{"id":1194,"date":"2015-03-23T11:54:58","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T00:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/?p=1194"},"modified":"2019-02-26T16:39:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T05:39:09","slug":"being-in-the-world-2010-a-film-by-tao-ruspoli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/?p=1194","title":{"rendered":"‘BEING IN THE WORLD’ (2010): A FILM BY TAO RUSPOLI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What does it mean \u201cto be\u201d? How does one proceed to formulate an answer to such a question? What demands does it make on one’s self, commitment, time, and relationship with the surrounding world and its inhabitants? How should one\u00a0relate to the technologies that he or she\u00a0uses on a daily basis? How does one\u00a0preserve meaning in one’s\u00a0life\u00a0within a disjointed and exponentially accelerating\u00a0age?<\/p>\n

For the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), the history of Western thought is marked by a sustained and institutionalised forgetting of such enquiries into the meaning of Being. In one of his most important, pervasively studied and widely debated texts, Being and Time<\/em> (1927), Heidegger articulates this predicament in the following terms:<\/p>\n

Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word “being”? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression “Being”? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question.<\/p>\n

For Heidegger, confronting this state of affairs required firstly acknowledging how the question of Being has been overshadowed by millennia of Platonic abstract theorising and Cartesian, subject-object conceptions of the nature of consciousness, thinking and reality.<\/p>\n

Revisiting the problematic of Being therefore required not only a radically novel approach to philosophy, but even demanded the unprecedented, patient and meticulous destruktion<\/em> (deconstruction) of its entrenched,\u00a0metaphysical foundations. In practical terms, Heidegger approached the task by formulating a style of philosophical writing that tested not only time-honoured and seemingly incontestable truths but, more importantly and strategically, challenged and stretched the existing limits and possibilities of language and sense.<\/p>\n

Heidegger\u2019s dense, evocative, tortuous and almost impenetrable prose was aligned with his emphasis that philosophy should be attuned to, and amplify, the perplexity of the world, and his emphatic assertion that \u2018making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy’.<\/p>\n

Interpreting Heidegger, particularly for those approaching him for the first time, can therefore seem like an ostensibly daunting and perhaps impossible undertaking. But it is a task that is made less overwhelming courtesy of the numerous introductory guides and commentaries currently available on Heidegger. Other media have also played an instrumental role in providing a point of entry into his challenging and horizon-expanding philosophy.<\/p>\n

Film is a case in point. In his vast, engaging\u00a0and powerfully affecting documentary Being in the World <\/em>(2010), director Tao Ruspoli assembles a diverse group of professionals,\u00a0including philosophers, musicians, entertainers, architects, chefs and athletes,\u00a0to explore the myriad dimensions of Heidegger’s thought, its relationship to the history of Western philosophy, and its relevance for understanding life in an increasingly globalised, consumer culture.<\/p>\n

Drawing upon his\u00a0seminal treatise Being and Time<\/em> (1927) and other key writings, Being in the World<\/em> navigates many of Heidegger’s most important contributions to philosophy, including his insights on authenticity, conformity, care, commitment, moods, time, the world, the question of technology and the hidden history of Being.<\/p>\n

\u2018It’s a film that uses philosophy as a way of describing and celebrating human skilfulness, and mastery, and craft in different disciplines, from cooking to carpentry to music\u2019, Ruspoli explains. In deploying this cross-disciplinary scope and incorporating the wisdom and voices of masters and philosophers from diverse social, cultural, linguistic and socio-economic contexts, Being in the World<\/em> discloses the pertinence of Heidegger’s philosophy in relation to the different worlds that these individuals inhabit and traverse, and the parameters within which they negotiate their work, existence, and pursuit of creative freedom.<\/p>\n

It is an approach that resonates with the spirit of a philosophy that underscores the inter-temporal, interconnected and protean dynamic of human existence. Ruspoli\u2019s journey into\u00a0Heidegger\u2019s thought\u00a0advances via\u00a0segues and detours into debates surrounding artificial intelligence, the power of improvisation in Jazz and Flamenco music, the primacy\u00a0of time\u00a0in Japanese carpentry and experimentation in New Orleans cuisine, and the efficacy\u00a0of rethinking the rules of the game in adrenaline-pumping athletics and high-powered speed-boat racing. \u2018In the film\u2019, Ruspoli remarks, \u2018we go back and forth between these philosophers who talk about these ideas and then people who are living them\u2019.<\/p>\n

In effect,\u00a0this veritable\u00a0shuffling between viewpoints\u00a0and lives can leave the viewer\u00a0pondering his or her\u00a0own world, the things that they\u00a0value and care about, the constraints that condition their\u00a0actions and possibilities, the\u00a0goals and objectives that motivate them, their\u00a0connectivity to other entities, and the indeterminate\u00a0and\u00a0unforeseeable future that they\u00a0nevertheless anticipate, envision, project and strive towards. \u2018We have to combat passivity. If I have one message, it’s that: active involvement in our world\u2019, Ruspoli muses. \u2018What we have to do is find these parts of the world that still are rich with structure and meaning, and see if it resonates with us, and then have the courage to follow that path, as risky as it could be\u2019.<\/p>\n

What emerges in Being in the World<\/em> is the formidable challenge of negotiating the forces at play in our attempts to exert our agency and stake a path for ourselves in the particular milieu\u00a0in which we reside, move and work. \u2018The movie makes the big argument that risk is an essential part of mastery\u2019, Ruspoli reflects, \u2018and if it’s all gonna be according to plan, again, it looses some of that meaning that comes from outside of you. If something calls you, take that calling seriously\u2019.<\/p>\n

Such tensions are, interestingly, inseparable from the filmmaking process per se<\/em>, particularly for a documentary that promotes itself, according to\u00a0its\u00a0tagline, as \u2018a celebration of being human in a technological age\u2019. The irony that marks this assertion and, by extension, inscribes Ruspoli\u2019s undertaking is not lost on the director. \u2018So here’s like, you know, making a film celebrating craft<\/em> and appreciating it on this highly technologised<\/em> media. I like this kind of tension there, and keeping that tension alive’.<\/p>\n

In a zeitgeist<\/em> that is labelled\u00a0posthuman<\/em> by some philosophers and cultural theorists, living and working with this inextricable relationship between \u201ctradition\u201d and technology, \u201cindividuality\u201d and homogeneity, is one of Heidegger\u2019s enduring legacies and, perhaps, one of the inescapable tests\u00a0of the twenty-first century. Channelling Heidegger’s own preference for questioning as the essence, dignity and pathway of thought,\u00a0Ruspoli poses a\u00a0query that provides ample food for reflection: ‘How do we use technology without letting it dehumanise us? How does skilful behaviour open up a space for us to have a memorable meaning?’<\/p>\n

– Dr. Varga Hosseini<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does it mean \u201cto be\u201d? How does one proceed to formulate an answer to such a question? What demands does it make on one’s self, commitment, time, and relationship with the surrounding world and its inhabitants? How should one\u00a0relate to the technologies that he or she\u00a0uses on a daily basis? How does one\u00a0preserve meaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1795,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions\/1795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinetikink.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}