Interpretation and scholarly articles on Sartre, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Irwin originated the philosophy and popular culture genre of books with Seinfeld and Philosophy in 1999 and is currently the General Editor of The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series.
Contributors ix
Editor’s Introduction and Acknowledgments: “We are Not in This Alone” xviiKimberly S. Engels
Foreword xixMichael Schur, creator of The Good Place
Introduction xxiiiPamela Hieronymi and Todd May, philosophical advisors to The Good Place
Part I “I Just Ethics’d You in the Face” 1
1 How Do You Like Them Ethics? 3David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett
2 Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By: Doug Forcett and the Limits of Self-Sacrifice 15Greg Littmann
3 Luck and Fairness in The Good Place 25Scott A. Davison and Andrew R. Davison
Part II “Virtuous for Virtue’s Sake” 35
4 Can Eleanor Really Become a Better Person? 37Eric J. Silverman and Zachary Swanson
5 The Good Place and The Good Life 47C. Scott Sevier
6 The Ethics of Indecision: Why Chidi Anagonye Belongs in The Bad Place 57Traci Phillipson
Part III “All Those Ethics Lessons Paid Off” 65
7 Moral Absurdity and Care Ethics in The Good Place 67Laura Matthews
8 The Medium Place: Third Space, Morality, and Being In Between 75Catherine M. Robb
9 What We May Learn from Michael’s Solution to the Trolley Problem 87Andreas Bruns
Part IV “Help Is Other People” 97
10 Some Memories You May Have Forgotten: Holding Space for Each Other When Memory Fails 99Alison Reiheld
11 The Good Other 110Steven A. Benko
12 Not Knowing Your Place: A Tale of Two Women 121Leslie A. Aarons
Part V “Absurdity Needs to Be Confronted” 131
13 Marginal Comforts Keep Us in Hell 133Jake Jackson
14 “I Would Refuse to Be a God if It Were Offered to Me”: Architects and Existentialism in The Good Place 141Kimberly S. Engels
Part VI “Searching for Meaning Is Philosophical Suicide” 153
15 Death, Meaning, and Existential Crises 155Kiki Berk
16 From Indecision to Ambiguity: Simone de Beauvoir and Chidi’s Moral Growth 166Matthew P. Meyer
17 Beyond Good and Evil Places: Eternal Return of the Superhuman 178James Lawler
Part VII “The Dalai Lama Texted Me That” 189
18 Conceptions of the Afterlife: The Good Place and Religious Tradition 191Michael McGowan
19 Who are Chidi and Eleanor in a Past-(After)Life? The Buddhist Notion of No-Self 202Dane Sawyer
Part VIII “Sometimes a Flaw Can Make Something Even More Beautiful” 211
20 Hell Is Other People’s Tastes 213Darren Hudson Hick and Sarah E. Worth
21 Why Everyone Hates Moral Philosophy Professors: The Aesthetics of Shallowness 224T Storm Heter
Part IX “Oh Cool, More Philosophy! That Will Help Us.” 237
22 An Epistemological Nightmare? Ways of Knowing in The Good Place 239Dean A. Kowalski
23 What’s the Use of Free Will? 249Joshua Tepley
24 From Clickwheel through Busty Alexa: The Embodied Case for Janet as Artificial Intelligence 260Robin L. Zebrowski
25 Why It Wouldn’t Be Rational to Believe You’re in The Good Place (and Why You Wouldn’t Want to Be Anyway) 270David Kyle Johnson
Index 283
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.