Although the year 1984 is hurtling back into the distant past, Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four continues to have a huge readership and to help shape the world of 2084. Sales of Orwell's terrifying tale have recently spiked because of current worries about alternate facts, post-truth, and fake news.
1984 and Philosophy brings together brand new, up-to-the-minute thinking by philosophers about Nineteen Eighty-Four as it relates to today's culture, politics, and everyday life. Some of the thinking amounts to thoughtcrime, but we managed to sneak it past the agents of the Ministry of Truth, so this is a book to be read quickly before the words on the page mysteriously transform into something different.
Who's controlling our lives and are they getting even more levers to control us? Is truth objective or just made up? What did Orwell get right-and did he get some things wrong? Are social media opportunities for liberation or instruments of oppression? How can we fight back against totalitarian control? Can Big Brother compel us to love him? How does the language we use affect the way we think? Do we really need the unifying power of hate? Why did Orwell make Nineteen Eighty-Four so desperately hopeless? Can science be protected from poisonous ideology? Can we really believe two contradictory things at once? Who surveils the surveilors?
Although the year 1984 is hurtling back into the distant past, Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four continues to have a huge readership and to help shape the world of 2084. Sales of Orwell's terrifying tale have recently spiked because of current worries about alternate facts, post-truth, and fake news.
1984 and Philosophy brings together brand new, up-to-the-minute thinking by philosophers about Nineteen Eighty-Four as it relates to today's culture, politics, and everyday life. Some of the thinking amounts to thoughtcrime, but we managed to sneak it past the agents of the Ministry of Truth, so this is a book to be read quickly before the words on the page mysteriously transform into something different.
Who's controlling our lives and are they getting even more levers to control us? Is truth objective or just made up? What did Orwell get right-and did he get some things wrong? Are social media opportunities for liberation or instruments of oppression? How can we fight back against totalitarian control? Can Big Brother compel us to love him? How does the language we use affect the way we think? Do we really need the unifying power of hate? Why did Orwell make Nineteen Eighty-Four so desperately hopeless? Can science be protected from poisonous ideology? Can we really believe two contradictory things at once? Who surveils the surveilors?
Acknowledgments
Are We Living in 1984? A Doubleplusgood Introduction
1. Little Knots of Resistance
TRIP MCCROSSIN
2. Orwell’s Blind Spot—Non-State Enemies of Freedom
ERIN NASH
3. Strength through Ignorance
JAMES CONANT
4. Big Brother Ltd.—The Orwellian Nature of Neoliberal Politics
DARREN BOTELLO-SAMSON AND KAYCE MOBLEY
5. Can You Be Happy under Ingsoc?
JOSIP CIRIC AND BRUNO CURKO
6. Trauma and Betrayal in Nineteen Eighty-Four
DANIEL CONWAY
7. Exercise as Oppression
EZIO DI NUCCI
8. Collective Trance and a Hope for Sanity
ISKRA FILEVA
9. Dystopian Dreams
JAN FRIIS
10. Newsleep 24/7—Big Brother’s Assault on Sleep
JASON MATTHEW BUCHANNAN
11. Science against Totalitarian Ideology
WILLIAM GOODWIN
12. Hangings, Shootings, and Other Funny Stuff in Nineteen
Eighty-Four
JARNO HIETALAHTI
13. Post-Factual Democracy
VINCENT HENDRICKS AND MADS VESTERGAARD
14. Could Enhancing Human Capacities Prevent Nineteen Eighty-Four
from Happening?
POLAROS KOI
15. Why Don’t the Proles Just Take Over?
GREG LITTMANN
16. How the Mass Media Control Our Language
LAVINIA MARIN
17. Controlling the Present, the Past, and the Future
CHRISTOPHER MARKOU AND JAMES CROSSLEY
18. Reducing Thought to 140 Characters or Less
EDWARDO PEREZ
19. Controlling People by Fallacious Reasoning
ELIZABETH RARD
20. Love and Hate in Nineteen Eighty-Four
TIMOTHY SANDEFUR
21. The Unmaking of the Self in Torture
ALBA SANCHEZ
22. Can Thought Be Controlled Just by Controlling Language?
JESSE SCHUPACK
23. The Unrelieved Bleakness of Nineteen Eighty-Four
OSHRAT C. SILBERBUSCH
24. Revolutionary from the Waist Down
STEFAN STORRIE
25. Big Brother, We Are Watching You!
TORBJORN TANNSJO
26. Networks of Trust and Distrust
MARK ALFANO
27. Oldthinkful Duckspeak Refs Opposites Rewrite Fullwise Upsub
Antefiling
KEITH BEGLY
Author Bios
References
Index
Ezio Di Nucci is Associate Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Before that he was Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Duiburg-Essen in Germany. He is the co-editor with Filippo Santoni de Sio of Drones and Responsibility (Routledge, 2016). He has also written several books, including Ethics without Intention (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Mindlessness (Cambridge Scholars, 2013). Stefan Storrie, currently an independent scholar, has held the position of Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. He is the author of a book on Berkeley's Three Dialogues being released by Routledge in 2018. He has also edited a collection on the Three Dialogues, which is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in early 2018.
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