Zelda and Philosophy!
This is a Post Devoted to My Upcoming Book on The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy
Welcome to our page for the upcoming book Zelda and Philosophy! Since my last book on Zelda, several new games in the series have been released, including Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and the more recent Echoes of Wisdom. As readers of the new book will see — to be released later in 2025 — these games open up new areas for philosophical reflection. Of course, the book also touches on the titles we’ve all loved for many years, from A Link to the Past to Majora’s Mask.
The new book is currently in production, here is the call for abstracts to get a sense of the project (unfortunately no new submissions are currently being accepted). This book will be published as a part of Wiley-Blackwell Publishing’s Pop-Culture and Philosophy series. While I am editing the book, it is a team effort and I couldn’t do it without all the amazing authors who’ve submitted chapters. We are all diehard Zelda fans as well as philosophers.
Anyway this page is devoted to the new book and any Zelda-related news, ideas, thoughts, etc. I will make updates about promotions, release date, etc. Contributing authors please feel free to add anything you deem relevant with respect to Zelda and the book in the comments section, including any of your own ideas for promoting the book. And anyone else who happens upon this article with thoughts, feel free to share them.
I want to end this short article with a recent study on open world video games. Citing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom the study concludes that open world games can potentially lead to relaxation and enhanced well being. To be clear, I haven’t looked in depth at the study — and, yes, I know that some Zelda games might not be considered open world — but it’s just cool to see how much the conversation around video games has changed. The “video games lead to violent behavior” canard from my youth having been thoroughly debunked, we can now just appreciate games like those in the Zelda series for the tremendous works of art that they are.