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William Irwin (born 1970) is Professor of Philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and is best known for originating the "philosophy and popular culture" book genre with Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing in 1999 and The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer in 2001.
Irwin was born in 1970 and raised in Yonkers, New York. He attended Regis High School in Manhattan, a Jesuit institution, graduating in 1988. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Fordham University in 1992 where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa cum Laude, having attended Fordham on a full Presidential Scholarship. He later received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York in 1996 at the age of 26. Irwin’s dissertation, “Harmonizing Hermeneutics: The Normative and Descriptive Approaches, Interpretation and Criticism,” was awarded the Perry Prize for Outstanding Dissertations in Philosophy. His dissertation director was Jorge J.E. Gracia. E.D. Hirsch, Jr. was his external evaluator.
Irwin is the author of God Is a Question, Not an Answer: Finding Common Ground in Our Uncertainty, published by Rowman & Littlefield.
The Free Market Existentialist: Capitalism without Consumerism was published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2015. Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, praised the book, saying “William Irwin has transcended ideology and tribalism to unite a set of ideas that, for the first time, could end the rancor between the Left and the Right by reminding each of their shared values. This book will change the thinking of everyone interested in politics, economics, or religion—a game changing work.”
Irwin’s first book, Intentionalist Interpretation: A Philosophical Explanation and Defense, was nominated for the American Philosophical Association Young Scholar’s Book Prize and was the subject of a special book session at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought in May 2000.
Irwin's creative writing includes two poetry books, Both/And and Always Dao, and two novels, Free Dakota and Little Siddhartha, a sequel to Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha .
Irwin has published articles in scholarly journals such as Philosophy and Literature , Philosophy Today , Journal of Value Inquiry , and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism .
Irwin is best known for having originated the philosophy and popular culture genre of books with Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing in 1999 and then the popular The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer in 2001. He was editor of these books and then series editor of the Popular Culture and Philosophy Series through Open Court Publishing Company, producing titles such as Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, Star Wars and Philosophy: More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine, Superheroes and Philosophy: Truth, Justice, and the Socratic Way, and many others. [1] Carlin Romano from The Chronicle of Higher Education called the Popular Culture and Philosophy Series “the most serious philosophy series on the market, if some link between academic seriousness and real life still exists.” [2] In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Stephen T. Asma called William Irwin the “chief architect” of the philosophy and popular culture movement. [3]
In 2006, Irwin left Open Court to become the General Editor of The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series through Wiley-Blackwell. [4] Reuters (now Thomson Reuters) reported that Irwin’s books have sold more than one million copies. [5] South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today was the first in that series, published in 2006. Metallica and Philosophy: A Crash Course in Brain Surgery followed shortly thereafter; Scott Ian from Anthrax called it “a kick-ass read.” [6] The series also includes Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality published in 2012. Irwin is quoted in USA Today as claiming that "the books are about smart popular culture for smart fans.” [7]
Irwin first theorized the philosophy and pop culture genre in his article “Philosophy as/and/of Popular Culture” in Irwin and Gracia eds. Philosophy and the Interpretation of Popular Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), pp. 41–63. In 2010 he explained the motivation for the series and defended it against critics in an article in The Philosophers’ Magazine titled “Fancy Taking a Pop?” Irwin defended the style of the books in “Writing for the Reader: A Defense of Philosophy and Popular Culture Books”.
When Irwin was with Open Court, he edited The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real, which Anderson Cooper referred to as an "interesting collection of thoughts on the movie and its place in the world" in an interview with Irwin. [8] Irwin also discussed a follow-up book, More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded, in an interview with Keith Olbermann. [9]
Irwin is the author of the first book exclusively focused on the lyrics of James Hetfield, The Meaning of Metallica: Ride the Lyrics.
Irwin has appeared as a guest on hundreds of radio shows, television shows, and podcasts. He has been interviewed by Time, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, USA Today, the BBC, CNN, NPR, and MSNBC, among others. In a 2010 interview with Time, Irwin said “Philosophy has had a bad rap for centuries. People mistakenly think it has nothing to do with their everyday lives, including enjoying media.” [10] Concerning readers’ reaction to the book series, Irwin told The Wall Street Journal, "I think an equal amount of people find it either too fluffy or too rigorous." [11]
In May 2012 Irwin was named Outstanding Alumnus by the Philosophy Department at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. He is the first person ever to receive this award.
Along with David Kyle Johnson, Irwin writes the blog "Plato on Pop" for Psychology Today.
He also maintains the blog “It’s Your Choice: The Free Market Existentialist Perspective” for Psychology Today.
Series Editor, The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series (Wiley-Blackwell) Series Editor, Popular Culture and Philosophy (Open Court Publishing).
This is a bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophical system initially developed in the 20th century by Rand.
Robert C. Solomon was a philosopher and business ethicist, notable author, and "Distinguished Teaching Professor of Business and Philosophy" at the University of Texas at Austin, where he held a named chair and taught for more than 30 years, authoring The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (1976) and more than 45 other books and editions. Critical of the narrow focus of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, which he thought denied human nature and abdicated the important questions of life, he instead wrote analytically in response to the continental discourses of phenomenology and existentialism, on sex and love, on business ethics, and on other topics to which he brought an Aristotelian perspective on virtue ethics. He also wrote A Short History of Philosophy and others with his wife, Professor Kathleen Higgins.
