Socrates said that the “unexamined life is not worth living”. In this case we can definitely say that the Examined Life is worth watching!

Examined Life is a film showing eight renowned philosophers in turn walking and sharing their thoughts with writer and director Astra Taylor. Featured philosophers in Examined Life include Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor.

The film was done with the premise that “philosophers have long done their best thinking when directly engaging with the outside world, not in isolation from it,” and since walking means going out and Neitzsche once claimed that “only ideas conceived while walking have any value” then it’s easy to see why Taylor chose to give us a peek into the philosophers thoughts while they were literally out on the streets.

The film has been receiving praise for bring philosophy to the figurative (aside from the literal) streets, making it actually understandable and even interesting for regular people. Ok so interesting might be too strong for some people but at the least she got the philosophers to open up in a manner that steers clear of too much big terms. In the end, interested or bored, reviewers agree that the discussions with each philosopher will leave you thinking a bit deeper about different things in life. So if your brain needs a little jump-start or you want to indulge in a variety of philosophy lessons without having to pore through lots of books my advice would be to watch Examined Life.

The Department of Philosophy of the University of Guelph will be inviting a speaker every year to their campus hold an event called The Guelph Lecture in Philosophy. This is the very first year that the event will be held. The inauguration of the Guelph Lecture in Philosophy will be held on March 21 from 2 to 4pm at the Rozanski Hall in Guelph. The lecturer, Peter Singer, will speak on “Ethics and Animals”. Everyone is invited to come and listen to the lecture. NO ADMISSION FEE.

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne. He is best known for his book Animal Liberation, which is credited by some for the formation of the animal rights movement as we now know. With a utilitarian approach to ethics he asserted the principle of minimizing suffering in his book and argued that animals have rights and these rights should be based on their ability to feel pain. Singer’s latest book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, is fresh out of printing. Though I haven’t got hold of a copy yet but it promises to be a riveting read based not only on the topic itself and Singer’s reputation but from the first few paragraphs shown in the book’s website.

With such a distinguished guest it is no wonder Prof. Andrew Bailey of Guelph’s Philosophy Department feels that they are indeed fortunate.