Hannibal Lecter and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy)
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WILLIAM J. DEVLIN holds a PhD in philosophy from Boston University, and is Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University and Summer Lecturer at University of Wyoming. He is the co-editor of The Philosophy of David Lynch (2011), and has published articles and book chapters in philosophy of film and philosophy of popular culture concerning such topics as time-travel, ethics, Nietzsche, and selfhood. He is published in edited volumes such as The Philosophy of Steven Soderbergh (2011), The Philosophy of the Western (2010), The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film (2008), and Lost and Philosophy (2008). He also publishes in the field of philosophy of science and is co-editor of the volume, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50 Years On (2015). As much as he enjoys writing papers with his friend and co-author, Dr. Biderman, he is just now beginning to grow suspicious that the good Doctor is trying to eat him.
DERRICK HASSERT is Professor of Psychology, Chair of the Department of Psychology, and Chair of the Division of Social and Behavioral Science at Trinity College in Palos Heights, Illinois. He teaches courses in neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and ethics, and has published in the areas of cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, neuroethics, and philosophy of mind. While he has served edible brains to his students, they have all been made of gelatin—and none of them were Paul Krendler’s.
JASON HOLT is Professor at Acadia University, where he teaches courses in philosophy and communication for the School of Kinesiology. His principal research area is aesthetics. His books include Blindsight and the Nature of Consciousness (2003), various edited volumes, and literary works, most recently a book of poetry, Inversed (2014). He’s more into Valpolicella than Chianti.
TIM JONES holds a PhD from the University of East Anglia in England, where he also teaches literature. He also holds a Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy and so is pretty proficient at thinking about and working with the empathy discussed in his chapter. If you didn’t enjoy reading it, you’re objectively wrong and deserve to be eaten.
DANIEL P. MALLOY is a lecturer at Appalachian State University, where he teaches a wide variety of philosophy courses and cooks a wide variety of dishes. His research focuses on issues in ethics, broadly construed. He has published numerous chapters on the intersection of popular culture and philosophy. Daniel took up cooking as a serious endeavor about the same time that Hannibal hit the airwaves, which he assures us is pure coincidence. As of this writing, he has mastered many French and Japanese dishes, and plans to begin learning the art of Italian cuisine soon.
JOHN MCATEER is Assistant Professor at Ashford University, where he serves as Chair of the Liberal Arts program. Before receiving his PhD in philosophy from the University of California at Riverside, he earned a BA in film from Biola University and an MA in philosophy of religion and ethics from Talbot School of Theology. He probably has an empathy disorder, but he doesn’t really care what you think about that. Like Hannibal, he never feels guilty eating anything.
RICHARD T. MCCLELLAND holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He also pursued post-graduate training in two psychoanalytic institutes in the Seattle area for some years. He retired as Professor of Philosophy from Gonzaga University in January 2014. His research is at the juncture of philosophy of mind, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. He is married, with three grown children and three grandchildren and lives in British Columbia, Canada. He continues to pursue a vigorous program of research and writing, and reports happily that the percentage of severe psychopathology (including psychopathy itself) in his near vicinity has declined markedly since his retirement; alas, his last chance to capture a pure psychopath alive was almost certainly while working among university faculty.
BENJAMIN W. MCCRAW teaches philosophy at the University of South Carolina Upstate. His research focuses on epistemology and philosophy of religion, and he has published articles recently in Social Epistemology and the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. In addition, he’s the co-editor of a forthcoming trilogy of books on really scary stuff on the devil, hell, and evil—but he’s unlikely to be mistaken for Shaitan in the streets of Florence. He assures us his is not the least common form of polydactyly.
TRIP MCCROSSIN teaches in the Philosophy Department at Rutgers University, where he works on, among other things, the nature, history, and legacy of the Enlightenment. The present essay is part of a broader effort to view various forms of popular culture through the lens of Susan Neiman’s understanding of the same. He’s occasionally tempted in class to counsel, “Simplicity! Read Marcus Aurelius: Of each particular thing, ask what is it in itself, what is its particular nature?,” but suspects that someone might just get the wrong idea. He’s also occasionally hopeful that if in the end even Lecter can find love without computer dating, then there’s got to be hope still for the rest of us!
