《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》经典观后感有感

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》是一部由Astra Taylor执导，Anthony K. Lewis / 彼得·辛格 / Cornel West主演的一部纪录片类型的电影，特精心从网络上整理的一些观众的观后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(一)：与八位哲学家漫步纽约

　　avital ronell：

　　对意义的渴望是有毁灭性的

　　即时的满足感所喂养和刺激

　　eter singer：

　　减少这世上不必要的痛苦

　　为了世界更美好

　　kwame anthony appiah：

　　世界主义者，母系氏族的舅舅

　　martha nussbaum：

　　霍布斯洛克卢梭康德

　　社会契约论自然状态

　　cornel west：

　　恶臭的生命本质那就是历史

　　那些没思维审视没疑问的

　　michael hardt：

　　你们回北美发动革命吧

　　统治精英替换

　　人类本性是被建构的

　　民主是所有人管理所有人

　　lavoj zizek：

　　意义的疑惑艾滋是罪恶惩罚

　　生态学说别乱搞dna和大自然

　　在方程与技术形态中寻求诗与灵性

　　judith butler：

　　unaura taylor

　　德勒兹社身体能做什么

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(二)：一个浅显易懂的片儿

　　前些日子跟Gianpaolo闲聊的时候，他跟我说起这个片子，我就翻出来看。他本意是让我看齐泽克，因为这哥们挺神棍，好像总是对什么都不满意，批评那种已经变成“意识形态”的环境运动。这电影里一共采访了八个哲学家，齐泽克确实是最好玩的一个，站在垃圾场里批评环境运动，样子特别愤世嫉俗。

　　我最喜欢的竟然还是第一个，Avital Ronel。人生的意义不必要说尽，没有焦虑的生活才是问题，不要总觉得自己知道别人要的是什么，最负责任的人其实是那些成天担心自己不够负责任的人。我都还蛮同意的。爱人其实是种很谦卑的状态，成天欢喜琢磨自己这样做这样说是不是真的让对方感到舒坦，时常伴有轻微的负疚感，因为把重心暂时从自己身上移开了。

　　选择做学问很大程度上也是选择了一种生活的方式，学会带着疑问生活，把焦虑弄成常态。当然同时也得学会驾驭这焦虑的情绪，不然它也就只是种令人感到不太愉快的情绪罢了。

　　Michael Hardt讲革命那一段也还行。可是呢，有时候真是弄不清楚哲学家对于社会主义实践的抽象批判，到底算深刻还算肤浅。

　　其他人讲世界主义精神，讲福利国家的重要性，讲消费观念与道德，等等等等，基本无感。我知道这都算美国的人文学者关注的焦点，而我总有意无意和这些热门话题保持距离罢了。

　　今天过节，就看了这么个电影。这个片儿拍得十分浅显易懂，我想没读过任何哲学的人应该都能看明白。

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(三)：20200215记录

　　1、

　　（1）哲学是关于意义的学科吗？

　　不全然，世间之事物的发生可能只是那么偶然的存在，不是一定有意义。

　　（2）如果没有绝对的意义，人要如何成为有道德的人？

　　明确该做什么不该做什么的生活是不焦虑的。不焦虑就不会去探寻，焦虑是一种卓越的情绪。

　　有道德人是心存谦卑的，道德的关系是你无法完全理解他性。

　　2、

　　（1）我们应该如何花钱？——道德问题

　　饥饿富裕与道德——伦理学

　　何为正义？思考才知道不知道。

　　哲学要突破伦理和常规，去思考旧远存在的东西。

　　道德在人本身，意味着并非由个人决定，而是需要去思考他人的利益，站在他人立场思考。思考我为什么不做？不花钱的东西？不伤害他人和帮助他人的道德。

　　3、

　　（1）我们可以对更大的公民去负责吗？

　　全球公民的概念

　　——世界主义者：接受人们的不同，文化相对主义。

　　——普遍主义者：宗教的零和性

　　文化价值的冲突——现代问题——意识到思考方式的差异，价值观的差异。

　　（2）如何兼顾小团体的道德与大团体的道德？

　　4、

　　社会契约论——自然状态下的分配机会——假定天生能力的平等（女性、残疾者）

　　好的社会成员，是好的生产者——美国的想法

　　5、

　　需要勇气去审视自己——有些特定的东西领我们近乎过分地活着，就像一种热恋，但你也需要停下来去喝水。意义是西西弗斯的，是永远无法达到的。

　　6、

　　与政治有关的人性是可变的，是可建构的。重新思考革命，人性本身的变化，以使人具有民主的能力。

　　7、

　　生态学：意识形态错误的感知生活

　　事情发生自发寻找意义——生态学作为意识形态入场的地方，自然本身就是异常巨大的灾难——新的大众鸦片，成为类似于宗教的无法争论的声音，对意识形态变化的不信任。我们都知道所处的危机，为什么什么都不做？尚未被赋予理解灾难的能力。我们需要变得更加人工化。

　　8、

　　帮助是被忽略的，出门寻求帮助是一种示威，这种帮助并非我本身需要的，而是社会的残疾。

　　基本的需要是否被当做是社会的基本需求？这难道不是一个互帮互助的社会吗？

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(四)：笔记

　　

无论从历史的角度来看，还是从学术的观点出发，我都非常怀疑“意义”的承诺，因为意义即使不是这类事物的核心，也常常具有法西斯主义、非进步主义的优势。因此，通常情况下，在给定的事件或结构中对“意义”的紧急补充，或者生活中的主题是掩盖，是一种修饰“无意义”世界的方式。

I'm very suspicious historically and intellectually of the promise of meaning because meaning has often had very fascistic, non-progressivist edges if not a core of that sort of thing. So that very often, also the emergency supplies of meaning…that are brought to a given incident or structure…or theme in one’s life are cover-ups, are a way of dressing the world of non-meaning.

