Tag: Philosophy Through Film

The Anxiety of Nature and The Difficulty of Grace

Wan BoLeave a comment

"A man's heart has heard two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You'll have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. It accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. It accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. It likes to lord it over them, to have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it, and love is smiling through all things. " - The Tree of Life (2011)

Our Lives Are Still Our Own: A Nietzschean Reading of Cloud Atlas

Wan BoLeave a comment

I explore how the narrative structure of Cloud Atlas helps to demonstrate Friedrich Nietzsche’s arguments about the death of God and eternal recurrence. Moreover, I consider how the film, inspired by the Buddhist concept of karma, challenges Nietzsche’s individualistic solution to nihilism and how Nietzsche may respond to the challenge.