Should you feel guilty about watching "Family Guy?" What's so funny about dysfunctional families? Where's the line between parody and nonsense? These are just a few of the many questions asked and answered in "Family Guy and Philosophy: A Cure For the Petarded," a new book edited by Assistant Professor of Philosophy J. Jeremy Wisnewski, published by Wiley-Blackwell in its Philosophy and PopCulture Series earlier this month.
The 17 chapters by American philosophers use the low-brow, potty-mouthed, cartoon humor of the popular television program "The Family Guy" to illustrate philosophy in a way that non-philosophers can understand--without getting too high-brow for their (or your) own good. They discuss how the show can teach us about ethics, ego, hypocrisy, death, life after death, and more serious subjects. Wisnewski's chapter is entitled "Killing the Griffins: A Murderous Exposition of Postmodernism."
"People today take tend to take themselves and things too seriously," says Wisnewski. "This show provides an escape, a release; it's full of legitimate insights that get us to laugh at things that might surprise us. It defies expectations."
Wisnewski continues, "This book is about the most misunderstood show on television. There's a lot going on here, and it's not all on the surface. It's philosophically deep, and I knew it from the first time I saw it.:
The book adds additional support to the central tenet of the Wiley-Blackwell Philosophy and PopCulture series: A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and a healthy helping of popular culture clears the cobwebs from Kant.
Wisnewski specializes in moral and political philosophy and 19th- and 20th-century French and German philosophy. He is author of Wittgenstein and Ethical Inquiry: A Defense of Ethics as Clarification (Continuum, 2007). He also serves as editor of the Review Journal of Political Philosophy and is author of numerous articles in the journals Public Affairs Quarterly, Philosophy Today, the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, among others. Wisnewski holds a B.A. in philosophy from the College of William and Mary, an M.S. in the philosophy of the social sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Riverside.
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