Welles and Philosophy

[Wellesnet]

"Almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. New theories lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it”. - Stephen Hawking

Astronomer Neil Degrasse Tyson was accused of being a "Philistine" for his recent comments dismissing Philosophy as a waste of time. But Welles might have been on his side, judging from this 1970 interview with Dick Cavett:

CAVETT: What would you study if you could go back to school now?

WELLES: That’s a good question. If I wanted to study something seriously and get good at it, I think it would be Anthropology. Don’t you think that’s a fascinating subject?

CAVETT: Yes. I might study Philosophy as well.

WELLES: I’m suspicious of Philosophy. I have a real philistine doubt about it’s worth, but Anthropology fascinates me. It seems to be at it’s beginnings, whereas Philosophy seems to be at it’s end.

Interesting excerpt from a thread on the old Welles board concerning an essay called "Citizen Kant: Themes of Consciousness and Cognition in Citizen Kane" :

Dave L.:
"Citizen Kane shares structural similarities with Immanuel Kant's epistemology (theory of knowledge). The film’s narrative structure, characterization, and manipulation of space and time acts as a correlative to Kant's "transcendental idealism", itself an attempt to bridge the impasse between Hume's empiricist skepticism (wherein the phenomena of consciousness or 'sense of self' is construed as no more than a rapid series of sensory stimuli) and Descartes' rationalist "cogito" argument (wherein the senses, which can deceive, cannot be trusted and the 'thinking self' is a kind of 'substance' which acts as the ultimate source of all genuine knowledge). In short, I argue that the "News on the March" segment represents the Humean model of consciousness (of the 'self' as no more than the sum of observable phenomena), Thompson's pursuit of the meaning of 'Rosebud' parallels Descartes' (and most of western science's) failed attempts to find the 'essence' of personal identity (or 'self-hood'), and the film's omniscient opening and closing scenes represent Kant's idea of the "noumena" with respect to consciousness (that is, the "transcendental unity of apperception" which Kant deduces 'must' exist if we are to account for our continuous senses of self across time and space)."

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Jez:
These ideas are interesting... it's nice to know that others see Welles films as being philosophically rich as well... every line, every scene, every piece of music jolts the mind from place to place and idea to idea...

I don't necessarily think Welles would have had Kant/Hume/Descartes in mind when he made the films, and in this sense he can be considered a philosopher of considerable stature himself - after all, it's all about (re)presentation isn't it?! By this I mean that Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Derrida etc have all dealt with epistemology in different styles but with a constant thread running through the middle, and I think Welles also sits on this thread, using film/fiction (or art/truth) as his medium.

I think that the "Declaration of Principles" in Kane is central to the movement of the Kane identity: history/character is recorded, Kane deviates from it... why? How? Can we know?

Of course, while these characters are born of his own character, Welles constantly reminded those who asked that they WERE NOT biographies, and how right he is!

There is a brief section in Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" in which he discusses the connection of his characters to himself, concluding that (rather than being autobiographical) they are in fact studies of the many POSSIBILITIES that could have affected his own life. They stem from him, but they are not him. I think this is very close to Welles' style.

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Dave L:
I don't believe that Welles had Descartes/Hume/Kant in mind when he made Citizen Kane either. While there is little evidence that anyone involved in the making of Citizen Kane knowingly attempted to infuse the film with epistemological reflections, I believe that most 'timeless' art which deeply resonates with people does so because it taps into potentially universal 'truths', which might otherwise only be reached via a complicated systematic philosophical endeavor.

While I am much more aligned with 'analytic' philosophy, I do believe that Jung's theory of the collective unconscious (as he applied it to the world of the artist) gets to the heart of the matter. Jung describes the artistic process as "a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument… Whenever the creative force predominates, human life is ruled and moulded by the unconscious as against the active will, and the conscious ego is swept along on a subterranean current, being nothing more than a helpless observer of events."

