ABSTRACT
Both the philosopher of science and the philosopher interested in films find much to dismay them in the branch of philosophy known as ‘aesthetics’. Having both loyalties, I write this with some feeling. To the philosopher of science aesthetics looks poorly organized, showing little signs of progress, far more deeply Hegelian and anti-rationalist than other philosophical fields. To the philosopher of film the dismay comes from neglect: in the huge literature on aesthetics there is very little about films. Naturally, there is nothing whatsoever before 1889 and even for some time thereafter. But in the major journals and textbooks down to this day, films are as likely as not to be ignored. Six admirably rational works of recent vintage, Hospers’ Meaning and Truth in the Arts, Wollheim’s Art and Its Objects , Goodman’s highly influential work, The Languages of Art , Scruton’s Art and Imagination , Danto’s The Transfiguration of the Commonplace , Sparshott’s The Theory of the Arts , all fail to cite any film, still less to deal in general with film as one of the arts. In Danto’s and Sparshott’s cases, this despite the authors having written elsewhere about film. In another remarkable case of Harvard colleagues ignoring each other, Cavell’s book mentions Goodman in neither edition, and Goodman returns the favour. Suzanne Langer appended a few pages on films to her classic work Feeling and Form. But the philosopher of art to whom I shall pay the greatest respect by attempting to work out ideas parallel to his for films, Sir Ernst Gombrich, scarcely mentions films in book after book, even when dealing with motion (1982).
