Hitchcock as Philosopher

<p> The films of Alfred Hitchcock deal heavily with psychological and philosophical themes and one needn't look very far into the canon to find them. In Psycho for example the personality metamorphosis in Marion Crane that leads her into grand larceny is a pale double of the murderous oedipal divide in Norman Bates. In <I>The Birds</I> overbearing natural mutations turn what might have been a creature feature into a film about fear of the unknowable.</p><p> This book looks at 12 Hitchcock films and the positions they put forth on three problem areas of epistemology: deception knowledge of mind and problematic knowledge of the external world. These philosophical concepts are explained and woven into the author's thorough and thought-provoking discussion of each film. Descartes and Wittengenstein star; Plato Locke Hume Kant and Kierkegaard also make appearances in this new philosopher's cut of the master's works.</p>