The Big Lebowski and Philosophy: Keeping Your Mind Limber with Abiding Wisdom

Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture #35

by Peter S. Fosl (Editor), William Irwin (Series Editor)

Celebrate the Dude with an abiding look at the philosophy behind The Big Lebowski Is the Dude a bowling-loving stoner or a philosophical genius living the good life? Naturally, it's the latter, and The Big Lebowski and Philosophy explains why. Enlisting the help of great thinkers like Plato and Nietzsche, the book explores the movie's hidden philosophical layers, cultural reflection, and political commentary. It also answers key questions, including: The Dude abides, but is abiding a virtue? Is the Dude an Americanized version of the Taoist way of life? How does The Big Lebowski illustrate the Just War Theory? How does bowling help Donny, Walter, and the Dude oppose nihilism? Yes, the Dude is deep, and so is this book. Don't watch the movie--or go to Lebowski Fest--without it.


Explores many of The Big Lebowski's key themes, such as nihilism, war and politics, money and materialism, idealism and morality, history, and more Gives you new perspective on the movie's characters--the Dude, the Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak, Donny, Maude Lebowski, Bunny Lebowski, and others Helps you appreciate the Coen Brothers classic even more with the insights of Aristotle, Epicurus, Kant, Derrida, and other philosophical heavyweights

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Pop Culture, Media Tie In, Essays, Audiobook

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 13, 2012

Reviews

[FunkMaster General · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tend to love all the ". . . and Philosophy" books.

& this one also delivers

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, [my] opinion, man.

[Mr Shahabi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's a nice concept, it's not philosophically deep or adding something new that no philosophy-101 student would not know, but it's interesting material for non philosopher-is people who would love to see the Dude from this perspective

Drink Tea, Man..

[Oliver Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection of brief essays. My favourites were the ones that examined elements of the movie as examples of existentialist thought and art. Maybe it's the short essay format, or my state of mind while I read this, but for some reason I made a heck of a lot of highlights--more than I could actually fit into this page:

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The key here is that particular acts are not right (or wrong), in and of themselves, but only insofar as they constitute an exercise of virtue (or vice). Accordingly, virtue theories are often described as agent-based, rather than act-based. In contrast, act-based approaches typically characterize right action in terms of its coherence with a general principle, its consequences, its universalizibility, or other properties of the action itself. Here, the focus is on the qualities of acts, rather than the qualities of persons.

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Act-based theories ask questions about the properties of acts themselves and deemphasize questions about the agent who does or did these acts. Virtue theories ask questions about agents and deemphasize questions about the acts themselves. Thus, while act-based approaches ask, “What ought I do?” or “What ought to be done?” virtue theories focus on questions such as “What kind of person should I be?” or “What kind of life should I live?”

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Being kind is not simply behaving kindly in every situation but, rather, behaving kindly when the situation at hand calls for kind behavior, when being kind is “the thing to do.”

—

According to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), we acquire the practical wisdom (phron-esis) necessary for virtue by developing an understanding of the good life, first in terms of general principles, for example, to be honest, brave, kind, and what have you, and then in applying them. This practical wisdom is frequently characterized in terms of perception (aisthe;sis), “discernment,” “situational appreciation,” or an ability to see how general principles apply in unfamiliar situations.

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Virtue theory holds that the right action in any given situation is what a virtuous person would do in that circumstance, the virtuous person is someone possessed of the virtues and, in an Aristotelian view, the virtues are settled dispositions or habits whose exercise is constitutive of eudaimonia, an ancient Greek term that is variously translated in the parlance of our times as human flourishing, success, happiness, or well-being.

—

The paper is “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems,” and the result is stunning: in any consistent theory capable of expressing the basic facts of arithmetic, there must always be statements that are true in the theory but that are not provable from the axioms.

—

No matter how you build your system, no matter how many axioms you include, there will always be results that are impossible to prove—and not just hard to prove, but literally impossible.

