POL 583 - Heidegger and Arendt on Film

Edmund Husserl called earth “the originary ark.” Martin Heidegger wrote that earth must not be associated with “the merely astronomical idea of a planet.” After the launch of Sputnik, Hannah Arendt called earth “the quintessence of the human condition,” a “free gift from nowhere” that we now wish to exchange for something we have made ourselves. All three were worried about the fate of the world once we left earth and ventured into space. This course takes up these anxieties from the perspective of our own world by placing them in conversation with science, art, and film. What “world picture” comes into focus through the lens of Earth System Science, contemporary climate modeling, and astrobiology? Primary texts are “The Age of the World Picture,” “The Origins of the Work of Art” and “The Question Concerning Technology,” the final chapter of The Human Condition, along with excerpts from Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences and Alexandre Koyré’s From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Our contemporary archive includes images of the earth from space, the concepts of the Anthropocene and technosphere, the history of climate modeling and the future of geoengineering, the films Koyaanisqatsi and Gravity, and Yinka Shonibare’s Refugee Astronaut. No scientific or technical knowledge is required - only curiosity and a sense of wonder.

Unit(s): 0.5
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Graduate course. Offered summer 2026.