A few years ago, I discovered a YouTube channel called The School of Life and quickly fell in love with their series The Curriculum, narrated by Alain de Botton. The series, animated in a style reminiscent of Monty Python's irreverent humor, explains major philosophical currents and their key figures.
This discovery was a catalyst for a somewhat pedantic but genuinely curious philosophy novice like me. If I had to pinpoint when my library started to become more eclectic, it would probably be at that moment.
Thanks to the extra income I enjoyed during those early single years—partly intentional, partly fortuitous—I developed a habit of frequenting bookstores to enrich my collection.
One day, as I browsed the shelves, a book stood out like a cavity-free molar: The Simpsons and Philosophy: Understanding the World Through Homer and Company by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble.
The cover, akin to a cirrhotic version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, featured Socrates, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Marx, Sartre, Barthes, Nietzsche, and Kant.
It felt like a gift from above—an opportunity to delve deeper into these authors through the lens of the show that had taught me so much about life and the meaning of the word "yokel."
Opinion on the Book
The book consists of 18 unconnected essays, each written by a different author.
The first five chapters felt like a jelly Venus de Milo, sculpted by jelly artisans working exclusively with jelly:
Homer and Aristotle
Lisa and American Anti-Intellectualism
The Importance of Maggie: The Sound of Silence – East and West
Marge’s Moral Motivation
Thus Spoke Bart: Nietzsche and the Virtue of Badness
I’d like to highlight the first two chapters, which struck me as not only worth reading but deeply relevant for an engaging, entertaining, and insightful discussion of our reality.
The first chapter examines Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics through the lens of Homer Simpson, exploring how his actions and motivations reflect various models of virtue and vice.
This chapter succeeds in sparking interest in Nicomachean Ethics while concluding with a fascinating discussion of Homer’s “love of life” and the virtue that can be found in it.
The second chapter is more of a logical exercise, gaining relevance in today’s polarized and divided reality.
Perhaps I’m over-interpreting, but the text felt like a cautionary tale about snobbish intellectualism.
Lisa Simpson is the perfect character to embody (or rather, ink) this concept. While she’s often right in her arguments, she’s still an 8-year-old with corresponding contradictions and inconsistencies.
American society (and, arguably, the global community) struggles with a rejection of intellectuals who don’t align with its beliefs. The anti-vaccine movement, for example, is difficult to explain otherwise.
However, this chapter doesn’t vilify intellectuals. On the contrary, it validates their perspective while politely asking them to tone it down—a message we could all stand to hear occasionally.
A Brief Interlude
After finishing the first chapters, the scent of cookies wafting from a nearby bakery (tragically on fire) distracted me. I forgot about the proverbial call to Australia and shelved the book for a couple of months.
When I recently revisited it, I reread the first chapters but remembered why I’d lost interest when I reached Chapter 6.
The first section, The Characters, includes the five chapters mentioned above.
The second section, Simpsonian Themes, comprises:
The Simpsons and Allusion: “The Worst Essay Ever”
Popular Parody: The Simpsons and Gangster Films
The Simpsons and Hyper-Irony
The Simpsons and the Politics of Sex
This section was perhaps the least memorable of the entire book. These essays felt overly intellectual, written with a tone reminiscent of the comic book store guy. While I understand their intrinsic value, the topics failed to capture my interest.
The third section, I Didn’t Do It: Ethics and The Simpsons, includes:
The Moral World of the Simpson Family: A Kantian Perspective
The Simpsons: Atomistic Politics
The Hypocrisy of Springfield
“I’m Really Enjoying This… Ice Cream”: Mr. Burns, Satan, and Happiness
Hi-Diddly-Ho, Neighborino: Ned Flanders and Loving Thy Neighbor
The Function of Fiction: The Heuristic Value of Homer
This section left me feeling somewhat deceived. While a few essays were interesting, the connection to the series often felt forced—sometimes as awkward as poets rhyming “cat” with “hat.” I was fed up! Paragraph after paragraph of clumsy analogies—ugly ones, at that.
I realized I was laughing at quotes from the show, not the text itself. The writing wasn’t funny, and, more often than not, it wasn’t very engaging either. In short, it was garbage.
The final section, The Simpsons and Philosophers, was perhaps the least enjoyable:
A Marxist (Karl, not Groucho) in Springfield
“And the Rest is Just Logic”
What Does It Mean to Think for Bart?
These three chapters felt long and disconnected from the book’s premise. By this point, I was thoroughly disenchanted. Enough with the academic bliss-blass and jim-jam! Professors, get to the point, for heaven’s sake!
Ultimately, I finished the book more out of inertia than genuine interest.
And Then?
In conclusion, aside from the first section—which I enjoyed unironically and can genuinely celebrate—it’s hard to pinpoint the target audience for the subsequent chapters.
Some essays delve into topics so dense that they alienate curious novices looking to learn the basics of philosophy through the show. Others treat their subjects so superficially that expert readers would likely feel underwhelmed.
Writing about The Simpsons is a monumental task. The brilliance of the early seasons is rarely matched in depth or humor. While this book has its moments of brilliance, its inconsistency and uneven focus make it a work I can only partially recommend.
As a final verdict, I’ll just say this: if you want to learn more about philosophy, you’re better off turning on the TV.
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