Book Review: Terminator and Philosophy (2009)

I’ll be back therefore I am
by William Irwin et al

Terminator and PhilosophyThis book was purchased for me by a friend who thought it looked like “the sort of material I’d be into.” And she was right. Actually, I had never heard of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series of books, much less this particular item—which poses age-old questions of free will, personhood, the man-machine relationship, and so on. Very cool concept to merge such deep discussions with the characters and actions in a major movie like James Cameron’s Terminator series.

The overall quality of the writing is first class, and one is struck immediately by the depth of academic knowledge of each of the writers. Which makes sense, because many of them are gentlemen and ladies with professorial credentials: meaning they’ve read all the classics from authors we college students in the humanities were assigned to read: Descartes, Kant, Hobbes, Mill, Bentham, and a host of others. Continue reading