Glasgow Uni just launched a Game of Thrones course and everyone is obsessed

A brief glimpse of light in what has been a dark year


First The Simpsons, and now Game of Thrones – Glasgow University has gone TV series mad.

It’s arguably the best course ever and it was launched at Glasgow earlier today – behold, Game of Thrones and Philosophy: politics, power and war.

The tutor running the course, Dr John Donaldson, said: “The aim of the course is for people who take it to view philosophy as not just the sort of thing a few people do at university, but the sort of thing every person has a capacity and inclination toward.”

Dr John Donaldson

His course will “explore some of the many philosophical ideas embedded in the show’s tales of struggle and conquest.”

It’ll cover such philosophical topics as game theory, war theory, and the nature of political authority, among others. It aims to include John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes – to name but a few philosophers whose ideas will be incorporated.

The course is not the only pop-culture-meets-philosophy class available at Glasgow University. Also on offer is The Sopranos and Philosophy: self-interest, morality, and the ethics of loyalty, as well as The Wire and philosophy: drugs, Diogenes and the death of the American dream.

Similar classes on offer delve into the philosophy of Doctor Who, Westworld and stand-up comedy.

The course will run on Saturday afternoons and has been designed to pique the interest of would-be philosophers.

Dr Donaldson said: “I hope they go away with their appetite whetted and they want to come back and study philosophy further, and read it on their own time.”