Dead Ringers: Plato and Turning the Camera Back

Timothy Secret

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Chapter 3 Dead Ringers: Plato and Turning the Camera Back

In: Plato and the Moving Image

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Timothy Secret

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 60–78

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004398290_005

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Abstract

In this chapter, the author offers a reflection on the famous command of the Oracle at Delphi gnōthi seauton (“know thyself”) in order to advance our understanding of the dynamic interaction between knowledge of the self and right action. This is done alongside and by means of a critical reflection on recent developments in cinema studies. The chapter begins with a reflection on the self-conscious cinematic presentation of the protagonist Filip Mosz in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s quasi-autobiographical film Camera Buff (Amator). Following this, a novel and sustained reading of the Ring of Gyges is offered as one way of understanding to role of the gaze in cinematic experience, building off a reconstructive analysis of the concept of the “objective gaze” in light of Sartre’s analysis of shame as a motor of self-knowledge. Finally, this re-reading of Sartre on shame and the gaze in concert with the place of the gaze in Plato’s retelling of the Gyges story is put into conversation with Herodotus’s version of the Gyges story and Diderot’s Letter on the Blind. In this closing moment, it is argued that the notion of the objective gaze, as advanced in classical film theory, does not necessarily contribute to our understanding of self-knowledge or right action.

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Plato and the Moving Image

Series: Value Inquiry Book Series, Volume: 332, Value Inquiry Book Series Online, Volume: 332, and Philosophy of Film, Volume: 332

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004398290

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 17 May 2019

Subjects
- Art History
  - General
- Philosophy
  - Aesthetics & Cultural Theory
  - Ancient Philosophy

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Chapter 3 Dead Ringers: Plato and Turning the Camera Back

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Plato and the Moving Image

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