Philosophy and Film : Interwining Heidegger and Wenders

The thesis of this paper is that philosophy is at its end and movies are replacing it. it seemed helpful to start with a generalized overview of my project and spread out from there. i will use the philosopher martin heidegger's sketch of the end of philosophy, and the filmmaker wim wenders as an example of how movies are replacing philosophy. we spend much of our lives surrounded by moving photographic images. we are surrounded by an audio-visual form which first took shape in the cinema and became the common currency of modern television. both materially and mentally they have a shaping impact on our lives. et few people make an effort to reflect back on film, thinking of movies solely as popular entertainment. my task is to take films seriously as thought and art. i want to think about how we think about films. i want to explore how films have the capacity to address some of the key issues which academic philosophy has been grappling with for centuries, and opens these questions up in new ways to the billions of people who are exposed to this technology. as an example of the capacity of film to do philosophy, i will look at wim wender's wings of desire (1987), the story of an angel hovering over berlin who decides to become mortal. the german philosopher, martin heidegger (1889-1976) sets the stage of philosophy in this century, describing how he sees its completion in the traditional sense and what he sees as the task of thinking in philosophy's wake. in heidegger's late writings i will use his call for philosophy to begin again, to experience the being of beings which sparked the original greek philosophers (his task of thinking) as a springboard to leap into wings of desire and its capacity to respond to this challenge. i will look at wenders as overcoming heidegger's response to his own challenge, his dwelling; which is possible because it is a film.