On William Lyons’ short films about Wittgenstein (The Examination) and Arendt (The Letter)

Abstract

Can the history of philosophy transcend the reconstruction of facts and the causal relationships that bind them together? As such, it can also be said to facilitate the analysis of key philosophical problems inherent to the act of communicating the history of philosophy itself. In this article, such a possibility is explored from the vantage point of William Lyons’ short films The Examination (2015) and The Letter (n.d.). These productions re-create certain episodes in the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hannah Arendt with an eye to institutional and moral issues of philosophical significance.