Superheroes and Philosophy: Truth, Justice, and the Socratic Way Book

There are a few essays in this collection that are fun to read, but as a collection as a whole, I have to rate it fairly low. My biggest problem with this book is that it is edited very loosely. The title of the book says that this is an examination of comics through the lens of philosophy. However, this collection includes essays on psychology, mythology, and religion in addition to philosophy. Also, the essays on philosophy focus strongly on ancient Greek philosophers, so they start to feel a bit repetitive after a while. A good editor would have ensured that each essay would focus on a different aspect of philosophy, and thus provide a bit more variety. This book would have been greatly improved if it had included anything about 20th century philosophers, since the works of those philosophers were developed at the same time as the rise of comics.

Another weak point is that it seems that some of the authors are not really familiar with the comics that these superheroes come from. These authors focus on examples from the movies rather than from comics. The weak point of this is that this was first published in the early 2000s, so the only movies to reference are the first two X-men movies and the first two Spider-man movies. This gives these essays a dated feel rather than a historical feel if they had used comic references.

The religious essays were particularly irritating to read. In particular there is one that attacks an atheist world view as senseless since it would mean that comic book lovers' favorite comic universes would end when the universe ends. I certainly don't expect that kind of pandering to emotions in a book that is supposed to be about philosophy.

I would recommend steering clear of this book, and if the other books in this series are edited in this manner, perhaps it is best to give the whole series a pass.