Lester Hunt

Utilizing a series of essays examining the broad philosophical concepts embedded in Rod Serling's series, _The Twilight Zone_, __Philosophy in The Twilight Zone__ provides a platform for further philosophical discussion. Features essays by eminent contemporary philosophers concerning the over-arching themes in _The Twilight Zone,_ as well as in-depth discussions of particular episodes Fuses popular cult entertainment with classical philosophical perspectives Acts as a guide to unearthing larger questions - from human nature to the nature of reality and beyond - posed in the series Includes substantial critical and biographical information on series creator Rob Serling.

           1. My thesis. The point I wish to make here is actually fairly simple. As my title suggests, I wish to argue for the idea that the state is an institution that requires a justification. Some readers will no doubt feel that the fact that the state needs a justification is so obvious that arguing for it is a waste of time: it is best to move on forthwith to the real issue, which is what that justification (if there is one) might be. To others, the very idea that there is an issue here might seem baffling: why should government be any more in need of a justification than anything else? I would like to put forth a reason, a rather simple one actually, for thinking that it does need a justification; that it stands more in such need, perhaps, than any human institution of comparable longevity and persistence.

Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue : This book is a discussion of Nietzsche's ethical and political ideas. It is an attempt to be both scholarly and, in a sense, activist. The ultimate point is to see how believers in liberal democracy (like me and most of my readers) should respond to the challenge that Nietzsche represents. As with any profound challenge, one is never the same again after it is overcome. In particular, I suggest that liberals can learn something very important from the ideas that grow out of Nietzsche's early discussion of Homer's notion of agon or Wettkampf (roughly, conflict or competition).

This chapter describes the story of Ayn Rand's changing attitude toward Friedrich Nietzsche. One thing that can make the relationship between them difficult to understand is the fact that Rand's relation to Nietzsche changes considerably over the years. The history of this relationship can be divided roughly into three different periods. The first begins during her years as a student in Russia and ends with the completion of The Fountainhead (approximately 1921–1942). The second period follows upon the completion of The Fountainhead and ends with the completion of Atlas Shrugged (1942–1957). The third and last period (1957–1982) follows the writing of Atlas and ends with her death. When people associate Nietzsche with Rand, as they often do, they are not thinking of the metaphysical and epistemological issues as determinism and the validity of reason. They are probably thinking mainly of ethical issues.

Film audiences are no longer in a position to know for certain which images, or features of images they see on the screen were created by photography and which were created in a computer. Yet they are reacting to the advent of computer graphics as if it is merely a technical improvement, not a change in the nature of film itself. This would mean that one of the most influential early theories of film—realism—is wrong. It held that film is by nature photographic and that its unique value is to afford the audience the physical connection with reality that photography, uniquely among pictorial media, brings. I argue that the audience is right about this. Even as applied to purely photographic films, realism was simply a mistake.