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Gödel’s own proof is perhaps the most interesting. In it, he gives a method whereby statements in a system can be uniquely encoded as numbers in that system. He then produces a number that when interpreted as a statement, says, “This statement is not provable in this system.” This is a statement that references itself.

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If Gödel’s statement is provable in the theory, then its conclusion is also true, namely that it is NOT provable in the theory. This, of course, is a paradox. So, if we insist that our system must be consistent in order to avoid paradoxes and the contradictions that follow from them, we are led to the only other possibility: that Gödel’s statement is not provable in the theory. But this then directly establishes the truth of the statement. Hence the statement is simultaneously true and not provable in the theory.

—

The statements guaranteed by Gödel’s theorem are statements that can neither be proved nor disproved, because to do either will result in contradiction.15 This is the “formal undecidability” Gödel refers to in the title of his paper, and he shows it is an inescapable fact in any second-order system, including, for instance, the system of the Principia Mathematica.

—

Well, perhaps undecidability is not totally inescapable. After all, this problem of undecidability exists only if we insist that our system must be consistent. There is always the option to allow inconsistency.

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Gödel did not prove only one incompleteness theorem in his 1931 paper, but two. Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem asserts: for any theory that expresses the basic facts of arithmetic, the theory proves its own consistency if and only if the theory is inconsistent.

—

For Epicurus, life ends with the death of the body. There is no reason to fear the gods or death itself, because any pain or worry we can experience is limited to our lifetime as a sensing being. Understanding the world around us is, for Epicurus, only good insofar as it allows us to reject misguided fears or worries—the wise will understand that any energy or trouble spent on anything other than this life is wasted and will instead seek to make this life more comfortable, more tranquil, and more pleasant.

—

Epicurus’s deceptively simple philosophy encourages us to be content and satisfied with satisfaction. Put simply, one who is satisfied with satisfaction is more likely to be satisfied than someone who, because he perpetually believes he needs “more,” is not satisfied with satisfaction. The problem with such thinking, warned Epicurus, is the matter of how much “more” does such a person need to be content. How far beyond “satisfaction” does one need to go to be satisfied? Where does one draw the line when one has moved beyond the natural line of “enough?” Epicurus’s concern was that such faulty thinking easily leads to a discontented condition of ongoing dissatisfaction.

—

True virtue, according to the Aristotelian idea of the Golden Mean, exists at the point of moderation between the two extremes (of excess and deficiency). It is at this point that we find the virtuous person, who acts in the right way with the right motive at the right time to the right extent.

—

As the contemporary philosopher Rick Furtak wrote, It is one thing to admire another person, and quite another to admire oneself admiring. In the latter case, the emotion has been cut off from its outward foundations and has become inauthentic or sentimental. . . . The sentimental or inauthentic person, in other words, wants to have the effect without the cause, to experience an affect without having to deal with its grounding conditions. . . . This is how emotion frequently becomes inauthentic: one misrepresents the world in order to feel the way one wants to, noticing only those details that justify a pleasant response (or an unpleasant response, if that is what one is seeking). This kind of selective attention is a form of self-deception.

—

Charles Taylor identifies three malaises of modernity: disenchantment, disengagement, and atomism.

—

By engaging in practices, we can build communities and find meaning in the world. These practices can help us avoid nihilism because they entail a commitment to values and meaning that stand outside of our own choices.

—

Meaning exists outside of us, and it may be that by engaging in some practice, we can find some meaning beyond that practice and beyond ourselves. Reading the works of Charles Taylor or Alasdair MacIntyre might even point us in that direction. Furthermore, we need not deny our connections to the world or to other people. We are who we are because of where and who we came from and whom we hang out with. This doesn’t mean that we are doomed to be trapped in some role made out for us before the world began. It means we shape our identity in relationship to others and to the world around us. This means, finally, that the society of which we are a part is more than just a bunch of ships passing in the night. We can build communities that resist the nihilism of the present world by making real connections with one another.

—

Camus spoke of absurdity as an encounter with the unfamiliar that eventually leads to the recognition that the world that the self inhabits is at its very root devoid of any intrinsic meaning.

