Film 'intellectual fun' for West GS '80, Appiah and Singer

According to its website, the film, which opened Feb. 20 and also features philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah and bioethics professor Peter Singer, seeks to bring philosophy “out of academic journals and classrooms, and [put] it back on the streets.”

In the documentary, Taylor interviews some of today’s highest-profile thinkers about their respective fields. Each of Taylor’s conversations lasted for hours, but all of them were edited to about 10 minutes each for the film.

Full transcripts of each talk will be published in book form, according to The New York Times.

The documentary places the thinkers in thematically relevant, real-world public settings. Appiah, for example, discusses cosmopolitanism in a departure lounge in one of Toronto’s international airports. The professor is known for his book “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,” which examines changing morality in an interconnected and fragmented world.

“It was a little weird because we had some people notice the cameras and just kind of stare,” Appiah said, “but it was mostly just the crew [there].”

Singer did not have the benefit of a quiet environment during his dialogue with Taylor about poverty and charity.

“The location — Fifth Avenue, New York — was chosen to give me some examples of what I was talking about — shops selling ridiculously expensive luxuries, items that people buy instead of giving the money they are spending to help people struggling to survive on $1 a day,” Singer said in an e-mail.

Appiah said that the film’s unconventional subject matter does not limit its audience.

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“Obviously, it’s meant for an intellectually curious crowd, but I think that a general audience can enjoy it,” he said, “even if we all look a bit strange on film talking about this stuff.”

The film does have some limitations, though, according to Appiah and Singer.

Appiah noted that time constraints make film and philosophy a less-than-perfect combination.

“For philosophy, you need a lot of words, and it’s hard to fit a lot of words into such short segments,” he said. “There are some things about philosophy that you can do in books that you maybe can’t do in a movie.”

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Singer echoed this sentiment, explaining that the true experience of philosophy lies in books.

“For those really interested in ideas, the film is just an appetizer,” he said, adding that it will encourage viewers to “find something to read that will give [them] a deeper understanding of the issues.”

Still, Singer noted, watching the documentary may be confusing for those “unprepared” to absorb all of its ideas.

“I think what [viewers] would take from each of the philosophers would vary a lot,” he said. “I didn’t always find it easy to understand what my colleagues [were] talking about myself.”

Despite all the complex ideas and difficult questions it offers, West explained that at the heart the film is a modern reaction to Socrates’ observation that the unexamined life is not worth living.

“It’s a Socratic movie,” West said. “And that’s what philosophy is all about: hard questioning, grappling with deep issues and emerging with a courage and a compassion.”