ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND PHILOSOPHYIs George Michael's crush on his cousin unnatural?Is it immoral for Lindsay to lie about stealing clothes to hide her job?Is Gob better off living his life in bad faith?What inferences can we draw from Tobias's double-entendres?Are the pictures really of bunkers or balls?The Bluth family's faults, foibles, and character flaws are so excruciatingly familiar that we squirm in painful recognition of the outrageous impulses that we all have but would never act on. The Bluths seem utterly unaware of the gaping distance between their behavior and accepted social norms. Lurking behind this craziness are large moral and philosophical issues to be explored. From Plato to Aristotle, from Descartes to Marx, Arrested Development and Philosophy draws from great philosophical minds to shed new light on the show's key questions and captivating themes, including the nature of self-knowledge and happiness, business ethics and capitalist alienation, social class, the role of error in character development, and much more.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: And Now a Few Words from the New CEOs ofthe Bluth Company ixINTRODUCTION 1Kristopher PhillipsPART ONE FAMILY FIRST1 Is the Examined Life a Huge Mistake?: Happiness,Self-Knowledge, and the Bluths 7Jason Southworth and Ruth Tallman2 Kissing Cousins: Incest, Naturalism, and the Yuck Factor23Deborah R. Barnbaum3 Freudian Arrested Development 33Tim Jung4 Don't Know Thyself: Gob and the Wisdom of Bad Faith 46Daniel P. MalloyPART TWO A BUSINESS MODEL5 Dr. Fünke's 100 Percent Natural Good-Time AlienationSolution 61Jeff Ewing6 Family First: How Not to Run a Business 73Brett Gaul7 Bourgeois Bluths: Arrested Development and Class Status85Rachel McKinneyPART THREE SOME HUGE MISTAKES8 What Whitey Isn't Ready to Hear: Social Identity inArrested Development 99J. Jeremy Wisnewski9 "I Just Blue Myself": The Use and Abuse of Language inArrested Development 111M. E. Verrochi10 To Bias Tobias: Gender Identity, Sexuality, and ArrestedDevelopment 123Darci Doll11 I'm Oscar.com: The Problem(s) of Personal Identity inArrested Development 136Kristopher PhillipsPART FOUR THE ONE WHERE THEY DO EPISTEMOLOGY12 You Can't Do Magic: Gob Bluth and the Illusionists' Craft151Michael Cholbi13 Is Justified True Bluth Belief Knowledge? 162Brett Coppenger and Kristopher Phillips14 Bunkers and Balls: Arrested Development,Underdetermination, and the Theory-ladenness of Observation172Michael Da SilvaPART FIVE SOLID AS IRAQ: POLITICS AND ETHICS ARRESTED15 No Touching! George Sr.'s Brush with Treason 185Douglas Paletta and Paul Franco16 "I've Made a Huge Mistake": George Oscar Bluth Jr. and theRole of Error in Character Development 197Christopher C. Kirby, Jonathan Hillard, and MathewHolmes17 The Comedy of Contradiction 210Erin Fay and Willie YoungPARTS IX: AND ON THE EPILOGUE . . .18 And Now the Story of a Wealthy Family Who Lost Everything:Arrested Development, Narrative, and How We Find Meaning227Tyler ShoresCONTRIBUTORS: Banana Stand Employee Roster 241INDEX: Banana Stand Inventory 247