Laurence BonJour is an American philosopher and Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Washington.
The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer is a non-fiction book analyzing the philosophy and popular culture effects of the American animated sitcom, The Simpsons, published by Open Court. The book is edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble, each of whom also wrote one of the eighteen essays in the book.
Richard Shusterman is an American pragmatist philosopher. Known for his contributions to philosophical aesthetics and the emerging field of somaesthetics, currently he is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University.
Jorge J. E. Gracia was a Cuban-born American philosopher who was the Samuel P. Capen Chair, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Comparative Literature in the State University of New York at Buffalo. Gracia was educated in Cuba, the United States, Canada, and Spain, and received his Ph.D. in Medieval Philosophy from the University of Toronto.
South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today is the first non-fiction book in Blackwell Publishing Company's Philosophy & Pop Culture series and is edited by philosopher and ontologist, Robert Arp, at the time assistant professor of philosophy at Southwest Minnesota State University. The series itself is edited by William Irwin, who is a professor of philosophy at King's College, Pennsylvania in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The book utilizes the five classic branches of Western philosophy, namely, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and logic, in order to analyze episodes of South Park as well as place the show in a context of current popular culture.
Eliot Sandler Deutsch was a philosopher, teacher, and writer. He made important contributions to the understanding and appreciation of Eastern philosophies in the West through his many works on comparative philosophy and aesthetics. He was a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii.
David Edward Cooper is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Durham University.
Robert F. Almeder is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University. He is known in particular for his work on the philosophy of science, and has also written on the philosophy of mind, epistemology and ethics. He is the author of 24 books, including The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce (1980), Death and Personal Survival (1992), Harmless Naturalism: The Limits of Science and the Nature of Philosophy (1998), Human Happiness and Morality (2000), and Truth and Skepticism (2010).
Aloysius Patrick Martinich, usually cited as A. P. Martinich, is an American analytic philosopher. He is the Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin. His area of interest is the nature and practice of interpretation; history of modern philosophy; the philosophy of language ; the history of political thinking and Thomas Hobbes.
Matthew Henry Kramer is an American philosopher, currently Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He writes mainly in the areas of metaethics, normative ethics, legal philosophy, and political philosophy. He is a leading proponent of legal positivism. He has been Director of the Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy since 2000. He has been teaching at Cambridge University and at Churchill College since 1994.
Michael Krausz is a Swiss-born American philosopher as well as an artist and orchestral conductor. His philosophical works focus on the theory of interpretation, theory of knowledge, philosophy of science, philosophy of history, and philosophy of art and music. Krausz is Milton C. Nahm Professor of Philosophy at Bryn Mawr College, and he teaches Aesthetics at the Curtis Institute of Music. He has taught at University of Toronto and has been visiting professor at American University, Georgetown University, Oxford University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, American University in Cairo, University of Nairobi, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and University of Ulm, among others. Krausz is the co-founder and former Chair of the fourteen-institution Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium.
Robert Arp is an American philosopher known for his work in ethics, modern philosophy, ontology, philosophy of biology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, religious studies, and philosophy and popular culture. He currently works as an adjunct professor teaching philosophy courses in the classroom and online at numerous schools in the Kansas City, Missouri area and other areas of the United States.
Tom Rockmore is an American philosopher. Although he denies the usual distinction between philosophy and the history of philosophy, he has strong interests throughout the history of philosophy and defends a constructivist view of epistemology. The philosophers whom he has studied extensively are Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Lukács, and Heidegger. He received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1974 and his Habilitation à diriger des recherches from the Université de Poitiers in 1994. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Duquesne University, as well as Distinguished Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University.
Charles Taliaferro is an American philosopher specializing in theology and philosophy of religion. He is an emeritus professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Faithful Research, and a member of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of twenty books, most recently The Image in Mind; Theism, Naturalism and the Imagination, co-authored with the American artist Jil Evans. He has been a visiting scholar or guest lecturer at a large number of universities, including Brown, Cambridge, Notre Dame, Oxford, Princeton, and the University of Chicago. Since 2013 Taliaferro is editor-in-chief of the journal Open Theology.
Ann E. Cudd is an American philosopher. She is the president of Portland State University as of August 1, 2023. She was previously the provost and senior vice chancellor and professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and dean of the college and graduate school of arts and sciences at Boston University. She also served as vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies, as well as university distinguished professor of philosophy, at the University of Kansas, and was an affiliated faculty member in the Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies Program during her time there. Cudd is considered one of the founders of analytical feminism, was a founding member of the Society for Analytical Feminism, and served as its president from 1995 to 1999. On March 10, 2023, Cudd was formally selected as the 11th president of Portland State University.
Charles Burke Guignon was an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of South Florida. He is known for his expertise on Martin Heidegger's philosophy and existentialism. He became a member of the Florida Philosophical Association in the early 2000s.
Victorino Tejera was a writer, scholar, and professor of philosophy with specializations in ancient Greek thought, Metaphysics, Aesthetics, and American philosophy. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He is known especially for his writing on Plato's Dialogues. Many scholars believe Tejera's work in this area is his most valuable contribution to philosophy. He was editor and contributor with Thelma Lavine on History and Anti-History in Philosophy whose FromSocrates to Sartre (1984) was the basis for the PBS series of the same name.
David Kyle Johnson is a Professor of Philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He specializes in logic, metaphysics, free will, and philosophy of religion.
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