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Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten, ed. Inception and Philosophy: Ideas to Die For. Chicago: Open Court, 2011. 319 pp. Softcover. ISBN 978-0-812697-33-9. $19.95.
In his brief introduction to Inceptbn and Philosophy: Ideas to Die For, Thorsten Botz-Bornstein opens with a deceptively simple claim, "Dreams are the original virtual reality" (vii) ; he then questions the true nature of both concepts- dreams and virtual reality. While not rapturously revelatory, the inquiry that takes place in subsequent chapters allows twenty scholars to dive into the philosophically charged world of Christopher Nolan's 2010 film, Inception, and to pull readers down to deeper levels of thinking as the scholars raise questions of morality, ontology, and epistemology.
The organization of the volume may frustrate some readers. Botz-Bornstein divides the volume into five "Levels," based on the five levels of reality in the film: "Come Back to Reality, Please," "We're Not in Your Dream," "The Infinite Staircase," "The Most Resilient Parasite," and "Downwards Is the Only Way Forwards." These five separate sections do not produce an overarching scholarly narrative or relate to one central theme, but there exist clusters of questions and problems in each. In "Come Back to Reality, Please," Chapters 1 through 4 set groundwork for the debates about the nature of actual rather than virtual reality from our perspectives in the extra-filmic world. How do we, as people who are not characters in a film with dream machines, question reality and understand this narrative as reflective of our reality? Chapters 5 through 8, "We're Not in Your Dream," add a layer focused on relational issues and an introduction to the moral or ethical questions of having shared dreams. In "The Infinite Staircase," the authors of Chapters 9 through 12 address the shaping of time and experience. "The Most Resilient Parasite," Chapters 13-16, takes a line of Cobb, the protagonist, about the power of an idea and the place of ideas in dreaming and living. Chapters 17 through 21, "Downwards Is the Only Way Forwards," provide, arguably, the most cohesive of the five levels. Each chapter considers how connections and differences between dream and reality have specific applications to living in response to grief, experience, day-to-day living, creating one's world, and how totems can ground but also entrap.
This unconventional organization does...