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Popular Culture and Philosophy #105
The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy: You Think or Die
The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy treats fans to dozens of new essays by experts who examine philosophical questions raised by the Game of Thrones story. This ultimate analysis provides the most comprehensive discussion to date and engages the Game of Thrones universe through the end of Season Six of the HBO series.
Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Joffrey, Cersei, Brienne, Arya, Stannis, and many other characters are used to apply the traditional philosophical questions that everyone faces. How should political leaders be chosen in Westeros and beyond? Is power merely an illusion? Is it immoral to enjoy overly violent and sexual stories like Game of Thrones ? How should morally ambiguous individuals such as Jamie The Kingslayer and Savior of King’s Landing be evaluated? Can anyone be trusted in a society like Westeros? What rules should govern sexual relationships in a world of love, incest, rape, and arranged marriage? How does disability shape identity for individuals like Tyrion, Bran, and others? How would one know whether there is a God in the Game of Thrones universe and what he is like?
Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Joffrey, Cersei, Brienne, Arya, Stannis, and many other characters are used to apply the traditional philosophical questions that everyone faces. How should political leaders be chosen in Westeros and beyond? Is power merely an illusion? Is it immoral to enjoy overly violent and sexual stories like Game of Thrones ? How should morally ambiguous individuals such as Jamie The Kingslayer and Savior of King’s Landing be evaluated? Can anyone be trusted in a society like Westeros? What rules should govern sexual relationships in a world of love, incest, rape, and arranged marriage? How does disability shape identity for individuals like Tyrion, Bran, and others? How would one know whether there is a God in the Game of Thrones universe and what he is like?
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2016
16 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 11, 2019
[This review contains minor plot revelations.]
Sometimes I'm just looking for the conversation. Somewhere, I think, somebody's got to be having the conversation.
Jaime Lannister, for instance. Beautiful, and beautifully arrogant, Jaime Lannister. One of the best living swordsmen in the realm. The youngest knight ever selected to the seven who would guard the king. And there, where he should have met a most magnificent destiny, he encountered instead his doom. He says, circumspectly:
"So many vows. They make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Obey your father. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. What if your father despises the king? What if the king massacres the innocent? It's too much. No matter what you do you're forsaking one vow or another..."
His king went mad, you see. Quite mad. And things got tricky.
"Finally, the day of reckoning came. Robert Baratheon marched on the capital after his victory at the Trident. But my father arrived first, with the whole Lannister army at his back, promising to defend the city against the rebels. I knew my father better than that. He's never been one to pick the losing side. I told the Mad King as much. I urged him to surrender peacefully. But the king didn't listen to me...
"So we opened the gates and my father sacked the city. Once again I came to the king, begging him to surrender. He told me to bring him my father's head. Then he turned to his pyromancer. Burn them all, he said. Burn them in their homes, burn them in their beds. Tell me, if your precious Renly commanded you to kill your own father and stand by while thousands of men, women and children burned alive, would you have done it? Would you have kept your oath then?
"First I killed the pyromancer. And then, when the king turned to flee, I drove my sword into his back. Burn them all, he kept saying. Burn them all! I don't think he expected to die. He...he meant to burn with the rest of us and rise again, reborn as a dragon, turn his enemies to ash. I slit his throat to make sure that didn't happen."
And now he is known throughout the land as Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. His brethren scorn him. No knight with an ounce of honor can ignore the stain of him. And he pretends this doesn't matter. And seventeen years pass.
He finds his brother imprisoned and facing death. He is goaded into a visit - and, really, it's all so much more complicated than this, but, in the end, he goes. The brother is afraid. He cannot wrap his mind around the specter of an imminent execution. He frets against it symbolically, within the reminiscence of a cousin of theirs...Orson, who used to sit all day in the garden crushing beetles with a rock. The brother talks of how it came to obsess him, this cousin's rationale. Why did these beetles need to die? All day long in the garden crushing them. It came to consume his childhood; filled his waking hours with concern and seeded all his nightmares. Orson and his rock. He turns to his brother in that prison cell to say, by way of explanation:
"Because it was horrible, that all these beetles should be dying for no reason."
And the beautiful, and beautifully arrogant, knight responds:
"Every day around the world men, women and children are murdered by the score. Who gives a dusty fuck about a bunch of beetles?"
And all I can think is this:
You do, Jaime Lannister. It was your destiny, lo those many years ago, to actually give a dusty fuck about a bunch of beetles.
But he doesn't see it. As gifted as he is, he lacks the cognitive ability to work with symbols. And there's simply got to be a conversation going on somewhere about this...along with so many of the other arrested agonies that throb beneath the more shallow attractions of HBO's Game of Thrones.