我们只是想当然地认为人类有权利以任何形式利用动物，而那是无法自圆其说的。

We’ve just taken for granted the idea that somehow humans have the right to use animals whichever way they want to and that isn’t defensible.

柏拉图说，哲学是一种对于死亡的冥想与准备。他指的死亡并非事件，而是生命中的死亡，因为没有死亡，就没有转世，没有变化，没有转换。因此问题变成了你如何学习如何死亡。蒙田在他著名的论文中说道，“哲学是学习如何死亡”，你无法避谈如何学习死亡来讨论真理。

Plato says philosophy is a meditation on and a preparation for death. By death, what he means is not an event, but a death in life, because there’s no rebirth, there’s no change, there’s no transformation without death. Therefore, the question becomes, how do you learn how to die？ Montaigne talks about that in his famous essay, “To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die.” You can’t talk about truth without talking about learning how to die.

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(五)：Examined Life：philosophy is in the streets 笔记

　　省察生活 finite situation→death 一个关键是倾向：欲望于死亡面前的搏斗 or 教条主义 or 民主实验想要维持的民主制度 学习如何死亡。 人是有限的。 Vico维科谈论成为尸体是什么，而海德格尔只是讨论抽象的死亡。 哲学家、诗人和音乐家应该一起出行。 心灵的乐趣，可能是无聊地在家或者图书馆，但是你却可以从中intensely alive。 看到世界的邪恶和黑暗，却仍然选择爱这个世界。 时间是真真切切的…… 虚无主义是“过一个有意义的生活”的挑战。 寻找意义就是西西弗斯式的推石头。 怀疑主义 海德格尔：放弃哲学选择思考→走上不知通往何处的路。著作《Holzwege》（a path that leads nowhere）。 meaning有纯粹存在的偶然性absolute contingency of being。 德里达：若你能够荣耀地宣判自己无罪，那你实际上并不是那么有道德。 花钱的道德？ Peter Singer：孩子落水，周围没人，除非你，没人能救他，但是你穿了新鞋子，你怎么办？ 消费，饥荒，道德。 应用伦理学→"corrupt" morals，挑战道德。 道德应该来自自己，但也并非完全主观。 把自己放在别人的角度看问题，可以减少苦难。 花在买衣服上的钱，虽然没有伤害到他人，但是它也可以被用于慈善。 意义→把自己和伟大的事业联系起来，减少世界的苦难来使世界更加美好。 古代人和现代人所居住的环境不同。 如何为全球公民服务？如何成为一个世界公民cosmopolitan？ 文化相对主义。 是非怎么判断？ 母系氏族社会的孩子（片中说的是加纳），其生命中最重要的男性是其舅舅maternal uncle，当地语是叫wofa（而非父亲）！→舅舅要教育和照顾其侄子侄女。 一优一劣 vs 只要符合其环境，两者都好都可以接受 世界各地的价值观本就存在巨大差异，要接受这一点吗？ PS：节目虽说提倡街头巷尾的人都可能有思想，但是实际上很难找到这样的一条街。配乐不错。导演好年轻。 亚里士多德的正义→人的能力巨大。 社会契约→“自然状态”的人。 女性，残疾人，智力潜能不足者，身体的不平等如何影响了其政治经济层面的不平等？ 能力→各种各样的能力，如情感能力、娱乐能力、身体能力什么的 革命：1.一群统治精英被换成另一群统治精英，但是并没有实现民主，获利的只是他们。2.移除权威形式。→都不足信。 人性善变，人性是被构建出来的。 革命应该让人有民主的能力。→列宁对此的回答：否定negation民主，“无产阶级专政”，通过某种国家的霸权来运行变革，改变人性，使人拥有民主的能力。（←主讲人不认同此观点）→只有通过践行民主才能让人学会民主。 “革命”的真正含义是什么？ Zizek： 垃圾不会消失。 环保折射着我们的意识形态（传统意义上的ideology是指虚假错误地感知思考现实的方式）。 “意义的诱惑” 现存世界可能是最好的世界。× PS：齐泽克大战Jordan Peterson的辩论中，好多东西原来都是他之前说过的。齐泽克说话的时候，我听到了他喉咙和小舌的颤抖。 ecology会逐渐成为大众的精神鸦片opium of the masses（马克斯对宗教的比喻也是这个），扮演conservative ideology保守性意识形态（对改变change不太信任）的角色。 人是自然的一部分。 精神分析 否认 的绝佳案例：我清楚得很，可是我就装作不知情。eg：人们选择性无视自己所处的危机环境，抱有侥幸心理地自欺。 我们应该抽离自己于自然，而变得更加人工化。我们应该发展一种更恐怖的抽象的新型物质主义materialism，因此，重点就在于如何在一个充满抽象理性的世界中寻找诗意灵性。 把垃圾制造成有美感的东西。 如何爱这个世界？从不完美中找到完美。 Judith Butler采访Sunaura Taylor： ST：增加对残疾人士的基础设施有利于其获得更多的社会接纳（因为其出行方便→出来的次数增多→和他人的交往增多→周围人能够更接纳他们）。 JB：残疾和性少数很像。人的步态怎么引起他人的杀戮之心？仅仅因为一个男生走路扭腰摆臀像女人吗？ ST：小时候被嘲笑自己走路像猴子→人和非人的界限何在？ JB：我们是否生活在一个个人的基本需求basic needs能被满足的世界中？我们的基本需求不仅仅是个别人的问题issue，而是全社会的问题。 全社会应该达成一个共识：我们应该在自己的能力范围内帮助其他人实现自己的基本需求。

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(六)：八名哲学家的walk talk要点概述

　　Cornel West:

　　人类是向死而生的存在，哲学因此成为了与教条主义、脆弱民主、父权制、公权力等未能对其影响的受众负责的权威的搏斗。

　　叶芝有言，审视内心的黑暗角落需要比上战场搏斗更大的勇气。

　　柏拉图和蒙田认为哲学关于学习如何死亡。

　　真相是一种生活方式而非与世间万物对应的名词系统。人类永远无法理解现实的终极性质，只能不断接近真相。

　　柏拉图在理想国中禁止了长笛但允许里拉琴，因为长笛能契合灵魂三分法中的每一种：理性、灵性、欲望性。讽刺的是，柏拉图在临终时要求一名色雷斯女孩为他吹奏长笛。

　　音乐和快乐很重要，有时快乐会多到令人难以承受。

　　I have learned to look at the world, in all of its darkness and evil and still love it. ——Beethoven

　　对和谐与整体的执念是不必要的。

　　The blues is personal catastrophe lyrically expressed.

　　失败是结果论者创造的概念，过程比结果更重要。Try again, fail gain, fail better. ——Beckett

　　美国也是浪漫主义计划的产物，但实际上是一种脆弱的民主实验。

　　追求意义是西西弗式的，永远只能无限接近目标。

　　Avital Ronell:

　　海德格尔弃哲学从思考，并写下《Holzwege》，意即“a path that leads nowhere”。

　　意义并非事物的核心，而是掩盖无意义的工具。对意义的渴求使我们看不到纯粹存在的偶然性（absolute contingency of being）。

　　焦虑是一种卓越的美德，真正有良知的人永远认为自己做得还不够多。

　　理解他者意味着毁灭他者。

　　eter Singer:

　　是放弃昂贵的新鞋拯救面前溺水的孩子，还是用这双鞋的价值拯救远方更多受苦的孩子？功利主义哲学与绝对价值哲学的碰撞。

　　应用伦理学挑战道德。道德虽然主观但并非随心所欲，它不仅关注“不伤害他人的义务”，也关注“帮助他人的责任”，也就是“你本可以做却没做的事”——“I think we have moral obligations to help just as we have moral obligations as not to harm.”

　　哲学的意义在于减少不必要的痛苦，让世界因你的存在而变得更好，哪怕改变微不可见。

　　Kwame Anthony Appiah:

　　全球化无限扩大了个体需要负责的对象，由此孕育出秉持文化相对主义（求同存异）的世界主义者，以及与之相对的普遍主义者（德国谚语——“If you don’t want to be my brother, I’ll bash your head.”）。

　　理想状态是兼顾对全人类的责任以及对小群体的关怀。

　　Martha Nussbaum:

　　脱胎于亚里士多德的正义观致力于支持特定群体的能力发展，后被社会契约论取代。后者提出应还原自然状态下人的平等性，但搁置了对于在生理或心理方面处于弱势地位的女性、儿童、老人及残障人士的考量。

　　关注个体在基本尊严方面的平等更为合理，如思考、想象、交际、娱乐、参政等。

　　Michael Hardt:

　　lavoj Zizek:

　　意识形态处理现实问题，但却将其神秘化。意识形态的基本机制之一就是意义的诱惑。当令人不安的事发生时，人们下意识地寻找意义，如就AIDS解读为上帝的惩罚。这让我们感觉厄运并非随机降临的，提供了安全感。

　　生态学的问题在于，将自然视为原本和谐、有机、平衡的存在，并遭到人类打扰，但人类也是自然的一部分。

　　生态学将会如马克思描述的宗教般成为人民的精神鸦片，其同样拥有不允许质疑的最高权威。它日渐开始通过设置界限的方式阻碍科学突破与基因学发展，体现了保守意识形态对改变的不信任。

　　有人认为科技使人异化，因此我们应该返璞归真，寻根自然。事实上为了保护自然，我们反而更需要切断对自然的依赖。

　　Judith Butler & Sunaura Taylor:

　　增加对残障人士友好的基础设施有利于该群体被社会接纳（出行方便→出行频率提高→与他人交往次数增加→正常化）。

　　人的步态为什么会足以引发杀戮之心？仅仅因为一名男性走路扭腰摆臀吗？人和非人的界限何在？

　　残障人士的基本需求是否能得到满足不仅关乎自身，亦是全社会的共同问题。因此社会应达成一项共识：我们应在自己的能力范围内帮助其他人实现自己的基本需求。

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(七)：主要角色介绍

　　THE PHILOSOPHERS

　　Kwame Anthony Appiah

　　was born in London (where his Ghanaian father was a law student) but moved as an

　　infant to Ghana, where he grew up. A philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist, he is

　　Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the University Center for Human

　　Values at Princeton University and the author of many books, including The Ethics of

　　Identity, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Thinking it Through, and

　　Experiments in Ethics.

　　Judith Butler

　　Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the

　　University of California, Berkeley, has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory,

　　olitical philosophy, and ethics. Published in 1990, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the

　　ubversion of Identity has sold well over 100,000 copies internationally, becoming one

　　of the most cited contemporary philosophical texts. Her other books include Bodies That

　　Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”; "Precarious Life: Powers of Mourning and

　　Violence; and Giving an Account of Oneself.

　　Michael Hardt

　　is the co-author, with Antonio Negri, of Empire—an international bestseller dubbed “the

　　Das Kapital of the anti-corporate movement” by Naomi Klein—as well as its sequel,

　　Multitude. He is a professor of literature at Duke University.

　　Martha Nussbaum

　　Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, holds appointments in the

　　hilosophy Department, Law School, and Divinity School at the University of Chicago

　　and is a board member of the university's human rights program. She holds thirty-two

　　honorary degrees from universities around the world. Her research and writing covers a

　　road range of subjects: philosophy and literature, ancient philosophy, liberal education,

　　ocial and political issues, and philosophy of law. Her many books include Frontiers of

　　Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership; Upheavals of Thought: The

　　Intelligence of Emotions; and Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of

　　Religious Equality.

