How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy: Being and Awesomeness

Like philosophy itself, How I Met Your Mother has everyone thinking. Have you ever wondered why you identify so strongly with Barney despite the fact that he's such a douche? Or why your life story doesn't make sense until you know the ending--or at least, the middle? Or where the Bro Code came from and why it's so powerful? How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy answers all these questions and a whole lot more.

Twenty of the awesome-est philosophers ever congregated in one bar have come together to quaff a few drinks and analyze this most awesomely philosophical of sit-coms. They poke, prod, and sniff at the misdeeds of Goliath National Bank, the ontology of waiting to get slapped, the epistemology of sexual attraction, why the Platinum Rule is to never love thy neighbor, the authenticity of censoring yourself, why future Ted's opinions matter to present-day Ted, and whether it's irrational to wait for the Slutty Pumpkin. This book shows that viewers of How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy know that philosophy is much more than a song and dance routine.

Lorenzo von Matterhorn is the pseudonym of a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse College, Cambridge University (UK). He is the author of Between Perception and Action and Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception (both forthcoming in 2013 from Oxford University Press), and editor of Perceiving the World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Before taking up full-time philosophy he was well known as a movie critic, and served on the jury at several major international film festivals. He lives in Antwerp, Belgium and Cambridge, England.