Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality

Awesome insight to the lyrics of Black Sabbath. Not at all satanic as the right wing Christian conservatives would want you to believe. They are looking at the world from the dark side and wishing for a better place. Highly entertaining.

A lot of this is a little far fetched, but it was an interesting read, and most Black Sabbath fans I think will like it.

This is the first volume in this series that I have read and therefore I have no idea how it may relate to the others in terms of breadth, depth and treatment of the subject. I can say, though, that I am likely to dip into a few of the others where the subject is of interest to me because, frankly, I enjoyed this a whole lot. While a couple stuck a (non-triton) sour chord for me - bound to happen in any sort of anthology, my only real complaint, honestly was that I wished a few of these had gone into greater depth and length. For some of these writers/thinkers and there ideas, more time in their presence would certainly be welcome.While the philosophy presented here rarely got terribly deep or intricate, I can appreciate that the book (and by extension, the series) is not intended for academia. The desired audience here is the thinking Sabs fan, not the academic curious about the Sabs. It is assumed the reader is versed in Sabbath, not philosophy. As a result, the philosophy here is, as a whole, on the 101 level (with some 200 and 300 level arguments mixed in here and there). And I presume the idea is to take the pop culture fan and show how thought and intellectual approach can be part of their / our / my world, too. And to that end, this is a pretty darned good book, as will as being fun. It helps that the contributors are clearly Sab fans. Several are far more knowledgeable in the sub-worlds on metal than an old guy who loved 'em in the 70's, like me. (And I am sorry, Mr. - unless in the meantime it has become Dr. - Cray - w/o Ozzy it ISN'T really quite Black Sabbath.)Along those lines, most of the examination of Sabbath's work itself is focused on the Ozzy years and the first 6 albums. While Dio, Heaven & Hell, et al, do show up here and there, the bulk of the examination of the *work* of Black Sabbath, as well as much of the examination of the *entity* of Black Sabbath, is on the early stuff that created a whole new world out of working class angst, some bad dreams and Geezer's interests. And of course, for me anyway, this is fine. That's the stuff that matters even if some of the other stuff was fair to middling.And it has a great, consistent sense of humor about itself, which is no small achievement for a multi-author anthology of philosophical examinations of a (THE) heavy metal band.For thinking Sabbath fans, for certain.

Black Sabbath and philosophy are synonyms. A complex experience for mind and senses which demands full attention.Same thing with the book.Sabbath Bloody Sabbath album as reading soundtrack to the book is perfect experience.

Great book.

"Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality" explores a number of themes found in the lyrics of the band's many popular songs. Themes explored in this collection of essays are existentialism, moral evil, apocalyptic literature, the devil's tone, music and the will, the phenomenology of perception, Aristotle's views on music, categorization of concepts, what makes something a work of art, the presence of Apollonian and Dionysian concepts present in Black Sabbath's lyrics, issues related to the continuity of identity, social existence and its effect on consciousness, Cartesian skepticism, and just war theory. Upon close inspection, Black Sabbath's lyrics are shown to provide a rich and fertile ground for the exploration of many philosophical themes. This isn't just a heavy metal band making noise - far from it. Throughout these essays, the reader is shown how deep, meaningful, and socially relevant Black Sabbath's songs are. And the enthusiasm of both the editor and the contributing essayists is clearly evident throughout this book. Unfortunately, this collection of essays falls short in a number of respects. Weak essays that stray from the "and philosophy" mandate, coupled with shorter-than-usual essays for this genre, and one-too-many typographical and grammatical errors, along with the presence of the "curse of the book's editor", all conspired to prevent this collection from being a stellar entry in the Wiley-Blackwell "Philosophy and Popular Culture" series.What first caught my eye about this book was how short it is. A total of seventeen essays covered 203 pages, in a genre that typically sees books ranging from 242 pages to 288 pages in length. The reason for this was allegedly an attempt by the editor, William Irwin, to exercise "quality control", to keep the essays "tight and short" (personal e-mail communication). Truly, these are noble goals. However, I believe that the shorter essay length hamstrings (most) writers in that they will end up lacking adequate space with which do justice to their chosen themes. The proof of this can be found not just in the number of essays that were weak, but also in how many essays felt that they needed more than the usual one page of Notes at the end. I counted seven essays out of seventeen that had more than one page of Notes. One essay (chap. 10) had three and a half pages of Notes. When an author feels compelled to have so many pages of notes for an essay of ten and a half pages, then the author did not have enough room to express his ideas within the actual essay. Whether this shorter essay length is a harbinger of a new format for essays in this genre, only time will tell.As I began to read, I quickly became concerned that this book was going to be just like another weaker entry in Wiley-Blackwell's series, "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy". Editor William Irwin began with "Beyond Good and Evil: Facing Your Demons With Black Sabbath and Existentialism". I felt like an innocent bystander at a car crash as I read an essay that seemed to simply point at a particular lyric and then note how it matched up with an existentialist philosopher's ideas. No real substance or development of a theme, in my opinion, just an essay with a "point and click" mentality. "The curse" has struck again.The next four chapters increased my sense of foreboding, and made me a bit "Paranoid". Although I learned a lot, especially about how Black Sabbath's music could be looked at as a type of apocalyptic literature (chap. 3), and the history and use of the tritone, also known as the "devil's note", in music (chap, 4), there was no real development or use of philosophy. Indeed, just as I thought that things were going to start picking up, James Heathers' "The Worst of All Possible Worlds: Schopenhauer Meets Sabbath" fell flat with an essay that had no real development of the theme.Did it get any better? Surprisingly, yes, and more so given that the next two essays prove that it is indeed possible to craft an excellent essay in a shorter number of pages. In what has to be one of the best essays in the genre that I have yet come across, Ken Pepper's "Tony Iommi's Hand of Doom: From Plastic Fingertips to Creative Freedom" took Merleau-Ponty's ideas on phenomenology and freedom and brought them head-to-head with Sartre's ideas. Black Sabbath leader and guitarist Tony Iommi lost some tips of his fingertips in a workplace accident, yet proceeded to overcome his handicap by using plastic and leather fingertip extensions. Merleau-Ponty's ideas about the body schema are used to explore the objective and the subjective, along with ideas of freedom. This essay was mind-numbingly spectacular.Mr. Pepper's essay was followed by Greg Littmann's superb "The Art of Black Sabbath: Aristotle Joins the Band". Here, Mr. Littman explores Aristotle's views on music by asking whether Aristotle could have ever been part of Black Sabbath, and if so, which position he would have had. Mr. Littmann crafted an enjoyable and thorough essay that wove Aristotle's ideas with the reality of Black Sabbath.Eight of the next nine essays were solid. Three of these dealt with issues of identity (chaps. 11, 12, and 13), but it was Mark D. White's "The Name Remains the Same - But Should It?" that took the issue of identity (what makes Black Sabbath be Black Sabbath) and explored an ethical angle: the reasons that fans have to expect a band to maintain its line-up, and whether bands have an ethical obligation to do so. Mr. White took an expected philosophical theme, the issue of the continuity of identity, and then "flipped the script" and looked at the effect of this on the fans. Mr. White invoked Kant and covered his topic quite nicely in a mere seven pages (but with a little over a page of Notes).Jacob M. Held's "'As the War Machine Keeps Turning': Just War Theory, Pacifism, and the War on Terror" covered "jus ad bellum" and "jus in bello" quickly and succinctly, and then applied it to America's War on Terror. A good read, and, again, a good example of a well-crafted essay in a shorter format.The very last essay, Robert Arp's "Stop Stereotyping Sabbath: Sex, Subjugation, and Stupidity" was a surprising let-down. I have come to expect that the final essay in some way wraps up the collection by addressing a philosophical theme that has a great deal of relevance and import. In Mr. Arp's case, I found a confusing muddle that went nowhere. It wasn't even good enough to label as "social commentary". It should not have been included in this book.Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. I learned a lot and read some very good essays. I think that the new format of shorter essays was a good experiment, and I hope that it is not in and of itself the new wave of how essays in this genre will be crafted. Quality before quantity, both in number of pages and number of essays. This new shorter format can work, but it is incredibly difficult, as most people are, let's face it, not good at structured thinking or expressing themselves via the written word. But as Black Sabbath has said, "Never Say Die!" just keep trying to "Master Philosophy and Pop Culture". John V. Karavitis

It’s not hard cover

A very interesting read - i wonder what the band would make of it?

Wie zu erwarten finden sich hier Essays von unterschiedlicher Qualität. Manche sind relativ banal und man denkt, das bißchen an Interpretation und Philosophie hätt ich auch noch hingekriegt, andere sind eher musikjournalistischer und musiktheoretischer Natur, die kennt man schon aus anderen Publikationen, und dann gibt es die, wo Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer und Bertrand Russel bemüht werden, um dem Phänomen Black Sabbath auf die Spur zu kommen. Da es hauptsächlich um die Texte geht, ist dies vor allem ein Tribut an Bassist Geezer Butler, der das Gros der Texte bei den Ur-Sabs geschrieben hat. Stellenweise geht die Zuschreibung der Autorenschaft etwas durcheinander, da wird auch After Forever Geezer zugeschrieben, obwohl das nun gerade der eine Song mit Text ist, für den Tony Iommi allein die Credits bekommen hat, oder es geht kurz um Texte aus Ozzys Solophase, die dem Ozzman zugeschrieben werden, obwohl mittlerweile bekannt ist, dass selbst da noch häufig Bassisten und Drummer und andere die Texte für ihn geschrieben haben. Ach ja, mit am amüsantesten fand ich einen Text, in dem der Autor Aristoteles' Texte als Referenzpunkt heranzieht und sich zur Veranschaulichung vorstellt, A. hätte in den frühen 70ern versucht, Mitglied bei Black Sabbath zu werden. Ist schon ein amüsanter Schmöker, und danach dürfte jedem Zweifler klar sein, dass es bei Black Sabbath eben um viel mehr ging als Satan, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll.