On the surface, The Philosophical Hitchcock: Vertigo and the Anxieties
of Unknowingness, is a close reading of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958
masterpiece Vertigo. This, however, is a book by Robert B. Pippin, one
of our most penetrating and creative philosophers, and so it is also
much more. Even as he provides detailed readings of each scene in the
film, and its story of obsession and fantasy, Pippin reflects more
broadly on the modern world depicted in Hitchcock's films. Hitchcock's
characters, Pippin shows us, repeatedly face problems and dangers rooted
in our general failure to understand others--or even ourselves--very
well, or to make effective use of what little we do understand.
Vertigo, with its impersonations, deceptions, and fantasies, embodies
a general, common struggle for mutual understanding in the late modern
social world of ever more complex dependencies. By treating this problem
through a filmed fictional narrative, rather than discursively, Pippin
argues, Hitchcock is able to help us see the systematic and deep mutual
misunderstanding and self-deceit that we are subject to when we try to
establish the knowledge necessary for love, trust, and commitment, and
what it might be to live in such a state of unknowingness.
A bold, brilliant exploration of one of the most admired works of
cinema, The Philosophical Hitchcock will lead philosophers and
cinephiles alike to a new appreciation of Vertigo and its meanings.