ANDREW PAVELICH received his PhD from Tulane University in philosophy in 1999. He is now Associate Professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, where he teaches a wide variety of classes that may or may not appeal to Hannibal, including Ethics, World Religions, and the Philosophy of Death. He is a sometimes vegetarian, but would almost certainly jump at the chance to eat a drowned, plucked, and roasted songbird, bones and all.
DAN SHAW is a professor of philosophy at Lock Haven University, and Managing Editor of the journal Film and Philosophy. He first proposed his Nietzschean power-based theory of horror in a special edition of that journal on horror (2000). With Steven Schneider, he is the co-editor of Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror (2003), where he characterized Hannibal Lecter as exhibiting a mastery reminiscent of Nietzsche’s Overman. He is also the author of a critical review of Hannibal Rising (“The Birth of a Killer,” 2009), a book on ethics and film (Morality and the Movies, 2012), and a book on existentialism and film (Movies with Meaning, 2016). His relish of horror is complete, and he once said that he wouldn’t mind being Hannibal Lecter for just one day, to feel what such amoral control would be like—especially at mealtimes.
JOSEPH WESTFALL is not a Pazzi of the Pazzi, but is a Westfall of the Westfalls (bowels in). He is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston-Downtown, and the author of The Kierkegaardian Author (2007) as well as numerous articles and book chapters, including a contribution to Curb Your Enthusiasm and Philosophy (2012). His research interests are primarily in European philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of literature and film. He is very likely someday soon to begin receiving aftershave for Christmas that smells like it has a ship on the bottle, and is perfectly happy responding to such criticism with the maniacally insightful retort, “Smell yourself!” He likes to think he eats well, and has no known victims.
MANDY-SUZANNE WONG is an independent scholar and writer. She holds a PhD in musicology from UCLA, and began her academic career as a musicologist. During her research on late-twentieth-century musical philosophies, she became fascinated by Dr. H. Lecter’s unique approach to, shall we say, taking in classical music and musicians. (See the case of Benjamin Raspail: the juicy bits do surprisingly well in the fridge.) This predilection was unfortunate, for it did not sit well with her colleagues. Since they adamantly assured her that she was making it all up, she turned to writing fiction. And indeed, the company of homicidal trees, argumentative amphibians, and other maniacs of various degrees of nonexistence seemed to suit her well. To exacerbate her instability, she began to hang around philosophers: reckless individuals who cook up wild ideas to suit their dangerously adventurous palates. Her seizure of the editorship of Evental Aesthetics, a philosophical journal, testifies to her issues with control.
ANDREA ZANIN has always been partial to a little killer with her Chianti and her writing path, by natural inclination, has taken her on a journey through the moonstruck minds of the butchers and brutes that horror has spewed into society with diabolical delight. It all started in South Africa, a country all too familiar with scandalous crime and sociopathic tendencies but, as a cum laude English hono
rs graduate (with a law degree to boot) from the University of Johannesburg, Andrea has used her “classical” education as a platform to pick apart the psyches of such offenders, translating man’s dark heart into something . . . more palatable. Currently based in London, Andrea is a working writer/editor with expertise in discourse analysis; she is also the author of pop-culture blog Rantchick.com, and has contributed a chapter to Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy (2013).