　　Avital Ronell

　　literary critic, feminist/deconstructionist, and philosopher-received her PhD from Princeton

　　University in 1979 before continuing her studies with Jacques Derrida and Hélène

　　Cixous in Paris. University Professor at New York University and Jacques Derrida Chair

　　of Philosophy and Media at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, she is the

　　author of The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech; The Test

　　Drive; and Stupidity, among other works, and has written consistently for ArtForum,

　　ArtUS, and Vacarme (Paris). She is a 2009 guest curator at the Centre Pompidou, where

　　he offered a “'Rencontre” with Werner Herzog, Judith Butler, Laurence Rickels, Jean-Luc

　　ancy, and others.

　　eter Singer

　　called the “most influential” living philosopher by the New Yorker, is Ira W. Decamp

　　rofessor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University

　　and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE),

　　University of Melbourne. He has written many books, including Animal Liberation, a

　　eminal text of the animal rights movement; Practical Ethics; and, most recently, The Life

　　You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty.

　　unaura Taylor

　　is an artist, writer, and activist living in Oakland, California. She is disabled due to U.S

　　military pollution, a legacy that has affected all aspects of her work. Her artworks have

　　een exhibited at venues across the country, including the Smithsonian Institution and the

　　erkeley Art Museum. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a 2004

　　acatar Foundation Fellowship and a 2008 Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Her published

　　work includes the Monthly Review article “The Right Not to Work: Disability and

　　Capitalism” and “Military Waste In Our Drinking Water” (with Astra Taylor), which was

　　ominated for a 2007 Project Censored Award. Taylor is currently co-editing a book on

　　disability and animal rights. She received her undergraduate degree in disability studies

　　from Goddard College and holds an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley's

　　department of art practice. Her website is www.sunaurataylor.org.

　　Cornel West

　　the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University, has been heralded by

　　ewsweek as an “eloquent prophet with attitude.” In his latest book, Hope on a

　　Tightrope, he offers courageous commentary on issues that affect the lives of all

　　Americans. Themes include Race, Leadership, Faith, Family, Philosophy, and Love and

　　ervice. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers Race Matters, which

　　won the American Book Award, and Democracy Matters. West has won numerous

　　awards and has received more than twenty honorary degrees. He also was an influential

　　force in developing the storyline for the popular Matrix movie trilogy.

　　lavoj Zizek

　　is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European

　　Graduate School; International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities,

　　irkbeck College, University of London; and a senior researcher at the Institute of

　　ociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has published over twenty books, including

　　Welcome to the Desert of the Real, The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Parallax

　　View, and In Defense of Lost Causes. He is also the subject of the feature documentary

　　Zizek! directed by Astra Taylor and distributed by Zeitgeist Films.

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(八)：DIRECTOR’S Q & A

　　When did you become interested in philosophy？

　　My interest in philosophy goes back quite awhile. I was around twelve or thirteen when

　　I first picked up Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, which was over my head even though

　　the subject was something very important to me. During my first year of university I

　　discovered “theory,” to which I devoted myself before discovering filmmaking. What I

　　love about philosophy is the way different theories present opportunities to look at the

　　world anew. Film has a similar ability to shift perception, to alter the way we look at the

　　world, so I think the two fields compliment each other well.

　　Most of the subjects who appear in Examined Life (Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter

　　inger, Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, and Judith

　　utler) are thinkers I have worked with or studied in the past or feel a special connection

　　to. For example, I initially read Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble when I was a teenager

　　wrestling with what it meant to be a “feminist.” Later, Martha Nussbaum’s work influenced

　　me to reevaluate my thinking about the position of people with disabilities in our

　　ociety. Thinkers like Slavoj Zizek and Michael Hardt regularly challenge my political

　　assumptions. I’ve found Cornel West’s speeches to be consistently inspiring and provocative

　　(and he should be making even more of them now that he is a campaign advisor to

　　arack Obama). Finally, it was a graduate seminar lead by Avital Ronell (co-taught by

　　the late Derrida) that inspired my desire to take philosophy out of the academy and

　　make it more accessible to a non-specialized audience.

　　What inspired you to make Examined Life？

　　Many would agree that the world is facing a multitude of unprecedented problems, from

　　global warming to growing economic inequality. In a way, this is part of why I wanted

　　to make Examined Life right now -- I feel that the myriad problems facing us demand

　　more thinking than ever, not less.

　　That said, most people wouldn’t assume philosophy would have anything useful to say

　　on these issues. Often when you mention “philosophy” people’s eyes kind of glaze over.

　　The word conjures images of stodgy old white men pontificating on abstract matters

　　completely irrelevant to those of us who live in the “real world.” Or maybe folks assume

　　that philosophy simply doesn’t relate to their lives, or that people who are interested in

　　the subject are unforgivably ponderous or pretentious.

　　I happen to think philosophy has something to add to the conversation, not that

　　hilosophers necessarily “have all the answers” but that they can help us ask different

　　questions and see things in new ways.

　　hilosophy isn’t necessarily the sort of subject that obviously lends itself

　　to cinema. How did you translate the subject to the big screen？

　　Obviously, a lot of philosophy is very technical. But as Isaiah Berlin, echoing Bertrand

　　Russell, once said, “the central visions of the great philosophers are essentially simple.”

　　When it comes to defending these central visions, things can get a bit complicated, but

　　the heart of the matter is usually fairly intelligible and accessible. So my aim was to present

　　the basic impulse or insight of a variety of philosophers in a way that was free of jargon

　　and directly relatable to the audience’s experiences.

　　How did you come up with the concept of the philosopher’s walk for

　　this film？

　　I was talking to my friend Aaron Levy, a curator and academic in Philadelphia, about

　　the project and he suggested a potential subject and mentioned that the fellow was quite

　　hy. Perhaps, Aaron mused, he’d be more comfortable if you filmed him while taking a

　　walk instead of sitting down. At that moment a light bulb went off in my brain as I had

　　recently read Rebecca Solnit’s amazing book Wanderlust, which is a magisterial history

　　of walking.

