ABSTRACT

This volume collects twenty original essays on the philosophy of film. It uniquely brings together scholars working across a range of philosophical traditions and academic disciplines to broaden and advance debates on film and philosophy. The book includes contributions from a number of prominent philosophers of film including Noël Carroll, Chris Falzon, Deborah Knight, Paisley Livingston, Robert Sinnerbrink, Malcolm Turvey, and Thomas Wartenberg.

While the topics explored by the contributors are diverse, there are a number of thematic threads that connect them. Overall, the book seeks to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy of film in fruitful ways. Moving to the individual essays, the first two sections offer novel takes on the philosophical value and the nature of film. The next section focuses on the film-as-philosophy debate. Section IV covers cinematic experience, while Section V includes interpretations of individual films that touch on questions of artificial intelligence, race and film, and cinema’s biopolitical potential. Finally, the last section proposes new avenues for future research on the moving image beyond film.

This book will appeal to a broad range of scholars working in film studies, theory, and philosophy.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

part I|69 pages

The Nature of Film

chapter 2|23 pages

The World Viewed and the World Lived

Stanley Cavell and Film as the Moving Image of Skepticism

chapter 3|15 pages

The Morph-Image

Four Forms of Post-Cinema

chapter 4|14 pages

Deleuze’s Cronosigns

part II|78 pages

The Film as Philosophy Debate

chapter 5|11 pages

The Bold Thesis Retried

On Cinema as Philosophy

chapter 6|24 pages

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment

Some Challenges and Opportunities

chapter 7|19 pages

Are There Definite Objections to Film as Philosophy?

Metaphilosophical Considerations

part III|49 pages

The Philosophical Value of Film

chapter 10|11 pages

Filmmaking as Self-Writing

Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963)

chapter 11|21 pages

Film and Ethics

part IV|57 pages

Cinematic Experience

chapter 12|13 pages

Movies, Narration and the Emotions

chapter 14|25 pages

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures

A Phenomenological Approach to Cinema

part V|51 pages

Interpreting Cinematic Works

chapter 15|14 pages

The Blade Runner Question

From Philosophy to Myth

chapter 17|18 pages

Transnational Biopolitical Motives in Postmodern Cinema

Žižek and Badiou on Udi Aloni’s Forgiveness and Local Angel

part VI|57 pages

Further Debates

chapter 18|23 pages

Cinema and Television

The Art and Industry of Joint Works

chapter 20|18 pages

Metaphysical Alter-Egos

Matheson, Dunne and the View From Somewhere