Examined Life is a 2008 documentary film directed by Astra Taylor

Astra Taylor

Astra Taylor is a Canadian-American documentary filmmaker and writer, best known for her 2005 film, Zizek!, about the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and for her 2008 film, Examined Life....

. The film features eight influential contemporary philosophers walking around New York and other metropolises and discussing the practical application of their ideas in modern culture.

The philosophers featured are Cornel West

Cornel West

Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....

, Avital Ronell

Avital Ronell

Avital Ronell is a Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and a Professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she co-directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project...

, Peter Singer

Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...

, Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Ghanaian-British-American philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up in Ghana and earned a Ph.D. at Cambridge...

, Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum , is an American philosopher with a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and ethics....

, Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...

, Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....

, and Judith Butler

Judith Butler

Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...

, who is accompanied by Taylor's sister Sunny

Sunny Taylor

Sunaura "Sunny" Taylor is an American painter and activist for disability and animal rights. She currently resides in Oakland, California, and has taught classes at the University of California, Berkeley....

, a disability activist.

The film appeared in the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

2008 Toronto International Film Festival

The 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This 33rd annual festival was from September 4 to September 13, 2008...

, the 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival

Melbourne International Film Festival

The Melbourne International Film Festival is an acclaimed annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1951, making it one of the oldest in the World....

 and the 2009 Kingston Canadian Film Festival. It is co-produced by Sphinx Productions and the National Film Board of Canada

National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...

, in association with the Ontario Media Development Corporation, TVOntario

TVOntario

TVOntario, often referred to only as TVO , is a publicly funded, educational English-language television station and media organization in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is operated by the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario...

 and Knowledge Network

Knowledge Network

Knowledge , formerly Knowledge Network, is a Canadian English language public educational cable television network in the province of British Columbia...

.

Despite favorable reception (Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 gives it 76%), Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum , is an American philosopher with a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and ethics....

 subsequently complained in The Point that although Examined Life displays "a keen visual imagination and a vivid sense of atmosphere and place" it nonetheless "presents a portrait of philosophy that is ... a betrayal of the tradition of philosophizing that began, in Europe, with the life of Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

".

External links

• Examined Life at the National Film Board of Canada
• Examined Life Review by Kam Williams KamWilliams.com