　　The walking theme is a pretty straightforward idea, but it’s also one that has numerous

　　levels of significance. Cinematically it provides an opportunity for movement, gesture,

　　and variation of scene. Historically it speaks to philosophy’s peripatetic origins and to

　　the fact that many great philosophers were avid wanderers (Socrates, Nietzsche,

　　Rousseau, Kierkegaard and Benjamin all come to mind). Symbolically, it illustrates my

　　intention of taking philosophy out of the ivory tower. Politically, walking is under siege in

　　our car-driven speed-obsessed culture. Culturally, we place little value on the peaceful,

　　olitary reflection walking encourages.

　　How did you go about directing the project？

　　I began inviting people to appear in Examined Life in early 2007. Once someone

　　expressed interest in participating, I started a conversation about the form their walk

　　hould take, keeping in mind how each segment would fit into the greater whole.

　　Typically I had a specific theme in mind for them to discuss, something central to their

　　work that I also felt would play well off the other segments I was planning. In some situations

　　the subject and I discussed the various points they hoped to make, in order to make

　　ure we were on the same page. In other cases we completely improvised, having a

　　long extemporaneous and circuitous conversation, which I then had to find some center

　　to in the editing room. Overall, I did my best to balance the need for pre-planning and

　　rehearsal with my desire to make a film that was fresh and unforced, something that

　　would hopefully convey the spontaneous life of the mind and the process (excuse the

　　un) of thinking on one’s feet.

　　That was part of why I wanted to shoot this project outside, in the streets. I wanted

　　uncontrolled things to happen, to pose challenges and provoke thoughts and reactions

　　we couldn’t anticipate. Some topics immediately lent themselves to a specific location, as

　　in Peter Singer’s discussion of consumer ethics (we shot along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan,

　　which is an upscale shopping district) and ecology for Slavoj Zizek (I knew I wanted film

　　in a garbage dump), but other themes were less easy to illustrate. In those cases I asked

　　if there was a location the subject felt a special connection to, or perhaps a site that

　　holds personal significance or one related to their philosophic evolution. So some of the

　　hilosophers are in a spot they like visiting or walking along a route they walk everyday

　　in real life. In some cases I simply chose a location that I felt suited the subject’s

　　temperament and that was logistically feasible and visually compelling.

　　How did you achieve wholeness with so many subjects？

　　Well, as Cornel West says at the end of the film, our obsession with wholeness can be

　　roblematic. I didn’t want the film to wrap everything up or pretend to provide a definitive

　　answer to the different and difficult questions it poses (after all, if we had watertight

　　answers there wouldn’t be any need for philosophical questioning any more). That said,

　　I do hope the film has a cohesiveness despite the fact it is somewhat fragmented formally,

　　in the sense that it is a series of vignettes. To achieve some sense of harmony the film

　　was conceived, directed and edited so that all the subjects are, in a sense, talking about

　　the same main topics -- the search for meaning and our responsibilities to others in a broken

　　world (by which I mean a world full of inequity and suffering, one beset by problems

　　oth interpersonal and political) -- from different angles.

　　Related to the central themes of the film, I chose subjects that are concerned with social

　　and ethical issues, which is probably a reflection of my personality and interests as much

　　as anything else. So there are many branches of philosophy that are not touched on in

　　Examined Life, like linguistic philosophy and logic and philosophy of mind, for example.

　　These areas can all be fascinating but I felt I had to limit the field of topics from which I

　　drew in order to achieve a sense of thematic unity.

　　《受审视的生活：哲学就在街头巷尾》观后感(九)：Cornel West / Avital Ronell / Slavoj Zizek

　　Examined life

　　The unexamined life is not worth living

　　-Plato

　　Cornel West

　　How do you examine yourself？ What happens when you interrogate yourself？

　　What happens when you begin to call into question？

　　Your tacit assumptions and unarticulated presuppositions, and begin then to become a different kind of person？

　　For me, philosophy is fundamentally about our finite situation.

　　We can define that in terms of we are beings towards death.

　　And we are featherless, two-legged, linguistically conscious creatures born between urine and feces…whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.

　　That's us. We are beings towards death.

　　At the same time, we have desire while we are organisms in space and time.

　　And so it's desire in the face of death.

　　And then of course, you have got dogmatism, various attempts to hold on to certainty.

　　Various forms of idolatry and you have got dialogue in the face of dogmatism.

　　And then of course, structurally and institutionally you have domination.

　　And you have democracy. You have attempts of people tying to render accountable

　　Elites, kings, queens, suzerains, corporate elites, politicians, trying to make these elites accountable to everyday people. So philosophy itself becomes a critical disputation of wrestling with desire in the face of death, wrestling with dialogue in the face of dogmatism and wrestling with democracy trying to keep alive very fragile democratic experiments in the face of structures of domination; patriarchy, white supremacy, imperial power, state power.

　　All those concentrated forms of power that are not accountable to people who are affected by them.

　　Do you have to go to school to be a philosopher？

　　Oh, God, no. Thank God you don’t have to go to school. No. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom.

　　It takes tremendous discipline it takes tremendous courage to think for yourself, to examine yourself. The Socratic imperative examining yourself requires courage. William Butler Yeats used to say it takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield. Courage to think critically. You can't talk.

　　Courage is the enabling virtue for any philosopher, for any human being, I think in the end. Courage to think, courage to love, courage to hope.

　　lato says philosophy is a mediation on and a preparation for death.

　　And by death, what he means is not an event, but a death in life because there is no rebirth, there is no change, there is no transformation without death.

