Like any reasonable person, I watch the Fast and the Furious film franchise primarily for its insights into moral philosophy and political economy. At a fundamental level, the franchise is about what Harvard philosopher Christine Korsgaard identifies in The Sources of Normativity as the “intractable conflicts” that arise from our conflicting practical identities. As moral actors we are, first and foremost, human and subject to impersonal moral obligations. But in this neo-Kantian, human-centered framework we face the unavoidable reality that as humans we are each beautiful unique snowflakes with our own particular lives and particular obligations to particular people. To simply ignore our concrete obligations to one another in the face of abstract obligations to humanity would, itself, be inhuman.

Fast and Furious economics.