Index
Achilles, 128
aesthetic distance, 101–4, 106, 163
aesthetics, 35, 38–39, 74, 95–96, 99–102, 104–7, 152, 161–69, 186–91, 194–95, 203–4, 212, 215, 232
Agamben, Giorgio, 11–14
agnotology, 112–13, 115
Alderman, Harold, 214–15
Alighieri, Dante, 6, 173, 202
Alive (1993 film), 19, 41
Allen, Woody, 183
Amuse-Bouche of Sweetbreads. See Raspail, Benjamin
Andersen, Hans Christian, 3
Andrés, José, 204
Animal Crackers (1930 film), 183
animals, xvii, 6–9, 11–12, 36–37, 41, 57, 77, 85, 128–30, 138–39, 151, 153, 167, 172, 182, 194, 200, 229–30, 233–34
Annie Hall (1977 film), 183
anthropocentrism, 9
anthropophagolagnia. See cannibalism, paraphilic
anthropophagy. See cannibalism
anti-hero, xvi, xvii, 92–93, 119, 132, 183, 189, 208, 223
Antisocial Personality Disorder. See psychopathy
Aradillas, Aaron, 114
Aristotle, 8, 71, 77–78, 124–25, 128, 133, 190, 230, 239
art, xii, 3, 5–6, 18, 24, 39, 71, 78, 88, 93, 100–107, 162–68, 171, 186–95, 202–5, 222–24
architectural, xii, 101, 104
cinematic/televisual, 163, 165–66, 172, 174, 177–78, 181–84, 187, 199–201, 203, 205, 210, 212, 217–22, 224–28
culinary, 3, 5–6, 24–25, 27, 31–32, 35, 39, 99, 107, 136, 139, 148, 152, 162, 164, 166–68, 171, 173, 180–82, 189, 194, 202, 204–5, 208, 212, 215, 224, 232, 240
drawing/painting/sculpture, 101, 106, 141–42, 161–65, 185, 189–94
homicidal, 100–103, 105–6, 132, 168, 185–86, 189–90, 202–4
Ikebana, 192–93
literary, 161, 172–73, 177, 179, 183, 186, 189–90, 194, 218, 240
musical, xii–xiii, 38–39, 93, 95–96, 99, 148, 161–63, 171, 173, 181, 185, 188, 190, 194, 202, 204, 213, 240
theatrical, 88, 93, 96, 183
sartorial, xii, 93, 186, 202
Augustine, Saint, 72
autonomy, 66, 68, 93–94, 96–97, 127, 239–40
Aztecs, 21, 27
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 101, 104, 161, 185, 202
Barber, Donnie, 10, 92
bare life, 10, 12–14
Bataille, Georges, 136–37, 139
Bates, Norman, xiv, 100, 173, 218, 225
Batman, xvi
beasts. See animals
beauty, xx, 39, 102, 104–7, 139, 152, 154, 162–63, 166, 186–87, 189–90, 193, 204
Beck, Glenn, 117
becoming. See metamorphosis
behaviorism, 48–51, 78
Berry-Dee, Christopher, 19
Blake, William, 101
Bloom, Alana, xix, 129, 135–37, 141–45, 173, 182, 184, 203, 206, 212–13
body, 9–11, 15–18, 22, 26–30, 34–36, 41, 49, 59, 93, 100, 106, 113–14, 118, 128, 136, 139–40, 151, 153, 161–62, 180, 186, 192, 194, 203–4, 222, 225, 233–34
Bosch, Hieronymous, 141–42
Bottai, Sean (“The Freak”), 109
Bourne, Jason, 96
Bozo the Clown, 172
Braised Beef Lungs. See Ledgerwood, Darrell
Brigham, John, 231–32, 235
Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme, 5
bromance. See homosociality
Brown, Matthew, 130, 144, 178–79
BSU (Behavioral Science Unit). See FBI
Budge, Tobias, 69, 100, 130, 181–82
Buffalo Bill. See Gumb, Jame
Bullough, Edward, 101, 103
Bundy, Theodore “Ted,” xiv, 118
Caldwell, Andrew, 35
Candide, 53
Cannibal, Hannibal the, 13, 15–16, 19, 24, 59, 105, 184, 188, 217, 219, 222–23
cannibalism, 4, 6, 8–9, 10–12, 15–30, 31–41, 73, 80, 90, 100, 114, 128, 138, 140, 148, 151–53, 157, 165, 168–69, 171, 174–75, 180–82, 184, 185–86, 188–89, 191, 193, 195, 204–6, 208–9, 212, 215, 222, 226, 228, 235, 237
active, 26–27, 29
benign, 29–30, 99, 153, 181, 188, 222, 224
cultural, 20, 21–22, 27
ethics of, 25–30
hedonistic, 20, 22–26, 28
medicinal, 22
nutritional, 21–22
paraphilic, 23, 28
passive, 26–30
political or military, 21–22, 27, 30
recreational/culinary/epicurean, 23–25, 28–29, 139, 202
religious, 21
sadistic, 23, 26, 28, 221–22
starvation, 19–21, 27, 138
