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Fight Club Philosophy

This is an actual paper that I turned in for my philosophy class last year.

Enjoy.

I chose to analyze the movie “Fight Club” which is the 1996 film adaption of the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. I believe that the plot of fight club shows how extreme behavior and irrational thinking will only lead to ruin. The movie starts out showing a tired, frustrated young man working at a boring job who meets an eccentric soap salesman on a plane, Tyler Durden. The two form a secret society known as “Fight Club” where frustrated average Joes come to beat the pulp out of each other and let out their inner desires for violence.

The club gets out of control when Tyler starts plotting violent crimes and makes plans to blow up several buildings. The narrator must stop Tyler and in the end realizes Tyler is simply his own desires manifested in a human form. The two men are really one person. One is the rational personality and the other, extreme. At the end of the movie, the narrator finds a way to kill Tyler and live a life of balance.

I believe this is a philosophical movie in several ways because it deals with ethics. It is the age-old battle of right and wrong and in the end, Aristotle’s “Golden Mean” prevailed. The narrator did not have to live a mundane life of solitude but he also did not have to live a life of excessive fighting, women, and crime.

A quote from the character Tyler Durden in the movie explains why this alter-ego exists, “All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I f*** like you wanna f***, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.” The narrator created Tyler as a way to give in to unnatural desires that should not be satisfied and almost ruined his life because of it. But in the end, reason rules over passion.