Louis C.K. and Philosophy: You Don't Get to Be Bored

by Mark Ralkowski (Editor)

Overview

Charlie Rose has called Louis C.K. “the philosopher-king of comedy,” and many have detected philosophical profundity in his material.

Twenty-five philosophers examine the wisdom of Louis C.K. from a variety of philosophical perspectives. The chapters draw upon C.K.’s standup comedy, the show Louie, and C.K.’s other writings.

One writer looks at the different meanings of C.K.’s statement, “You’re gonna be dead way longer than you were alive.” One chapter shows the affinity of C.K.’s “sick of living this bullshit life” with Kierkegaard’s “sickness unto death.” Another pursues Louis’s thought that we may by our lack of moral concern “live a really evil life without thinking about it.”

C.K.'s insistence that “things that are not can’t be” points to the philosophical problem of nothingness in relation to being. His religion is “apathetic agnostic,” conveyed in his thought experiment that God began work in 1982. Louis’s argument that you can have the kind of body you want if you make yourself want a disgusting, shitty body, is the Stoic ethics of Epictetus. And, as C.K. has shown in so many ways, the fact that we’re soon going to die has its funny side.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812699067
Publisher:	Open Court Publishing Company
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Series:	Popular Culture and Philosophy , #99
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mark Ralkowski is assistant professor of philosophy and honors at The George Washington University. He is author of Plato's Trial of Athens (2016) Heidegger's Platonism (2009) and editor of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Philosophy (2012) and Time and Death: Heidegger's Analysis of Finitude (2005). He lives in Takoma Park, MD.

Table of Contents

A Note on "Louis" and "Louie" xi

The "Other Shit" that Louis C.K. Wanted to Talk About Mark Ralkowski xiii

I Everybody Has a Competition in Their Brain 1

1 Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy Max Elder 3

2 Sex Has Something Behind It John Heaney 11

3 When to Hate and When to Be Irate Daniel Malloy 23

II Misery Is Wasted on the Miserable 37

4 On Being a Dead Person Who Hasn't Died Yet Mark Ralkowski 39

5 Just Want a Shitty Body Bekka Williams 59

6 You're Gonna Die Ethan Mills 69

III Raising the Grown Up They're Going to Be 79

7 Because Nothing Can't Be! Joseph R. Kirkland 81

8 Should Jane Get to Be Bored? Daniel Addison 93

9 What Fuckin' Chance Does a Kid Have? Joseph Westfall 107

IV That Knowledge that It's All for Nothing and You're Alone 119

10 On "Crying Like a Bitch" Roberto Sirvent Joel Avery 121

11 Louis C.K.'s No-Bullshit Philosophy Marie Snyder 131

12 Confronting the "Forever Empty" Brandon Polite 143

V Did You Look in the Downstairs Bathroom? 155

13 Why? Why? Why? Joel Walmsley 157

14 Louis C.K.'s God Silas Morgan Roberto Sirvent 167

15 God Started in 1983 Matt DeStefano 177

VI Having a Lot of Beliefs and Living by None of Them 187

16 You're Not Starving Phil Smolenski 189

17 Louis's Little Believies Ryan Jawetz 199

18 Believies are Not Motivaties Jason Dockstader 211

VII Take Some Responsibility for the Shitty Words You Want to Say 223

19 The Playful Thought Experiments of Louis C.K. Chris A. Kramer 225

20 Feminists Can Take a Joke Jennifer Marra 237

21 If You're Not White, You're Missing Out Myisha Cherry 247

VIII Of Course hut Maybe… 255

22 Sometimes Cartesian Eric Scholl 257

23 Louis C.K. Meets the Unconscious Duncan Reyburn 267

24 An Hour James Bliss 277

References 287

Some Dead People Who Haven't Died Yet 291

Index 297