While Penguin classics of Aristotle and Descartes—not to mention their Cliffs Notes counterparts—sell year in and year out, some publishers think philosophy gets a bad rap among book buyers, and they’re doing something about it. Wiley is in the process of rolling out a new series on pop philosophy called Philosophy for Everyone. The series takes subjects like yoga, college sex, pornography, and serial killers, and looks at them from a philosophical point of view.
Books in the series primarily feature essays by philosophy professors on a given subject, mixed in with a smaller number of pieces written by experts in the subject field. Blending pop culture with philosophy results in a mix of high and low endeavors: as Jeff Dean, the Wiley editor of the series, said, the essays are brief and they’re on philosophical topics, “so it requires paying a little attention, but they’re not written for professionals.” Later this month, Wiley will publish College Sex: Philosophers With Benefits, Cycling: A Philosophical Tour de Force, and Climbing: Because It’s There. In September, it will release Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life; in October, Porn: How to Think with Kink, Cannabis: What Were We Just Talking About?, and Serial Killers: Being and Killing. In 2011, it is publishing Dating: Flirting with Big Ideas, Gardening: Cultivating Wisdom, Fatherhood: The Dao of Daddy, and Motherhood: The Birth of Wisdom. Fritz Allhoff, an assistant professor in the philosophy department at Western Michigan University, is the series editor.
Each $19.95 paperback consists of new material commissioned especially for the books. Editors generate ideas for books, and then place a call for “abstracts” on online listservs and other outlets that philosophers read to gauge interest. If the response is strong, the editors pursue it; if not, they hold off, said Dean.
Dean said the books in the Philosophy for Everyone series allow writers to “get people into philosophical topics.” Take, for example, the October title Christmas: Better Than a Lump of Coal, edited by Scott C. Lowe. The collection looks into traditional Christmas festivities to "unwrap" its pagan origins and secular trimmings. Essays include “Scrooge Learns it All in One Night: Happiness and the Virtues of Christmas," "Santa’s Sweatshop: Elf Exploitation for Christmas," “Crummy Commercials and BB Guns: Son-of-a-Bitch Consumerism in a Christmas Classic,” and “Lying to Children about Santa: Why It's Just Not Wrong.”
Books in the Philosophy for Everyone series are also available in e-book format, and Dean said eventually Wiley will sell the content a chapter at a time. Wiley also could end up using some of the content in textbooks, Dean said, but on the other hand, he sees the books as “a gateway into philosophy,” a way of “making it less scary. I think sometimes philosophy is misapprehended as too esoteric or irrelevant by the main population. Philosophical reflection is deeply relevant and accessible to things in everyday life.”
