Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment

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.

"Rupert Read’s new book is a debate-changing contribution to academic film-as-philosophy . . . Moreover, it offers an accessible and stimulating read for movie enthusiasts eager for criticism fuelled by a passionate belief in the power of films to entertain or rivet and offer insights into the human condition . . . Whether one is encountering the confluence of philosophy and film for the first-time or is well-versed in its various topics and trajectories, Read’s canon- and mind-expanding contribution is invaluable." – Britt Harrison, University of York in Philosophical Investigations"Rupert Read is one of the most significant environmental philosophers alive. He is changing the way people think about and talk about the catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change. Any thinking person who cares about non-human animals or about our ecological crisis—and that means any thinking person—will want to read this book. Read has here applied his unique and highly-acclaimed reinterpretation of Wittgenstein to help us to better understand some of the most important films ever made as well as the very activity and meaning of film criticism and interpretation. He does this in a thoroughly accessible and engaging way. This book will change—and enrich—the way you see, think about, and talk about films, and the world they screen for us." – Gary Francione, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy, Rutgers University, USA"In his superb new book on film and philosophy—on film as philosophy—Rupert Read takes double inspiration from Ludwig Wittgenstein: from the latter’s advice, "Don’t think, but look!"—but equally from the subtle and sustained thinking that led Wittgenstein to that carefully considered conclusion. Here Rupert Read discusses a wide range of movies, from crowd-pleasers like The Lord of the Rings trilogy to esoteric masterpieces like Hiroshima mon Amour and Melancholia. In so doing, he offers a profound meditation on the possibilities of film, one that does justice to the potential scope of its philosophical ambitions but also to the profundities, both dark and glistening, of its surfaces." – Professor Louis Sass, author of "Madness and Modernism" and of "The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber and the Schizophrenic Mind""Enthralling and enlightening ... Read’s volume sparkles with ecological and liberatory wisdom, 'seeing' its case studies in a new light, meaning that the book is itself an 'eye-opener' ... Read argues that [films] can therapeutically cure our ill society since they necessarily involve a 'loving gaze', through which 'we see the world aright'. Such an unprecedentedly new interpretation of cinema."Rong Wan in Film-Philosophy

• Introduction: Film as Freedom: The Meaning of Film as Philosophy1. Implicating the Narrator, Implicating the Audience: Waltz with Bashir and Apocalypto2. How to Represent a Past We Would Rather Forget: Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad3. Learning from Conceptually Impossible Versions of Our World: Never Let Me Go and The Road4. When Melancholia is Exactly What is Called For: Melancholia and Solaris5. Gravity’s arc; or Gravity: A Space Odyssey6. The Fantasy of Absolute Safety through Absolute Power: The Lord of the Rings trilogy and AvatarConclusion: What have we learnt?