Paisley Livingston

The increasingly popular idea that cinematic fictions can "do" philosophy raises some difficult questions. Who is actually doing the philosophizing? Is it the philosophical commentator who reads general arguments or theories into the stories conveyed by a film? Could it be the film-maker, or a group of collaborating film-makers, who raise and try to answer philosophical questions with a film? Is there something about the experience of films that is especially suited to the stimulation of worthwhile philosophical reflections? In the first part of this book, Paisley Livingston surveys positions and arguments surrounding the cinema's philosophical value. He raises criticisms of bold theses in this area and defends a moderate view of film's possible contributions to philosophy. In the second part of the book he defends an intentionalist approach that focuses on the film-makers' philosophical background assumptions, sources, and aims. Livingston outlines intentionalist interpretative principles as well as an account of authorship in cinema. The third part of the book exemplifies this intentionalist approach with reference to the work of Ingmar Bergman. Livingston explores the connection between Bergman's work and the Swedish director's primary philosophical source-a treatise in philosophical psychology authored by the Finnish philosopher, Eino Kaila. Bergman proclaimed that reading this book was a tremendous philosophical experience for him and that he "built on this ground." With reference to materials in the newly created Ingmar Bergman archive, Livingston shows how Bergman took up Kaila's topics in his cinematic explorations of motivated irrationality, inauthenticity, and the problem of self-knowledge

In his little-known essay published posthumously in 1849, Über die Eintheilung der schönen Künste, Bernard Bolzano proposes an explication of the concept of beautiful art as well as a classification of these arts. Bolzano’s divisions allowed him not only to provide a principled and comprehensive classification of actual, well-established arts, but also to anticipate kinds of beautiful art that would not exist or be widely recognized until decades after his death, such as moving pictures, abstract paintings, and what he called ‘the arts of pure thought’.

The idea that films can be philosophical, or in some sense ‘do’ philosophy, has recently found a number of prominent proponents. What is at stake here is generally more than the tepid claim that some documentaries about philosophy and related topics convey philosophically relevant content. Instead, the contention is that cinematic fictions, including popular movies such as The Matrix, make significant contributions to philosophy. Various more specific claims are linked to this basic idea. One, relatively weak, but pedagogically important observation is that some films can be used to provide philosophy students with vivid and thought-provoking illustrations of philosophical issues. Film screenings stimulate discussion and may motivate renewed engagement with difficult philosophical texts. A stronger contention, however, seeks to link innovative and philosophically valuable thinking to ‘the film itself’ or to the ‘specificity of the cinematic medium’. Such claims raise interesting questions, including questions about the status of the increasingly prevalent philosophically motivated interpretations of particular movies. Who is actually doing the philosophizing in such cases? Is it the audio-visual display, the film-maker, or the philosopher who devises an interpretation of the work? What is the role of specifically cinematic devices in the philosophical points made in such interpretations? Is there any tension between the goal of appreciating a film as a work of art and the goal of arguing that a film has significant implications for a position on a problem in philosophy? A course in the general area of cinema as philosophy can focus on issues related to the locus and status of cinematic philosophizing. It can also delve into specific films and film-makers and philosophically oriented interpretations of specific philosophical topics, such as personal identity. Issues pertaining to interpretation, meaning, and authorship can be usefully investigated in this connection, as can topics in meta-philosophy related to the very nature of philosophical insight or knowledge

The word ‘genius’ is often associated with the idea that artistic creativity is entirely a matter of an involuntary sort of inspiration visited upon the individual artist. My aim in referring to cinematic genius is not, however, to defend that dubious thesis, but to direct attention to the remarkable artistic achievements that some film-makers, working individually or in collaborative teams, have managed to bring about in their intentional and often painstaking creation of cinematic works. Genius, as I understand it, is the exceptional ability to do something difficult, such as the intentional making of an innovative and valuable work of art. My central claim in what follows is that our longstanding and legitimate interest in manifestations of this kind of skill has important implications for a number of interrelated issues in the philosophy of art, and in particular, for some of the questions taken up in the ever-expanding literature on the ontology of works of art.

Paisley Livingston here addresses contemporary controversies over the role of "theory" within the humanistic disciplines. In the process, he suggests ways in which significant modern texts in the philosophy of science relate to the study of literature. Livingston first surveys prevalent views of theory, and then proposes an alternative: theory, an indispensable element in the study of literature, should be understood as a Cogently argued and informed in its judgments, this book points the way to a fuller understanding of the special contribution that literary knowledge may make within the human sciences.

Is it legitimate to interpret and evaluate works in terms of their place within the writer's Oeuvres complètes? Is the notion of the life-work, and of relations between works and the life-work to which they belong, theoretically uninteresting, or worse, unjustifiable? The publication of a beautiful, five-volume edition of Roland Barthes's Oeuvres complètes is a good thing, but if we were to rely on this theorist's meta-hermeneutical dicta alone, it would be hard to say why. Barthes and other advocates of impersonal notions of discourse and textuality tell us there is no good reason to "privilege" the boundary and internal structure of the individual writer's corpus. Yet Barthes, like the many critics who have trumpeted the "death of the author" theme, continued to rely on the categories of author and life-work. This discrepancy between theory and practice can be resolved in one of three ways: we can revise the theory to make it square with practice; we can keep the theory and try to make our critical practices conform to it; or we could replace both with some compatible pair of alternatives. In what follows I argue for revising theory in light of practice, first by responding to some theoretical objections to the work/life-work topic, and then by providing examples of worthwhile lines of inquiry related to it

Resumo Na entrevista ficcional que se segue, as ideias de Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos sobre as artes de representação serão aplicadas a aspectos relevantes do cinema. Du Bos argumenta que, normalmente, as obras de ficção cinematográfica são projectadas para dar origem a “paixões artificiais”, que têm a função de fornecer alívio ao tédio, sem as consequências negativas que muitas actividades alternativas têm. Também será considerada a questão, se os filmes têm um significado filosófico. O resultado é uma perspectiva desconhecida, do princípio do século XVIII, em algumas temáticas contemporâneas. Palavras-chave : catarse, cinema apocalíptico, Du Bos, emoção, paixões artificiais, paradoxo do afecto negativoIn the following fictional interview, the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ ideas about the representational arts are applied to relevant aspects of the cinema. Du Bos argues that normally works of cinematic fiction are designed to give rise to ‘artificial passions’ that have the function of providing relief from boredom without the negative consequences that many alternative pursuits would have. Du Bos’ solution to the paradox of negative affect and his position on Aristotle’s doctrine of catharsis are also set forth in the interview. The question of whether films have philosophical significance is also taken up. The upshot is a somewhat unfamiliar early 18th-century perspective on some contemporary issues. Keywords: apocalyptic cinema, artificial passions, catharsis, Du Bos, emotion, paradox of negative affect

l Carroll's criticisms of my essay on C. I. Lewis's conception of aesthetic experience, I discuss reasons given in support of axiological accounts of aesthetic experience, including Lewis's contentions about the intrinsic valence of all experiences and his emphasis on the interests motivating philosophical classifications of experience. I also respond to Carroll's remarks about a possible explanatory requirement on a conception of aesthetic experience and the idea that artists have aesthetic experiences as they make a work of art.