The Philosophy Film Club and Liberal Studies present a screening of Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959) and discussion led by Robert Pippin (U Chicago). Generally considered one of Bresson’s greatest works, Pickpocket tells an “incomparable story of crime and redemption … A cornerstone of the career of this most economical and profoundly spiritual of filmmakers, Pickpocket is an elegantly crafted, tautly choreographed study of humanity in all its mischief and grace, the work of a director at the height[...]
In the final part of The Human Condition (1958) Hannah Arendt turns to the danger of ‘world- alienation’. Based on a variety of discoveries and evolutions that are constitutive of modernity (globalization, Protestantism, the invention of the telescope), modern man has adopted an Archimedean, external position vis-à-vis the world. According to Arendt, this ‘view from without’ has gradually jeopardized the experience of a shared world, endangering the foundation of all meaning-giving activities. My talk can[...]