Philosophy Through Film

Catalog description

Presumably, you care about movies. Why do you care about movies? Because they entertain you? Because they are beautiful? Because they are informative? Because they make you feel things? The guiding thought of this course will be that we care about movies because they participate in the practice of philosophy—or at least they have that potential. Of course, this also presumes that we care about philosophy—a claim that will take some time to defend. To test that hypothesis—that films have the potential to participate in the practice of philosophy—we first need to consider what the practice of philosophy is. Then, we will need to say something about what film is. And then, we can examine whether film can do philosophy. In the first part of the course, we will analyze the medium of film in order to clarify the characteristics of film that would allow it to be philosophical. In the second part of the course, we will explore how those characteristics of film contribute to how we think philosophically about our lives. In particular, students will explore problems pertaining to subjectivity (What it is to be a human being?) and to ethics (How do I know the right thing to do?). Each week, we will watch a film—including Jeanne Dielman, Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Get Out, and Spring Breakers—and read a philosophical text—including Aristotle, Cavell, Merleau-Ponty, Parfit, and Adorno—with the aim of placing the two in conversation. Life and Beauty: Kant’s Critique of Judgment