Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts

Chicago: Open Court, 2004. First ed., first printing (full number line). x, 243 pages; 23 cm. Fine in fine jakcet. Hardcover. ISBN: 9781435114838

"In Harry Potter and Philosophy, individual chapters look at such topics as life revealed in the Mirror of Erised; the ethics of magic; Moaning Myrtle, Nearly Headless Nick, and the relation of the mind to the brain; and the character of Hermione as a case of "sublimated feminism." Also examined in this collection are how Aristotle would have run a school for wizards; whether the Potter stories undermine religion and morality; how to tell good people from evil ones through the characters in these novels; and what dementors and boggarts can teach readers about happiness, fear, and the soul. --From publisher's description." // Contents: I. Wizards, Witches, and Muggles: The Inhabitants of Potter's World; 1. Becoming Harry Potter: An Orphan's Search for Identity; 2. Sublimated Feminism: Hermione Granger and the Women of the Wizard World; 3. Averting the Eyes: Self-Deception and the Self-Image; 4. The Taste of Love in Harry Potter; II. Choices, not Abilities: Virtue and Morality in Harry Potter; 5. If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts; 6. The Mirror of Erised: What is the Best Life; 7. The Question Concerning Magic; 8. Moral Imagination and the Apologist's Paradox; III. Knockturn Alley: Evil and the Dark Arts; 9. Is Ambition a Virtue? The Moral Significance of Slytherin House; 10. Harry Potter and the Guises of Evil; 11. Voldermort, Boethius, and the Destructive Effects of Evil; 12. Dark Creatures at Hogwarts: A Platonic Perspective; 13. Harry Potter on the Meaning of Life and Death, Good and Evil; IV. Every-Flavored Essay; 14. Heaven, Hell, and Harry Potter; 15. Wherein 9 3/4? Space, Time, And Magic in the Potter Universe; 16. Ghosts and the Possibility of Disembodied Existence; 17. Normalizing the Paranormal.