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of Wal‐Mart. Like Socrates, perhaps South Park – and Kyle and Stan more specifically – presents us with a way to reflect on what we think we really know, and through reflection move beyond our mindlessness.

      Notes

      1 1 For pop culture resources and philosophical resources related to this chapter please visit the website for this book: https://introducingphilosophythroughpopculture.com.

      2 2 Plato (1981). Apology . In: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo (trans. G.M.A. Grube). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing . Also see Xenophon (1965). Recollections of Socrates, and Socrates' Defense before the Jury (trans. A. Benjamin). Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill.

      3 3 Apology, 30.

      4 4 Apology, 28–29.

      5 5 H. Arendt (2003). Personal responsibility under dictatorship. In: Responsibility and Judgment , 40–41. New York: Schocken.

      6 6 Arendt, 49.

      7 7 See Plato (1991). The Republic of Plato (trans. D. Bloom). New York: Basic Books ; Aristotle (1999). Nicomachean Ethics , (trans. T. Irwin). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing .

      8 8 Apology, 41.

      9 9 Arendt, H. (1964). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil , 135–150. New York: Viking Press .

      10 10 Arendt, Some questions of moral philosophy. In: Responsibility and Judgment, 96–7.

      11 11 I owe this insight to Kyle Giroux.

      12 12 See Freud, S. (1965). The Interpretation of Dreams , 156–166. New York: Avon Books.

      13 13 For more on this issue, see Lear, J. (1990). Love and Its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis . New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux .

      14 14 Freud (1993). Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (trans. A.A. Brill), 261–73. New York: Dover.

      15 15 My thanks to Kyle Giroux for his work as a “South Park consultant” and his suggestions for ways to update this version. Additional thanks to Keith Wilde and Nicole Merola for their comments and suggestions on this essay, and to numerous students from Endicott College for their discussions of an earlier version of the essay. Errors remain my own.

      Robert Arp

      Summary

      The creators of South Park are aware of logical principles and purposely violate them to show the absurdities associated with certain beliefs, opinions, ideas, and arguments. In fact, much of South Park's humor concerns logical violations and the contradictions and problems that result. Logic is the study of the principles of correct reasoning associated with the formation and analysis of arguments. Using examples from South Park, this chapter offers a short logic lesson as an introduction to what philosophers do when they put forward and critique arguments. Topics covered include the parts of an argument (premise and conclusion), premise‐ and conclusion‐indicating words, deductive versus inductive arguments, good versus bad arguments, and a few common fallacies such as the famous Chewbacca defense utilized by the cartoon Johnny Cochran in the episode “Chef Aid.”

      Any form of prejudice and stereotyping, by definition, constitutes a hasty generalization.

      Consider the way Kyle's Jewish cousin, Kyle 2, is stereotyped in “The Entity,” or how Mexicans are type‐cast as lazy, gay people are all flamboyant like Big Gay Al or Mr. Slave, and African Americans are reverse type‐cast as “richers” in “Here Comes the Neighborhood.” Even Officer Barbrady commits the fallacy of hasty generalization in “Chickenlover” when, after reading a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, he concludes that all books must be this bad, and reading “totally sucks ass.” The creators of South Park play on people's hasty generalizations to make their points in episode after episode, probably because not only is prejudice something that morally harms people, but it also logically “harms” people's thinking as well.

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