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Philosophers debate how Orwell´s nightmare world compares to today´s world of political acrimony and discontent.

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Although the year 1984 is hurtling back into the distant past, Orwell´s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four continues to have a huge readership and to help shape the world of 2084. Sales of Orwell´s terrifying tale have recently spiked because of current worries about alternate facts, post-truth, and fake news.

1984 and Philosophy brings together brand new, up-to-the-minute thinking by philosophers about Nineteen Eighty-Four as it relates to today´s culture, politics, and everyday life. Some of the thinking amounts to thoughtcrime, but we managed to sneak it past the agents of the Ministry of Truth, so this is a book to be read quickly before the words on the page mysteriously transform into something different.

Who´s controlling our lives and are they getting even more levers to control us? Is truth objective or just made up? What did Orwell get right-and did he get some things wrong? Are social media opportunities for liberation or instruments of oppression? How can we fight back against totalitarian control? Can Big Brother compel us to love him? How does the language we use affect the way we think? Do we really need the unifying power of hate? Why did Orwell make Nineteen Eighty-Four so desperately hopeless? Can science be protected from poisonous ideology? Can we really believe two contradictory things at once? Who surveils the surveilors?

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Acknowledgments

Are We Living in 1984? A Doubleplusgood Introduction

1. Little Knots of Resistance
TRIP MCCROSSIN

2. Orwell´s Blind Spot-Non-State Enemies of Freedom
ERIN NASH

3. Strength through Ignorance
JAMES CONANT

4. Big Brother Ltd.-The Orwellian Nature of Neoliberal Politics
DARREN BOTELLO-SAMSON AND KAYCE MOBLEY

5. Can You Be Happy under Ingsoc?
JOSIP CIRIC AND BRUNO CURKO

6. Trauma and Betrayal in Nineteen Eighty-Four
DANIEL CONWAY

7. Exercise as Oppression
EZIO DI NUCCI

8. Collective Trance and a Hope for Sanity
ISKRA FILEVA

9. Dystopian Dreams
JAN FRIIS

10. Newsleep 24/7-Big Brother´s Assault on Sleep
JASON MATTHEW BUCHANNAN

11. Science against Totalitarian Ideology
WILLIAM GOODWIN

12. Hangings, Shootings, and Other Funny Stuff in Nineteen Eighty-Four
JARNO HIETALAHTI

13. Post-Factual Democracy
VINCENT HENDRICKS AND MADS VESTERGAARD

14. Could Enhancing Human Capacities Prevent Nineteen Eighty-Four from Happening?
POLAROS KOI

15. Why Don´t the Proles Just Take Over?
GREG LITTMANN

16. How the Mass Media Control Our Language
LAVINIA MARIN

17. Controlling the Present, the Past, and the Future
CHRISTOPHER MARKOU AND JAMES CROSSLEY

18. Reducing Thought to 140 Characters or Less
EDWARDO PEREZ

19. Controlling People by Fallacious Reasoning
ELIZABETH RARD

20. Love and Hate in Nineteen Eighty-Four
TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

21. The Unmaking of the Self in Torture
ALBA SANCHEZ

22. Can Thought Be Controlled Just by Controlling Language?
JESSE SCHUPACK

23. The Unrelieved Bleakness of Nineteen Eighty-Four
OSHRAT C. SILBERBUSCH

24. Revolutionary from the Waist Down
STEFAN STORRIE

25. Big Brother, We Are Watching You!
TORBJORN TANNSJO

26. Networks of Trust and Distrust
MARK ALFANO

27. Oldthinkful Duckspeak Refs Opposites Rewrite Fullwise Upsub Antefiling
KEITH BEGLY

Author Bios
References
Index

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