Fans of the TV show ?Lost? noticed more than one interesting turn of events during the season finale last night. For Locker Room readers the most interesting turn was what happened to John Locke. For the uninitiated, one of the key survivors of the crash of Oceanic 815 is named John Locke. As the other survivors try to escape the island, Locke decides to stay. In fact, he replaces Ben as the leader of the ?Others.?
Flash-forward about 3 years and the six survivors who escape the island are confronted by death and funeral of a mysterious man named Jeremy Bentham. In the final scene of the show, the casket is opened and there lies John Locke, the survivor not the philosopher.
Now the press and the blogosphere are all a buzz about the reason the writers used the names of two philosophers in the series. Perhaps one of the writers had a course in philosophy in college and the only thing that stuck was the names. Or perhaps the there is a connection between the philosophy and the meaning of the show. I will leave it to quicker minds than mine to figure this out, but I will tune in next season for the answers.
This is not the first time popular culture crosses paths with philosophy. I just finished a book of articles by conservative political philosophers who examine the political philosophy in movie “Casablanca .” Political Philosophy Comes To Rick’s: Casablanca And American Civic Culture, James F. Pontuso, editor
