M. E. Littlejohn - Böcker

Hailed as one of America's original art forms, film has the distinctive character of crossing high and low art. But film has done more than this. According to American philosopher Stanley Cavell, film was also a place where America in the 1930s and 1940s did its thinking, a tradition that was taken up and enriched throughout world cinema. Can film indeed think? That is, can film do the work of philosophy?Following Cavell's lead to think along the tear of the analytic-continental traditions, this book draws from both sides of the philosophical divide to reflect on this question. Spanning generations and disciplines, pondering everything from art house classics to mainstream blockbusters, Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies aims to fling open the doors to this conversation on all sides. Inquiring into both philosophy's word on film and film's word to philosophy, the interdisciplinary dialogue of this book traverses the conceptual and the particular as it considers how film catalyzes our thinking and sets us talking. After viewing the world through film, we find our world--and ourselves--transformed by deeper understanding and new possibilities.This book aims to provide a novel and engaging way in to thinking with and about this enduringly popular art form.

Hailed as one of America's original art forms, film has the distinctive character of crossing high and low art. But film has done more than this. According to American philosopher Stanley Cavell, film was also a place where America in the 1930s and 1940s did its thinking, a tradition that was taken up and enriched throughout world cinema. Can film indeed think? That is, can film do the work of philosophy?Following Cavell's lead to think along the tear of the analytic-continental traditions, this book draws from both sides of the philosophical divide to reflect on this question. Spanning generations and disciplines, pondering everything from art house classics to mainstream blockbusters, Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies aims to fling open the doors to this conversation on all sides. Inquiring into both philosophy's word on film and film's word to philosophy, the interdisciplinary dialogue of this book traverses the conceptual and the particular as it considers how film catalyzes our thinking and sets us talking. After viewing the world through film, we find our world--and ourselves--transformed by deeper understanding and new possibilities.This book aims to provide a novel and engaging way in to thinking with and about this enduringly popular art form.

In an age where thinking is too often restricted to its scientific exercise, how better to liberate the full powers of our reason than to engage with the possibility of what exceeds them? What better way to measure our progress beyond modernist metaphysics and the contemporary nihilism it generated than to discuss the question of God?Written by specialists in French philosophy, the essays in this volume use the question of God to identify problematic metaphysical patterns still carved into our thought as well as to reconstruct new paths for philosophy that open beyond these limitations. Discussing the work of Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Héring, Levinas, Derrida, and others, contributions range across topics including the influence of Neo-Platonic philosophy on theology, the errors of modern rationalism, and phenomenology’s interest in religion.Even when drawing on resources from faith traditions, this French engagement with the question of God defies any simplistic attempt to relegate its efforts to theology; the authors of this volume clearly demonstrate its deeply-embedded relation to the history of thought and its relevance to questions central for the task of philosophy today. With a special attention the work of significant philosophers less known outside of France, this volume promises to deepen the Anglophone reception and understanding of contemporary French philosophy.

The world is increasingly polarized along religious, ethnic, race, gender, class, and ideological lines. But must such diversity necessarily breed suspicion, fear, or violence? Richard Kearney invites us to consider another path. He wagers that the cause of our divisions often lies not in difference but in a lack of creative imagination. Ever in a spirit of dialogue, he shows how poetics and narrative imagination can break the hold of hostility and open new possibilities of reconciliation, accomplishing what moral arguments alone cannot.Now, more than ever, there is an urgent need for Kearney’s work, which addresses our current moment of crisis and division, providing pathways of creative response and healing. This book follows Kearney’s journey through the fields of philosophy of the imagination, hermeneutics, philosophy of religion, ethics, psychology, practical philosophy, and politics. The selection of writings in this volume offers to the specialist and the general reader a concise, well-rounded entry into one of the most prolific and wide-ranging thinkers in contemporary philosophy.