Center Journals

The relationship between philosophy and cinema may be examined from three angles: the philosophical output of cinema, in that cinema is a field capable of producing ideas and concepts and having a significant aesthetic impact on contemporary culture; examining the aesthetics of cinema itself, its tools and techniques; viewing cinema as a tool for philosophy or as a philosophical experience. This paper thus discusses the books and publications in the field of philosophy that are devoted to cinema and the philosophers most concerned with the question of the cinematic image. It also focuses on the intellectual and critical moments that inaugurated the relationship between philosophy and cinema, especially in the works of authors such as Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Al-Dahi examines Edward Said’s autobiography from various perspectives. It first focuses on the memoir’s intellectual dimension, which traces Said’s educational experience and his intellectual evolution. It stresses the depth of his engagement in the writing process, as well as his ability to join his origins in a marginalized culture and an oppressed people with his capacity for critical engagement with the deconstruction of the structures of Western culture, exposing its unspoken foundations and tendencies. The ultimate goal of this process was to formulate his method of criticism, which he termed “contrapuntal criticism”. Secondly, the memoir’s existential dimension is brought into focus, centered on Said’s desire to register a symbolic victory over the specter of death, after his diagnosis with cancer. Finally, the autobiography’s focus on nationalism is analyzed, where story of the life of a Palestinian interacts with the national cause in all its phases, bringing to light the sorrows and the dreams of the Palestinian people, registering their attempts to achieve their national goals.

This paper presents a reading of the Arab Spring’s events and an attempt to forecast its future by examining the relationship between the ongoing social movements and various contemporary ideas concerning the philosophy of justice. This study also examines some of the notions of justice that have arisen in the Arab tradition in order to distinguish the elements that are likely to persist from those that are likely to be surpassed and replaced. It also stresses the fact that the concept of justice in the Arab tradition was developed in isolation from the principle of freedom. Subsequently, the paper discusses the Arab Spring’s future potential—ranging from constituting the onset of a global movement against the existing form of globalization, which is based on unjust principles and, therefore, the central target of those seeking justice and freedom—to turning toward isolationism and the traditional Arab notion of justice, which is separate from freedom, or even turning toward justice at the expense of freedom. Finally, the paper presents the conditions that must be met in order to ensure that the demands of justice and freedom will overlap as part of a continual dialectic between the two concepts.