Unfortunately, you will not find it here. What The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy will provide are essays by the score that pair characters with systems of thought. Stannis Baratheon and Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith. Samwell Tarly and magical pragmatism. Melisandre and Manichean Divine Patronage. Theon Greyjoy and Aristotle's "Middle Way." The best, for me, came close to the end of the work and was titled, "Trying to Do Good with Arya, Tyrion, and the Hound." A very nice meditation on moral virtue.
Yet my hunt continues...
Sometimes I'm just looking for the conversation. Somewhere, I think, somebody's got to be having the conversation.
Jaime Lannister, for instance. Beautiful, and beautifully arrogant, Jaime Lannister. One of the best living swordsmen in the realm. The youngest knight ever selected to the seven who would guard the king. And there, where he should have met a most magnificent destiny, he encountered instead his doom. He says, circumspectly:
"So many vows. They make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Obey your father. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. What if your father despises the king? What if the king massacres the innocent? It's too much. No matter what you do you're forsaking one vow or another..."
His king went mad, you see. Quite mad. And things got tricky.
"Finally, the day of reckoning came. Robert Baratheon marched on the capital after his victory at the Trident. But my father arrived first, with the whole Lannister army at his back, promising to defend the city against the rebels. I knew my father better than that. He's never been one to pick the losing side. I told the Mad King as much. I urged him to surrender peacefully. But the king didn't listen to me...
"So we opened the gates and my father sacked the city. Once again I came to the king, begging him to surrender. He told me to bring him my father's head. Then he turned to his pyromancer. Burn them all, he said. Burn them in their homes, burn them in their beds. Tell me, if your precious Renly commanded you to kill your own father and stand by while thousands of men, women and children burned alive, would you have done it? Would you have kept your oath then?
"First I killed the pyromancer. And then, when the king turned to flee, I drove my sword into his back. Burn them all, he kept saying. Burn them all! I don't think he expected to die. He...he meant to burn with the rest of us and rise again, reborn as a dragon, turn his enemies to ash. I slit his throat to make sure that didn't happen."
And now he is known throughout the land as Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. His brethren scorn him. No knight with an ounce of honor can ignore the stain of him. And he pretends this doesn't matter. And seventeen years pass.
He finds his brother imprisoned and facing death. He is goaded into a visit - and, really, it's all so much more complicated than this, but, in the end, he goes. The brother is afraid. He cannot wrap his mind around the specter of an imminent execution. He frets against it symbolically, within the reminiscence of a cousin of theirs...Orson, who used to sit all day in the garden crushing beetles with a rock. The brother talks of how it came to obsess him, this cousin's rationale. Why did these beetles need to die? All day long in the garden crushing them. It came to consume his childhood; filled his waking hours with concern and seeded all his nightmares. Orson and his rock. He turns to his brother in that prison cell to say, by way of explanation:
"Because it was horrible, that all these beetles should be dying for no reason."
And the beautiful, and beautifully arrogant, knight responds:
"Every day around the world men, women and children are murdered by the score. Who gives a dusty fuck about a bunch of beetles?"
And all I can think is this:
You do, Jaime Lannister. It was your destiny, lo those many years ago, to actually give a dusty fuck about a bunch of beetles.
But he doesn't see it. As gifted as he is, he lacks the cognitive ability to work with symbols. And there's simply got to be a conversation going on somewhere about this...along with so many of the other arrested agonies that throb beneath the more shallow attractions of HBO's Game of Thrones.
Unfortunately, you will not find it here. What The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy will provide are essays by the score that pair characters with systems of thought. Stannis Baratheon and Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith. Samwell Tarly and magical pragmatism. Melisandre and Manichean Divine Patronage. Theon Greyjoy and Aristotle's "Middle Way." The best, for me, came close to the end of the work and was titled, "Trying to Do Good with Arya, Tyrion, and the Hound." A very nice meditation on moral virtue.
Yet my hunt continues...
August 12, 2017
Cute little philosophy refresher that's up to date to the current season of Game of Thrones. Hell of a lot better than the other one. There was the one dude, though, who tried to argue that we all projected extra hate on Joffrey because of the incest taboo he represented and embodied, and that's just silly. We hated him because, as Olenna and the Hound both so concisely put it, he was a cunt.
September 6, 2023
I loved this book. Because life got crazy it took me a ridiculous 18 days to complete. I am not one to read a book more than once, but I definitely see myself revisiting this one. I didn’t necessarily agree with ever essay, but I enjoyed them all, I especially enjoy those that argue both sides of the discussion.
February 12, 2018
I may have read too many books in the pop culture and philosophy series to find the ideas fresh, but this particular compilation feels about 70% phoned in. Maybe there are only so many ways you can apply comparisons of teleological and deontological ideals and existentialism to pop culture? It does contain a few gems though: the analysis of the pragmatism of the Hound, Evan Rosa's unique prose, and Jason Iuliano's treatise of the Varys riddle. But the editor should've capped the amount of collective times the authors could include "You know nothing Jon Snow" as a flavor quote about epistemology in the single digits.
