Practical philosophy and television drama. Ethical and anthropological remarks on some European television series (2015)

Abstract

When reasoning about the stories and dramas of television series, it is useful to resort to an ethical and anthropological criterion. This approach calls for distinguishing between an anthropological reason applicable to people in the real world and the dramatis personae. There are two coherent anthropological behaviors that may contribute to a viewers’ active position. The first one is to consider that Aristotle's Poetics and the contemporary extension of his content can rationally account for those stories and dramas, today precisely qualified as ‘tragic’. The second one is to understand the real world and its dramatic representations, in accordance with the Leonardo Polo’s transcendental anthropology, the vision which Jürgen Habermas finds in religions, and Joseph Ratzinger - articulating reason and faith - has summed up as living veluti si Deus daretur.

Keywords

• Communication studies
• television series
• Europe
• poetics
• antropology
• ethics