A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-138-59602-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 244 Seiten, Format (B × H): 236 mm x 160 mm, Gewicht: 464 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Aesthetics

Inspired by the philosophy of Wittgenstein and his idea that the purpose of real philosophical thinking is not to discover something new, but to show in a strikingly different light what is already there, this book provides philosophical readings of a number of ‘arthouse’ and Hollywood films. Each chapter contains a discussion of two films—one explored in greater detail and the other analyzed as a minor key which reveals the possibility for the book's ideas to be applied across different films, registers, and genres. The readings are not only interpretive, but they offer a way of thinking and feeling about, with, and through films which is genuinely transformative. Rupert Read’s main contention is that certain films can bring about a change in how we see the world. He advocates an ecological approach to film-philosophy analysis, arguing that film can re-shape the viewer’s relationship to the environment and other living beings. The transformative 'wake-up call' of these films is enlightenment in its true sense. The result is a book that ambitiously aims to change, though film, how we think of ourselves and our place in the world, at a time when such change is more needed than ever before.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Read, Rupert

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Installations-, Aktions-, Computer- und Videokunst

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Film as Freedom: The Meaning of Film as Philosophy

1. Implicating the Narrator, Implicating the Audience: Waltz with Bashir and Apocalypto

2. How to Represent a Past We Would Rather Forget: Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad

3. Learning from Conceptually Impossible Versions of Our World: Never Let Me Go and The Road

4. When Melancholia is Exactly What is Called For: Melancholia and Solaris

5. Gravity’s arc; or Gravity: A Space Odyssey

6. The Fantasy of Absolute Safety through Absolute Power: The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Avatar

Conclusion: What have we learnt?

Über Autor(innen)

Rupert Read is Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is a renowned Wittgensteinian scholar, with research interests in political and environmental philosophy. His published monographs to date are Kuhn (co-authored, 2002), Applying Wittgenstein (2007), Philosophy for Life (2007), There is No Such Thing as a Social Science (2008), Wittgenstein Among the Sciences (2012), and A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes (2012). His editorial experience includes The New Hume Debate (co-edited, 2000), Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell (2005), and the work for which he is perhaps still best known, The New Wittgenstein (Routledge, 2000), which offers a major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein’s thinking.