Wittgenstein at the Movies

Cinematic Investigations

Contributions by Steven Burns, Andrew Lugg, William Lyons, Michael O'Pray, Daniel Steuer, William C. Wees Edited by Béla Szabados, Christina Stojanova University of Regina, Can

Hardback - £92.00

Publication date:

24 March 2011

Length of book:

166 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

239x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739148853

Ludwig Wittgenstein loved movies, and based on his remarks on watching them, there is a strong connection between his experience of watching films and his thoughts on aesthetics. Furthermore, however, Wittgenstein himself has been invoked in recent cinema. Wittgenstein at the Movies is centered on in-depth explorations of two intriguing experimental films on Wittgenstein: Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein and Péter Forgács' Wittgenstein Tractatus. The featured essays look at cinematic interpretations of Wittgenstein's life and philosophy in a manner bound to provoke the lively interest of Wittgenstein scholars, film theorists, and students of film aesthetics. As well, the book engages a broader audience concerned with philosophical issues about film and Wittgenstein's cultural significance, with the world of fin-de-siècle Vienna, of Cambridge in the first half of the twentieth century, of artistic modernism.
Wittgenstein emphasized the role of showing beyond what can be said, and lamented his inability to present philosophy poetically. Movies are a medium for both of these techniques. Finally we have a collection of reflections on Wittgenstein in and at the movies that take these techniques seriously in concrete ways. The contributors are first-rate, and the topics are just what you would hope for.