Topics in Film & Literature
Alienation, Absurd, Dread, Despair, Death.
The Burden of the Human Condition: The Existentialist Novel and Film
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A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.
Albert Camus
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L’enfer c’est les autres.
Jean-Paul Sartre |
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Is Existentialism a Philosophy?
If one discounts the remote ancestry of Pascal and Rousseau (but never leaving out Kierkegaard or, mainly, Nietzsche) it is by Heidegger’s mediation (who contumaciously and—according to Walter Kaufman, with reason—resisted the label “existentialist”) that the concern with the paradoxical “ontological existence” emerges as a scalding philosophical subject. By means of Heidegger’s canonization of a French sage (a sanctification that the latter readily accepts) existentialism is launched to the philosophical symposium. About him, Heidegger writes:
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Sartre formulates the basic principle of existentialism in these words: existence precedes essence. Here he uses the terms existentia and essentia in the old sense of metaphysics which says since Plato: the essential precedes the existential. Sartre reverses this sentence. But the reversal of a metaphysical sentence remains a metaphysical sentence. Being such a sentence, it remains, like all metaphysics, in the oblivion of the truth of Being. … The main principle of Sartre about the priority of existentia over essentia certainly justifies the name “existentialism” as a title which is appropriate for this philosophy. (the last emphasis is not Heidegger’s) |
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Philosophy? Anti-philosophy? The weltanschauung of the fifties? The lightening rod of la nouvelle vague? Through a wide-sweeping survey, we’ll make our best effort to analyze the characteristics and narratives of existentialism: To take advantage of the opportunities afforded by a comparative reading and thinking, the films and texts will be approached through questions that interrogate them not only from philosophical, literary, cinematographical, and cultural analysis, but also from ethics and politics.
We will screen and read (oftentimes from) some works of the following bibliography and filmography:
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THE NOVELS
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_ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground (1864) Trans. with an introd. by Jessie Coulson. New York: Penguin, 1972
_ Herman Hesse, Der Steppenwolf / Steppenwolf (1927) New York: Picador, 2002
∙ Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée / Nausea (1938) New York: New Directions, 1959
∙ Albert Camus, L’Étranger / The Stranger (1942) New York: Vintage, 1989
---. La Peste / The Plague (1947) New York: Vintage, 1991
---. La Chute / The Fall (1956) New York: Vintage, 1991
∙ Christiane Rochefort, Le repós du guerrier / Warrior’s Rest (1958) – Trans. by Lowell Bair, New York: D. McKay Co., 1959
∙ Richard Wright, The Outsider (1953) New York: Putnam, 1982 |
THE CANONICAL EXISTENTIALIST SHORT STORY
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∙ Jean-Paul Sartre, “Le Mur” / “The Wall,” from Jean-Paul Sartre, Intimacy (1938 / 1939) New York: Norton, 1948 / Frogmore, UK: Panther, 1967
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THE CANONICAL APOLOGY OF EXISTENTIALISM
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∙ Jean-Paul Sartre, “L'Existentialisme est un humanisme” / “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946), from Stephen Priest, ed. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings (2001) New York: Routledge, 2002
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THE FILMS
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∙ Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot Le Fou (1965) - France / Italy
∙ Igmar Bergman, Det Sjunde inseglet / The Seventh Seal (1957) - Sweden
---. Persona (1966) - Sweden
∙ Luchino Visconti,Lo Straniero / The Stranger (1967) – Italy / France / Algeria
∙ Bob Rafelson, Five Easy Pieces(1970) – USA
∙ Richard C. Sarafian, Vanishing Point (1971) - USA
∙ Michelangelo Antonioni, Professione: Reporter / The Passenger (1975) - Italy / France / Spain / USA
_Hal Ashby, Being There (1979) - Japan / UK / USA
∙ Luis Puenzo, La Peste / The Plague (1992) - France / UK / Argentina |
EXISTENTIALIST THOUGHT
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∙ Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe / The Myth of Sisyphos (1942) New York: Vintage, 1991
∙ Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Etre et le néant / Being and Nothingness (1943) New York: Washington Square, 2001
∙ Walter Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre.New York: Penguin, 1975 |
CRITICAL PUNDITRY |
∙ Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (1964) Trans. Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will, Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973
∙ Herbert Marcuse, "Sartre's Existentialism," fromStudies in Critical Philosophy [1972] Trans. Joris De Bres, Boston: Beacon, 1973
∙ Thomas Nagel, “Death” and “The Absurd,” from Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (1979) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000
∙ Roger Scruton, A short history of modern philosophy: from Descartes to Wittgenstein (1981) London; New York: Routledge, 1995 |
Le Grand Finale: Sigmund Freud. FREUD??!!
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_ Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents ( 1930) New York: Norton, 1986
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