Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Shadow of a doubt alfred hitchcock analysis
Descartes’ First Meditation.
Descartes’ First Meditation.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Shadow of a doubt alfred hitchcock analysis
Hitchcock/Descartes
Am I really awake typing a paper for philosophy? Did I just watch the Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt or did the “not so supremely good God” plant a reel of thoughts in my head (Descartes16)? That would be ironic since the themes of the film are based upon human understanding of doubt, dreams, good, evil, ignorance and knowledge. The film portrays a neat staircase that leads into the house of an all American family and a rickety set of stairs off the side of the house that are private and used for escape. After watching the deep hidden meanings and symbolism in the film, one could perceive the image of the parallel staircases like a metaphor for the human mind. This would bring the audience into a deeper place, dark, dreamlike, full of insecurities and doubt.
The author of “Meditations the First Philosophy” Rene Descartes reaches a place in his life where he has exhausted his external passions and is ready to fully explore his internal world. In his first philosophical meditation he talks about knowledge and doubt; breaking through barriers of perception down to the foundation of thought. Looking at knowledge and truth skeptically wondering what is real and what part of his knowledge is based upon false opinions. It is in this place that Descartes explores the deceptiveness of one’s own senses. He says that senses can deceive when it “is a question of very small and distant things” (Descartes 14). He goes on to say that there are things he cannot doubt like the fire he sits next to or the winter gown that adorns his body . Dreaming is sense that often persuades the mind that it is doing something else, painting images of reality without letting the dreamer in on the truth; dreams are senses that deceive.
...
... middle of paper ...
...le clues that Charlie is hiding something that the family remains oblivious to. The fact that Charlie shows up, out of the blue at the same time the authorities are searching for a widow murderer does not seem strange to them. Maybe the connection gets lost, but surely they must wonder about the amount of money that Old Charlie carries; the father who is a banker and spends his free time solving mysteries does not ask any questions. Then there is the moment at the dinner table when Charlie goes off in a fit of madness and pretty much confesses to the crime and all his sister says is that he should refrain from saying such things like that at the ladies conference. The child Anne has some intuition, but she spends the majority of time hiding in fictional stories. This dream like state definitely disconnects the family members from the world and reality.
Descartes goal of doubting things is to overcome skepticism, and come to a truth, thus gaining knowledge that is certain. He believes in order to know anything for certain we have to first doubt the truth of everything. In the first meditation, Descartes uses perceptual illusions, the dream problem and the possibility of a deceiving god to show the uncertainty of many common beliefs, and spark doubt.
The first meditation focuses on doubt. As it starts Descartes’s is having doubts on all of his opinions, knowledge, wisdom etc. He ends up deciding that instead of doubting opinion by opinion, it will be easier to doubt the foundation from which the opinions have been built on. Then he says that not to trust, ones senses because they can be wrong. Descartes provides examples like dreaming, god or painting a mermaid (based on the senses, but not proven to be true referring to mermaid). At first he thinks only complex things can be questioned not simple things. But, upon further examination he realizes that he can doubt simple things. So he uses examples to show why he can doubt things.
Rene Descartes’ greatest work, Meditations on First Philosophy, attempts to build the base of knowledge through a skeptical point of view. In the First Meditation, Descartes argues that his knowledge has been built on reason and his senses, yet how does he know that those concepts are not deceiving him? He begins to doubt that his body exists, and compares himself to an insane person. What if he is delusional about his social ranking, or confused about the color of his clothes, or even unaware of the material that his head is made of? This is all because the senses are deceiving, even in our dreams we experience realistic visions and feelings. Finally, Descartes comes to the conclusion that everything must be doubted, and begins to build his
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is a film which functions on multiple levels simultaneously. On a literal level it is a mystery-suspense story of a man hoodwinked into acting as an accomplice in a murder, his discovery of the hoax, and the unraveling of the threads of the murder plot. On a psychological level the film traces the twisted, circuitous routes of a psyche burdened down with guilt, desperately searching for an object on which to concentrate its repressed energy. Finally, on an allegorical or figurative level, it is a retelling of the immemorial tale of a man who has lost his love to death and in hope of redeeming her descends into the underworld.
At the beginning of the very first meditation, Descartes states that he has lost his trust with his senses because they can be easily deceived (Descartes, 18). While dreaming sometimes it feels very real just as it does whi...
