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Examined Life - DVD/La vie sous examen - DVD
Description
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” —Socrates
Philosophers have long done their best thinking when directly engaged
with the outside world, not in isolation from it. Socrates roved the Athenian
agora, courting trouble with the authorities. Rousseau immortalized his
rambles through nature on the printed page. Nietzsche once said that only
ideas conceived while walking have any value.
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. 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.
Featuring Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony
Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and
Sunaura Taylor.
2009, 88 min 05 s
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