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Introduction

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Philosophy in Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man

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Abstract

The relationship between film and philosophy has long been debated in film studies and continues to be an issue of great interest to film scholars. The basic thesis of this book is that film is not only a massive archive of illustrations at the disposal of philosophy, but should instead be considered a new form of philosophical argumentation per se. Film is not a tool for philosophy, it does philosophy. Film philosophizing can be studied through Ricœurian film hermeneutics based on the concept of the film world. From this perspective, each movie is a world, and the film world is the expression of its specific philosophy of being. Ricœurian film hermeneutics considers movies as worlds and filmgoers as interpreters that are directly involved in them. Interpretations are always relative and contextualized in the awareness of the historicity of any interpretive act. In its historical transmission, the film world is therefore exposed to be interpreted from many different perspectives, and each interpretation serves to better reveal its specific universe of meanings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Alberto Baracco

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  1. Alberto Baracco
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Correspondence to Alberto Baracco .

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Baracco, A. (2019). Introduction. In: Philosophy in Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12426-7_1

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