Pulp Fiction as Philosophy: Bad Faith, Authenticity, and the Path of the Righteous Man

Pulp Fiction is pulp and transcends pulp. As such, it is an authentic film. It is of its time, aware of the concrete reality of its historical context, teaming with cultural allusions. It is a self-conscious, postmodern pastiche, with a nonlinear narrative. But Pulp Fiction also transcends all of this. It celebrates morality, mercy, and forgiveness, and rewards authenticity of the deepest kind, requiring acknowledgment of our finite realities, our infinite nature, and God’s grace. Pulp Fiction is postmodern, but it is also modern. By embodying this duality and challenging the viewer to engage with it themselves through the distinct attitudes of the main characters, Pulp Fiction is able to present an engaging, compelling, complex, and opinionated meditation on human life as a struggle for self-knowledge and authenticity.