ABSTRACT
In previous chapters, I have proposed two ways whereby films can do philosophy: by illustrating a philosophical theory in a perspicuous manner and by presenting a philosophical thought experiment. In this chapter, I consider a film that does both: Carol Reed’s masterpiece The Third Man (1945). Its presentation of a pulp fiction writer’s difficulties upon arriving in Vienna only to find that the friend who has brought him there is dead makes two distinct philosophical contributions. First, its depiction of the novelist’s refusal to believe that his friend could be a notorious criminal develops an account of what I shall call ‘‘the vicissitudes of moral intelligence.’’ Moral intelligence (or practical wisdom, phronesis) is a notion that Aristotle develops in his Nichomachean Ethics. The film pinpoints two obstacles to its unproblematic employment in our lives: prior commitments and the influence of pulp fictions. This is an important contribution that the film makes to Aristotelian ethics.
