Veritas - Spring 2021

VERITAS Journal of Theology and Philosophy

Issue IX Spring Term 2021

CONTENTS Introduction 1 Reason and Reality 6 The Philosophical Influence of Gottfried 22 von Herder The Dialogue between Philosophy and 28 Film: A Short Introduction Senior School 34 Middle School 41 Lower School 73 Forty-Seven Aphorisms on Various 94 Theological Themes Bibliography 102 People 103

INTRODUCTION Dr Tromans, Editor The theme of this year’s Veritas is Philosophy, Theology, and Film, and it has been a delight to read such diverse and riveting essays on the topic. The philosophy of film is now a firmly established subset of that branch of philosophy devoted to conceptual and theoretical inquiry into art and aesthetic experience. A brief exploration here at the start of the meaning of two technical terms – “mimesis” and “hermeneutics” – will help focus the key questions that will accompany us later.

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“Mimesis” concerns the character of representation.

Aristotle held that there was an analogical relationship whereby words referred to a world distinct from them, and so, he said, “art imitates the works of nature”.1 Film, for example, begins with the raw material of space and time, but then re-presents them in new ways. It follows that, in our writing about the dialogue between philosophy/theology and film, we cannot simply rehearse the literary-oriented specifics of plot and character, but must, rather, examine how persons, places, and things are visually framed – or, perhaps, not framed – within a filmic image.

As for “hermeneutics”, a good definition is the one Paul Ricoeur offers, when he speaks of hermeneutics as “the theory of the rules that preside over an exegesis – that is, over an interpretation of a particular text or group of signs that may be viewed as a text”.2 A key question is whether theological and philosophical insights are there to be discovered in the text, or are they, as it were, “discovered” by the reader. There is a sense, I suggest, in that interpretation must be creative in order to be exact.

The clause “art imitates nature” can be found in several passages in the Aristotelian corpus: Phys. 1943 21, 1993 17; De Mundo 396b12; Poetics 14473 14-17, 1448b4-24. All references (except De Mundo) refer to Richard McKeon’s The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1966).

2 P. Ricœur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven, 1970), p. 8.

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The picture on the cover is taken from Gabriel Axes’s 1987 masterpiece Babettes Gæstebud (“Babette’s Feast”). The first Danish film to win best Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, it has regularly been treated as a narrative of Christianity. What warrants such an interpretation? We can note, for example, that the film is full of references that associate Babette with Christ. Babette, though once a famous chef in Paris, but now “poor among the poor”, plays out what may be called a “passion” by sacrificing herself to redeem her community, through the symbolically apt medium of a communal meal.

The story centres on Babette, eucharistically-minded, but is more principally about two sisters, Martine and Filippa, repressed yet dutiful daughters of a strict pietist priest, who has founded a maintained a strict Lutheran brotherhood, and advocates an asceticism that denies “fleshly pleasures”, in favour of the glories of heaven. To celebrate the anniversary of the Founder, Babette (who unbeknownst to the community has won a lottery in France) prepares a meal – “un vrai diner francais”, she says – for the community in which she sacrifices all she has.

Babette’s agape meal (a kind of sacrament) is, indeed, a meal that mysteriously effects the salvation of the community. The guests emerge to a quiet, starlit night, proclaiming blessings, their spirits exalted, reconciled, united, no longer fearful.

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Obvious theological responses suggest themselves.

Axel’s film, creating as it does a challenge to Christian theology about its own central meal, is pregnant with the sort of symbolism that brings into focus the Eucharistic quality of the feast, a blessing of the present moment. Twelve sit down for a meal, with red wine at its heart. At this unexpected abundance, the General speaks of the gift of grace, describing it as infinite and unconditional. He says: Everything we have chosen has been granted to us. And everything we have rejected has also been granted.

This is a sacramental moment, celebrating the abundance of this world, and a conquering of the yearnings for a better world elsewhere. Babette’s Feast sharpens theological engagement with such questions.

Theologians, however, cannot simply quarry film for good illustrative material. As I suggested above, this approach is a mistaken one. Certainly, Theology looks for confirmation of its own content, but it also expects to be challenged – what Larry Krietzer calls “reversing the hermeneutical flow”3 – and even radically questioned in the process.

It has been a great pleasure to be involved with the publication of Veritas for the first time. I owe particular thanks to my colleagues in the department L. J. Krietzer, The New Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow (Cornell University Press, 1993).

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in Theology and Philosophy, and also to the student editorial team who were willing to devote their time to this edition of the journal. Along with Dr Ralph Norman’s essay, “Reason and Reality”, we are pleased to include a contribution by one of our Sixth Form students, Harry Davis (L6R2), on the philosophical legacy of Johann Gottfried von Herder.

Below, you will find three essay competitions addressing fundamental questions related to the dialogue between philosophy/theology and film. There is also my own short piece, “Forty-Seven Aphorisms on Various Theological Themes”. The end result of this edition undoubtedly reflects both the outstanding ability of our students and the enduring value of studying Theology and Philosophy.

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REASON AND REALITY Dr Ralph Norman Ralph Norman teaches Theology, Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has taught Philosophy and Theology at the University for nearly 20 years. He also publishes research which explores links between both subjects.

One of the puzzling things about our minds is just how improbable they are. The laws of nature form a very fine-tuned system, and if any of a handful of factors had been even a fraction different there would be no so thing as intelligent life.1 As Stephen Hawking said, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration”.2 The physicist Paul Davies writes, “The existence of mind in some organism on some planet is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor by-product of mindless,

M. Rees, Just Six Numbers (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999).

2 S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam, 2011), p. 207.

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purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here”.3 Davies thereby expresses a kind of surprise at the fact that we are here in the universe and also something else. He attaches significance to the fact that we are here. Why suggest that we are for some reason supposed to be here?

One of the philosophically significant things about Darwin’s theory of evolution is that it removes purpose, design, or intention from explanations of how our minds came to be. Of course, once our minds came to be we started to use them to re-design ourselves, intellectually, culturally and morally; but the important thing here for many Darwinian materialists is that we can explain the first steps in our coming-tobe with reference to blind biological processes.

Complex minds are simply adaptations that have (so far) proved beneficial to the reproduction of one species of animal.

Soon after Darwin wrote The Descent of Man (1871), philosophers started questioning if his materialist explanation of the emergence of mind was entirely convincing. Thomas Hill Green argued that there is a difference – perhaps a great difference – between evolutionary change and the knowledge of evolutionary change. It is one thing to have evolved; another thing to have intelligent consciousness of evolution. How P. Davies, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 242.

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should we explain the emergence of minds from blind, unconscious matter? Any mind capable of theorising biological evolution is already somehow “beyond” or “over and above” material things, just as it is “over and above” the processes of change which it perceives and attempts to explain. This is because knowledge of change is only possible for minds which transcend the here and now. In order to perceive the difference between past, present, and future, one has to have some sort of trans-temporal consciousness. If our minds were not like that, we could have no concept of change and hence no concept of evolution. To put the question in simple terms, how can consciousness of change evolve out of a succession of changes?4 Through a finely graded series of almost infinitesimal incremental steps? That seems the most reasonable way forward: we work from the biological evidence we already possess and theorise that any gaps in our knowledge of the evolutionary process can be filled with further evolutionary explanations. The testing of the theory sets us on a quest for more evidence. This is the basis of our biological science. But when it comes to explaining something like the emergence of rational consciousness some basic problems remain. The steps from lower to higher consciousness are always (of necessity) explained from the side of those who are already in possession of higher consciousness. You See T. Hill Green, Prolegomena to Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), § 84.

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have to already have a complex mind to explain how you got one.

You also need language. Darwin spent a lot of time looking for animal analogues to human language. I think it fair to say that we are still yet to find anything like human language in any other type of animal. The “language gap” marks us off from other species.

However tempted we may be to “narrow the gap” between animal and human, our evolutionary stories about language depend on the compression of the differences (and simultaneous exaggeration of similarities) between complex language and brutish grunts. Like an upside-down Thomas Aquinas, Darwin reasoned by analogy and anthropomorphism. To make his case he often ironed flat the differences between the human and non-human. He tended to describe human behaviours in terms of animal behaviours and animal behaviours in terms of human behaviours.5 But this tends to obscure the differences we are trying to explain: the difference between a grunt on the one hand, and a language capable of expressing a theory of evolution or a truth of mathematics on the other. As Roger Scruton observed in the course of an argument about the limits of Darwin’s explanations of human

See C. Darwin, The Descent of Man, chapter 3 and chapter 4.

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behaviour, “You don’t cross that chasm merely by misdescribing the behaviour that creates it”.6 The plugging of holes in our knowledge with Darwinian filler has been described by the (avowedly atheist) philosopher Thomas Nagel as “Darwinism of the gaps”.7 Nagel offers an alternative to materialist neo-Darwinism. He argues that any arguments we have – including arguments about evolution, or the emergence of language – presuppose what philosophers have historically called the principle of sufficient reason. The underlying order of nature is intelligible: in principle there has to be a good reason for everything. If we do not presuppose reasonable answers to our questions, there can be no point in asking those questions in the first place; there would be no ultimate rational point to science or anything else. This principle of sufficient reason means that the whole cosmos has to be imprinted with or informed by an underlying structural intelligibility. Nagel admits that this means that he is working “in the tradition of Plato”,8 and it leads him to argue in favour of a metaphysics of “panpsychic monism” (i.e., that the

R. Scruton, The Face of God (London: Continuum, 2012), p.

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7 T. Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 127.

8 Ibid., p. 17.

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whole of things, intelligibility).9

universally,

is

informed

by

It is one thing to say that we are centres of rational awareness existing within the universe. But Nagel takes this a step further and suggests that we are thereby involved in the self-awareness of the universe itself. According to Nagel, “Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself”.10 We do not have to take this to mean that the cosmos per se is intelligent.

We could say that insofar as we are examples of selfconscious (i.e., awakened) minds engaged with the rationality of material things, we are in some way the minds of the universe. But since our minds presuppose the cosmos to be universally intelligible, we then also have to assume that we are part of the monistic unity of the cosmos itself. This assumption that the universe is one intelligible unity means that we have to include ourselves as parts of that whole. In principle, our own reasoning minds must needs also be intelligible because the universe is intelligible. Since we our selfconscious, we can – should – account for our behaviour in terms of rational ideas and reasonable values rather than instincts. As Bernard Bosanquet once argued, “You do not make the world; it communicates your

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Ibid., pp. 56-57.

Ibid., p. 85.