October 4, 2017
Anthology of essays about philosophical themes in Game of Thrones. Most of the articles are either illuminating or entertaining. Although the essays are written by different authors and addres different themes, Tyrion comes out looking good in most of them. One thread that runs through the essays ins the difficulty of acting justly in that world, which is a reflection of our world.
May 20, 2017
I felt like I was reading essays from a college philosophy class, where each student decided to write about Game of Thrones. Some of the essays had merit, while others seemed to regurgitate storylines from the show and threw in random philosophers.
July 29, 2017
A mixed bag of essays on the philosophical questions raised by ASOIAF. I should probably give it 4 stars just because, even when I disagree, the essays offer a foil for discussion, but, I'll hold firm because I believe there could be better collections. ;)
December 30, 2016
**This book was reviewed for the San Francisco and Seattle Book Reviews**
The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy is yet another offering in the wonderful pop culture and philosophy series. This one focuses on GRR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, and the HBO show Game of Thrones. There are seven sections, looking at various aspects of the stories, from the ethics and morals employed by the various people woven through this elaborate tapestry, to the lenses disability is viewed through, to questions of power and its misuse, to the Machiavellian influence woven in the story. The philosophies that guide the lives of certain characters such as Arya, Jaime, and Tyrion are examined closer, with an eye to their deep growth and evolution.
Some of my favourites include:
‘There is Only One God and His Name is Death’ looks at why the random, unexpected deaths of central characters tends to be rare in art, and how Martin has successfully pulled it off.
'Tyrion’s Humour’ discusses how humour can be used as a criticism of social injustice, and how Tyrion’s brand of humour reflects not malice, but compassion abraded by cynicism. He’s also reflecting the archetype of the Fool, who can get away with saying and doing things others can't. That doesn't *always* mean he'll get away with it.
'Guilty of Being a Dwarf’ compares Tyrion's life journey to Sartre's views on self, and how we choose to see ourselves. (Yes, I am a huge Tyrion fan)
'Varys’ Riddle’ talks about concepts of power, and where power is really derived from. Perhaps something those of us in the US need to be thinking about right now, as a country.
I love these books! They focus and sharpen philosophical concepts, revealing how they are present underlying our entertainment, and illustrating their relevance in today's society. This particular one had more, yet shorter essays. All were really good.
GRR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy both pack a wallop right now, as we watch the corrupt struggle for power right now, and wars rage on helpless civilians. Stories like these, with various people jockeying for power on a global stage underscore the dangers of such thinking, and ways to work with and against it.
The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy is yet another offering in the wonderful pop culture and philosophy series. This one focuses on GRR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, and the HBO show Game of Thrones. There are seven sections, looking at various aspects of the stories, from the ethics and morals employed by the various people woven through this elaborate tapestry, to the lenses disability is viewed through, to questions of power and its misuse, to the Machiavellian influence woven in the story. The philosophies that guide the lives of certain characters such as Arya, Jaime, and Tyrion are examined closer, with an eye to their deep growth and evolution.
Some of my favourites include:
‘There is Only One God and His Name is Death’ looks at why the random, unexpected deaths of central characters tends to be rare in art, and how Martin has successfully pulled it off.
'Tyrion’s Humour’ discusses how humour can be used as a criticism of social injustice, and how Tyrion’s brand of humour reflects not malice, but compassion abraded by cynicism. He’s also reflecting the archetype of the Fool, who can get away with saying and doing things others can't. That doesn't *always* mean he'll get away with it.
'Guilty of Being a Dwarf’ compares Tyrion's life journey to Sartre's views on self, and how we choose to see ourselves. (Yes, I am a huge Tyrion fan)
'Varys’ Riddle’ talks about concepts of power, and where power is really derived from. Perhaps something those of us in the US need to be thinking about right now, as a country.
I love these books! They focus and sharpen philosophical concepts, revealing how they are present underlying our entertainment, and illustrating their relevance in today's society. This particular one had more, yet shorter essays. All were really good.
GRR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy both pack a wallop right now, as we watch the corrupt struggle for power right now, and wars rage on helpless civilians. Stories like these, with various people jockeying for power on a global stage underscore the dangers of such thinking, and ways to work with and against it.
July 23, 2021
Το βιβλιο δε λεει και πολλα πραγματα αλλα το μεγαλυτερο ελαττωμα του ειναι η παντελης απουσια επιμελειας. Δεν εχω ξαναδει τετοια προχειροδουλεια. Ντροπη.
July 23, 2022
Όχι ότι το περιεχόμενο αξίζει, αλλά η μεταφράστρια ειδικά δολοφόνησε όποια προοπτική μπορεί να είχε.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews