Metaphysics and the Moving Image / Trevor Mowchun.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mowchun, Trevor, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Metaphysics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 265 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh, Scotland : Edinburgh University Press Ltd, [2023]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

<i>Metaphysics and the Moving Image</i> is an investigation into the medium of film's inheritance of metaphysics - Western philosophy's oldest and most ambitious form of 'truth-seeking.' Why does the moving image of film take up this ancient quest at the very moment when philosophy sought to abandon it once and for all? As the long age of metaphysics comes to a close with the Nietzschean 'death of God' and its crisis of nihilism, the emergence of film at the dawn of a new century brings forth a new absolute value, both life-affirming and more-than-human: 'the world in its own image'. Film radically transforms the metaphysical paradigm from rational speculation through concepts to mechanical revelation through images and sounds - the 'dream machine' at the heart of the medium's capacity to enlighten and enthrall.<br><br>In this book, Trevor Mowchun discusses film theorists and philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Stanley Cavell, Robert Bresson, and Heinrich von Kleist, in relation to films which possess a 'metaphysical film style,' including The Thin Red Line and The Turin Horse. Painting and photography are also considered a precursor to the moving image, but it's a specifically cinematic metaphysics which promises to lead us out of the traps of abstraction and alienation inadvertently set by old metaphysics. Mowchun demonstrates that in a post-metaphysical world, questions about being, value, truth, life and death return with renewed force, finding concrete yet open-ended responses in cinema.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Death of God, the Birth of Film, and the New Metaphysics

Chapter One. Image Breakthrough: Disclosure and Derailment in Painting, Photography, and Film

Chapter Two. The Evolution of the Concept of "World" from Philosophy to Film

Chapter Three. Paradise Exposed: Psychic Automatism in Film 103 Primer: "While the will is off its watch"

Chapter Four. Nature, Whose Death Shines a Light: Exteriority and Overexposure in The Thin Red Line

Chapter Five "Mother, I am Dumb ...": The Reevaluation of Friedrich Nietzsche in The Turin Horse

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 19 Oct 2023).

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-4744-9393-9

1-4744-9392-0

OCLC:

1371574618