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nature to you, though in receiving this you are an active organ of the world itself”.11 This allows us to see a bit more clearly what Nagel means when he claims that in our minds the universe is waking up to itself. He means that a biological evolutionary process has led in human beings to the emergence of collective cultural and intellectual processes, and that as a second step these intellectual processes have, in turn, proceeded to make of themselves the shift from merely subjective to objective and universal knowledge. Such universal knowledge is of a type which transcends the limited perspectives of any particular conscious subject. In other words, at least some of our knowledge is of a type that cannot be described as being merely “your opinion” or as only “my view”. Some of our knowledge is universally true. Thus I have knowledge that 2 + 2 = 4 and that this would have to be true even if no one, anywhere, at any time, had ever lived to think it. 2 + 2 just is 4. It does not depend on me adding it up to make it so. The human mind is a part of the universe that has woken up to the deep insight that we do not invent numbers but participate in a world of mathematical truths.

The effectiveness of mathematics in describing the world is quite wondrous. To some, like Eugene Wigner, it seems that if mathematical reasoning did not B. Bosanquet, The Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1921), p. 3.

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necessarily “fit” with descriptions of the material world, it would surprisingly improbable that it should.12 But mathematical reasoning does “fit” with the world. Moreover, any mathematical proof is necessarily true; it could not sometimes be true and sometimes be false in the way that material things sometimes do exist and sometimes do not. Given this it should perhaps be predictable that the worldview (if it can rightly be described as one) of at least some very prominent mathematicians remains recognisably Platonistic. As an example, take what Roger Penrose says: “To me the world of perfect forms is primary… its existence being almost a logical necessity – and the world of conscious perceptions and the world of physical reality are its shadows”.13 The material universe has somehow got to the point where rational life has emerged and recognised the intelligible ordering of nature as a kind of other world, not itself material, but logical, mathematical, and rational.

One might be surprised by the fact that the world makes any sense to us at all. The universe is no mere swirling chaos, but is something that can be reasoned about; it displays patterns and laws of nature that we can recognise and which make sense to us. We suppose E. Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Natural Sciences” in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, 13:1, 1960.

13 R. Penrose, Shadows of the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 417.

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that such patterns and rules are universal. Indeed, the presupposition of the universalizability of this accordance of reason with the cosmos is something which itself makes empirical science possible. (It is not itself a fact of empirical science, but a precondition of it; no scientist has observed the universe as a whole, and the claim that there are universal laws of physics is itself incapable of any ultimate empirical verification).

So, let us admit that for us there is a harmonious correlation, agreement, and concordance between mind and matter. How do we account for this? Could this harmony or unity be explained as some random chance or coincidence? That would make our capacity to reason a fluke. If reason is the result of chance, there is no rational explanation for reason: reason itself would have been caused by or based in an ultimately irrational and lawless chaos. Even if we entertain the hypothetical argument (of modal logic) that an infinite number of multiverses could by sheer random chance include at least one instance of a rationally ordered universe (our own – the best of all possible worlds precisely as the intelligible world), we are not easily left off the hook. As Thomas Nagel argues, “this is a cop-out, which dispenses with the attempt to explain anything”.14 Nagel’s argument is that the multiverse theory does not satisfactorily solve the problem. It does

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Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 95 n.

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not provide a comprehensive account of the natural order as ordered, and gives no intelligible explanation of intelligibility. If we take recourse to multiverse theory, intellect becomes a mere accident that exists only in a hole (a negative space) within a wider chaos.

Intelligibility would then have no final significance. If there is no ultimate reason for reasoning we may as be done with it (and theories of multiverses to boot).15 Reasonable structure cannot be exceptional, but must be recognised everywhere as the condition of our knowing a system of nature. Intelligibility has to go all the way down things, right to the very depths. If this (logically) has to be more than a coincidence, what then is it? John Richardson Illingworth was representative of a tradition of post-Darwinian British philosophy when he argued that only purpose can lead to purpose.

“For a system which culminates in purpose must be purposeful throughout. Its entire process must be qualified by the character of its conclusion”.16 This, he argued, was not an argument from design, but a reflection of what he called the “higher teleology”: “What we are here contending with is that the entire material order, with all its infinite complexity, This rather Nietzchean insight reflects various types of fideism as well as any theology which privileges God’s will over God’s logos or truth. If the free agency of God is not governed by (or identical with) God’s truth, reason has no ultimate rational ground.

16 J. Richardson Illingworth, Divine Immanence (London: Macmillan, 1898), p. 15.

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ministers to another and higher order of being, from which it received no reciprocal return, and is therefore intended or designed so to do”.17 For Illingworth, this is the consequence of recognising the reasonableness of material order as ordered.

How come this ordering? It might be our own doing: the correlation might be caused by us. One of the odder, though surprisingly recurrent themes of quantum physics is the notion that the existence of things in the universe actually depends on you and I, as observers. Much has been made of the notorious “delayed-choice double-split” experiment. This is the basis for John Wheeler’s claim, “It has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it is an observed phenomenon”.18 But if observers are responsible for observed phenomenon, where do we stop? For Stephen Hawking, the “observations you make on a system in the present affect its past… the universe doesn’t have just a single history, but every possible history… and our observations in its current state affect its past and determine the different histories of the universe”.19 This argument led Hawking to the logical conclusion that “we create Ibid., p. 20.

J. Wheeler, “The Past and the Delayed-Choice Double-Slit Experiment” in A. R. Marlow, ed, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory (Academic Press: 1978), p.

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19 S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam, 2011), pp. 106-107.

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history by our observation, rather than history creating us”.20 If this is true, it follows that the cosmos has been formed by our own minds.

What are we to say? That our minds participate in immaterial rational and mathematical laws which exist outside of time, generating as well as informing the universe? That is a way of explaining how we got here, and a way of providing an account of how our rationality somehow “fits” with the world.

Philosophical idealism is back in business.

If human beings can apply reason to everything in nature, they can apply it to themselves, too. Reasoning about reasoning is what Rowan Williams has described as a “doctrine of intelligence”. There are different ways of being intelligent which involve a diversity of questions. There are pragmatic or problem-solving or solution-focussed functional questions. There are also questions about the point, purpose, end, or good of those functions. Likewise, there are questions about the end, or good, of intelligence itself. The finding of one type of answer to one type of question does not stop us asking further questions. Indeed, this is part of the joy of intellectual life. Yet this intellectual life is not “free-floating”, but engages with reality. I cannot just make up truth because it suits me. Reason itself shows us this.

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Ibid., p. 179.

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Or, as George Orwell observed, “we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we a finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality”.21 Good education helps us with this. Good education allows us to practise routines of patient attentiveness, acquire the habits of asking good questions, and aims at helping us to sift the superficial from the profound.

“Good learning calls, no less than teaching does, for courtesy, respect, a kind of reverence: reverence for facts and people, evidence and argument, for climates of speech and patterns of behaviour different from our own”.22 When we apply the principle of sufficient reason to our own behaviour we begin to ask reasonable questions of ethical problems, seek reasonable answers to those The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell. Vol. IV: In front of your nose, 1945-1950 (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), p. 124.

22 N. Lash, Holiness, Speech and Silence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 62-63. Lash writes in the tradition of John Henry Newman, who believed that the hallmarks of a liberal education included habits of “diligence, assiduity, regularity, despatch, [and] persevering application”.

Newman held that education’s lasting attributes are “freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom”. See J. Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1996), p. 94 & p. 77 21

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questions, and develop and revise moral theories.

Ethics cannot be a matter of mere personal preference.

Moral judgments are not just expressions of our own feelings and attitudes. If we disagree over what is right, it is not just because I have a very strong emotional feeling that you are wrong. The person who bursts into tears first is not necessarily more moral than another; the person who shouts loudest has not thereby won an argument. We persist in subjecting moral choices to rational argument in the expectation that reason will help supply answers to our moral problems. Further, if we disagree about the best way of doing this, we engage in a philosophical conversation about moral theory. Idealism also opens up old paths in aesthetics. Roger Scruton wrote extensively on the application of philosophical reasoning to beauty. Beauty, he argued, is not merely a matter of subjective preferences, but is in principle something that can be reasoned about intelligibly.

Scruton’s book, The Soul of the World (which happens to refer to Nagel) argues that aesthetics is a path to transcendence; our experience of beauty tells us something about truth.23 And religion? We find here a core aspect of the spiritual, philosophical and theological traditions we inherit from St Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was committed to the idea that that truths of religion, R. Scruton, The Soul of the World (Princeton University Press, 2014).

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however obscure they might appear at first sight, could not, in principle, be contrary to reason. God for Thomas is the God of truth. Our scientific and philosophical questioning of the world as well as of ourselves is made possible because the rational Divine mind had provided the grounds for the intelligibility of the world.

It sets the mind on a journey towards the discovery of further and deeper layers of intelligibility, all the way down to the depths. This intelligibility opens a path to God. “Wonder is a kind of desire in knowing. It is a cause of delight because it carries with it the hope of discovery” (S. Th. 1-2, q. 41, art. 4, ad 5); “as it stated in the beginning of the Metaphysics (1.2)… a person… wonders… and from wondering proceeds to inquire.

Nor does this inquiry cease until one arrives at a knowledge of the essence of the cause” (S. Th. 1-2, q. 3, art 8). How come this desire, this aspiration, for truth?

The desire for knowledge makes the acquisition of knowledge possible; the “gift” of desire provides the “dynamism of the participation of the finite in the infinite”.24 Desire always desires some end, which is a good, and “without some at least partly determinate conception of the final telos there could not be any beginning to a quest”.25 As far as Thomas was

J. Milbank, Being Reconciled (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 8.

25 A. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1985), p. 219.

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concerned, if there is no God, there is no satisfying explanation for science.

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE OF GOTTFRIED VON HERDER Harry Davis (L6R2) In this article, I will briefly summarise the works of Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) and the influence his work had on philosophers such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and J. S. Mill. Herder’s work also contributed to the establishment of the basis of modern linguistics. He was also a central thinker in the foundation of nationalism and the belief that all people who speak the same language should live in the same land.

Herder's best-known works are written on the theory of language and they give us a fascinating insight into the origins of language. He argued that language should be described in human or natural terms and that the divine source cannot give us a direct interpretation of the origins of language.

David Hume wrote that, “mankind is so much the same in all times and places that history informs us of nothing new or strange”, but Herder believed that this opinion was wrong. If this is to be so, then why has there been such a vast variety of traditions, concepts, and values around the world in various periods of time?

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To answer this question, Herder came up with the theory that thinking depends on language and location and that one can only think if they have a language.

This is why various fields of thinking have been established in different locations around the world.

Someone who speaks Hindi would think differently to someone who speaks German as it is part of their human nature. This is why we have different cultures around the world.

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His thesis challenged the early view that had dominated in the 17th and 18th century which was that language and thought and meaning were completely unrelated. His works were seen as ground-breaking and went on to influence many modern philosophers.

