The Good Place and Philosophy: Everything is Forking Fine!: The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

Contributors ix Editor's Introduction and Acknowledgments: "We are Not in This Alone" xvii Kimberly S. Engels Foreword xix Michael Schur, creator of The Good Place Introduction xxiii Pamela Hieronymi and Todd May, philosophical advisors to The Good Place Part I "I Just Ethics'd You in the Face" 1 1 How Do You Like Them Ethics? 3 David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett 2 Don't Let the Good Life Pass You By: Doug Forcett and the Limits of Self-Sacrifice 15 Greg Littmann 3 Luck and Fairness in The Good Place 25 Scott A. Davison and Andrew R. Davison Part II "Virtuous for Virtue's Sake" 35 4 Can Eleanor Really Become a Better Person? 37 Eric J. Silverman and Zachary Swanson 5 The Good Place and The Good Life 47 C. Scott Sevier 6 The Ethics of Indecision: Why Chidi Anagonye Belongs in The Bad Place 57 Traci Phillipson Part III "All Those Ethics Lessons Paid Off" 65 7 Moral Absurdity and Care Ethics in The Good Place 67 Laura Matthews 8 The Medium Place: Third Space, Morality, and Being In Between 75 Catherine M. Robb 9 What We May Learn from Michael's Solution to the Trolley Problem 87 Andreas Bruns Part IV "Help Is Other People" 97 10 Some Memories You May Have Forgotten: Holding Space for Each Other When Memory Fails 99 Alison Reiheld 11 The Good Other 110 Steven A. Benko 12 Not Knowing Your Place: A Tale of Two Women 121 Leslie A. Aarons Part V "Absurdity Needs to Be Confronted" 131 13 Marginal Comforts Keep Us in Hell 133 Jake Jackson 14 "I Would Refuse to Be a God if It Were Offered to Me": Architects and Existentialism in The Good Place 141 Kimberly S. Engels Part VI "Searching for Meaning Is Philosophical Suicide" 153 15 Death, Meaning, and Existential Crises 155 Kiki Berk 16 From Indecision to Ambiguity: Simone de Beauvoir and Chidi's Moral Growth 166 Matthew P. Meyer 17 Beyond Good and Evil Places: Eternal Return of the Superhuman 178 James Lawler Part VII "The Dalai Lama Texted Me That" 189 18 Conceptions of the Afterlife: The Good Place and Religious Tradition 191 Michael McGowan 19 Who are Chidi and Eleanor in a Past-(After)Life? The Buddhist Notion of No-Self 202 Dane Sawyer Part VIII "Sometimes a Flaw Can Make Something Even More Beautiful" 211 20 Hell Is Other People's Tastes 213 Darren Hudson Hick and Sarah E. Worth 21 Why Everyone Hates Moral Philosophy Professors: The Aesthetics of Shallowness 224 T Storm Heter Part IX "Oh Cool, More Philosophy! That Will Help Us." 237 22 An Epistemological Nightmare? Ways of Knowing in The Good Place 239 Dean A. Kowalski 23 What's the Use of Free Will? 249 Joshua Tepley 24 From Clickwheel through Busty Alexa: The Embodied Case for Janet as Artificial Intelligence 260 Robin L. Zebrowski 25 Why It Wouldn't Be Rational to Believe You're in The Good Place (and Why You Wouldn't Want to Be Anyway) 270 David Kyle Johnson Index 283

KIMBERLY S. ENGELS is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Molloy College, Rockville Centre, New York. She is the author of numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles, and is the co-editor of Westworld and Philosophy.