Capote, Truman, 112
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, 193
Carpenter, John, 218
Carroll, Noël, xi, 172–73, 219–21, 223, 225, 227–28
Cassidy, Patrick, 202
Castle, Frank “The Punisher,” xvi
Castle, William, 110
census taker, xiv, xvii, 15, 29, 35, 73, 78, 109, 166, 184, 185, 188, 201, 204
change. See metamorphosis
Chaplin, Charlie, 172
character, 38, 40–41, 72–77, 79–81, 167–68, 190, 193, 230
charisma/charm, xii, xx, 7, 56, 138, 148, 151, 154, 173–74, 222, 224
Cheek and Mushroom Brochette. See Dortlich, Enrikas
Cheek Tartare. See Grutas, Vladis
Chesapeake Ripper, The, xix, 16, 30, 35, 59–60, 129, 136, 138–39, 141, 143–44
Chianti. See census taker
Chicken Liver Pate. See Vocalson, Michelle
Chilton, Frederick, xiv, xix, 7, 22, 37–39, 54, 64, 103, 141, 144, 176–77, 179–80, 182, 188, 205, 208, 217–18, 223, 226
Christianity, 11–12, 17–18, 77–78, 210
Cleckley, Hervey, 102
colonialism, 16–17
Columbus, Christopher, 16
compassion, 53, 87–88, 96
confidentiality. See ethics, codes of
Congo, Democratic Republic of, 21–22, 27
corpse. See body
courtesy, xii–xv, 11, 36–37, 68, 73, 80, 99, 107, 129–30, 132, 140, 145, 164–65, 168–69, 175–77, 188–89, 208, 210, 222
Cox, Alan, xv
Cox, Brian, xiii, xv, 33, 109, 115, 162, 183
Craven, Wes, 218
Crawford, Jack, 6, 24, 29–30, 47, 54, 63–64, 113, 125, 128–29, 134, 135–36, 141–45, 149, 154, 157, 173–74, 180–81, 185–86, 200–201, 203, 206, 213–15, 217–18, 231–32
Crawford, Phyllis “Bella,” 125, 149, 181
craziness. See insanity
Crisp Lemon Calf Liver. See Caldwell, Andrew
critique, 4–5
Croce, Benedetto, 186, 188, 195
cruelty, 5, 80, 139, 171, 175
Crusades, The, 18
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 164
Dahmer, Jeffrey, 19, 23, 28
Dark Knight, The (2008 film), 203
Dawley, J. Searle, 218
Deadpool, 183
death, xix, 9–10, 12–13, 20, 26–27, 34, 37–39, 55, 72, 78–79, 92, 96, 100, 106, 119–20, 127, 141, 172, 189, 191, 194, 230, 232, 235–37
deception. See lying
dehumanization. See humanity
delirium. See insanity
Demme, Jonathan, 71, 162, 165, 200–201, 217, 219
Deogracias, Carlo, 177–78
Deogracias, Matteo, 177–78, 201, 205, 208
detachment, 163
devil, xi, xviii–xix, 73, 215
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995 film), 205<
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dignity, 9–10
dishonesty. See lying
disrespect. See respect
Doemling, Cordell, 206, 224
Dolarhyde, Francis, xix, 9, 56, 100–101, 104, 110–14, 165, 174, 190, 205, 207, 212, 222, 225–26
dominance, social. See power
Donner Party, The, 19–20
Dortlich, Enrikas, 33–34, 193
Douglas, John, 113, 185, 190
Dracula, Count, xi, xvii, xviii, 172, 184, 218, 220–24, 228
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920 film), 218
Du Maurier, Bedelia, 24, 63–64, 128–29, 142, 154, 201, 210, 215
Dumas, Alexandre, 5
duplicitousness. See lying
Egger, Steven, 119–20
Elfman, Danny, 110
emergence. See metamorphosis
emotion, 72, 77, 86, 88, 92–94, 124, 135–37, 143, 149, 151, 155, 163, 187, 200, 205, 208, 211, 219–21, 230, 236–38
empathy, 85–89, 92–93, 96, 102–4, 141, 147–51, 153–57, 200–201, 207–8, 210, 213, 215–16, 228
endocannibalism. See cannibalism, cultural
Enkidu, 128
entropy, 55–56, 135, 145, 234–35
epistemology, 112
essence. See nature
ethics, 12, 15–16, 25–30, 31, 33, 35–41, 45, 48, 50–52, 59–60, 62, 65, 68–70, 74, 78, 105–7, 125–27, 129, 132, 139–40, 150–52, 157, 163, 166, 185, 187–90, 201, 211, 214, 227, 230, 239–40
codes of, 59–70, 74, 79, 234–35
consequentialist, 38–40
Kantian, 36–37, 40
Natural Law Theory, 33–34