This idea is also the foundation of cultural nationalism which is the belief that each country has its own values based on language and so therefore liberalism cannot be applied across different nations, as people who do not speak the same language have a language barrier which may cause issues between people due to their lack of understanding. These issues could be religion based or just cultural differences that the people disagree on. Herder saw having one language within a country as a way of peaceful co-existence with a more liberal form of government as all the people would have similar beliefs. This was an early view of nationalism but the meaning of nationalism was severely distorted in Germany in the 1930s and the early 1940s when Hitler came to power. Despite being Austrian he shared the view that language unites all German speakers much like Herder. The country Hitler constructed though was very different from that desired by Herder. The war hungry Nazi Germany was almost the complete opposite of Herder’s idea of a peaceful and free Germany.

Herder also developed a new theory on translation, which is complicated by different languages having different concepts. He states that there can be two 24

types of translation, a “lax” approach where the text can stray from the original source in order to adapt to the language it is being translated into, or there is the “accommodating” approach which is where you should stay as close as it possible can to the original text.

Herder preferred the accommodating approach as the fundamental goal of translation is semantic faithfulness. However, when using the accommodating approach, he claimed that one cannot always translate a text with the same meaning in another language. An example he gave was English humour: the jokes made in English quite simply do not convey the same meaning when being translated into another language.

He derived a solution which was to make sure that the text must capture the emotional tone of the original or the oral aspects of its language. He gives an example of this in his translation of Genesis 1 where the English translation states, “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light” – which he translates into German, “Gott sprach: ‘Sei Licht!’ und’s war Licht!” While the meanings do not match word for word the use of the exclamation mark encapsulates G-d’s command and the force that he is speaking with.

Herder himself translated texts in a range of languages including some of the works of Shakespeare to help prove his point about language. His essay titled “Shakespeare” changed the way we approach historical texts as he claimed that we must judge a piece of work by their own historical and cultural context. He also 25

believed that it is vital to learn other languages so that we can express things which our mother tongue cannot.

His work on translation helped found a whole new area of academic work known as linguistics. This is the scientific study of language form and meaning with analysis focussed on the historical and political factors that have influenced the language in the past.

Linguistics is usually the analysis of human language by observing the connection between sound and meaning.

The work of Herder also included some material on interpretation and the theory of hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the theory used behind interpretation, in particular in religious texts and works of philosophy. He tried to answer the question, when interpreting someone who is speaking a completely different language and therefore has a different way of thinking, how can we achieve an accurate interpretation?

Herder set out three principles that we must follow when interpreting: The first principle when interpreting religious texts, is that one must use a principle of secularism. This means that no religious assumptions should be made no matter how sacred the text may be. The second principle is a principle of generic interpretation which 26

means that the interpretation should be of the nature of the genre that is being interpreted. Thirdly a principle of methodological empiricism is necessary when interpreting. This means that when interpreting a text, one must keep to sensory experience as our knowledge cannot extend beyond experience.

This work on hermeneutics influenced Friedrich Schleiermacher to expand on the work of Herder.

This essay has demonstrated the influence that Herder has had on not only philosophy but also linguistics, politics and he also potentially playing an inadvertent role in World War II by virtue of his influence on Hitler. The real question stemming from this is: why don’t more people know about Herder? One explanation could lie in the fact that because so many other philosophers used his work as the basis for further writing. It is possible that he has been left in the shadows of Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Nietzsche.

Despite not receiving the recognition that others have received, Herder changed the way that translators approach their work. This has been important for translation works of theology and philosophy which have been written in the past so that we can understand them now. As one of the great thinkers of the 18th century, Herder laid the foundations for others.

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THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND FILM: A SHORT INTRODUCTION Matt Cohen (U6C1), Oliver Jayson (U6R1), Riyan Lakhani (U6R2), Gabriel Medoza (U6J2), Daniel Sandler (U6M1) The philosophy of film is now regarded as an established subfield of the contemporary philosophy of arts. Although the philosophy of film has experienced particular growth in more recent history, its roots lie in the early decades of the 20th century. There are many significant reasons why contemporary philosophers now take a keen interest in the philosophy of film. Perhaps most importantly, the cultural role of movies in modern day society has made it imperative for philosophers to take film as a serious artform, on the same level as literature, painting, and design. This has led to a surge of interest in the use of film for philosophical reflection – making the philosophy of film a key area for discussion. In this entry, we first explore the nature of film before delving into more specific issues such as emotional engagement and the linking of film to society.

The question that dominated early philosophical inquiry into film was whether the cinema could be regarded as an artform. There were two reasons 28

against the proposition: firstly, film seemed to have a vulgarity that made it an unsuitable companion to theatre and the other fine arts. Secondly, film seemed to borrow too much from other art forms. In order to justify the claim that film deserves to be considered an independent art form, philosophers investigated the ontological structure of film. The hope was to develop a concept of film that made it clear that it differed in significant ways from other fine arts. Hugo Münsterberg, the first philosopher to write a monograph about the new art form, attempted to distinguish film by means of the ways that film creators employed different technical devices in presenting its narratives, such as flashbacks, closeups, and so on.1 According to Münsterberg, these devices distinguished film as an artform. Münsterberg went on to ask how viewers were able to understand the role that these technical devices had in conveying the plot of the film. His answer was that these devices were all objectifications of mental process. For example, a close-up presents in visual form a correlate to the mental act of paying attention to something.

Viewers can understand how these devices function because they are familiar with the workings of their own minds and can recognize these objectified mental functions when they see them. Therefore, it is clear to A. Langdale (ed.), Hugo Munsterberg on Film: The Photoplay: A Psychological Study and Other Writings (Routledge, 2001).

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see that ever since the beginning of filmmaking, there has been a deep underlying link between philosophy and film.

Another aspect of the philosophy of film that is worth exploring is film and its influence on society. In some instances, particularly in the 20th century, it was argued that film had no positive impact on society.

Film often represented a society that had a false resemblance to the one we are a part of, since it often avoided acknowledging the existence of systemic problems, such as social oppression towards minority groups. Instead, the narrative of Hollywood films displayed imaginary stories as though they represented reality. Furthermore, one can go so far as to suggest that “Hollywood” and other mainstream entertainment industries actually supported social oppression in society by denying the existence of it.

However, over the years, the structure behind the narrative of Hollywood films has developed massively to become more progressive and even to challenge social norms which they deem incorrect. For example, films such as Matilda supported the empowerment of woman in an era where the idea empowerment for women was not as well-known a concept as it is today.

Matilda is a film whose narrative encourages young girls to pursue their dreams in education or elsewhere regardless of societal expectations. Furthermore, films possess the ability to reach large audiences, allowing society to be exposed to new and more progressive 30

ideas to inspire more societal progression and even to revolt against backwards ideologies that harm different communities, whether this be race, class, gender or sexual orientation.

A further key area to be explored is the idea of emotional engagement – in other words, the reasons why we are able to connect with characters on screen.

We believe the best way to understand our emotional response to imagined scenarios is through what is dubbed the “thought theory”, which claims the reason behind our emotional response to films is that our emotions are brought about by the thoughts that occur to us as we are watching a film. When watching Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, for example, many have noted that, although they could not literally identify themselves with Hispanic maid Cleo in 1970s Mexico working “for a wealthy family”, they could relate to her thoughts. When Cleo’s baby is stillborn, we can relate to the feelings of sheer loss that evoke a deep melancholy – although not, of course, to the extent of a mother losing her child. Interestingly, in some ways our inability to understand what a character is going through makes our emotional response even more powerful, as we grapple with our own thoughts trying to connect with what we see. Contrasting the beautifully sensitive film that is Roma, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street was a film of sheer excess in wealth, drugs, and sex; again, most viewers could identify to some extent with protagonist Jordan’s 31

thoughts of greed and self-protection that motivated him to act – thoughts which in turn tend to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. We watch films because we create connections with them, and we forge these links by connecting our own thoughts with what we see on screen.

The last area of philosophy and film to be explored is film as philosophy. Initially, philosophers such as Plato showed hostility towards the arts, claiming that they posed competing and erroneous sources of belief and knowledge. Nonetheless, philosophers of film have generally opposed this view, seeing film as a source of philosophical knowledge and modernism. In fact, Stanley Cavell suggests that film shares the inherent concerns of philosophy – scepticism about the world and how it can be overcome.2 However, there is an opposition to such a point of view – namely, that instead philosophy can have at most a heuristic function in relation to philosophy. Individuals who hold the belief that film can make a philosophical contribution understand that fiction films can function as thought experiments, in which imaginary scenarios are carried out to show how things would be in certain cases. Films such as The Matrix and Memento have been suggested as such philosophical candidates.

Furthermore, a focus has been placed on structural C. Wheatley, Stanley Cavell and Film: Scepticism and SelfReliance at the Cinema (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

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films – films that are analogues to minimalism in the other arts. These give rise to the question of whether they are not in fact actual experiments that seek to show necessary criteria for something being a film. The films The Flicker and Serene Velocity, for example, make philosophical contributions, if this view is accepted. On a more general note, the philosophical relevance of film has been generally recognised by philosophers. Although it is debatable whether films can “do” philosophy, it is obvious that films are bringing philosophical issues to the attention of wide audiences. And this must be beneficial for philosophy’s advancement.

It is clear from this discussion that the philosophy of film has become a significant area for philosophical reflection, and we can look forward to the quantity and quality of philosophical contributions to this artform increasing dramatically in the coming years.

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SENIOR SCHOOL Students were asked to provide a 1500word response to the statement: Film provides access to truths, particularly philosophical and theological truths, that cannot be expressed in any other way.

Winner: Jack Cobb (U6C1) At a time when populist movements are on the march throughout the world, when the climate crisis deepens and the coronavirus pandemic adds to a seemingly endless list of insurmountable problems, why should we pay attention to (the philosophy of) film? Isn’t it self-indulgent to concern ourselves with film, literature, music, or other arts when the foundations of society and of the international order are being shaken? Along with an examination of the epistemological process of film, this essay will explore how films can influence culture, politics, and laws, and how they can produce an unparalleled emotional reaction in an audience. I will argue that films have the ability to provide us with access to truths that cannot be expressed in any other way because of their phenomenological realism, which transforms our ideas and perspectives. Only when we (mistakenly) defend a simplistic correspondence theory of truth do the 34

distinguishing aspects of film, its vivid effects and emotions, not provide us with any new truths.

First, it is necessary to understand what we mean when we refer to film. It is commonplace when we use the word “film” to mean any or all events captured by a camera as a set of moving images. This, in itself, reveals to us the limitations of our statement, since film seems to borrow so much from other art forms that it would be impossible to argue successfully that it provides access to truths that cannot be expressed in any other way. For example, early films seemed little more than recordings of either theatrical performances or everyday life. The rationale behind this was to enable them to be disseminated to a wider audience than was possible at a live performance; but, in that case, film seems only to be a means of access to other art forms and not an independent art, capable of revealing knowledge, on its own. For example, the recently produced Disney Plus film of the musical Hamilton does not appear capable of producing any new knowledge that could not be found from merely watching it in the theatre. Clearly then our definition of film needs to be refined to distinguish the role of film as an enterprise in its own right.

