Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing

by William Irwin

Overview

Designed for philosophers as well as readers with no particular philosophical background, the essays in this lively book are grouped into four amusing acts. Act One looks at the four Seinfeld characters through a philosophical lens and includes Jerry and Socrates: The Examined Life? Act Two examines historical philosophers from a Seinfeldian standpoint and offers Plato or Nietzsche? Time, Essence, and Eternal Recurrence in Seinfeld. Act Three, Untimely Meditations by the Water Cooler, explores philosophical issues raised by the show, such as, Is it rational for George to do the opposite? And Act Four, Is There Anything Wrong with That?, discusses ethical problems of everyday life using Seinfeld as a basis. Seinfeld and Philosophy also provides a guide to Seinfeld episodes and a chronological list of the philosophers cited in this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812696950
Publisher:	Open Court Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/01/1999
Series:	Popular Culture and Philosophy , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	876 KB

About the Author

William Irwin is an assistant professor of philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA. He is the author of Intentionalist Interpretation: A Philosophical Explanation and Defense.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Monologue: Seinfeld, "The Field of Being"	xi
Act I	The Characters, aka "The New York Four"	1
1.	Jerry and Socrates: The Examined Life?	3
2.	George's Failed Quest for Happiness: An Aristotelian Anaylsis	15
3.	Elaine Benes: Feminist Icon or Just One of the Boys?	27
4.	Kramer and Kierkegaard: Stages on Life's Way	38
Act II	Seinfeld and the Philosophers	59
5.	Making Something out of Nothing: Seinfeld, Sophistry, and the Tao	61
6.	Plato or Nietzsche?: Time, Essence, and Eternal Recurrence in Seinfeld	71
7.	Seinfeld, Subjectivity, and Sartre	90
8.	Wittgenstein and Seinfeld on the Commonplace	109
Act III	Untimely Mediations by the Water Cooler	119
9.	The Costanza Maneuver: Is it Rational for George to "Do the Opposite"?	121
10.	Peterman and the Ideological Mind: Paradoxes of Subjectivity	139
11.	The Secret of Seinfeld's Humor: The Significance of the Insignificant	148
Act IV	Is there Anything Wrong with That?	161
12.	Seinfeld and the Moral Life	163
13.	Virtue Ethics and TV's Seinfeld	175
14.	The Final Episode: Is Doing Nothing Something?	183
	What's the deal with Episode Lists? Episode Guide	193
	Who are these Philosophers? A Chronology of Some Big-Time Philosophers	199
	Who are these People? Notes on the Script Writers, aka the Contributors to This Volume	207
	Index of Everything	211

Editorial Reviews

Fourteen essays use the popular television comedy to introduce the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Lao Tzu, Heidegger, Kant, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Wittgenstein. Supporting them are a chronology of episodes, and a chronology of philosophers with brief quotations. Bibliographic references are slender. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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