Disappearing Act
Summary
This chapter focuses on Woody Allen's trick philosophy. Allen's trick philosophy relies on the power of unconstrained reflection to make God, the external world, enduring physical objects, other people, knowledge, morality, responsibility, character, meaning, beauty, power, action, even one's self disappear. This trick philosophy is also called factoring philosophy, because its characteristic pattern of reasoning is to factor out the purely subjective, what is for us, from the purely objective, what is in itself. Woody Allen's philosophy is plausibly identified with existentialism. In discussing the disappearing magic of Allen's trick philosophy, the chapter also discusses global skepticism and the projectionist theory in detail.