　　And therefore, the question becomes, how do you learn how to die？

　　And of course, Montaigne talks about that in his famous essay, "To Philosophize is to learn how to die. " You can't talk about truth without talking about learning how to die.

　　I believe that Theodor Aorno was right when he says that condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. That gives it an existential emphasis, you see. So we are really talking about truth as a way of life, as opposed to simply truth as a set of propositions that correspond to a set of things in the world.

　　Human beings are unable to ever gain any monopoly on Truth, capital "T", we might have access to truth, small "t", but they are fallible claims about truth. We could be wrong, we have to be open to revision and so on. So there is a certain kind of mystery that goes hand-in-hand with truth.

　　This is why so many of the existential thinkers, be they religious, like Meister Eckhart or Paul Tillich, or be they secular, like Camus and Satre, that they're accenting our finitude and our inability to fully grasp the ultimate nature of reality, the truth about things.

　　And therefore, there, you talk about truth being tied to the way to truth, because once you give up on the notion of fully grasping the way the world is, you're going to talk about what are the ways in which I can sustain my quest for truth.

　　How do you sustain a journey a path toward truth, the way to truth？

　　o the truth talk goes hand-in-hand with talk about the way to truth.

　　And Scientists could talk about this in terms of inducing evidence and drawing reliable conclusions and so forth and so on.

　　Religious folk could talk about this in terms of surrendering one's arrogance and pride in the face of divine revelation and what have you.

　　ut they're always of acknowledging our finitude and our fallibility.

　　I want all of the rich, historical colorations to manifest in talking about our finitude.

　　eing born of a woman in stank and stench what I call "funk".

　　eing introduced to the funk of life in the womb and love-push that gets you out.

　　Right？ And then your body is not just death but the way Vico talks about it.

　　And here Vico was so much better than Heidegger.

　　Vico talks about it in terms of being a corpse.

　　ee, Heidegger didn't talk about corpses. He talks about death.

　　It's still to abstract. Absolutely.

　　Read the poetry of John Donne. He'll tell you about corpses that decompose.

　　Well, see, that's history. That's the raw funky, stanky stuff of life.

　　That's what bluesmen do. See, that's what jazzmen do. See, I'm a bluesman in the life of the mind. I'm a jazzman in the world of ideas. Therefore for me, music is central.

　　o when you are talking about poetry, for the most part, Plato was talking primarily about words, whereas I talk about notes, tone, timbre, rhythms.

　　For me, music is fundamental.

　　hilosophy must go to school not only with the poets. Philosophy needs to go school with the musicians. Keep in mind, Plato bans the flute in the republic but not the lyre.

　　ecause the flute appeals to all of these various sides of who are given his tripartite conception of the soul; the rational and the spirited and the appetitive. And the flute is appeals to all three of those, where he thinks the lyre on one strings, it only appeals to one and there is permissible.

　　ow, of course, the irony is when Plato was on his deathbed, what did he do？

　　Well, he requested the Thracian girl to play music on the flute.

　　I'm a Christian, but I'm not a puritan. I believe in pleasure.

　　And orgiastic pleasure has its place. Intellectual pleasure has its place. Social pleasure has its place. Televisual pleasure has its place. You know, I like certain TV shows.

　　My God, when it comes to music- Oh!

　　You know, Beethoven's 32nd Sonata, Opus 111.

　　Unbelievable aesthetic pleasure.

　　The same would be true for Curtis Mayfield or the Beatles or what have you .

　　There's a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied.

　　It's true that you might be socially isolated.

　　ecause you're in the library at home and so on. But you're intensely alive.

　　In fact, you're much more alive then these folk walking these streets of New York in crowds.

　　With just no intellectual interrogation and questioning going at all.

　　ut if you read, you know, John Ruskin or you read a Mark Twain, or my God, Herman Malville,

　　You almost have to throw the book against the wall.

　　ecause you're almost so intensely alive, that you need a break.

　　It's time to take a break and get a little dullness in your life.

　　Take Moby Dick throw it against the wall the way Goethe threw Von Kleist's work against the wall. It was just too much. It made Goethe, it reminded Goethe of the darkness that he was escaping after he overcome those suicidal impulses with Sorrows of Young Werther in the 1770s…

　　That made his move toward neoclassicism in Weimar.

　　There are certain things that make us too alive almost, it's almost like being too intensely in love. You can't do anything. It's hard to get back to the Kronos. It's hard to get back the everyday life. You know what I mean？

　　That chirotic dimension of being in love with another person, everything is so meaningful, you want to sustain it. It's true.

　　You can't just do it, you know, you got have to go to the bathroom, have a drink of water. Shit!

　　Romanticism thoroughly saturated the discourse of modern thinkers.

　　Can you totalize？ Can you make things whole？

　　Can you create harmony？ And if you can't, disappointment.

　　Disappointment's always at the center. Failure is always at the center.

　　ut where'd the Romanticism come from？

　　Why begin with Romanticism？ See, I don't begin with Romanticism.

　　You remember what Beethoven said on his deathbed, you know.

　　He said, "I have learned to look at the world, in all of its darkness and evil and still love it."

　　And that's not Romantic Beethoven, that is the Beethoven of the String Quartet 131."

　　The greatest string quartet ever written, not that in classical music.

　　ut of course it's a European form, so Beethoven is the grand master.

　　ut the string quarter your go back to those movements.

　　It's no Romantic wholeness to be shattered as in the early Beethoven.

　　He's given up on that, you see.

　　This is where Chekhov begins, this is where the blues starts, this is where jazz starts.

　　You think Charlie Parker's upset because he can't sustain a harmony？

　　He didn't car about the harmony. He was trying to completely ride on the dissonance, ride on the blue notes.

　　Of course he's got harmony in terms of its interventions here and there.

　　ut why start with this obsession with wholeness？

　　And if you can't have it, then you are disappointed and want to have a drink？

　　And melancholia and blah, blah, blah…

　　o, you see, the blues my kind of blues begins with catastrophe begins with the Angel of History in Benjamin's theses.

