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Academy Award–winning director Martin Scorsese is one of the most significant American filmmakers in the history of cinema. Although best known for his movies about gangsters and violence, such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, and Taxi Driver, Scorsese has addressed a much wider range of themes and topics in the four decades of his career. In The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese, an impressive cast of contributors explores the complex themes and philosophical underpinnings of Martin Scorsese’s films. The essays concerning Scorsese’s films about crime and violence investigate the nature of friendship, the ethics of vigilantism, and the nature of unhappiness. The authors delve deeply into the minds of Scorsese’s tortured characters and explore how the men and women he depicts grapple with moral codes and their emotions. Several of the essays explore specific themes in individual films. The authors describe how Scorsese addresses the nuances of social mores and values in The Age of Innocence, the nature of temptation and self-sacrifice in The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead, and the complexities of innovation and ambition in The Aviator. Other chapters in the collection examine larger philosophical questions. In a world where everything can be interpreted as meaningful, Scorsese at times uses his films to teach audiences about the meaning in life beyond the everyday world depicted in the cinema. For example, his films touching on religious subjects, such as Kundun and The Last Temptation of Christ, allow the director to explore spiritualism and peaceful ways of responding to the chaos in the world.Filled with penetrating insights on Scorsese’s body of work, The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese shows the director engaging with many of the most basic questions about our humanity and how we relate to one another in a complex world.

Mark T. Conard, assistant professor of philosophy at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, is the editor or coeditor of many books, including The Philosophy of Film Noir and The Philosophy of Neo-Noir.

"Ethics, aesthetics, film theory, and popular culture all meet in this new collection, which sheds new light on all aspects of Scorsese's work. This much-awaited edition brings alive philosophical themes in Scorsese's films that both the novice and the expert can appreciate. The contributors manage to be accessible and scholarly at the same time." --John Davenport, associate professor of philosophy and Magis Fellow, Fordham Univ

"Examines Scorsese's films in a distinctive and refreshing departure from traditional criticism. What emerges is both a sense of the ethical core of a filmmaker and the realization that Scorsese's insight into the human condition remains constant and penetrating." --Library Journal

"Conard has compiled another jargon-free and entertaining collection of essays that clearly and concisely define traditional philosophical thought—this time through the lens of Scorsese’s films. . . . Be the reader a Scorsese enthusiast or a philosophy student, this collection serves as an excellent interdisciplinary resource." -- A.F. Winstead, CHOICE

"This collection will be particularly valuable to philosophy scholars interested in ethics as well as film and cultural critics." --Matthew Schultz, Film Criticism

Publication Date

5-31-2007

Publisher

The University Press of Kentucky

Place of Publication

Lexington, KY

ISBN

9780813192185

eISBN

9780813172552

Keywords

Martin Scorsese, Motion pictures

Disciplines

American Popular Culture

The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese
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