With this in mind, I think many artists are not fully 'aware' of the power their work has in activating the audience's imaginations.

FWIW, here's John Houseman 's generous but brutally honest (?) presentation of Orson Welles' "intellectualism" --
"For all his undoubted intelligence, Welles was never an intellectual, in the theatre or out of it. He was a quick reactor, a brilliant improviser, a vivid visualizer, but he seldom cared to stop and think, and hardly ever gave his audiences time to do the same. In a way, the live theatre was his ideal medium, the perfect form for the prestidigitator's magic, since you never see exactly the same thing twice. It is surprising that he was later to make films which could stand up triumphantly to the most minute and frequent analysis… [Taylor, p. 30-31].

It's also worth noting that "F For Fake" contains some relatively sophisticated 'arguments' relevant to philosophical aesthetics and issues of what makes art 'art'.

Regarding Orson Welles' Nietzschean influence:
"At various periods in his youth he made a study of Nietzsche." [Naremore, p. 3].
According to the Saturday Evening Post's 1940 article on Welles, "The Education of Orson Welles (Who Really Didn't Need It", Welles also is said to have written a scholarly essay on Nietsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra."

"Bright Lucifer", Welles' earliest original work (written when he was 18), was apparently very autobiographical and also echoed some rough Nietzschean themes. According to James Naremore, the main character, Eldred Brand, outwardly resembles Welles himself. Naremore (who has seen the script, itself not otherwise published) describes Brand as "a devotee of Nietzsche" (p. 5) and one who "models himself on the Devil" (p. .

It is interesting that Welles would go on to play the Clarence Darrow-like role in the film "Compulsion", a thinly-disguised version of the Leopold and Loeb murder case, wherein two precocious young men, under a Hitler-ized reading of Nietzsche (e.g., the superman is beyond moral codes of good and evil, yada yada yada), decide to commit murder for no other reason than as an 'experiment' to realize their perverted version of Nietzschean moral philosophy and also to demonstrate what they believe is their 'superior intellect' and ability to commmit such a crime without getting caught.

There are Nietzschean themes in "Heart of Darkness" as well and the following excerpt of Kurtz dialogue from Welles' screenplay for a film version of Conrad's novel are illustrative:

KURTZ: I'm a great man, Marlow -- really great... The meek -- you and the rest of the millions -- the poor in spirit, I hate you -- but I know you for my betters -- without knowing why you are except that yours is the Kingdom of Heaven, except that you shall inherit the earth. Don't mistake me, I haven't gone moral on my death bed. I'm above morality. No. I've climbed higher than men and seen farther. I'm the first absolute dictator. The first complete success. I've known what others try to get… I won the game, but the winner loses too. He's all alone and he goes mad." [as quoted in Naremore, p. 144].

KURTZ: Understand this much -- Everything I've done up here has been done according to the method of my Government. Everything. There's a man now in Europe trying to do what I've done in this jungle. He will fail. In his madness, he thinks he can't fail-but he will. A brute can rule only brutes. Remember the meek, -- the meek. -- I'm a great man, Marlowe -- really great -- know the strength of the enemy -- its terrible weakness, the meek -- you and the rest of the millions -- the poor in spirit. I hate you -- but I know you for my betters -- without knowing why you are except that yours is the Kingdom of Heaven, except that you shall inherit the earth . . . . [From "Revised Estimating Script for Heart of Darkness," pp. 161-63, box 14, Welles collection, Lilly Library, as quoted in "Fiery Speech in a World of Shadows: Rosebud's Impact on Early Audiences", by Robin Bates with Scott Bates, in Perspectives on Citizen Kane, p. 313].

http://listverse.com/2011/02/19/top-10- ... n-history/

[F. Scott]

WELLES: I’m suspicious of Philosophy. I have a real philistine doubt about it’s worth,