—

The absurd recognition comes when a world once recognized as having some kind of higher meaning, value, and order is now recognized as being meaningless, valueless, and irrational.

—

Where we once saw meaning, value, and order in the universe, in the actions of others, and even in our own thoughts and actions, we become conscious that this has been an imposition all along. It has been an illusion we created. Taken at their face value, we see that these things have no intrinsic value. What was once familiar becomes unfamiliar, alien, strange, and foreign. Naturally, this can be disconcerting, leading to the proverbial “existential crisis.”

—

There is neither rhyme nor reason to what happens, no ultimate explanation or significance to what struts across the stage of experience.

—

For Camus, the tension of the absurd arises because we find ourselves doing something that we cannot ultimately do—foisting meaning and value on an inherently meaningless and valueless world. For Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), on the other hand, the tension of the absurd arose out of the disconnect between the seriousness with which we engage the world through our values and the lack of ultimate justification for those values.

—

For Sartre, as for Camus, the absurd is characterized by a tension, a palpable disconnect between us and the world. For both Camus and Sartre, the world, independently of our experience of it, does not come prepackaged with significance.

—

Nothingness is not a characteristic of the world of existence apart from human interaction and experience.

—

Even when we think we have found a lack of meaning in the world, this lack itself is our own doing. Human consciousness and experience are essentially connected with the world, and the world is constituted by the meanings (or lack thereof) we give it. Through our experience of the world, we make the world what it is.

—

Our world, the world, is just one of a number of possibilities of the way the world is. The absurd is just that feeling that even though the world is what it is in terms of the perspective we have of it, we cannot justify our choices and values in terms of anything outside of that perspective.

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Absurdity is a fact of our human existence, a result of the absolute freedom we have to choose the way the world is. Such freedom also has another consequence: absolute responsibility for our choices.

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Once a choice is made, once a project is embarked on, we bear responsibility for its consequences. The choice is ours, it is us, and we ought not to treat it as if it isn’t when things don’t go our way.

—

Camus gave us a pretty clear indication of what he thought an existentialist work of art—what he called an “absurd creation”—would look like. An existentialist work of art, such as a movie, is supposed to repeat the absurdity of the real world in its fictional world, replete with characters who not only recognize the illegitimacy of trying to impose meaning on their world but who also keep this recognition ever before them (and us) by refusing to infuse their world with counterfeit purpose.

—

A fictional world in which the characters are not faced with the perpetual experience of alienation but instead are meaningfully engaged with the world and with one another amounts to a rebellion against reality, rather than a rebellion against the absurd.

—

The characters will be marked by a “lucid indifference,” an indifference to their world that they recognize and fight to maintain. Their experiences will be just that—experiences, devoid of any ultimate meaning, value, or significance.

—

For Sartre, the purpose of an existentialist work of art is to overcome the sense of alienation.

—

The task of the artist is to replicate the real world in his fictional world, a world that has its source in human freedom. Camus saw human beings as inescapably disconnected from the world, and it is here that Camus located his notion of absurdity. Sartre, on the other hand, saw human beings as inescapably—and meaningfully—engaged in the world, and he located the absurdity of our existence in the fact that such engagement has no independent, objective rationale.

—

As Sartre would have it, the characters are engaged with their world, alternately creating events with significance and attaching significance to events already created.

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This is how the world comes to him in his experience—not as a blank slate on which he refuses to write, as Camus might have it, but as a story in the process of being written by him.

—

The characters all have their story, the network of meanings in terms of which they choose, in their freedom as existing individuals, to see the world—their world. Some of these worlds overlap in their interpretations; some of them don’t. Yet all of them are worlds that are experienced as having meaning, a meaning that arises not from the events themselves but from those who experience them.

—

Kierkegaard argued that through repetition, we can build meaning in our lives and construct a meaningful self.

—

So, to repeat things in life in this existentialist sense is not to live in the past. Rather, it’s to reinhabit a form of life, a choice, a way of being in a way that carries it forward, inflects it, reinterprets it, and renews it in new contexts.