　　You see, it begins with the pillage, the wreckage on pile on another.

　　That's the starting point. The blues is personal catastrophe lyrically expressed.

　　And black people in America and in the modern world given these vicious legacies of white supremacy. It is how you generate an elegance of earned self-togetherness.

　　o that you have a stick-to-it-ness in the face of the catastrophic and calamitous and horrendous and the scandalous and the monstrous.

　　ee, part of the problem, though, is that, see, when you have a Romantic project, you are so obsessed with time as loss and time as a taker.

　　Whereas, as a Cheknovian Christian, I want to stress, as well, time as a gift and time as a giver.

　　o that, yes, it's failure, but how good is a failure？ You done some wonderful things.

　　ow, Beckett could say, you know, "Try again, fail gain, fail better."

　　ut why call it failure？ I mean, why not say you have a sense of gratitude that you are able to do as much as you did？

　　You are able to love as much as think as much and play as much.

　　Why think you needed the whole thing？

　　You see what I mean？ This is even disturbing about America.

　　And, Of course, America is a Romantic project.

　　It's paradisal , "City on a Hill" and all this other mess and lies and so on.

　　I say no, no. America is a very fragile democratic experiment predicated on the dispossession of the lands of indigenous people and the enslavement of African peoples and the subjugation of women and the marginalization of gays and lesbians.

　　And it has great potential. But this notion that somehow you know, we had it all.

　　Or ever will have it all, it's got to go.

　　You got to push it to the side.

　　And once you push all that to the side, then it tends to evacuate the language of disappointment

　　And the language of failure.

　　And you say, Okay, well, how much have you done？

　　How have we been able to do it？

　　Can we do more？ Well, in certain situation, you can't do more.

　　It's like trying to break-dance at 75. You can't do it anymore.

　　You were a master at 16, it's over.

　　You can't make love at 80 the way you did at 20. So what？

　　Time is real.

　　Q: the idea of the meaning of life？ Is it philosophy's duty to speak on this？

　　A meaningful life？

　　Q: How to live a meaningful life？ Is that even a relevant ？ Is that even an appropriate question for a philosopher？

　　o, I think it is. No, I think the problem with meaning is very important.

　　ihilism is a serious challenge. Meaninglessness is a serious challenge.

　　Even making sense of meaninglessness is itself a kind of discipline and achievement.

　　The problem is, of course, you never reach it, you know.

　　It's not a static, stationary telos or end or aim.

　　It's a process that one never reaches. It's Sisyphean.

　　You are going up the hill looking for better meanings, or grander, more enabling meanings.

　　ut you never reach it. You know, in that sense, you die without being able to "have" the whole

　　In the language of the romantic discourse.

　　The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

　　-Diderot

　　Avital Ronell

　　Yes, that is scandalous. I can understand that the others would have 10 minutes,

　　ut to bring me down to 10 minutes, is outrage, there is no doubt about it.

　　The thing is we don't know where this film is going to land, whom it's going to shake up, wake up, or freak out, or bore. But even boredom, as an offshoot of melancholy would interest me.

　　As a response to these dazzling utterances that we are producing.

　　ut I would say that even if philosophy, and don't forget that Heidegger ditched philosophy for thinking, because he thought philosophy as such was still too institutional, academic, too bound up in knowledge and results, too cognitively inflected.

　　o he asked the question, what is called thinking ？

　　And he had a lot to say about walks, about going on paths, that leads nowhere.

　　One of his important texts is called Holzwege, Which means a path that leads nowhere.

　　In Greek, the word for path is methods. So we are on the path.

　　Is philosophy a search for meaning？

　　I am very suspicious historically and intellectually of the promise of meaning, because meaning has often had very fascistoid(fascistic？) and non-progressivisit edges.

　　If not a core of that sort of thing, so that very often, also this emergency supplies of meaning,

　　That are brought to a given incident of structure or theme in one's life are cover-ups, are a way of dressing the wound of non-meaning.

　　I think it's very hard to keep things in the tensional structure of the openness, whether it is ecstatic or not, of non-meaning. That's very difficult, which is why there is then the quick grasp for a transcendental signifier, for God, for nation, for patriotism. It's been very devastating this craving for meaning, though it's something which we are in constant negotiation.

　　Everyone wants something like meaning. But when you see these dogs play, why reduce it to meaning rather than just see the arbitrary eruption of something that can't be grasped or explicated. But it's just there in this kind of absolute contingency of being.

　　To leave things open and radically inappropriable and something and admitting we haven't really understood is much less satisfying more frustrating and more necessary.

　　That's why I think a lot of people have been fed and fueled by promises of immediate gratification in thought and food and junk, junk food and junk food and so on.

　　There is a politics of refusing that gratification. And I know that is a crazy-making, but I think that's where we have to pull the brakes.

　　How do you behave ethically if there is no ultimate meaning？

　　recisely where there isn't guaranteed or palpable meaning, you have to do a lot of work and you have to be mega-ethical, cause it's much easier to live life and know that well, that you shouldn't do, and this you should do, because someone said so.

　　If you are not anxious, if we are okay with things, we are not trying to explore of figure anything out. So anxiety is the mood, par excellence of ethicity(ethic). Now, I am not prescribing anxiety disorder for anyone. However, could you imagine Mr. Bush who doesn't give a shit when he sends everyone to the gas chamber or the electric chair？ He expresses no anxiety. And they are very proud of this. They don't lose a wink of sleep. They express no anxiety. This is something Derrida has taught. If you feel that you have acquitted yourself honorably, then you are not so ethical.