I agree with Welles that mere word-banter, e.g., "How many angels can fit on the end of a thumb drive," is fruitless. However, he seems to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Reflection is the ability of the mind to make its current or past activity a future object of inquiry -- such reflections are the raw data of philosophy. Specific examples: Whenever one, as a scientist, does a meta-study (comprehensive review and evaluation of studies) or engages in reflection on methodology (be it quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-design) he/she is engaging in epistemology and logic -- components (of course) of philosophy. Whenever a scientist, or a user of scientific findings, considers the impact of those findings on people's lives, he/she may be engaging in ethics -- another branch of philosophy. Inasmuch as reflections such as these are (hopefully) part of a person's or society's scientific endeavors, there will necessarily be philosophical inquiry. One simply cannot escape doing philosophy, because we are sentient, self-aware beings. The important question, I think, is not "What good is philosophy?" but: "Is one doing philosophy badly, in a mediocre fashion, or well?"

[Wellesnet]

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." - Karl Marx

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ― William Shakespeare, As You Like It.

"Born in Athens around 469 BCE, Socrates lived during the period of the city's greatest cultural expansion. Son of a midwife and sculptor, he was acquainted with the intellectual elite at the court of Pericles, ruler of Athens, despite his plebian origins." - The Glory That Was Greece

"...the great revolution of our time, the liberation of women. But by liberating women we are freeing the last of our slaves. And for fifteen, twenty thousand years, there has never been a civilization ever, including the great democracy of Pericles in Athens that has not been maintained by slaves."
- Orson Welles (Someone To Love)

Wiki (on Socrates):

Plato is frequently viewed as the most informative source about Socrates' life and philosophy. At the same time, however...It is a matter of much debate over just which Socrates it is whom Plato is describing at any given point—the historical figure, or Plato's fictionalization. As Martin Cohen has put it, Plato, the idealist, offers "an idol, a master figure, for philosophy. A Saint, a prophet of the 'Sun-God', a teacher condemned for his teachings as a heretic."

Socrates has been depicted by some scholars as a champion of oral modes of communication, standing up at the dawn of writing against its haphazard diffusion.

Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian hegemony to its decline with the defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. At a time when Athens sought to stabilize and recover from its humiliating defeat, the Athenian public may have been entertaining doubts about democracy as an efficient form of government.

One of Socrates' purported offenses to the city was his position as a social and moral critic. Rather than upholding a status quo and accepting the development of what he perceived as immorality within his region, Socrates questioned the collective notion of "might makes right" that he felt was common in Greece during this period. Plato refers to Socrates as the "gadfly" of the state (as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians), insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. His attempts to improve the Athenians' sense of justice may have been the cause of his execution.

According to Plato's Apology, Socrates' life as the "gadfly" of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the Oracle at Delphi (priestesses of the temple of Apollo) if anyone were wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded that no-one was wiser. Socrates believed the Oracle's response was a paradox, because he believed he possessed no wisdom whatsoever. He proceeded to test the riddle by approaching men considered wise by the people of Athens—statesmen, poets, and artisans—in order to refute the Oracle's pronouncement. Questioning them, however, Socrates concluded: while each man thought he knew a great deal and was wise, in fact they knew very little and were not wise at all. Socrates realized the Oracle was correct; while so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all, which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance. Socrates' paradoxical wisdom made the prominent Athenians he publicly questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to accusations of wrongdoing.

He was found guilty of both corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and of impiety ("not believing in the gods of the state"), and subsequently sentenced to death by drinking a mixture containing poison hemlock.

Socrates' death is described at the end of Plato's Phaedo. Socrates turned down Crito's pleas to attempt an escape from prison. After drinking the poison, he was instructed to walk around until his legs felt numb. After he lay down, the man who administered the poison pinched his foot; Socrates could no longer feel his legs. The numbness slowly crept up his body until it reached his heart.

"So he bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them,
and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold
as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone." - Mistress Quickly on the death of Falstaff, from Shakespeare's Henry V

Aristophanes' play The Clouds portrays Socrates as a clown who teaches his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt.