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?
