The Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars: Daniel Conway

March’s Film-Phil Lisbon Seminar will be led by Daniel Conway (Texas A&M University) who will talk about “Matters of Life and Death: The Nietzschean Imperative in Contemporary Science Fiction Films”. The session will be held on 17 March 2026, at 15:00 WET, in room A204 at NOVA FCSH (Av. de Berna, 26 C) and online via Microsoft Teams. To receive information about joining the meeting online, it’s mandatory to register in advance here.

Abstract

A major achievement of films in the genre of science fiction over the past half century is their collective success in depicting various iterations of the over-human future anticipated by the German-born philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). From Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future (2023), theorists and film enthusiasts have been treated to an impressive range of the futures that are believed or feared to be implied by the event [Ereignis] of the “death of God.” Indeed, the very best of the science fiction films of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have followed Nietzsche’s lead in exploring the conditions under which humankind might “overcome” its current, dead-end incarnation. What unites these films within an increasingly well-defined sub-genre is their shared appreciation of Nietzsche’s identification of the fear of death as the single most stubborn impediment to the ongoing growth and evolution of humankind. As both Nietzsche and Zarathustra consistently maintained, those among us who remain pathologically fearful of death—and, so, pathologically risk-averse—never actually experience life itself as a worthwhile impetus to the expression of a will for the future of humankind in an evolved incarnation. Simply put: the fear of death has revealed itself in late modernity as a nihilistic indictment (or repudiation) of life itself. Films in the sub-genre I have proposed to explore thus tend to treat the projected extinction of humankind not as an inevitable or natural outcome, as ordained, e.g., by a cosmos indifferent to human aspiration, but as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If humankind does in fact perish, it will do so of its own evacuated volition.

While most directors working in the genre have been content to explore the darker themes associated with Nietzsche’s philosophy—e.g., nihilism, decay, alienation, anxiety, dread, and so on—several recent films have endeavored to renew the promise encoded in his cautiously optimistic and “cheerful” forecast of an over-human future. What both approaches share in common, I submit, is an abiding attunement to what I prefer to call the “Nietzschean imperative”, which, on my reconstruction, enjoins humankind either to evolve or perish. While Nietzsche-inspired directors are occasionally concerned with the lives and deaths of particular individuals, especially those who are meant to exemplify (of challenge) the Zarathustran image of the redemptive Übermensch, I am more concerned to investigate those films in which the “Nietzschean imperative” is directed to the species as a whole. What interests me about these films is their guiding assumption or presupposition that humankind must arrive at a more general or collective response to its abiding fear of death, even if individual heroes or Übermenschen lead the way. In these films, in other words, the ideal response to the “Nietzschean imperative” is presented as a voluntary, self-transformation (or “self-overcoming”) on the part of humankind as a whole. As I intend to demonstrate, the envisioned “self-overcoming” of humankind in its current incarnation will involve a direct, species-wide confrontation with the fear of death. The only or best way for humankind to re-acquire a robust will for a future in which it will thrive is to cultivate a healthy, informed relationship to its own mortality. By learning to die well, humankind will finally learn how to live well.

Bio

Daniel Conway is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A&M University. He has lectured and published widely on topics in post-Kantian European philosophy, political philosophy, aesthetics (especially film and literature), philosophy of education, and genocide studies.