Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2019
Published In
Werner Herzog: Filmmaker And Philosopher
Series Title
Philosophical Filmmakers
Abstract
Werner Herzog has produced some of the most powerful, haunting, and memorable images ever captured on film. Both his fiction films and his documentaries address fundamental issues about nature, selfhood, and history in ways that engage with but also criticize and qualify the best philosophical thinking about these topics. In focusing on figures from Aguirre, Kasper Hauser, and Stroszek to Timothy Treadwell, Graham Dorrington, Dieter Dengler, and Walter Steiner, among many others, Herzog investigates the nature of human life in time and the possibilities of meaning that might be available within it. His films demonstrate the importance of the image in coming to terms with the plights of contemporary industrial and commercial culture. Eldridge unpacks and develops Herzog's achievement by bringing his work into engagement with the thinking of Freud, Merleau-Ponty, Nietzsche, Hegel, Cavell, and Benjamin, but more importantly also by attending closely to the logic and development of the films themselves and to Herzog's own extensive writings about filmmaking.
Published By
Bloomsbury
Recommended Citation
Richard Thomas Eldridge. (2019). Werner Herzog: Filmmaker And Philosopher.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/538
Comments
The introduction of this work is freely available courtesy of Bloomsbury.