Program Details

Philosophy and Film:  How Philosophical Ideas are Portrayed in Movies 

Instructor
Mark Luttio
W541B
Video Catch-up
Available

Course Description

This lecture series is designed to help us see that there is more to philosophy than the study of dusty, old philosophical texts. Philosophy is about life— about living an examined life and adopting a critical, reflective stance toward one’s social and cultural environment. Nowhere is this more evident than in the movies, where life is portrayed in all its colors and hues of reality. In short, film can be seen as the school of philosophy; or at least where philosophy gets portrayed and conveyed in dramatic ways. This lecture will give us the opportunity to see how film has been used masterfully to show the audience a particular philosophical viewpoint. Through clips and snippets we will see how this unfolds before our very eyes.

Lectures

  1. Introduction: So you love movies, but hate philosophy?  Movies ARE philosophy!  A look at "Thelma and Louise"  as an entree to the subject matter.
  2. Epistemology: Jim Carrey and "The Truman Show":  How do we really know what we know?
  3. Metaphysics: "The Matrix", "Inception" and other mind-bending portrayals of reality.
  4. Ethics: "Babel", "Crash" and other movies with moral conundrums.

About the Instructor

  • Mark Luttio, Ph.D., has been a professor at Lynn University for nearly 20 years. Moving to South Florida, from Notre Dame, IN. where he served on the faculty of Saint Mary’s College in the department of religious studies, he joined the faculty at Lynn as an adjunct professor in 2002. Since then he has become a professor of philosophy and religious studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, teaching a variety of courses both in the Dialogues of Belief and Reason and the humanities. Luttio is a U.S. citizen, but was born and raised in Asia, and thus finds himself at home in the international ethos of Lynn. He is often described as an Asian soul in a Caucasian body. He has traveled and lectured in numerous international venues, most recently at the University of Haifa, Israel, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Tokyo, Japan.