Examined Life

What, to pinch a phrase from English post-punk band The Chameleons, does anything mean, basically? Filmmaker Astra Taylor presents a perky primer to the biggest questions currently taxing the greatest minds. Examined Life, which takes its title from Socrates' famous dictum "the unexamined life is not worth living", tackles everything from the nature of democracy and revolution to the ecology movement, disability and globalisation. Entirely intentionally, it's a film that raises more questions than it can possibly answer, though the questions themselves reflect the fractured nature of life in the accelerated twenty-first century. The result is an engaging, lightly-delivered lecture about social responsibility and the state we're in which boils these thinkers' theories down to easily-digestible 10 minute chunks.

Taylor's intention is to drag philosophy out of the seminar rooms and set it loose on the streets - literally. Inspired by Rebecca Solnit's book 'Wanderlust: A History Of Walking', Taylor's film is a series of literal as well as metaphorical journeys as her thinkers stroll, row and ride their way round New York and San Francisco. Manhattan's glittering Fifth Avenue is the backdrop for Peter Singer's analysis of consumption in all its forms. A zealous proponent of vegetarianism, for Singer how we spend - or don't spend - our money has serious ethical implications which reverberate right through society.

Kwame Anthony Appiah expounds his 'cosmopolitanism' theory of social responsibility, which allows for a shared community while acknowledging that not everyone shares the same values (nice idea, though you can't help feel it needs a little interrogation). Elsewhere political philosopher Michael Hardt, author of the Naomi Klein-approved 'Empire', recalls visiting Nicaragua in the 1980s and being dismayed to discover that far from being filled with revolutionary fervor, all he could do was observe. "Revolution, he says, "requires a transformation of human nature so that people are capable of democracy." Though Taylor doesn't feel it's within her remit to challenge statements like this with a gentle "but how?", she does give the speakers a chance to put their ideas across in more depth and detail than a conventional TV doc or radio show might allow.

The stars of the show however, are Slavoj Zizek and Cornel West. Slovenian contrarian Zizek, who was the subject of Taylor's 2005 documentary Zizek! and who presented his own cheerfully idiosyncratic series The Pervert's Guide To Cinema, gives a typically dazzling display of intellectual acrobatics while wandering round a municipal dump, and if his suggestion that the ecology movement represents a new form of conservatism sounds like practiced provocation, Zizek's determination not to accept anything as given is a genuinely inspiring illustration of Socrates' own position.

Cornel West, a member of Barack Obama's advisory team, also proves exhilarating company as he rides through the city in the back of cab riffing unstoppably on everything from Beethoven and Beckett to the "the stink of life" which drives great rock music. West alone in the film appears to have been given free rein to follow his own free-ranging instincts and if there's an absence of focus, the sheer speed and scope of his monolog justifies his (possibly ironic) description of himself as a "jazzman of ideas".

Whether or not you agree with these thinkers, their arguments are presented with a pleasing mix of wit and charm. Popular philosophy is frequently presented as a self-important branch of the self-help industry, but the speakers in Taylor's film steer away from cosy assurances - meaning and certainty, in fact, provoke distinctly sceptical responses. And yet these strange new absences from our moral thought are presented as having positive implications. In the search for meaning, says feminist critic Avital Ronell, the path which leads nowhere is more profitable than the road to certainty. There's nothing wrong with being anxious about your actions, she explains. Anxiety indicates a sense of fallibility, which is in turn evidence of our value as people.

Stimulating as all this is, the best way to think of Taylor's film is as a handy jumping off point for further investigation. If you like what you hear, you may just have to take the old fashioned route and find these writers' books. And then sit down and actually read them.