Dune and Philosophy

Is it morally right to create a savior? Would interplanetary travel change human nature? What is the deeper meaning of desert ecologies? Are there some drugs we would want to be addicted to? Does history repeat itself? "He who controls the spice controls the universe." In Frank Herbert's Dune saga, the future of the Imperium depends on one young man, Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto and heir to the massive fortune promised by the desert planet Arrakis and its vast reservoirs of the drug "melange." With his mother Jessica, a devotee of the pseudo-religious Bene Gesserit order, Paul must find his place in the culture of the desert-dwelling Fremen while contending with both the devious rival House Harkonnen and the gargantuan desert sandworms--the source of the spice. Dune and Philosophy recruits 23 philosophers to mine not spice, but wisdom from Frank Herbert's Dune . Part of the New Wave of science fiction of the 60s and 70s, Dune is characterized by literary experimentation with shifting styles, differing narrative points of view, and the "psychedelic" culture of the period. Across the "Duniverse," including the first in an expected series of films brought to the big screen by Denis Villeneuve in 2021, the long-term strategies and intricate plots of warring Great Houses are driven not just by Heighliner spacecraft, but also by mind-expanding drugs, psychic powers, dystopian themes, race memories, and martial arts allowing control of the mind and the body. Tens of thousands of years into an intergalactic future, can humans endure, or will we sacrifice what is most important in our humanity for power, glory, religion, and of course, the control of the spice? Dune and Philosophy sets an intellectual course through sand and stars to find out. To learn more about the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, visit www.andphilosophy.com