　　If you have a good conscience, then you are kind of worthless. Like, if you think "Oh, I gave this homeless person five bucks. I am great." Then you are irresponsible. The responsible being is one who thinks they have never been responsible enough. They have never taken care enough of the other. The Other is so in excess of anything you can understand or grasp or reduce. This in itself creates an ethical relatedness, a relation without relation, cause you don't know , you can't presume to know or grasp the Other. The minute you think you know the Other, you are ready to kill them. You think, "Oh, they are doing this or this. They are the axis of evil. Let's drop some bombs." But if you don't know , you don't understand this alterity. It's so Other that you can't violate it with your sense of understand. Then you have to let it live, in a sense.

　　lavoj Zizk

　　This is where we should start feeling at home.

　　art of our daily perception of reality is that this disappears from our world.

　　When you go to the toilet, shit disappears. You flush it.

　　Of course rationally you know it's there in canalization and so on.

　　ut at a certain level of your most elementary experience, it disappears from your world.

　　ut the problem is that trash doesn't disappear.

　　I think ecology, the way we approach ecological problematic is maybe the crucial field of ideology today.

　　And I use ideology in the traditional sense of illusory, wrong way of thinking and perceiving reality.

　　Why？ Ideology is not simply dreaming about false ideas and so on.

　　Ideology addresses very real problems but it mystifies them.

　　One of the elementary ideological mechanisms, I claim, is what I call the temptation of meaning.

　　When something horrible happens, our spontaneous tendency is to search for a meaning.

　　It must mean something. You know, like ADIS. It was a trauma then conservatives came and said it's punishment for sinful ways of life, and so on and so on.

　　Even if we interpret a catastrophe as a punishment, it makes easier in a way, because we know it's not just some terrifying blind force. It has a meaning.

　　It's better when you are in the middle of a catastrophe.

　　It's better to feel that God punished you than to feel that it just happened.

　　If God punished you, it's still a universe of meaning.

　　And I think that that's where ecology as ideology enters.

　　It's really the implicit premise of ecology that the existing world is the best possible world.

　　In the sense of it's a balanced world which is disturbed through human hubris.

　　o why do I find this problematic？ Because I think that this notion of nature, nature as a harmonious, organic, balanced, reproducing almost living organism which is then disturbed, perturbed, derailed through human hubris, technological exploitation and so on, is ,I think a secular version of the religious story of the Fall.

　　And the answer should be not that there is no fall, that we are part of nature.

　　ut on the contrary, that there is no nature.

　　ature is not a balanced totality which then we humans disturb.

　　ature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes.

　　We profit from them. What's our main source of energy today ？ Oil.

　　What are we aware, what is oil？

　　Oil reserves beneath the earth are material remainders of an unimaginable catastrophe.

　　Are we aware, because we all know that oil is composed of the remainders of animal life, plants and so on and so on.

　　Can you imagine what kind of unthinkable catastrophe had to occur on Earth ？

　　o that is good to remember.

　　Ecology will slowly turn, maybe, into a new opium of masses, the way, as we all know,

　　Marx defined religion.

　　What do we expect from religion is a kind of unquestionable highest authority.

　　It's God's word, so it is you don't debate it.

　　Today, I claim, ecology is more and more taking over this role of conservative ideology.

　　Whenever there is a new scientific breakthrough, biogenetic development, whatever,

　　It is as if the voice which warns us not to trespass, violate a certain invisible limit, like,

　　quot;Don't do that. It would be too much." That voice is today more and more the voice of ecology.

　　Like, "Don't mess with D.N.A. Don't mess with nature. Don't do it"

　　This basic conservative partly ideological mistrust of change.

　　This is today ecology.

　　Another myth which is popular about ecology namely a spontaneous ideological myth is the idea that we Western people in our artificial technological environment are alienated from immediate natural environments that we should not forget that we humans are part of the living Earth. We should not forget that we are not abstract engineers, theorists who just exploit nature that we are part of nature, that nature is our unfathomable, impenetrable background.

　　I think that that precisely is the greatest danger.

　　Why？ Think about a certain obvious paradox.

　　We all know in what danger we all are, global warming, possibility of other ecological catastrophes and so on and so on.

　　ut why don't we do anything about it？

　　It is, I think, a nice example, of what in psychoanalysis we call disavowal.

　　The logic is that of, I know very well, but I act as if I don't know.

　　For example, precisely, in the case of ecology, I know very well there maybe global warming.

　　Everything will explode, be destroyed.

　　ut after reading a treatise on it, what do I do？

　　I step out. I see nothings that I see now behind me.

　　That's a nice sight for me, I see nice trees, birds singing and so on.

　　And even if I know rationally this is all in danger, I simply do not believe that this can be destroyed.

　　That's the horror of visiting sites of a catastrophe like Chernobyl.

　　In a way, we are not evolutionarily, we are not wired to even imagine something like that.

　　It's in a way unimaginable.

　　o I think that we should do to confront properly that threat of ecological catastrophe

　　Is not all this New Age stuff to break out of this technological manipulative mold

　　And to find out roots in nature. But, on the contrary, to cut off even more these roots in nature.

　　We need more alienation from our life world.

　　From our, as it were, spontaneous nature.

　　We should become more artificial.

　　We should develop, I think, a much more terrifying new abstract materialism.

　　A kind of mathematical universe where is nothing, there are just formulas, technical forms and so on.

　　And the difficult thing is to find poetry, spirituality in this dimension.

　　To recreate if not beauty then aesthetic dimension in things like this, in trash itself.

　　That's the true love of the world.

　　ecause what is love？ Love is not idealization.

　　Every true lover knows that if you really love a woman or a man that you don't idealize him or her.

　　Love means that you accept a person with all its failures, stupidities, ugly points.

　　And nonetheless the person's absolute for you.

　　Everything life that makes life worth living.

　　ut you see perfection in imperfection itself.

　　And that's how we should learn to love the world.

　　True ecologist loves all this.