‘The Simpsons’ as Philosophy

		<a href='http://ads.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9cd87eb&cb=135934981' target='_blank'><img src='http://ads.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=1&cb=135934981&n=a9cd87eb' border='0' alt='' /></a>	February 20, 2012 Log in / Register
			Text Size

Past Events Upcoming Events

Acts of Love

Ideological Hypocrites

OWS Calls for May Day Strike

When Iran Talks Back

Krugman to Playboy: Economic Crisis 'Doesn't Have to Be Happening'

Acts of Love
By Chris Hedges

Ideological Hypocrites
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.

The Lowdown on Fracking
By Lena Groeger, ProPublica

The Best, Most Revealing Reporting on the Foreclosure Crisis
By Blair Hickman, ProPublica

Nominate Our Next Truthdigger of the Week

OWS Calls for May Day Strike

When Iran Talks Back

Krugman to Playboy: Economic Crisis ‘Doesn’t Have to Be Happening’

Iran Could Cause Mideast Cold War, U.K. Official Warns

Syrian Troops Kill Mourner at Damascus Funeral

Taking Citizens United Back to the Supreme Court

‘Left, Right & Center’: Cars, Contraception and China

Occupy Fashion Week

Julian Assange a Part of Simpsons Milestone

Déjà Pooh
By Mr. Fish

This Gay Man Represented the President
By Mel White

Whither ‘Colbert Report’?

The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking

Dig led by Mike Rose

Financial Meltdown 101

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris

By Graham Robb
$19.11

The Radical and the Republican

By James Oakes
$10.67

Ash Grey T-Shirt

$19

‘The Simpsons’ as Philosophy

From the BBC

The writers of “The Simpsons” have been expertly and playfully inserting philosophical treatises into their shows for years.

The BBC takes a look at the philosophy of the show: “It’s not that the Simpsons is atheist propaganda; its main target is not belief in God or the supernatural, but the arrogance of particular organised religions that they, amazingly, know the will of the creator.”

BBC:

The Simpsons is more than a funny cartoon, it reveals truths about human nature that rival the observations of great philosophers from Plato to Kant… while Homer sets his house on fire, says philosopher Julian Baggini.

With the likes of Douglas Coupland, George Walden and Stephen Hawking as fans, taking the Simpsons seriously is no longer outre but de rigeur.

It is, quite simply, one of the greatest cultural artefacts of our age. So great, in fact, that it not only reflects and plays with philosophical ideas, it actually does real philosophy, and does it well.

Link

More Below the Ad