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I would argue that Harry Potter is the perfect story to use as a foundation for philosophy. I never got into HP or HPMOR, but at the turn of the 21st century Harry Potter occupied a position among our elite children similar to the Odyssey among the Ancient Greek children. The Odyssey was written to be entertaining and compelling in order to motivate Greek boys to participate in sailing expeditions and behave prosocially. This was its first and primary objective, because this was the first and primary objective of the community. Harry Potter motivated young Western boys and girls to enter elite academic institutions and eventually the PMC class, and it accomplished this wonderfully, with higher-ranked institutions being the first to establish Quidditch clubs. How did Harry Potter do this? Briefly,
Every aspect of “elite life” is exaggerated in the Harry Potter universe, made into a super-stimuli of sorts, which winds up enhancing interest in their real world equivalents. The letter of admission to the institution becomes the owl (wisdom personified) delivering a beautiful letter, which rescues the half-blood boy from a life of antisocial obesity-ridden mediocrity among those of inherently lesser ability. The half-blood boy’s real family and community are actually among the qualitatively superior wizards, where he belongs. The stupid “muggles” are no match for the pull of the elite institution. 12yo readers are actually sad that they never got their admissions letter, because children are delusional, and this disappointment becomes interest in academies later on.
Book-learning becomes magic learning; formulae become spells. (This is actually a device used to make medieval priests interested in reading books, too; close to all of the “magic” books in medieval history were written by and for priests, and they made extravagant promises of ability-enhancement from magically finding a thief to summoning a demon. Now, none of these worked, and there isn’t even any symbolic truth in them; the point was to maximize the interest of the priest for books, which will make him more interested in the Bible longterm (especially when he realizes the magic doesn’t work lol)). Paintings with history become “talking paintings”. Etc.
Hogwarts is, of course, written as a super-stimuli of elite institutions in the Western tradition. It uses aspects of Oxford, Cambridge, the monastic institutions, all blended into one.
Every aspect of Bildungsroman is associated with Hogwarts. First time friend picks you up in his car? It’s a flying car, and of course you crash into a tree (no, no, on top of a tree…)
Social issues like institutional corruption and racism also make an appearance. Voldemort is bad, even though wizards are objectively superior and their blood objectively superior; the fear one experiences saying his name is the same as saying the N-word. Draco and the Slytherins? Etc.
Okay, so Harry Potter is the defining book of the 21st century aspirational PMC child. (The PMC is Potter Mania Culture). Now let’s sail back to the Greeks. Greek philosophers applied an allegorical interpretation on top of the Odyssey, for educating elite children. Byzantines as late as the 12th century were using the Odyssey as “hooks” for their ideas. This is really what it’s about: mnemonic hooks, no different than in a memory palace. Hogwarts is one enormous memory palace to be exploited by philosophers. The story is sealed into the child’s mind, and then after that you can use his memories to add philosophy. This isn’t unique to the Pagans either. Philo interpreted every primitive part of Old Testament as an allegory of Greek philosophical ideas, which were genuinely completely retconned into the stories. The Church Fathers did something similar. If you want to be blasphemous, Jesus is the beginning of philosophy on top of the Hebrew Canon, reinterpreting and repossessing previous information in light of greater wisdom, and his story was written to be compelling from a number of different angles, eternally compelling. Jordan Peterson today is trying to use Old Testament stories for his ideas. TheLastPsychiatrist, an old favorite, used both popular culture and Greek myths.
Are philosophical treatises more “serious”? Frankly, I think they are completely unserious, because no one serious reads them. It would be one thing if our philosophers resided in an Ivory Tower on our community, and the crumbs of their wisdom dropped down to us as table crumbs drop down to dogs, but they seem to reside in an ivory tower on their own private island. Almost nothing of what they do will ever actually influence the lives and minds of even our elites, not just the normal and more functioning Americans. Because wisdom needs to be relatable to mainstream culture in order to be consumed. It needs to be digestible, easy, tasty. Because we don’t have a landed gentry, we have stressed elites who don’t have infinite time, and the children of our super wealthy are also retarded. Wisdom is like a small amount of leaven that a woman took and hid in 60 lbs of flour, and it leavened all the bread, blended into it, making it lighter and easier. If your wisdom isn’t relatable it’s not really wisdom.
(Replying also to @Corvos)
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