Philosophy and Cinema
Objectives
1) To acquire advanced critical knowledge of the fundamental problems of the relationship between philosophy and cinema;
2) 1) To acquire advanced critical knowledge of the fundamental problems of the relationship between philosophy and ethics;
3) 1) To acquire advanced critical knowledge of the philosophical origins of gratuitous violence (in particular, the death of God and nihilism);
4) To acquire the capacity to think how cinema and literature can help us rethinking the following philosophical problem: which are the consequences of the death of God for morality?
General characterization
Code
722031092
Credits
10.0
Responsible teacher
Paolo Stellino
Hours
Weekly - 3
Total - 280
Teaching language
Portuguese
Prerequisites
N/A
Bibliography
BAZIN, André, O Cinema. Ensaios, São Paulo, Editora Brasiliense, 1991.
DELEUZE, Gilles, Cinéma 1 : LImage-mouvement (Paris, Les éditions de Minuit, 1983); Cinéma 2 : LImage-temps (Paris, Les éditions de Minuit, 1985).
HANEKE, Michael, Violence and the Media, in: R. Grundmann, A Companion to Michael Haneke, Malden (MA), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
STELLINO, Paolo, Para além da lei moral: morte de Deus e gratuidade de Feuerbach a Sartre, Revista Trágica: estudos de filosofia da imanência 10/1 (2017): pp. 60-72.
WARTENBERG, Thomas E., Beyond Mere Illustrations: How Films Can Be Philosophy, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64/1 (2006): pp 19-32.
Teaching method
a) The main teaching method is, first, that of dialogued lectures;
(b) second: watching and then discussing the key films involved in the course;
Evaluation method
(c) writen test(40%), (d) students are evaluated by a mandatory 10 pages essay (50%), (e) a positive participation in the classes is valued(10%)
Subject matter
The aim of this course is to consider the philosophical origins of gratuitous violence. The thesis defended is that gratuitous violence, particularly in its literary form, has its origin, to a great extent, in the death of God and in 19th century nihilism. The course will be divided in two parts. The first part will focus on the following theoretical question: is it possible to philosophize through film? In order to tackle this question, attention will be focused on authors such as Bazin, Deleuze, and Wartenberg. In the second part of the course, attention will be devoted on how cinema (Hitchcock, Bresson, Kubrick, and Haneke, among others) and literature (Dostoevsky, Gide, and Camus) can help us rethinking the following philosophical problem: what are the consequences of the death of God for morality? To this aim, attention will be focused on a specific period of Western philosophy, namely the one that goes from the Enlightenment to French existentialism