Descartes’ theory of systematic doubt centered on his belief that individuals cannot trust their perceptions of the external world because sensory stimuli do not necessarily reflect true depictions of the world. Throughout his life, Descartes assumed information being received through his senses to be accurate representations of the external world until he realized that the senses as a source for information can occasionally mislead both himself and all other people. With this knowledge in mind, Descartes knew that an absolute confidence in sensory perception could deceive individuals about the external world and lead to a challenging of beliefs. As an example of this, Descartes considered that, as he wrote this meditation on systematic doubt,
Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all sensory perception. Since my most vivid dreams are internally indistinguishible from waking experience, he argued, it is possible that everything I now "perceive" to be part of the physical world outside me is in fact nothing more than a fanciful fabrication of my own imagination. On this supposition, it is possible to doubt that any physical thing really exists, that there is an external world at all. (Med. I)
All directors of major motion pictures have specific styles or signatures that they add in their work. Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest directors of all time, has a particularly unique style in the way he creates his films. Film analyzers classify his distinctive style as the “Alfred Hitchcock signature”. Hitchcock’s signatures vary from his cameo appearances to his portrayal of a specific character. Two perfect examples of how Hitchcock implements his infamous “signatures” are in the movies, A Shadow of a Doubt and Vertigo. In these movies, numerous examples show how Hitchcock exclusively develops his imagination in his films.
In the first meditation, Descartes makes a conscious decision to search for “in each of them [his opinions] at least some reason for doubt”(12). Descartes rejects anything and everything that can be doubted and quests for something that is undeniably certain. The foundation of his doubt is that his opinions are largely established by his senses, yet “from time to time I [Descartes] have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”(12). First, Descartes establishes that error is possible, employing the example of the straight stick that appears bent when partially submerged in water, as mentioned in the Sixth Replies (64-65). Secondly, he proves that at any given time he could be deceived, such is the case with realistic dreams. Further, Descartes is able to doubt absolutely everything since it cannot be ruled out that “some malicious demon … has employed all his energies in order to deceive me” (15). The malicious demon not only causes Descartes to doubt God, but also sends him “unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom or swim on the top”(16). Descartes has reached the point where he must begin to rebuild by searching for certainty.
Throughout “Mediations I and II”, Descartes disputes definitions of reality and identity, establishing a precursor to Emerson’s philosophy. Initially, Descartes questions all notions of being. In “Mediation I”, Descartes begins his argument explaining the senses which perceive reality can be deceptive and “it is wiser not to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived” (Descartes 59). But, he then continues to reason; “opinions [are] in some measure doubtful…and at the same time highly probable, so that there is much more reason to believe in than to deny them” (Descartes 62). Descartes maintains trust within his established personal beliefs though he may doubt certain physical senses. Additionally, Descartes seeks to establish his identity in “Meditation II”. Even as he questions his very existence, he begins trustin...
He quickly releases that this is the foundation of most of his beliefs. He first acknowledges that sometime our senses can deceive us, but say that our senses is mostly sturdy. It is after this that Descartes realizes that there has been times where he has been sleeping and in his dream he was certain that he was awake and sensing real objects. Though his current senses may have be dream senses, he suggests that even dream senses are drawn from our experience of us awake. He then discovers that there are times in which he cannot distinguish whether he is in his waking state and his dream state.
Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt is a true masterpiece. Hitchcock brings the perfect mix of horror, suspense, and drama to a small American town. One of the scenes that exemplifies his masterful style takes place in a bar between the two main characters, Charlie Newton and her uncle Charlie. Hitchcock was quoted as saying that Shadow of a Doubt, “brought murder and violence back in the home, where it rightly belongs.” This quote, although humorous, reaffirms the main theme of the film: we find evil in the places we least expect it. Through careful analysis of the bar scene, we see how Hitchcock underlies and reinforces this theme through the setting, camera angles, and lighting.
In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and the Matrix”, Christopher Grau explains Rene Descartes argument in Meditation. What one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of one’s imagination. One argument that Grau points out in Descartes essay is how one knows that what one think is an everyday experience awake is not all a part of a hallucination. He uses the example of dreams to draw a conclusion about is claim based on experiences one would experience with dreaming. He asserts that there are times when one wake up from a dream that seems to be “vivid and realistic” however soon finds that it was not. The experience of reality in the dream was all a part of the mind. If dreams seem to be reality and one would not have any concept that one is dreaming how does one know that one is not dreaming now? Descartes point is that one cannot justify reality in the sense that one could be dreaming right at this moment and not know therefore one cannot trust the brain as an indicator of what is reality.
...of all responsibility (for, of course, there is no way that a normal person could ever kill.) In keeping with this principle the film attempts to absolve Young Charlie from all responsibility in her Uncle's death, for it is seen as an accident that occurred when Young Charlie was fighting her Uncle in self-defence. In the final stages of the film we are brought back to the small town introduced to us in the beginning, this time, however, it is in morning for a beloved son. Charlie's death has brought Graham back to Young Charlie. We can see the good side has won the battle for her. As in early situational Charlie has learned her moral lesson and the episode may end.
Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six different steps that he named "Meditations" because of the state of mind he was in while he was contemplating all these different ideas. His six meditations are "One:Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", "Two:Concerning the Nature of the Human mind: that it is better known than the Body", "Three: Concerning God, that he exists", "Four: Concerning the True and the False", "Five: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and again concerning God, that he exists" and finally "Six: Concerning the Existence of Material things, and the real distinction between Mind and Body". Although all of these meditations are relevant and necessary to understand the complete work as a whole, the focus of this paper will be the first meditation.