—

Camus described three ways of resisting or, in his terminology, rebelling against the absurdity and despair of human existence.

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They are the lover, the actor, and the warrior.

—

On one hand, when we love other people, we might (and should) assist them with their valued projects, especially projects important to them that they cannot do on their own. On the other hand, often in this assistance we get too close; in doing so, we fail to respect the other person properly as his or her own person and fail to recognize that his or her valued projects are his or her projects.

—

Sometimes we care so much about what our loved ones care about because they care about it that we blur that line between us, and we forget that being autonomous people, our loved ones must be the ones to decide what they care about, and how to care about it.

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A standpoint, they explain, is a way of looking at and interacting with the world. It’s not simply a viewpoint one has automatically; a standpoint is a perspective on things each of us achieves through critical reflection on our personal experiences.

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Women who take a feminist standpoint don’t do this immediately or simply because they’re women but as a result of critical reflection on their experiences as women. Men can achieve a progressive male standpoint, May argues, by thinking critically about masculinity as we experience it in our own lives.

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Along with a willingness to reflect on the harms to women and men posed by traditional masculine roles, May argues that achieving a progressive male standpoint calls for collaborative, nondominating ways of interacting and learning with women.

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First, exclusively reflecting on one’s experiences of gender roles as a privileged person can yield only so much critical insight, without also listening respectfully to the reflective experiences of those directly oppressed by these same gender roles.

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A second valuable thing about nondominant interaction with women for achieving a progressive male standpoint is that in doing this, men aren’t merely rejecting traditional masculinity but actively replacing it with a meaningful alternative.

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As bell hooks puts it, “feminist masculinity” divests from a dominator model of manhood and actively invests in a partnership model instead.

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Finally, alongside self-reflection and constructive interactions with women must come, for a progressive male standpoint, a moral motivation for change.

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Being a true feminist ally involves not only sympathetic belief but also a commitment to act for both self-improvement and social progress.

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Proponents of the “slow work” movement such as Carl Honoré and Keibo Oiwa argue that our modern lives have become so inundated with work that we no longer know how to enjoy ourselves. We need to slow down at work and spend more time at leisure.

—

Haney argues that what many advocates of slow work, such as Carlo Petrini, want isn’t even less stress but the freedom to decide the tempos of their own lives.

—

Virtue involves moderation. Too much of anything can be bad. If we are too fearful, we will act cowardly, but if we are not fearful enough, we will act rashly. For this reason, philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE) argued that virtues are not extremes of good, but instead that virtues are themselves the mean course between extremes.

—

slowness seems not itself to be virtuous. What would be virtuous is figuring out when things should be slow and when they should be fast.

—

The real reason people work as hard as they do, Russell argued, is not to benefit society and certainly not to benefit themselves but to benefit a few rich people. These few rich people believe that the poor should keep themselves working hard to benefit the rich.

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Russell’s argument, though, is that the rich do not want us to be one of them and will do what they can to keep us working for them.

—

The rest of us are told, on one hand, that we are supposed to work hard but, on the other, that it won’t feel like work if we love what we do. We don’t see work as a good thing. Otherwise, we wouldn’t say, “I love what I do so much that it doesn’t feel like work.”

—

W. K. Clifford (1845–1879), who is most remembered today for a single essay he penned in 1877, “The Ethics of Belief.” In the essay, Clifford put forward and attempted to defend the principle that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

—

Luck in no way mitigates our responsibility to found our beliefs on the best information available. Even if our beliefs happen to be correct, we are wrong to hold them without sufficient evidence.

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In essence, James called into question an unspoken premise of Clifford’s entire position—namely, that beliefs are subject to voluntary control. If we have no control over what we believe, then we cannot be held morally responsible for it, any more than we can for our ethnic backgrounds or eye color.

—

James argued that whatever choice we have in our beliefs is somewhat like our choice in clothing. When I decide what to wear on a given day, my options are limited. There is a range of options, but that range is far from infinite. In the same way, in deciding what to believe, we are faced with a limited set of options. Now, there are a wide variety of possible beliefs, but some of them are not real options. We only occasionally have the opportunity to select one belief over another—these occasions offer what James called “genuine options.”

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In order for a choice of belief to be a genuine option, three conditions must be met. The hypotheses under consideration must be “living,” “forced,” and “monumental.”

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James’s notion of a genuine option has a role to play in understanding how we decide between hypotheses for which there is not enough evidence or enough time to gather evidence or any possibility of evidence.

[Jairo Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays here don’t do a very deep dive into the philosophical underpinnings of the material from the Big Lebowski that they are mining for meaning. But that’s by design because it’s still 600% more elucidating than any other pop culture based analysis out there. And by Jove there’s so many angles here. I came away thinking either the Coen brothers must be geniuses beyond their years or they must have some innate ability to write characters and circumstances that exhume a sheer fecundity for analysis.
There’s essays on Jewish history via the foil of Walter, the Dude’s adherence to Taoism or Buddhism or indeed any other -ism, the Rug’s central place as an axiom of the Dude’s room’s mathematical system, and of course lots and lots of references to existentialism and its authors. It’s a great book to come back to and pick off an essay every now and then. The next time I watch the Big Lebowski my mind will be reeling with the implications of every shot and every word of dialogue. That’s…fun I think?

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dabbled in philosophy myself, so this compendium of essays on various philosophical issues raised by the film The Big Lebowski was... well... better than I expected. I've read a couple of these type of (Insert Pop Culture Subject) and Philosophy style books, and this one was probably the best. It's a difficult middle path to run between being an Intro to Philosophy rehash and getting so arcane and complicated that it's unreadable. This book did a good job of working that difficult path. Naturally, with so many short essays, it can be a bit jarring, and while there's something here for everybody, there's probably also one or two that will bore any given reader. But again, of these type books, this is about as good as it gets. And that made it very much worth reading.

[Aaron Esthelm · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I think it draws some incorrect conclusions, if you go into it with a thoughtful intent you can get to some really interesting thoughts. The dude is a loving caring relaxed dude who is there for his friends and has a very robust philosophy. As expected the dude does not feel the need to expound his beliefs to all to hear. he is secure in himself enough to be content expressing them in his actions. With the downside of his beliefs seeming somewhat nebulous and leaving the watcher to infer with their own lense. Take the dudes actions for what they are. He is there for the people in his life regardless of what they can do for him. The dude is a great man with many characteristics we could all learn from. This book gives you plenty to roominate on.

Give it a read. 3.75

[Dann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners, The Big Lebowski and Philosophy: Keeping Your Mind Limber with Abiding Wisdom explores the hidden meanings and messages of Joel and Ethan Coen’s cult film. Featuring a collection of 18 articles, a number of topics are discussed, including Daoism, Just War Theory, Existentialism, Irony, and what have you. The authors (and proud we are of all of them) are clearly fans of the film and fill their articles with inside jokes. And the humor is rather clever (never going “Over the line!”) and keeps the tone lighthearted and very Dude. Incredibly entertaining, The Big Lebowski and Philosophy: Keeping Your Mind Limber with Abiding Wisdom really ties the room together.

[Martha Shiels · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this. I really did. But I got lost at the Pythagorean theorem

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good look at The Big Lebowski and its themes. Pretty good overall.


The bad with a off-topic (but not really) stuff (Optional Reading): I've read "Seinfeld and Philosophy" and that and this book have one thing that erks me. In Seinfeld and Philosophy, all the big characters are presented often as losers and horrible people. George, whom I always viewed as one of the most interesting and more of the common man is non-stop called a total loser. If I remember correctly, there was actually a full chapter on how much of a loser George is (though I might be remembering wrong because most of the time if George is being spoken about, a "loser" isn't far off it seems.) The others get some dirt kicked on them, but George was the most damaged.

In the this book: It's the Dude that's the George of this book. Though not nearly as bad, but it's still pretty head shaking stuff sometimes. The Dude is presented as a loser and lazy. In the movie, of course he is presented that way but he is a lovable and content character. The way that it's presented in the book it's almost a "holier than thou" light, as if you watch the movie and say "Geez, what a loser!" when you watch his adventures.

Something very small that got me: I was wondering who the hell "Deiter" was. Looking into it (being a pretty strong fan of the movie) I was shocked to stumble on the name I didn't know. After a searching, I still don't really know. In the book, if I remember correct, when I read it "Deiter" was saying the lines of Uli (head nihilist; Stormare). I originally thought they were going by his porn name, but that was Karl later to find out. A search of google yields people quoting Uli under the name Deiter, people calling Kieffer (Flea) Deiter, and people who review the film with the name Deiter. So it might be a regional thing, or something was changed before/after I had seen the film. Anyway, Deiter is likely Uli for those in my boat.


Long story short, it's a good book and thorough. Worth the read.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately, this is the kind of book that appeals to a very small demographic. Sure, I happen to be a huge Coen brothers fan with a penchant for philosophizing, so it worked for me. I don't think there are many people I know that I could recommend this to, however. I did love the ideas thrown around in the book, but I have to wonder if this is an example of critics reading into the text too much. I know the Coens are smart, but I couldn't help but feel like one of those kids who sits in English class wondering if the author really meant to put all that symbolism and allusion in the book. And, like most of those kids, I was probably just jealous that I wasn't smart enough to figure all of it out myself without having my teacher explain it to me...

My main takeaway is that Epicureanism, the idea of pleasure being the highest good, especially pleasure derived from living simply and without anxiety, is not too shabby a way of life.

[Craig Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

After having read this and I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski, I now know more about The Big Lebowski than a person could, or should, know... not that I'm complaining! I love the movie so much, otherwise I wouldn't bother reading books that pontificate on the philosophical perspectives of the film, which this book manages to do rather well, although it began to feel redundant after awhile. The more I read the book, the more I just wanted to watch the movie again instead. Fortunately, the chapters are short & sweet, and most of the authors are able to prevent themselves from sounding too dry and academic (which is the surest way to make my eyes glaze over and my brain go into auto-pilot while reading).

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

unbelievably good. though the essays here are still somewhat tongue-in-cheek, for the most part they are serious/scholarly philosophical texts about the meaning of the big lebowski. almost all of them were great (minus the one about "the dude as a feminist ally" in particular), but the chapter about the big lebowski's Oedipal complex was mind-blowing. as ridiculous as the premise seems to be at first, i can't help but feel that this essay is the most believable and convincing of them all. i loved this book.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dude Abides.

As far as the pop culture series of philosophy books goes, this isn't a bad one. It's done well, and nearly every essay is actually both good philosophically and pertaining to the movie (and not, like some past pop culture philosophy books where they use the source material minimally, or just try to tie it in so loosely it's nothing but lip service at best). Good collection of essays with really only one being a dud.

[Genesis Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of essays covering the gamut of Lebowski-related philosophical topics ranging from nihilism to existentialism. This book provides an enlightening and zesty mind limbering exercise that I would challenge any Lebowski fan to undertake. At the very least, it can certainly tie a bookshelf together...

[Evan Micheals · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another in the Pop Culture vs Philosophy series. Another introduction to a range of different ideas in philosophy written at the base level which I can understand. Even amongst this genre The Big Lebowski is a uniquely full story full of philosophical metaphors. I am coming to understand that metaphors and parables are the best way to teach moral, ethical, or philosophical ideals.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of essays using the characters and storyline of "The Big Lebowski" as illustrations. Humorous in spots, and even informative for those who are not philosophy wonks, but so very repetitive in story points and quotations from the movie that the whole thing just got annoying and boring about half way through. Unless you are utterly fanatical about all things Lebowski, pass this one up.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

This anthology will not stand.

[Phil Barney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough reaction philosophically to the big lebowski. Lots of big words here and some common and even obscure philosophies. A good read to do if you're a regular watcher of the film.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love the movie, you'll love this book. Great insight and smart people talking about the characters we love. As fans know, there is a lot to unpack in this movie.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acquired May 16
abebooks.com