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A review by mindfroth
The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart by Noel Carroll
2.0
This has some interesting insights, and compiles some interesting questions from the field, but overall it is a bad book, with a thesis not worthy of explication, and many premises too which the author labors to defend in needless, tedious, hairsplitting fashion. The amount of repetition and self-referential metacommentary is exasperating. The amount of space he squanders talking about how he doesn't have space to go into further detail is mind blowing.
At least the author acknowledges what the reader is likely to be thinking all along:
"It is my impression that the curiosity/fascination resolution that I have offered to the paradox of horror—despite its reliance on somewhat technical notions like categorical violations, and co-existentialism—is pretty obvious. It is certainly not as jazzy as many reductivist psychoanalytic theories. In fact, it may strike many as not being theoretical at all, but as nothing but a long-winded exercise in common sense."
Beware the wonkishness that is analytic philosophy.
At least the author acknowledges what the reader is likely to be thinking all along:
"It is my impression that the curiosity/fascination resolution that I have offered to the paradox of horror—despite its reliance on somewhat technical notions like categorical violations, and co-existentialism—is pretty obvious. It is certainly not as jazzy as many reductivist psychoanalytic theories. In fact, it may strike many as not being theoretical at all, but as nothing but a long-winded exercise in common sense."
Beware the wonkishness that is analytic philosophy.