Mythic themes and philosophical probing in film as an art form, as seen in works of Preston Sturges, Jean Cocteau, Stanley Kubrick, and various other filmmakers.
Film is the supreme medium for mythmaking. The gods and heroes of mythology are both larger than life and deeply human; they teach us about the world, and they tell us a good story. Similarly, our experience of film is both distant and intimate. Cinematic techniques―panning, tracking, zooming, and the other tools in the filmmaker's toolbox―create a world that is unlike reality and yet realistic at the same time. We are passive spectators, but we also have a personal relationship with the images we are seeing. In Cinematic Mythmaking, Irving Singer explores the hidden and overt use of myth in various films and, in general, the philosophical elements of a film's meaning. Mythological themes, Singer writes, perform a crucial role in cinematic art and even philosophy itself. Singer incisively disentangles the strands of different myths in the films he discusses. He finds in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve that Barbara Stanwyck's character is not just the biblical Eve but a liberated woman of our times; Eliza Doolittle in the filmed versions of Shaw's Pygmalion is not just a statue brought to life but instead a heroic woman who must survive her own dark night of the soul. The protagonist of William Wyler's The Heiress and Anieszka Holland's Washington Square is both suffering Dido and an awakened Amazon. Singer reads Cocteau's films―including La Belle et la Bête, Orphée, and The Testament of Orpheus―as uniquely mythological cinematic poetry. He compares Kubrickean and Homeric epics and analyzes in depth the self-referential mythmaking of Federico Fellini in many of his movies, including 8½. The aesthetic and probing inventiveness in film, Singer shows us, restores and revives for audiences in the twenty-first century myths of creation, of the questing hero, and of ideals―both secular and religious―that have had enormous significance throughout the human search for love and meaning in life.

Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film (Irving Singer Library)

Humor & Entertainment

Singer, Professor Irving

Movies

MIT Press]

"Love is not merely a contributor--one among others--to a meaningful life. In its own way it may underlie all other forms of meaning."--from the Introduction
In his widely acclaimed trilogy The Nature of Love, Irving Singer traced the development of the concept of love in history and literature from the Greeks to the twentieth century. Now in a sequel to his previous work, Singer explores a different approach. A "systematic mapping" of the various facets of love, the present volume is an extended essay that offers a philosophical and psychiatric theory of his own. Rich in insight into literature, the history of ideas, and the complexities of our being, The Pursuit of Love is a thought-provoking inquiry into fundamental aspects of all human relationships.
"The Pursuit of Love is a unique achievement in that it demonstrates the relation between love, value, and meaning. It is overall a work of great wisdom that I found to be illuminating and personally enriching."--Arnold H. Modell, M.D., Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

The Pursuit of Love: The Meaning in Life

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

The Johns Hopkins University Press

"Irving Singer has many wise and instructive things to say about happiness and how we can get beyond suffering in life. His discussion of the love of life as contrasted with the love of love... is a profoundly important one. It is a gold mine for those who wish to better understand the intellectual foundations of the good life."--Marvin Kohl, The New School of Social Research
Preceded by The Creation of Value and The Pursuit of Love, this final book in Singer's Meaning in Life trilogy studies the interaction between nature and spirit, and examines the ways in which we may resolve our sense of being divided and thereby overcome the suffering in life. The Harmony of Nature and Spirit suggests that the accord between nature and spirit, and between meaning, happiness, and love, arises from an art of life that employs the same principles of imagination and idealization as those that exist in all artistic creativity. Living the good life is an art that seeks the harmonization of meaning with consummatory happiness. It is through the meaning created by imagination and idealization, Singer says, that happiness and the love of life become available to us.
"Rarely does one get a chance to see such a polished, mature, and humane piece of writing, all the rarer in philosophy. Long ago, philosophers would write sophisticated books for a general, literate audience. James's Varieties of Religious Experience or Santayana's Life of Reason come to mind. Singer's work stands in near isolation because it continues this tradition."--Thomas Alexander, Southern Illinois University
"The book's freshness, perceptiveness, and clarity make it worthwhile for educated lay readers and professionals alike."--Robert Hoffman, Library Journal

The Harmony of Nature and Spirit: Meaning in Life

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

"Meaning in life,"writes philosopher Irving Singer, "and the meaning in our own lives, result from creative efforts on our part. It is not a prior reality awaiting our discovery. Though we talk about a 'search' for meaning, what we are seeking is primarily a mode of creativity that will make our lives meaningful."In clear, concise and direct language, Singer delves into the questions that beset most people throughout their lives, questions that often stir painful confusion and distress, and sometimes cause agonies of doubt and despair. Singer's patient consideration of the role of creativity in human experience leads him to distinguish between happiness and meaningfulness, and to offer challenging ideas about what would constitute a life that is "significant," important in itself and in its consequences. Even if values pass on through generations, he claims, they must be created anew by each individual.In The Creation of Value, the first volume of his trilogy on the good life, Singer studies the nature of imagination, idealization, and love in the context of humanity's attempt to define itself through the pursuit of meanings and values that it creates. Singer confronts life's most troubling problems: the meaning of death, the place of anxiety in daily existence, the conditions needed for us to have a life worth living, and the possibility of a love of life in others as well as in ourselves.

The Creation of Value: Meaning in Life (Meaning in Life, 1)

"Meaning in life,"writes philosopher Irving Singer, "and the meaning in our own lives, result from creative efforts on our part. It is not a prior reality awaiting our discovery. Though we talk about a 'search' for meaning, what we are seeking is primarily a mode of creativity that will make our lives meaningful."
In clear, concise and direct language, Singer delves into the questions that beset most people throughout their lives, questions that often stir painful confusion and distress, and sometimes cause agonies of doubt and despair. Singer's patient consideration of the role of creativity in human experience leads him to distinguish between happiness and meaningfulness, and to offer challenging ideas about what would constitute a life that is "significant," important in itself and in its consequences. Even if values pass on through generations, he claims, they must be created anew by each individual.
In The Creation of Value, the first volume of his trilogy on the good life, Singer studies the nature of imagination, idealization, and love in the context of humanity's attempt to define itself through the pursuit of meanings and values that it creates. Singer confronts life's most troubling problems: the meaning of death, the place of anxiety in daily existence, the conditions needed for us to have a life worth living, and the possibility of a love of life in others as well as in ourselves.

The Creation of Value: Meaning in Life (Meaning in Life/Irving Singer, Vol 1)

Harmony of Nature and Spirit (Meaning of Life/Irving Singer, Vol 3)

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