The analytic tradition of philosophy seeks to define film in terms of its ontological structure – the technical devices that it employs in presenting its narratives such as flashbacks, close-ups, and editing. All of these devices were/are taken to be objectifications of mental processes. A close-up, for example, presents in visual 35

form the correlate of the mental act of paying attention to something, and viewers naturally understand how such cinematic devices function because they are familiar with the workings of their own mind and can recognize these objectified mental functions when they see them. Combined with this formalistic view is the branch of film philosophy that stresses ontological realism. Film, because of its basis in photography, has been viewed as a realistic medium that allows viewers to actually see the objects that appear on screen.

Realists like André Bazin have classified film as real because it is able to capture an authentic reality independent of human subjectivity. In his classic essay “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema”, Bazin made two separate and important claims: that the film image was an objective re-presentation of the past, a veritable slice of reality; and the psychological corollary that spectators somehow regard the images on screen as identical with their referents. For Bazin, the art of cinema consists in everything that it can add to a given reality, such that he makes the bold claim: “we can say a director writes in film… The filmmaker is no longer the competitor of the painter and the playwright, at last he is the equal of the novelist”.1 There is certainly a degree to which this view has some value. Films undoubtedly are “sources”, as it were, capable of revealing to us knowledge in the same way as books or historical literature. For example, a film Bazin’s essay can be found in A. Bazin, What is Cinema?

(University of Calinforna Press, 2005).

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about World War II, that has a basis in the truth of the matter, and that can be judged by its reliability and provenance together with other sources, has equal worth in revealing empirical knowledge as, say, a history book. But here is the critical point. Given a purely correspondence theory of truth – whereby what is true is what corresponds or agrees with reality (a mirror theory of knowledge) – films have no independent value, for there are equally valuable, if not superior ways of revealing truths. There is nothing that a film can reveal that a book cannot also portray; and, given digital techniques for editing films, scepticism seems more of a problem. Therefore, when considering the statement above, according to this view, it is not possible for films to reveal truths that “cannot be expressed in any other way.”

However, in presenting this ontological realist film theory, Bazin has made a number of mistakes. Firstly, he should not reduce film to language. According to Christian Metz, cinematic language is not constituted by all elements that appear in film, but only by those things that can only appear in film such that the distinguishing feature of cinema is its capacity to represent the world symbolically, as well as its ability to express certain abstract concepts.2 More importantly, however, this ontological realism sees the only value of film insofar as it corresponds with reality, whereas I wish to argue that its real value comes from C. Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (University of Chicago Press, 1990).

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its ability to produce a powerful phenomenological response.

Immanuel Kant challenged the presuppositions of a mirror theory of knowledge, which no philosopher had seriously doubted before him. Kant argued that truth is not simply a copy of the world but involves a contribution of the thinking mind. What we call truth depends both on what there is, the way things are, and on the contribution of the thinker – the mind. For example, if we consider vision, we tend to think that what we see depends just on what is in reality; however, the more we study vision, the more we discover that what we call vision involves an enormous amount of interpretation. The colour we see as red is not the same colour in terms of wavelength that we see at different times of day. Even in our simplest transaction with the world, just looking at it, we are actually interpreting it.

To explain this further it is necessary to consider this example: two lighting strikes happen simultaneously, one at A and one at B. These strikes are perceived by three different observers, such that X is travelling from B to A, Y is standing equal distance from A and B, and Z is travelling from A to B. Now, X states that “A happens first”, Y states “A and B are simultaneous”, and Z states “B happens first”. The same event has been accurately perceived by three different observers such that because of the speed of light, facts about simultaneity in this way can correctly and truthfully be described differently by different observers.

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Given now that we cannot make a total separation between what is true and our perception of it, there is another way in which films can reveal truths to us.

Instead of accepting Bazin’s ontological realism, a more persuasive phenomenological realism emerges.

Film provides a phenomenological experience by consistently immersing the human consciousness in a world. As a means of enlightenment that escapes the limit of human sight, it is able to produce a dream-like reality by unhinging the most basic rules of logic and time, and by overcoming human reason. Film’s unique worth is its ability to transform all things in space into bearers of emotion. This is ultimately where Bazin has gone wrong. Hugo Munsterberg in “Photoplay” argued that film is the mirror of the mind and not the world; the goal of cinema is not, as Bazin thought, to reproduce reality, but is instead to materialise emotions. Munsterberg theorised in his film-mind analogy about how close-ups and flashbacks parallel acts of consciousness.

Therefore, it is the phenomenological power of film that is what enables it to reveal truths to us, not truths as in the correspondence theory of truth, but by recognising our mind-dependent contribution in truth developed since Kant. Films do this by transforming our perspective and challenging our pre-conceived ideas, allowing us the potential to critically think.

There is a reason why when teaching first year philosophy students about different accounts of perception, the film, The Matrix is commonly used,

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because it can challenge naturally accepted notions of direct realism in a way that listening simply cannot.

At the start of this essay, I questioned the value of theorising about film given the multitude of other problems going on in the world right now. The beauty of the phenomenological power of film is that it can really change society by developing our ideas and perspectives. Just as Theodor Adorno saw the damaging role of mass media in Nazi Germany, and the degenerating influence of the American cultural revolution post-WWII, film can be used for positive changes, directly because it can reveal new truths in a way that cannot be expressed by any other medium.

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MIDDLE SCHOOL Essays addressing the question: What can Film teach us about ethics and how to live a good life?

Aarav Anil (9H1) on The Social Dilemma The film The Social Dilemma is a documentary/drama that explains the rise of AI and how it controls the things we do in everyday life, how we think and behave, and also how obsessed we become with our gadgets. It shows us a scenario in which a teenage girl is desperately addicted to her mobile phone and how that affects her. It shows how painful it can be to receive a snide comment about your body image/facial features and raises key ethical questions.

We have many names for it: cyberbullying, being mean online, etc., but there is only one concept: making snide comments that are bound to hurt someone and affect their mental health. The Social Dilemma shows the impact of cyberbullying and the rise of cyberbullyingassociated deaths and suicides. It shows that in girls aged between 10 and 14, the suicide rate has gone up almost twice as fast as in girls aged between 15 and 19.

A recent study also demonstrates that young people

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are not going out as much as they used to due to all this new technology.

Nowadays, the tech industry is regarded as not only selling computers, but also “human futures”. This is evident in the number of employees in the tech industry. This is also ethically wrong as tech giants like Apple and Google fire employees if they make even the slightest mistake, or if the company’s sales rates go down. This leaves more people unemployed and affects mental health in the global populace overall.

Another problem shown in the film is the political and racial divides going from online to real life. This leads 42

to mass violence and protests globally, causing governments to fall into disarray and laws to slowly crumble. This is presented in the film in the form of a political riot, with many innocent passers-by being caught up in the fray and being hurt, if not killed.

Racial violence was also a key to many civilians being hurt in riots and drive-by shootings.

Another global problem shown in the film is fake news.

This plays a huge part in today’s life, with rumors about the coronavirus making people affected by it more and more anxious. Not only coronavirus, but a host of other stories are misinterpreted in the world of social media, like the suspected rigging of the US elections by Russia, the Syrian situation and the Novichok victims in the last five years, to name but a few. This will cause massive social media feuds, especially between vloggers who state their opinions on these situations and convince those loyal viewers and subscribers to believe their propaganda and spread the word to others around them. This will cause many street fights, and it could hit very hard to a fully developed country like the US, which, however economically developed, still suffers from government instability.

The film also shows how AI controls everything you see and everything that comes up on your feed. On YouTube, when you watch something, you see many other related (and somewhat unrelated also) videos popping up on the sides. This is all controlled by the AI 43

on the website or the app. This just shows how much of an influence the software has on the things that someone wants to watch or what ads they see over the course of their entertainment period.

A key point that the film makes is that with the good, there must also be the bad. A key quotation from Sophocles is “Every good thing that enters the life of man comes with a curse”. The “curse” we see today is cyberbullying, addiction, political riots, among other things. This is seriously messing with politics and democracy as we know it, as it increases the damage cover-up fund required from the national budgets, reducing the economy until it lies in shambles on the floor. This is key as it provides a long-term prediction as to what will happen in 30 years or so if we keep going down that path. It also proves that tech, no matter how luxurious, is not all good. This implies that soon, robotics and AI will be so advanced that it will take away human jobs. This will spell doom for humanity and its ability to think and innovate.

Tristan Harris, a co-founder of the Centre for Humane Technology and former design ethicist at Google, states that though everyone knows that there is some sort of a problem with tech, not even the biggest experts can say what that problem is in a few words.

This means that the education system is not doing enough to explain the cons of tech and social media.

Instead, they are just explaining what it is and how addiction is bad for you. This is not doing enough to 44

protect the young people from it. Addiction is one of those things that anyone can be afflicted by, which is why Tristan Harris said explicitly to shield more people from it because when it strikes, it can split families apart, as shown in the scenario in the film.

In conclusion, the film shows that tech controls ethics more than ever and reduces people’s consciences with nagging voices of vloggers and YouTubers spouting all kinds of propaganda. This manipulates the void between “good” and “bad”, and that line becomes very hazy. This makes the conception of ethics much harder for people, and soon they will drop the concept altogether. This teaches us to be wary when it comes to technology and social media, because it threatens the very foundation of civilization: namely, ethics.

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Savin Dias (9H2) on Lord of the Flies I have chosen to write about the 1963 film Lord of the Flies. I will write this essay from the perspectives of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who argue from different positions with regard to the human condition. I intend to evaluate who is right. The evaluation will be based upon two sources of evidence: i.

The narrative of the film and actions of key protagonists

ii.

Archaeological, anthropological and ethnographic research on hunter gatherers and forager communities

Lord of the Flies, directed by Peter Brook, is based on the novel published in 1953 by William Golding. A plane carrying a group of boys (aged between six and 12) crashes on a deserted island. Ralph is elected leader. Jack, his rival, is cruel and violent and becomes increasingly barbaric as the story unfolds. Slowly, Jack draws boys away from Ralph’s leadership. He can do this because of the boys’ natural affinity for hunting and violence. Two boys are murdered and Jack sets up a manhunt to find and kill Ralph. He torches the island-wide forest to smoke Ralph out, destroying their paradisiacal habitat. Luckily for Ralph, a British naval ship arrives on the island, saving him from death at the hands of savages.

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According to Thomas Hobbes, morality and conscience are not inherent traits of men. The only reason why anarchy does not prevail is because there are systems of government in place that enforce the rule of law. In his most famous work, The Leviathan, Hobbes expresses a bleak view of man’s natural instincts. The resulting behaviour of the boys reinforces this premise and supports the Hobbesian position.

Rousseau takes the opposite view: human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society.

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”, the opening words of Rousseau’s The Social Contract summarises his philosophical outlook. Rousseau believed that as hunter gatherers humans were once free and inherently good; however, when we started living in settlements our freedom was curtailed. This leads to social inequality, violence, and unhappiness.

According to Rousseau, the birth of the state was the demise of man.

So, who is right, Hobbes or Rousseau? Without a doubt, Lord of the Flies sits in Hobbes’ camp. With no law enforcement, the boys behave like savages, confirming Hobbes’ gloomy view of man.

However, Lord of the Flies is a work of fiction. What does the evidence from hunter gatherer communities from pre-history and modern day tell us about the human condition? The data points to a very different island.

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Cave paintings and archaeological remains of early humans suggest that the occurrence of extensive violence and genocide happened at a certain point in human history. The time coincides with the development of agriculture and humans living in settlements. For context, we should note that humans (homo-sapiens) have been around for around 250,000 years. The beginning of agriculture happened only 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. We have been huntergathers for at least 94% of our existence. Therefore, the inference from cave paintings and archaeology is that the era of savage behaviour is a recent chapter.

According to anthropologists, pre-historic man was a gentle nomad and enjoyed a good quality of life. When you compare pre-historic hunter gatherers with modern day forager communities (there are few remaining and dwindling!) you see remarkable similarities: -

Lots of free time: Hunting and gathering did not take long, at most two hours per day. This meant more time for socialising and adults could spend quality time with children.

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Child rearing was a responsibility shared by the whole tribe. Infants were carried by everybody.

Parents today warn children not to talk to strangers. However, in pre-history children were raised on a diet of trust.

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The nomadic life meant that you took only what you could carry. Hunter gatherers were not materialistic. Unlike us, they were not burdened by material possessions.

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Nomadic groups consisted of small numbers (maximum 150) and it was common for people to move into new bands. This mechanism avoided conflict. When settlements started there was a focus on one’s own community and one’s own possessions. Life in settlements made us more distrustful of strangers, leading to the birth of xenophobia.

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Modern foragers see themselves as recipients of a generous environment. They are grateful to nature for providing all their needs. Compare this with Jack who torches the island! Compare this with our current behaviour: we poison oceans with plastic, we suffocate air with carbon, and hunt animal species to extinction.

Based on archaeological, anthropological, and ethnographic research, inherent human nature is good. Left to our own, on the whole, we would live in harmony with each other and respect our natural environment. We did this as hunter gatherers for 94% of our time on earth. We do this now in forager communities. It is only in the most recent 10,000– 15,000 years, since the advent of agriculture, formation of settlements and creation of laws, have 49

violent, environmentally destructive, and genocidal tendencies occurred in our behaviour. Is this enough to dismiss Hobbes in favour of Rousseau? There is one final piece of evidence.

Unlike the fictions created by Brook and Golding, the real Lord of the Flies is a true story. In 1965, six boys aged 13-16 escaped from a boarding school in Tonga.

They stole a boat and set sale for Fiji – 500 miles away!

The boat was battered in a storm. They spotted and swam to the uninhabited the island of Ata and made it their home. Unlike the characters in the film, the boys did not turn on each other. When disagreements occurred, they were amicably reconciled. There was no violence. They spent the days, singing, making music, eating what nature provided and just chilling out.

This, I believe, is the true nature of human beings.

They were “rescued” by an Australian fishing boat 15 months later.

When the evidence is assembled and evaluated, we see that it is Rousseau, not Hobbes, who correctly understood the nature of man. To run an ethical society, policy-makers need to be mindful of this. If governing bodies begin with the premise that “human beings are good”, the rules and laws that follow will resonate with our nature and policies will be more successful and effective.

In answer to the question “What does Lord of the Flies teach human beings about ethics and how to live a good 50

life?”, based on the evidence, the answer is simple: absolutely nothing! Thankfully, Hobbes was wrong and Rousseau was right and we owe it to ourselves to believe that.

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Milo Sinclair (9R1) on Inside Out In this essay, I will be discussing what the film Inside Out can tell us about philosophy. But I will also be considering what philosophy can teach us about Inside Out.

The film’s story is charming but also deeply philosophical. I will show how it examines the idea of free will, whether you can have happiness without sadness, the concept of identity, and whether you can ever really understand someone. These are issues that philosophers have discussed for centuries.

Inside Out is based on five emotions inside of the mind of a young girl called Riley. The five emotions are Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. The film throws up 52

a few philosophical problems, including the idea of free will. Free will was defined by Plato as the concept of “self-mastery”. This is the idea that people can act at their own discretion. But the film presents Riley as a vessel or machine which her emotions control. If one emotion takes over then she will act totally in line with that emotion. We see this happen when the emotion Joy disappears for a bit. The film poses the question: can we have free will if, like Riley, we cannot do what we wish, and are a slave to our emotions?

Another philosophical question raised by the film is whether there can be happiness without sadness. The film suggests that the answer to this is “no”: you need sadness to understand what happiness is. Just like, if it was always 25 degrees Celsius, you would not understand what cold or hot was.

The movie shows Riley growing up, but the emotions in her head do not. This movie asks a deep philosophical question: are you are always the same person, even as you change over time? This is called the problem of continuity of identity. The philosopher John Locke argued that “personal identity should be defined in terms of sameness of consciousness”. Every day cells are dying and reforming as new ones replace them; after 10 years not a single cell in your body is the same as it was. Physically you are not the same person.

However, whether you are the same person mentally is a different question. This is complicated because our opinions are formed by connecting neurons. If you still 53

have the same view on something that you did 10 years ago, your connections are the same. Inside Out suggests something similar. We are the same person over time because our emotions remain stable even if our views and our basic chemistry does not.

Another key theme of the movie is that Riley’s parents are trying, but failing, to understand her. The film questions whether you can never really know someone.

You can tell someone everything about you, but they still won’t understand you. This is in part because people with different living conditions approach the world differently. For example, you may be sympathetic to a poor person and you may feel their pain, but you will never know what they are really feeling until you climb into their skin and walk around in it. Even if you have been in a similar position, you will still never fully understand them because people react differently. The film suggests the reason for this is that their emotions are different. You may have been homeless and so you might think you could understand a homeless person. But Inside Out suggests they will have different emotions to you. They may have kids or an addiction to smoking. This makes it impossible to understand someone even if you have been there.

It is also possible to reverse the question. That is not just to ask: what does a film like Inside Out teach us about philosophy? But also: what can philosophy teach us about films? Critical theorists argue that media, such as films, should be studied critically. Films, they 54

say, are a representation of what a society thinks is good and bad. It shows what is accepted and what most people think. This can be a sub-conscious bias that lies so deep the film makers don’t even notice they have it.

Unless they take a critical philosophical attitude. A critical theorist would note that a film like Inside Out normalises family relationships; it supports the idea that children should go to school, that dogs can be “owned”, for example.

Movies also show what society thinks the good life is.

Movies like Inside Out suggest that people should aspire to happiness, with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the ultimate goals. This feels natural to us because those are our values. But Spartan society was not about individual happiness; it was a warrior society, concerned with collective endeavour. Medieval society was organised around the Church and salvation.

Some philosophers say films should be critically examined for hidden messages. Inside Out, for example, suggests people are ultimately responsible for their own happiness. But Marxists would say that people are being oppressed under capitalism and the media, and films like Inside Out are used to trick people into thinking that their happiness is something that they control, stopping them fighting the real cause of their unhappiness, which is capitalism.

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To conclude, Inside Out touches on many philosophical ideas, from free will in Plato to continuity of identity in Locke, as well as the idea that happiness is your own responsibility. It’s also a great film, with wonderful characters, a touching story, and fantastic amination.

Well worth watching.

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Adam Smith (9H1) on Quo Vadis “When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give anyone – happiness and love.” (Henryk Sienkiewicz, “Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero”, 1896)

In 1905 the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of his books, Quo Vadis, is a story that explores religion, love, and duty. Several films have been made based on this book. I have chosen and watched two of them: one, a Hollywood film directed by Melvyn LeRoy (1951) and the other, a Polish version directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz (2001).

Quo Vadis tells a story about a Roman General called Marcus Vinicius, who through his love for the 57

Christian girl Lygia, converts to Christianity. The narrative takes place during the reign of Emperor Nero (54-68 AD), one of the most tyrannical emperors of Rome.

Quo Vadis teaches us about ethics as it shows the change of a man, from lustful monster, to caring husband. Marcus Vinicius begins the film as a commander returning from a victorious military campaign. On his journey to Rome, he stays in the house of the old general Aulus and becomes infatuated with Aulus’ adopted daughter Lygia. Marcus tries many ways of conquering her, stretching between kidnapping to buying her as a slave. Due to her hostage status, Emperor Nero reassigns Lygia to him, but she escapes with the help of the giant Ursus, her protector. In the end, Marcus falls in love with Lygia and discovers that she loves him too, but it was his shameless actions that initially pushed her away from him.

We learn that Marcus could not initially understand Christianity, as some of the main concepts such as killing being a sin made no sense to him, as he was a pagan Roman General and murder was his duty. He started to understand Christianity after observing the secret Christian gathering in Rome attended by Lygia, where Apostle Peter preached, and the serenity and the peace that emanated from the people.

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Both films show the character of Nero in excellent detail. They illustrate a cruel and empty man, who considers himself a God, and an “Artist” who thinks that his pathetic attempts at mastering the arts outdo the greatest artists of the classical world. He murders his mother and his first wife, simply to keep power. He orders the burning of Rome to “inspire an epic poem”, but when the people of Rome learn this, the Emperor chooses to blame it on the Christians due to his cowardice, and the slimy words of his wife, Poppaea.

Nero gives the people a circus to entertain them: the famous feeding of Christians to the hungry lions.

Lygia, too, is flung into the Colosseum together with other Christians, and Marcus swiftly follows her as he loves her. They are married by the Apostle Peter, minutes before being thrown into the arena. After Ursus kills a monstrous bull in the arena, the Romans, who by then had had enough of killing innocent Christians, defy their Emperor and demand he free Lygia and Marcus. At the end Nero kills himself.

It is here where the films diverge from actual historical events. Nero lived longer before a commander of the Praetorian Guard, Galba, took his throne after Nero was deposed by the populace. The endings show how being a corrupt and ruthless tyrant will be one’s downfall, and how benevolence triumphs greed.

The title Quo Vadis comes from the phrase spoken by Peter at the end of the film: “Quo Vadis, Domine?”

Peter leaves Rome to escape Nero’s persecution. On his 59

way out of Rome, Peter sees Jesus and, astounded, asks Him: “Where are you going, Lord?” Jesus replies that he is going to Rome to his people, as Peter has abandoned them. Peter decides to return to Rome and is crucified upside down by Nero, as the Christian leader.

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Quo Vadis illuminates the differences between the lifestyles of the pagan Romans and the lifestyles of the Christians. The lifestyle of the Romans was built on hedonism, filled with lust for materials and pleasure.

They drank wine, kept slaves, some in more moral ways than others, and went to awful things such as orgies and the gladiatorial games. They glorified the legions, who went around murdering and raping just to gain territory for the Roman Empire. The Romans got pleasure and enjoyment from these abominable spectacles, but could killing people for sport be a true source of pleasure? The Pagan Romans had multiple unjust and brutal gods, who treated humans as pets and playthings, and they worshiped them out of duty.

On the other side, the early Christians lived a pious life free from luxury and excess. They arguably restrained themselves from giving in to urges for objects and pleasure. Instead, they found happiness and love in God and their religion. Being humble, respectful, caring, and part of a spiritual community were all central to Christianity. They listened attentively to the words of the Apostles on how to live a better life.

In both films, the difference between the two lifestyles is clear. One values spiritual worth and piousness, the other values pleasure, violence, and power. But now we come to the question: whose lifestyle is better, and what does Quo Vadis teach us about how to live a good life?

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In my opinion, the lifestyle of the Christians was better. On the face of it, it may look like a povertyembracing life full of self-harm and deprivation.

However, the Christians found happiness and meaning in spiritual worth. They knew that their good deeds on earth would pay off in the Afterlife, giving them eternal joy in heaven with God. The Christians loved God and piety, and were happy to die for their faith, a bravery few have nowadays. They took strength from their faith; they believed that God loved them, they bathed in the warmth of his love, and adored a life free of sin.

The hedonistic life of the Romans looked pleasant on the surface, but underneath it was an empty network of schemes, lies, orgies, and death that rotted people from the inside out. They held on to pleasure and temporary happiness, while overlooking the simple things, and dooming themselves to a life of fake happiness and sadness.

Watching these two films made me feel that love and care for each other will always win out over lust and desire for others. The films also show how the beliefs of the bloodthirsty Romans were overcome by the peaceful and calm beliefs of the Christians. Although the films I watched were made 50 years apart, they portrayed the same message of hope, care, and true love for each other.

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“But I think happiness springs from another source, a far deeper one that doesn't depend on will because it comes from love.” (Henryk Sienkiewicz, “Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero”, 1896)

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Sachin Shah (9C2) on Quadrophenia The film I have chosen to review, entitled Quadrophenia, portrays the life of teenagers during the mid-60s. During these times, the two major youth movements, the mods and the rockers, were known to have rioted the streets of British coastal towns.

Inevitably, violence often occurred between them and mass destruction was created. In the movie, both the mods and the rockers go to Brighton, as we follow fictional mod, Jimmy and his mates.

To describe the film under one worldview, it would be: “what is the purpose of living life?” The mods and the rockers are continuously at war with each other and the police, without any gain for themselves. According to the utilitarian theory, the violence may be justifiable 64

if the inflictor gains more than the inflicted loses.

However, one might question if the pleasure, at the pain of someone else, is cruelty. Many philosophies would agree with this including Buddhism, and some would go further such as deontological ethics and consequentialism to say that punishment is justified.

I do not believe that the film is theistic, but nor is it atheistic. God does not have a role to play in this film and is not mentioned once; however, one’s understanding of the morality of the actions plays a much more significant role. As we see through Jimmy’s eyes, he has a very pessimistic approach to life. He always sees the glass half-empty and struggles to change this mindset, always thinking everyone is against him.

The mods and the rockers caused havoc without any benefit to themselves. By any standards, this could be described as morally wrong, as there is no happiness gained. In the Abrahamic religions, you may endure short term happiness, when you get something you want. One example of this is doing a good deed as there is a greater benefit for yourself. However, the best reason to do the right thing is because it is what you should do, as it is morally correct, whether you benefit from it or not. For example, if someone has slipped, you help them up because it is the right thing to do.

Overall, I do believe that the film encourages us to live well. Even though there is a lot of fighting and 65

violence, many of the mods and rockers were eventually punished later in court and had to pay a hefty fine (the equivalent of £2,300 today). It shows us that our actions have consequences, something which is shown universally. In Hinduism and Jainism, we have Karma; in Buddhism, there is the wheel of Samsara. Other philosophies such as Deontological Ethics and Consequentialism also agree, stating that if one action is morally wrong then we should be punished for it. In this way it teaches us to be kind, caring and to live a good life.

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Aditya Pillai (11C1) on The Perks of Being a Wallflower The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming-of-age film about finding belonging and one’s identity via a teenager’s experiences – both good and bad – through one year at high school. Finding friends, falling in love, coping with one’s past – these are narrated from the perspective of a teenager, Charlie, who, new to high school, is likened to a “wallflower” and branded as a misfit.

The film revolves around the various viewpoints and experiences Charlie encounters; it comments on notoriously controversial issues, as well as depression, drugs, sexuality, child-abuse, and there is a lot of profanity; however, the overarching and recurring theme of identity subtly suggests ways as to how we 67

can adapt our mindset to address such problems and move to the state of nirvana which is recognised as selflove and finding a sense of belonging.

The film is a thoughtful coming-of-age story that conveys several different messages on different levels.

These messages offer a great opportunity for teens to acknowledge the plight of mental health and the role of belonging and identity in maintaining a healthy, positive mindset; this is a film that really warrants discussion. The movie can be broken down into four major segments which indicate how through such ethical actions we can obtain happiness.

Ethics of Compassion, Forgiveness, and Understanding (we are ALL affected by others’ choices and our choices affect others). In the movie, every character has been affected and changed by members of their family or by their friends. In the words of screenwriter Robert Chbosky: “every family has ghosts, and every family has habits, and we still feel the repercussions of like, what your great, great grandmother did”. In essence, the ethics we are presented with here is one of compassion and caring.

To elaborate, not only should we look to forgive those who have wronged us in order to feel happier, but also we should take into account other people’s feelings and emotions before committing an action. This notion becomes clear towards the end of the film as the deeper emotions of every character unfolds; for example, Charlie finally acknowledges that his Aunt Helen had 68

sexually abused him when he was a child which had caused him trauma; however, in this acceptance, he lets his anger and depression go, making him more happy by freeing himself of all the hatred. This is an act of acceptance and compassion, because he doesn't blame her, but rather chooses to focus on the future instead of the past: “If I blamed my aunt Helen, I would have to blame her dad for hitting her and the friend of the family that fooled around with her when she was little”. Every person has a side of a story that we need to understand. By understanding this idea, we can learn to be more understanding, more trusting and thus more compassionate.

Ethics of Love and Empathy (you are not alone).

Charlie’s feelings of loneliness are something we can all experience to some degree. For some, the feeling of loneliness and despair can last far too long; this film makes you feel the magnitude of it and want to reach out to people. However, the moment you find someone who appreciates you for who you are – in this case, the characters of Sam and Patrick – there is this pure moral of empathy and trust which emanates through this film. Although Charlie is thought of as a “wallflower” because he notices things that most people don’t (at a party, Patrick says, “You see things.

You keep quiet about them. And you understand.”), he is always there for his friends, and his friends are always there for him – during both the good and the bad times. Here we learn of the importance of love and 69

how it can make you and someone else happy. The lesson here is of paramount importance as by knowing that you are never alone and always have someone to talk to, you always belong.

Ethics of Trust, Compassion, and Love (the importance of talking). Charlie appears to experience moments of depression and states of confusion during the film; however, it appears all he really wants is someone to talk to. He says his life is “happy and sad”, and he is “trying to figure out how that could be”. Charlie evidently has a lot on his plate that he needs to say, but this only builds up until he can start talking to someone – which in this case appears to be Sam, who symbolises a trusting friend.

Charlie seems to be profoundly affected by the death of his close friend Michael, because he goes into a depression-like state and many people start viewing him as a depressed kid. Even his parents, who are very loving and caring of Charlie, don’t understand what Charlie is going through. For them, it is just a mentally unstable state, but in reality it’s so much more; this moment in the film serves to represent the stark truth of loneliness.

Throughout the book, his parents refer to Charlie’s instability or his depression-like state as being “bad”.

They ask Charlie, “Is it getting bad again?” or “Are you okay?” No one ever asks him why he is feeling that way or what is making him feel that way until he finds a 70

group of friends who he can talk to. One message that seems to be prevalent throughout both book and film is, if you are depressed or sad, talk to someone. An important section of the film comments on the cruel lifestyle depression and loneliness impose on us through internalised suffering – the only way we can resolve this is through talking, which often is a nerve racking experience as we face the fear of being judged; however, sometimes this act of trust – of letting your guard down – can benefit you by talking through all of these built up emotions which are created internally.

Enjoy the Moment (carpe diem). Finally, by the end of the film, Charlie has a moment of true, pure happiness where he expresses that, right then, he feels infinite.

This quote, to me, encapsulates the beauty and essence of this film: “we are infinite”. It teaches us to seize the day – to enjoy every second as if it is our last. “When I think about being young, it’s as much about a first kiss, or a first crush, or that party, or the perfect drive, or that song, as it is about the things that most people don’t talk about, or the pressure to get into the right school and all these things. I remember that”. By learning to enjoy and find the beauty in every moment, that is how we can appreciate the beauty of life and seek true happiness.

Many teenagers experiences loneliness in their life and don’t have people to talk to. This film helps provide some meaning and hope to what teenagers go through, but is also nuanced to the extent that it provides a 71

solution to this issue through defeating loneliness by talking, opening up, and finding happiness and beauty in the small moments, thus achieving a positive, healthy mindset. By reaching out, teens who may feel alone or hopeless can find a sense of belonging and identity which is crucial in order to gain a sense of inclusivity and togetherness; talking helps people see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I highly recommend this film to any and all, for its message is one everyone must here and understand.

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LOWER SCHOOL Keshav Kanwar (7C) on The Matrix I really enjoyed The Matrix, a film which questions our perception of reality. This is the theme throughout the entire film. The central character, Neo, is in the Matrix and has the choice of the red or blue pill representing real and perceived perception. He chooses the red one, reality. In this essay, I discuss hope, technology, belief, God, religion and ethics.

The film is about hope: hope that Neo (anagram for one) is the One, hope he can save Zion (where humans who have escaped the matrix live), and hope that the human race can survive. Zion awaits Morpheus’s return with the One. The reference to Zion is biblical

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and means the dwelling place of God, while the reference to “God is hope” is from: Psalm 62:5 My soul, wait in silence for God only, For my hope is from Him. As the story unravels, we find out that the earth has been destroyed by artificial intelligence (AI). AI grows humans in chambers and controls their very existence to use humans as batteries for power. Fields of chambers are filled with humans. This is a parasitic and dictatorial relationship where AI cannot exist without humans, but they dominate their very existence. The film is apocalyptic with a gothic/postwar destruction appearance. On the surface, the film is an action film with superb special effects, but the underlying theme is actually a malevolent message about humanity losing control.

It shows belief… belief that humanity can escape the matrix, achieve enlightenment by being unplugged from it, and that machines can be defeated. The film could be a warning to us about using too much technology: technology advancing too much and taking over our lives, even our world. AI traps people in a dream world, where they think they are living their lives autonomously, but in reality, AI, the Matrix is in control. Could this mean that technology is advancing too quickly? I think it is.

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Another concept is the belief in a god-like person, Neo, who can save the world. Neo’s job is to save Zion from the war with machines and defeat control forever. He has the special abilities of the One, but it takes him a while to believe in himself and by the end of the movie, Neo is the One. He moves as fast as an agent, anticipates their moves, stops bullets with his hand, flies into agent Smith (a machine) and blows him up, sending out green shards and a yellow light. This light – like a halo around Neo – signifies omnipotence, Godliness, and power.

In summary, the film is theistic, about hope, belief in God and having faith that good will preside over evil.

Many of the world’s major religions share these beliefs and have stories of good overcoming evil. In the Bible, David beats Goliath, and in the Ramayana, Ram kills Ravan. It also has a moral that we should live balanced lives using technology but not relying on it too much.

It also teaches us about ethics. What is the right or wrong choice? This is put to the test when Neo chooses to go back into the Matrix to save Morpheus rather than save himself. If you haven’t seen it, watch it now!

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Dinil Rodrigo (7S) on The Theory of Everything Stephen Hawking is my idol, and I am an ardent follower of cosmology. The Theory of Everything is a film about this great physicist. Hawking was dedicated to finding the beginning of life, without the starting point of a creator. He was a strident atheist; he said that he wanted “to find one simple equation that would explain everything”.

In the film, Stephen meets a young girl called Jane who is soon to be his wife. Jane believes in 76

God; she is a Christian. Jane questions Stephen about why he doesn’t believe in God; the physicist replies by saying, “A physicist can’t allow his calculations to be muddled by a belief in a supernatural creator”. This implies that the way you look at life changes your perspective of reality. It changes the way you think. In physics, everything is calculated and based upon predictions.

Jane was devoted to caring for Stephen as his ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) grew worse; she believed in God and her caring for him was an altruistic act of love. When Jane mentioned the Church of England, in its abbreviation CoE, to Stephen, he didn’t even recognise the name. As a strident atheist he did not discredit religion with arbitrary force, but through the use of reason.

Stephen Hawking and Jane had hope, love and perseverance, even when he was given two years to live. Jane’s Christianity makes her want to thrive in life protecting her loved ones. She stays calm even in the toughest of situations. Stephen’s atheism drives him to have a curious mind; he possesses intelligence and an eagerness for the truth of the creation; he desires to discover how the universe existed. Stephen and Jane are different kinds of believer, but they have one thing in common – determination. With this 77

determination, they both fought Stephen’s disease; they fight for Stephen’s two years of life, and in the end, it’s worth it. He lives for over five decades more.

The movie is a mix of determination, Christianity, atheism, love, and many other things; nevertheless, it demonstrates that where there is life, there is hope.

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Aaryan Arora (7H) on Contact I have chosen to write about the movie Contact from a theological point of view. The movie is about a young girl who is fascinated with astronomy and detecting life outside Earth using giant radio telescopes. It poses questions regarding whether we are alone in this universe and the existence of God in our lives.

When the message from the extra-terrestrial life is received, it makes you think about the role of God and how we perceive his existence. I identified in the film an aesthetic worldview from the scientists who were researching the message; they disagreed about the existence of God and believed the message was rooted in science. Whether it is God or science, throughout the movie, the message from the extra-terrestrial(s) tells

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us that we humans are never truly alone, and that we are part of something bigger.

In the film, people have different interpretations of the message. So, when the message is first received, many people protest, denying the message as they believe that we are the only living beings in the world. This made me consider and think about one question in particular; “How do we know we didn't create the being we call ‘God’ because we felt alone?’”

I recently lost my grandad and while watching this movie it made me think whether he has actually moved into another dimension – a dimension which I can’t see right now; it made me happy thinking that there is a chance of seeing him in the future when I’m also in that altered reality.

The film had a worldview of both theistic and atheistic aesthetics. There were many denials of the existence of God, but also many protests that were religious and related to the existence of God. So, your interpretation of this film depends on your worldview.

The film made me think about faith and optimism.

Even when the project was about to be shut down due to a lack of funding, the scientists kept looking for life.

When the message arrived, they believed the instructions that were conveyed through the message were not a trick, but instead a bridge to connect to other life forms. The film is about possibilities and 80

about hope; it considers the idea that humanity is built on hope and looking forward in life, by being a part of something bigger than ourselves.

The concept of time and space is truly well examined in this movie, especially when the lead character takes the journey in the spaceship to Vega and she loses contact with the crew. The crew lose signal for a minute, but the actual recording through the headphones is for 18 hours. One minute to her traveling through a wormhole was 18 hours on Earth.

This made me wonder about time in space and left an impact on me.

In conclusion, the movie makes me believe that we are never truly alone in our pursuits in the universe and we always have to persevere in what we want to achieve. But we also have to believe in what we think is true.

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Zishaan Ghafoor (8J2) on PK I decided to select the film PK. In this film, an alien called PK is sent down to Earth via a spaceship; he explores Earth and asks lots of questions as he doesn’t really understand what humans do and how they act.

In the 12th minute, there is a dialogue between Sarfraz and Jaggu in which Sarfraz tells her he is Pakistani and as she is Indian, and she starts to judge him. This shows the harsh divide between Indians and Pakistanis, which illustrates how even though all people on Earth are just people, we still divide ourselves and split ourselves based on beliefs, events, etc.

The worldview of PK is about God and whether he exists as in order to find his remote to go home, PK needs to track the thief who stole it, and he needs to put his faith in God to find it. Also, throughout the film, he asks about God and about his statues. One such example would be about one hour in when he has a conversation with two men asking why they make statues of god when god made them, to which they do not really give an answer. This is a good point, because if god makes us then why do we make statues of him?

This could be because we need something to use to represent god so that we have something to worship to and to offer things to.

This contributes to my answer as I think that films can contribute to reflection on philosophical, ethical, and 82

religious matters. This film is comical as PK doesn’t really understand the different religions and sort of mixes them all in one, causing some small mobs to come after him. This shows that different religions have very varying rules and they must be abided by or there will be consequences.

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The role of God in this film is to be understood as PK does all he can across the religions to find God and seek his help. This shows that although all religions are different (marginally or narrowly) they have many similarities – such as believing in something or someone (which in many religions is a God or gods or an enlightened being). The film had varying moods, but I wouldn’t say it was optimistic or pessimistic but I would say that it was a very inquisitive film as we see the world through the eyes of PK which makes the world and people seem a lot more odd than we do, partly because PK is an outsider. Also, the questions he asks make some things seem very different to the way we see them. The film does encourage us to live well as several times PK is tricked and lied to and taken advantage of as he is new to the world. For these reasons, I have argued that films can contribute to reflection on philosophical, ethical, and religious matters.

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Aarav Rajput (7H) on PK Religion, a small word but one that has the world wrapped around it. School curriculums, newspapers, social media, theatres, movies – all portray different images and perceptions of religion to humans.

My first half term holiday at Habs, and I embarked on a philosophical journey with a thought-provoking movie shot in modern India, PK. The film centres on a humanoid alien who is stranded on Earth, the planet he was supposed to study. In his journey, he experiences many aspects of humanity, including religions, customs, languages, practices, and beliefs.

PK (the name of the main character) has a rather different view of religion and follows all religions in hope that one of their gods will help him. He sees that theistic society in which he finds himself has blind faith and it considers that other religions are inferior, such as the oppositions between Muslims and Hindus.

People deem that wearing different clothes, following different superstitions, and worshipping different gods separate them; however, the message here is that we are all brought to this planet by the same God who none of us know anything about.

The film suggests that people have the right to believe in God and even should believe in God, but it is vital to question your philosophy and not pursue it for social means. A key worldview is that if we are God’s children, he would not expect arduous tasks of us, such 85

as climbing mountains or sacrificing animals. The film is rather pessimistic towards these deities and beliefs which are supposed to help during times of struggle and mishap. The role of God plays a large part in our life; however, we should not make up stories and fool people into believing that God will do everything for us. God works in mysterious ways and will help us when we truly need help. Hindu dogmas play a large role in the movie – the kind of dogmas where, by giving donations to God, our problems will be solved. We are reminded that right principles reinforce that God is not in need of money and other offerings like milk or coconuts. People are better off giving these to paupers who have no money or food to live. PK tells us that God would rather have his people alive and well than possessing riches and luxuries.

The film encourages us to live well and test our beliefs at the same time. There is an important concept, “Wrong number”, within the film – a concept that religious figures are reaching out to a God that is purely a figment of our imagination; we envisage that God expects us to perform complicated tasks to survive. To PK, it represents that they are dialling the wrong number using a telephone and playing pranks on people which will cause pain and struggle.

Largely, this movie expresses the point that our beliefs should be challenged by us over the course of our lifetime. There is a great moral in this story teaching us to trust, but also to question and assess before 86

deciding the right path for ourselves. PK successfully probes our religious existence and forces us to question our social actions as a result.

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Saul Grenfell (8M1) on The Truman Show The Truman Show is a 1998 film about Truman Burbank, whose entire life has been false, where everyone he ever knew were actors, designed for the entertainment of the real world. He was under the illusion of it being his reality, and at the end finds out that his world was false.

This is similar to the philosophy of René Descartes, who asked whether we could know the world around us is real. We might be in a dream, where everyone is in your imagination or an evil demon could control everything around you. Descartes concluded: “I think, therefore I am”, meaning that I can be sure that one thing exists: myself. I am thinking, so there must something doing that thinking, so I must exist.

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The Truman Show also has themes of a higher power, similar to some ideas of God. The designer of Truman's reality lives in the moon of Truman’s world. He monitors Truman’s every move, gives information to the actors and changes the weather, time, and surroundings in an instant, similar to what many people believe God does. In the world, he is omnipotent: he controls everyone’s action in Truman’s world; he is also omniscient: he knows what Truman is doing at any given moment; and omnibenevolent: he believes what he is doing is for the best.

At the end of the film, the God-like features of the environment’s designer are questioned. Truman slips out of his bed at night and, unmonitored, goes on a ship to sail away. The designer is no longer all-powerful or all-knowing as Truman had slipped beyond his control and he is not aware of what he is doing. The facade of Truman’s reality finally slips away as his ship reaches a wall painted as the horizon, which is his world’s boundary. The designer explains to Truman that, from birth, he had been placed in this false world to be protected from the cruelty of the real world. The designer believes what he is doing is for the best. I disagree. The designer painted a picture of false reality, to make Truman live in blissful ignorance, not knowing the truth, but being content.

An actress in the world who fell in love with Truman, attempted to tell him that he was living in a fake world, before the designer made her disappear from 89

Truman’s world. There had been gaps in Truman's world; he was unsatisfied, not knowing the full truth but realising something was wrong. This is like the Buddhist concept of Samsara, the circle of reincarnation. We are never satisfied with what we have, always ignorant of the truth. Realising his reality is like reaching enlightenment. It’s different from the Buddhist enlightenment of acknowledging nothing is permanent, but Truman finally knows the truth and leaves his artificial world to the real one, just like Nirvana.

I loved watching The Truman Show. The ideas explored are incredibly interesting in the peculiar circumstance of a man living in a world constructed around him.

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Joshua Becker (8R1) on Bruce Almighty In the film Bruce Almighty, Bruce (Jim Carrey) has a good life. He is a quirky news reporter with a great apartment and girlfriend, Grace (Jennifer Aniston), but he does not have the anchor role he desires, and his ideas are stolen and passed off by others. After a dreadful broadcast from Niagara Falls, he loses his job and is beaten up by a gang protecting a homeless man.

He moans constantly to God about his rubbish life and blames God for having it in for him, failing to see how good his life really is.

God (Morgan Freeman – a fantastic choice) fancies a break and chooses to give Bruce omnipotent powers, in an attempt, I think, for Bruce to learn for himself how lucky he is. The only thing Bruce cannot do is interfere

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with free will. Can Bruce do a better job of being God than God himself?

Bruce is blown away with these new powers, but Bruce is forced to question whether to use them for selfish purposes or to help others. To start with, as I suspect many people would, he satisfises his own desires. He creates a mini-parting of the red sea in his tomato soup, takes revenge on one of the gang members who beat him up by enacting the “when monkeys fly out of my butt” taunt, changes his wrecked car into a Ferrari, teaches his dog who pees everywhere how to use the toilet, and creates unbelievable newsworthy items (such as an asteroid hit) which results in him getting his dream job.

But his powers have consequences. He changes the distance of the moon to create a romantic evening with Grace, unintentionally causing a tidal wave in Japan.

He then starts hearing loud prayers in his head from all the people on earth asking God for help. Rather than answering each prayer and trying to cut corners, Bruce arranges all prayers into e-mails and just answers “yes” to each prayer! Eventually his megalomania causes him to lose Grace.

Fortunately, Bruce learns that he does not need powers to help others and himself. He accepts that he cannot have everything that he wants, including winning back Grace (because he cannot interfere with free will). Bruce gives up everything, letting God 92

decide what is best for him. Bruce decides he wants happiness, not for himself, but for Grace. Ultimately, Grace returns and Bruce realises how blessed he has always been.

This hilarious, optimistic film has a great message.

People generally do not appreciate what they have; Bruce always had it all; he just could not see it.

Craving constant personal gain is not good and happiness is better found by helping or doing things for others.

It also shows that God has an extremely hard job – how do you keep all the billions of Bruces in the world on the right path? We may all think we could do this but best to leave it to the expert!

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FORTY-SEVEN APHORISMS ON VARIOUS THEOLOGICAL THEMES Dr Tromans 1) When we speak of “God” properly – to use the word in a sense consonant with the teachings of orthodox Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Bahá’i, a great deal of antique paganism, and so forth – is to speak of God as the transcendent origin and consummation of the world, who unites all things together in his Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

2) On this view, God is uncreated, uncaused, unknowable; omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; immanent to the being of beings and yet perfectly transcendent of all things.

3) If God is beyond all things – even “existence” as we know it – then it is, perhaps (as the theologian Paul Tillich has argued), better to say that God does not “exist”.

4) God, it is said, is both “transcendent” and “immanent”. God is at once infinitely beyond us, beyond the grasp of mutable and finite beings, and yet intimately and authentically within us.

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5) Two “things” can only be so close to one another.

However, the creator of every “thing” in existence cannot itself be an existent thing. Radical transcendence entails radical intimacy.

6) In his Confessions, St Augustine says that God is both interior intimo meo and superior summo meo. In other words, immanence and transcendence are not opposed to one another. God is only “in us” because he is “above us”. It is precisely because of God’s superior transcendence (“God above us”), and not in spite of it, that Augustine can speak of God as closer to us than we are to ourselves (“God in us”).

7) God’s true transcendence – God’s non-objective “objectivity”, as it were – transcends even the traditional opposition between the transcendent and the immanent.

8) It is a well-established theological principle that the relation between human and divine being must be defined strictly in terms of the infinite interval of evergreater difference between them.

9) If the above principle is correct, then then we are better to think God as the source of knowledge, rather than one of a number of actual or possible objects of knowledge.

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10) God, being God, cannot be reduced to a univocally determined object. This teaches theological humility – the recognition that God infinitely transcends all our words about God. 11) God is beyond all things – even the “God is…” of “divinity” (as, for example, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite argues in On the Divine Names). And yet, if God is not “divinity”, neither is God “not divinity”.

12) God is beyond every assertion and beyond every negation, as well as beyond every negation of the negation. “God is…”, “God is not…”, “God is not not…”, “God is not not not…” (one could go on) – even in the case of a predicate like “divinity”, God is beyond all of these.

13) Some words have the capacity to signify God truly; and yet, at the same time, God eludes every one of them. Or, rather (as Thomas Aquinas argues in the Summa Theologiae), that is how they say something true about God. 14) From the perspective of theology, even the wo/men we sometimes call the most intelligent have an infinite amount to learn. Discernment on the plane of material objects is one thing, and intuition of divine truth another. For just as the sun outshines the moon, so holy knowledge surpasses knowledge of the created world.

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15) The purpose of theology is to teach us to love what is beautiful.

16) Divine Beauty (to paraphrase Plotinus) transports to the “noetic” realm the intellect that draws close to it.

17) Through the contemplation of Beauty, the intellect acquires an ever-greater longing for God. Desire for God, in turn (to borrow an image from Gregory of Nyssa), leads us on into an endless epektasis, a reaching ahead towards an ever-greater embrace of divine glory.

18) The Beautiful (what academics sometimes called “aesthetics”) is not a subject to be studied, but a gift to be contemplated and, as it were, experienced.

19) Facts are one thing, truth another. Facts come from without, whereas truth is to be sought within.

20) Gratitude is happiness, and happiness arising from gratitude is wonder.

21) It is a mark of the educated mind to ask more questions than it answers.

22) The desire for certainty is the enemy of the happy life

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23) In a famous Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), it says that God justly rewards us for every single action according to the motive for which it is done. Prayer and charity, for example, are good in themselves, but performed for the sake of self-esteem, they are not good.

24) When we are frightened, we attract what we fear; when we face what we fear, the object disappears.

25) According to the view of God outlined in the aphorisms above, radical dependence upon divine transcendence does not contradict but rather increases human freedom. God’s power is not “power over” (overpowering) but power that, though over (or “above”) creation, releases.

26) “Creation” is not a final and finished product, but something which continues ex nihilo in time.

27) The human is defined by desire and movement – what Plato calls Eros. And such desire is divine grace in us.

28) To say that God reveals Godself is to say that God speaks to the creature through the creature. God is revealed in and through the human.

29) Fire does not extinguish fire but makes it even more inflamed. Just so, our enemies are subdued, not by anger but peace.

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30) It is good to speak the truth, but it is better to act upon it.

31) To live well is to seek the highest Good and Beauty; s/he who seeks the highest Good and Beauty lives well.

32) No vice is more egregious than the vice of inhumanity. Guru Nanak once said: “Before becoming a Sikh, a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Christian, let’s become a human first”.

33) Being honest towards others is one thing, being honest towards oneself another. One who seeks wisdom should first seek to know oneself.

34) Examine your conscience daily and you will never lie to yourself.

35) The idea of creatio ex nihilo (“creation out of nothing”) entails that the world is nothing apart from its immediate relation to the One from whom all things flow. Everything that is is what it is in relation to the One. 36) Wisdom is the resurfacing of innocence through the murkiness of experience.

37) The Hebrew Bible (Psalm 50: 10 12), the New Testament (Acts 17:24–25), and the Qu’ran (Surah 99

112) all state very clearly that God does not need the divine-world relationship. If we ascribe any need to God, we deprive God of his true transcendence and creation of its true gratuity.

38) Of all emotions which are desirable to a wo/man, none is more necessary to him or her than joy.

39) Human beings are always in becoming in relation to God’s infinity.

40) By every effort to know ourselves we change, such that a new effort to know ourselves is required. Selfknowledge begets self-transformation.

41) In our quest for happiness, sometimes our pursuit is so frantic that we drown out its call with the sound of our own desperately chasing feet.

42) Acceptance of uncertainty is the beginning of happiness.

43) According to the great Persian poet Hafiz, we should love like the sun loves the earth: in such a way that we expect nothing in return. The sun never says to earth, “You owe me”, and, in this way, it lights up the sky. The more deeply we love, the more selflessly we love, the more we bring light to the world.

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44) Religion without uncertainty is not faith, but an expression of fear. As the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says, “The gods love what is mysterious, and dislike what is evident”. The mind that is most stable in its certainty is the one in the most rapid state of decay.

45) The teachings of the great religions of the world are clear: insofar as we keep the commandment of love, we abide in God and God in us.

46) Unlike evil, which has its origin in the freedom of created beings, goodness exists before the ages, before the commencement of time.

47) Only love is imperishable and will remain incorruptibly with us forever.

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Select Bibliography Augustine, St., Confessions, trans. H. Chadwick (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Bentley Hart, D., The Experience of God: Being, Conscious, Bliss (Yale University Press, 2014).

Betz, J. R., After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

Dostoevsky, F., The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman’s Library, 1997).

Easwaran, E. (ed.), The Uphanishads (Nilgiri Press, 2007).

Gregory of Nyssa, St, The Life of Moses (Harper Collins, 2008).

Ladinsky, D. (ed.), A Year with Hafiz: Daily Contemplations (Penguin Books, 2012).

Luibheid, C. (ed.), Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (Paulist Press, 1987).

Nguyen, M., Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018).

Plato, The Symposium (Penguin Classics, 2003).

Plotinus, The Enneads (Penguin Class, 1991).

Sacks, J., Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (Hodder and Stoughton, 2020).

Tillich, P. The Courage to Be (Yale University Press, 2008).

Turner, D., Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait (Yale University Press, 2014).

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PEOPLE Staff editors: Dr Tromans

Student editors: Matt Cohen (U6C1) Oliver Jayson (U6R1) Riyan Lakhani (U6R2) Gabriel Medoza (U6J2) Daniel Sandler (U6M1)

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