Department of Philosophy Sponsors Movie Night: Examined Life
The Department of Philosophy will screen the film Examined Life Sunday, May 2 at 6:30 p.m. in Lyons 418. The event is hosted by the Department of Philosophy and the “Philosophy & Film” course team-taught by Tanya Loughead, PhD, and Girish Shambu, PhD. A question and answer period will follow the film.
Socrates famously proclaimed, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Cornel West asks, “How do you examine yourself? What happens when you begin calling into question your tacit assumptions and unarticulated presuppositions and begin to become a different kind of person?” Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets!
In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.
Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District questioning our culture’s fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West—perhaps America’s best-known public intellectual—compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be.
Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy’s power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it.
This film features Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor.
Submitted by: Tanya Loughead, PhD, assistant professor, philosophy
