I should clear up the title before beginning, Iron Man is not taking on both Captain America and Philosophy. Instead, philosophers are debating who is the better superhero, mostly in the context of the Civil War story line.It's hard to declare who's the ultimate winner, but for my money I think those who championed Iron Man made the stronger case. That's not so much the point though as I suspect the real purpose behind these books is to make philosophy fun and show how it can be used to make convincing arguments. Others in this series include Twin Peaks and Philosophy, David Bowie and Philosophy, and The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy. I'm particularly keen to read Black Mirror and Philosophy which is set to be published early next year.
It's definitely a good intro to some famous philosophical ideas, though on the debate side of things, I sometimes wished they'd had more ground rules. With Marvel stories and characters being told any number of times by any number of writers, some canon, some not, some in comics, some on the big screen, I felt sometimes that the philosophers were cherry-picking details to make their cases.
And of course, as with any compilation, I enjoyed some more than others. Most at least seemed to appreciate that the book was to be light in tone, even if they took philosophy itself seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment