Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Volume 0 Special Volume 5 (2016)

CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON FILM Article 1
AND PHILOSOPHY

2016

Introduction
Stefan Deines
Goethe University Frankfurt, stefan.deines@gmx.de

Mario Wenning
Goethe University Frankfurt, mwenning@umac.mo

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Deines, Stefan and Wenning, Mario (2016) "Introduction," Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive): Vol.
0, Article 1.
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 Introduction

St efan Deines &

Abou t CA Mario Wenning,
Guest Edit ors
Jou r n a l

Con t a ct CA Ever since the emergence of film, cinema, and TV, there have
been theoretical and philosophical endeavors to try to
Lin k s understand and conceptually grasp these phenomena. The
fact that we are confronted with “moving images” gives rise to
Su bm ission s a number of ontological, epistemic, and aesthetic questions.
These questions result from the fact that these new media are
Se a r ch Jou r n a l
based on the techniques of photography and are capable of
Enter search terms recording movement and, later, sound. Using these
techniques, we can capture scenes of our world and also depict
Search
more or less imaginary worlds and tell stories about fictitious
characters. The questions revolve around the keywords
‘realism,’ ‘representation,’ and ‘illusion,’ which continue to be
Editorial Board
intensely debated.[1]
Permission to Reprint
Theoretical approaches to film also focus on the fact that
Privacy movies have an extraordinary impact on their viewers and the
cultural world in general. As far back as the 1930s, Erwin
Site Map
Panofsky observed that the impact of movies surpasses the
Publisher influence of the traditional arts:

Webmaster Whether we like it or not, it is the movies that

mold, more than any other single force, the
opinions, the taste, the language, the dress, the
behavior, and even the physical appearance of a
public comprising more than 60 percent of the
population of the earth.[2]

Consequently, a good deal of the discussion in film theory and

the philosophy of film is concerned with the question of what
means and aesthetic strategies are being employed to activate
which kinds of cognitive and psychological dispositions and
processes. Given the tremendous impact of film on its
audience, it is argued, these effects need to be assessed and
evaluated.

The psychological and cultural effects of movies have been

criticized. Jean Luis Baudry and Theodor W. Adorno, to name
but two theorists, have analyzed cinema by means of
ideological critique and psychoanalysis. They have exposed the
regressive, deceptive, conformist, and altogether anti-
enlightening effects of cinema. Baudry compared the disposit if
of cinema with the situation described in Plato’s allegory of the
cave, and explains the enjoyment of the spectator as a result
of a regression into an early childhood state char acterized by
dependency and illusion.[3] In a similar vein, Adorno analyzed
the mechanisms by which film and movies, both segments of
the so-called culture industry, help to establish an overarching
social structure of capitalist reification and mass deception.[4]

There is, on the other hand, a tradition in film theory that

highlights the positive, reflective, political, and critical potential
of movies. Authors such as Siegfried Kracauer and Walter
Benjamin belong to this tradition. They emphasized the
specific epistemic merits of cinema: film is interpreted as a
medium that is capable of conveying insights into the natural
or social world and into our own condition and disposition that
cannot be obtained, at least not in the same way, by any other
means. Theorists have tried to explain this epistemic potential
by analogy with the procedures and presentation methods of
the sciences, and also with those of the other arts.[5] Only
during the last thirty years have we witnessed the emergence
of a vivid debate on the analogy between the epistemic
potential of movies and the traditional means and media of
doing philosophy.

In the 1980s, Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell, albeit in a

different manner and departing from different theoretical
background assumptions, pointed to an internal relationship
between cinema and philosophy, especially between film and
the problems of skepticism. In their wake, a number of
contributors have discussed the philosophical content and
significance of either specific movies, certain film genres or
cinema in general.[6] The debate is neither restricted to
specific philosophical topics and problems nor to determined
genres or styles in cinema. Problems of theoretical philosophy
and problems of practical philosophy are elaborated by
drawing on film. Aesthetic and art-philosophical dimensions
are being worked out. Art house movies are analyzed and
interpreted along with classical genre movies and Hollywood
blockbusters.[7]

The thesis that film is a medium of philosophical insight, that

cinema can be “philosophy in action,” has been developed in a
more or less radical form. The most radical position holds that,
in the course of a movie, philosophical thoughts, theses, and
arguments can be developed. As a consequence, the reception
of movies can lead to new philosophical insights. Moreover,
these insights can be gained in no other way than through the
reception of the respective movies because the philosophical
content is bound to and can be conveyed only through specific
cinematic means.

Claims of this kind have led, on the one hand, to a detailed

discussion revolving around questions concerning the specific
potentials and limitations of the medium of cinema. Is it
possible to formulate and convey philosophical thoughts and
arguments in a medium that is at least partially non-
conceptual? Is it possible to gain insights of a universal or
general nature within the frame of a mainly narrative medium
depicting the actions and experiences of individual
protagonists?[8] And is the assumption of a philosophical
content that is amalgamated with filmic means and can
therefore not be translated into conceptual form not inevitably
a mere allegation, since it cannot be falsified and is thus non-
confirmable?[9] On the other hand, these claims have resulted
in a sophisticated debate on the essence and the means of
philosophy: Does philosophy consist only of definitions, logical
inferences, and the formulation of statements that claim
universal validity? Or do sensual, narrative, rhetorical, and
world-disclosing dimensions not belong to philosophical inquiry
as well?

Because of diverging opinions regarding the potentials of

movies and the nature of philosophy, various positions have
developed in this debate. While some authors approximate the
radical position we have sketched, others defend positions that
are, in differing respects, more moderate. Moreover, there are
also positions that do not try to elucidate the epistemic
potential of the movies in analogy with philosophical insights
but see philosophy and film as standing in a complementary
relation, as did Adorno, for example. He argued that
philosophy and the works of art stand in a relationship that is
both incommensurable and complementary. Film, in this view,
can show specific social and historical constellations and can
lead to unique experiences and insights that are open to and
maybe even dependent on philosophical interpretation and
assessment, while not having a philosophical form or being
fully translatable into such a form.

Increasingly, scholars point to a genuine ethical dimension

opened up by cinema. This ethical dimension does not need to
be manifest in the content or the intended function of
particular films. Rather, the dynamic experience of perceiving
and responding to films has the potential of bringing about a
unique state of awareness. The ethical dimension of films
cannot be reduced to a normative content that can be
translated into propositional form or to a method of claiming
normative validity, such as the categorical imperative. At the
same time, cinematic ethics opens up complex ways of
viewing dynamic constellations of perspectives. These ways of
viewing are not only distinct from other aesthetic forms of
experience; they may also lead the spectator to a change in
perspective on the world beyond cinema. While such
transformation processes are by no means necessary, the fact
that they become possible through the invention of film gives
rise to unique potentials worthy of further exploration.

The papers published in this special volume present

contemporary philosophical perspectives on the epistemic,
ontological, and ethical characteristics and potentials of film.
The papers emerged out of presentations that were given
during a conference that was held at the University of Macau
on March 31 and April 1, 2015.

In his contribution, Robert Sinnerbrink underscores the ethical

dimension of cinema. By way of combining the objective
orientation of recent cognitive theory with the subjective
perspective opened up by phenomenology, he presents an
alternative to either reducing the ethical dimension to the
content of films or to situating ethical significance in the
processes of cinematic production and reception alone.
Cinema, Sinnerbrink argues, is best understood as a "medium
of ethical experience" or a "medium with the potential for
ethical transformation." Perceptual and sensuous engagement
with film harbors an ethical dimension in that it allows for a
specific kind of perspective-taking that is both dynamic and
affective. This observation, which is corroborated by
Continental and analytical approaches alike and finds
increasing support in empirical psychology, emphasizes the
corporeal emotional significance of cinematic experience.
"Cinempathy" is Sinnerbrink's hybrid neologism to characterize
the unique cinematic capacity to respond to the complexity of
situations others find themselves in by shifting between feeling
for (sympathy) and with (empathy) these others. The example
of an argument by the protagonists in Ashgar Farhadi’s A
Separat ion (2011) reveals that cinempathy is ethically more
complex and profound than the form of perspective-taking
that might be achieved in non-cinematic forms of witnessing.
Cinematic ethics focuses on the complex experience of
intersubjectivity in time rather than prioritizing a single
perspective.

While Robert Sinnerbrink is concerned with the transformative

potential of cinematic experience, Martin Seel focuses on the
ethos of cinema. At its best, cinema allows those who
experience it to experience their capacity to let themselves be
determined. The artistic potential of film consists in its ability
to answer a need rooted in the structure of human agency
that includes a dimension of passivity. Film, which emerges in
constant dialogue with other art forms, enables the viewer to
activate his or her "involuntary receptiveness." Writing about
music, Adorno referred to this dynamic state as one of "active
passivity." Seel extends this idea to argue that, by way of
being moved involuntarily through the moving images, humans
passively test their passions and convictions. Art, in general,
and movies, in particular, enable an active exploration of the
passivity that is a core dimension of human agency. And yet it
would be mistaken to conceive of film as a moral institution
that would allow its subjects to cultivate their responsiveness.
Drawing on the final closing door scene in John Ford's The
Searchers (1956), Seel points to the essentially ambiguous
human desire of searching for a "protective inside and a
liberating outside." This desire is satisfied by films in specific
ways. As a medium for conjuring up imaginative realities, it
constitutes an "emblem of the unstable framing," in which the
cinematic space is simultaneously more open and more closed
off than the alternative spaces in which agents navigate.

Josef Früchtl focuses on the reemergence of grand narratives

in contemporary film after postmodernism has declared such
narratives dead. If some films signal cultural transformations,
Avat ar (2009) and Cloud At las (2012) suggest, according to
Früchtl's detailed reconstruction, the reemergence of
metaphysical holism combined with a utopian gesture or a
"taste of utopia." Both films toy with the idea of resurrection
through the technology of morphing into new bodies. The
cinematic imagination of reawakening into a more authentic,
higher reality is embedded in an ontology that combines
pluralism and holism into a new grand narrative. The two
films, like Seel's example of the closing scene of The
Searchers, also suggest cinema’s turn towards self-reflexivity
in that they present by cinematic means sophisticated versions
of cinema-like devices that realize heightened forms of virtual
experience. Avat ar upholds the ethical model of nature, which
is regained through cinematic immersion. While disconfirming
the postmodernist dismissal of grand narratives, the films
discussed employ hybrid modes that realize a normative claim.
In the case of Avat ar , Christian and post-Humanist themes
merge to suggest that everything ought to be considered as
being connected within a "mimetically communicative action."
Cloud At las draws on conceptions of reincarnation from Hindu
and Buddhist religions and philosophies while performing an
aesthetic justification of holism. Both films converge in
gesturing towards a new utopian imperative that everything
should be considered as being connected and aesthetically
justified.
In his contribution, Jean-Yves Heurtebise turns to the ontology
of cinematic bodies, as did Josef Früchtl in the previous article.
Bergson and Deleuze present the theoretical backdrop that
allows the author to reconsider the philosophical implications
of embodiment in cinematic, that is, "imaged," form. Bergson
conceived of the image as being distinct from objects and
representations. By extension, the living body, as it is revealed
in cinema, is a privileged image in that it is distinct from mere
objects qua being alive, and distinct from mere
representations in that it is acting. Deleuze's phenomenological
approach to cinematic bodies reveals them as "testimonies" in
a world in which agents are increasingly deprived of the
capacity to act. These phenomenological approaches,
Heurtebise reminds us, break with the tendency to denigrate
the body that has dominated the history of ontology and
occasionally found expression in cinematic form. Plato's
dismissal of the body can, for example, be discerned in Robert
Bresson's L'argent (1983), just as Descartes' mechanical
conception of the body finds cinematic expression in the films
by directors such as Kazan, Fuller, and Lumet. In contrast to
these denigrating approaches to cinematic embodiment,
Heurtebise reveals the transcendent and mystical potentials of
cinematic bodies and finally returns to a Bergson- and
Deleuze-inspired approach to the anamnetic dimension of
cinematic bodies. This anamnetic dimension is revealed in films
such as Christopher Nolan's Mem ent o (2000), while David
Cameron's Avat ar (2009) signals the new, anti-Platonic dream
of migrating from the imperfect real to a higher form of virtual
body.

Taking the short film La rivière du hibou (1961), an episode of

the anthology series, The Twilight Zone , as an example,
Paisley Livingston and Trevor Ponech examine the logic and
philosophical significance of so-called “twist films.” In these
films, a surprising twist at the end reveals that we, as
spectators, are mistaken in holding some basic beliefs about
the world of the movie, the story, and/or its protagonists, in
spite of the fact that we attentively pursue and carefully
interpret the events on screen up to the twisting point.
Whether movies that lead us up the garden path in that
manner allow for a philosophically interesting insight depends,
according to Livingston and Ponech, very much on how they
are made. Twist films reflectively enlighten us about our
viewing habits and expectations as possible sources of partial
perception and delusion only if a second viewing reveals
meaningful hints and clues that we overlooked during the
initial watching because we were too engaged in following the
events of the story or wishing for a happy ending. The pivotal
relevance of the second viewing leads Livingston and Ponech
to an interesting discussion and a resolution of the “paradox of
suspense” that results from the assumptions that we can (re-
)experience suspense even after a repeated reception of the
work. This contradicts the assumption that suspense seems to
result from the state of uncertainty about the outcome of the
presented chain of events.

In their contribution, “Edward Yang’s Confusion,” Nga-chun

Law and Chun-cheong Lo analyze the movie, A Confucian
Confusion (1994) directed by Edward Yang, one of the main
representatives of New Taiwanese Cinem a . The authors
interpret this film as a cinematic contribution to recent
ideological and philosophical debates concerning the role of
Confucianism in modern Chinese society. Based on a survey
of the tradition and the different varieties of Confucian
thinking, they work out various confusions that led to some
overly positive assumptions concerning the role of
Confucianism in modernity. One example of this is the
assumption that the economic success of the states known as
the “Four Asian Tigers” sprang from the influence of traditional
Confucian virtues or—the idea Edward Yang develops and puts
to a test in his movie—that a revitalization of Confucianism
can be seen as a remedy for the centrifugal forces in modern
capitalist societies. To the contrary, Law and Lo point out that
in the context of modernity there is no foundation for a vital
Confucian practice. Because of the prevailing ideology of
atomism and individualism and the emergence of new social
roles and hierarchies, the traditional relationships and
institutions necessary for a Confucian life-form no longer exist.

In her contribution “Can the Audience Want?,” Angela Keppler

considers the peculiarities and the value of so-called quality
television, especially in the form of recent American series,
with and against Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno answered this
question in his eponymous article from 1963 in a skeptical
manner, seeing TV as a product and means of a culture
industry that does not contribute to the formation of
autonomous and critical subjects. Keppler, in contrast to
Adorno, sees the value of quality TV in doing exactly this, by
increasing our awareness and enabling new perspectives on
ourselves and the social and cultural world. New TV formats
accomplish this by demanding a specific aesthetic attitude
from their audience, which Adorno, in his Aest het ic Theory ,
only claimed for the encounter with works of high or avant-
garde art. This attitude of “active passivity,” whose
importance for the reception of cinematic art Martin Seel also
points out in this volume, leads to a specific aesthetic
experience in which a cautious perception of the aesthetic
object is as important as the active interpretation and
reenactment of the presented events and formal structures. In
the course of her analysis of three depictions of therapy
sessions taken from the series The Sopranos, Mad Men, and I n
Treat m ent , Keppler makes clear how subtle and complex the
visual, aesthetic, and narrative compositions of quality TV can
be.

Stefan Deines
stefan.deines@gmx.de

Stefan Deines teaches philosophy at Goethe University in

Frankfurt, where he received his PhD in 2008. He also teaches
at the University of Macau. He works on Critical Theory, Social
Philosophy, the Philosophy of History and the Philosophy of
Art. In terms of the Philosophy of Art, his research focuses on
the plurality of the arts, its functions and aesthetic experience.

Mario Wenning
mwenning@umac.mo

Mario Wenning (PhD, New School for Social Research 2007) is

a faculty member of the University of Macau and Sun Yatsen
University, Guangzhou. His work focuses primarily on social
and political philosophy as well as aesthetics in an intercultural
context. He has published in, among others, Journal of
Chinese Philosophy , Philosophy East and West , Parrhesia ,
Confluence, Yearbook for East ern and West ern Philosophy , and
St udies in Philosophy and Educat ion .

Published on June 30, 2016.

En dn ot e s

[1] Some recent discussions of these topics can be found in:

The Rout ledge Com panion t o Philosophy and Film , ed. Paisley
Livingston and Carl Plantinga (London: Routledge, 2009);
Berys Gaut, A Philosophy of Cinem at ic Art , (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2010); James Conant, “The World of a Movie”
in Making a Difference, ed. Niklas Forsberg and Susanne
Jansson (Stockholm: Thales, 2011), pp. 293-324.

[2] Erwin Panofsky, “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures,”

in Film : An Ant hology , ed. Daniel Talbot (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1966), pp. 15-32, ref. on p. 17.

[3] Cf. Jean-Louis Baudry, “The Apparatus: Metapsychological

Approaches to the Impression of the Reality in Cinema,” in
Narrat ive, Apparat us, I deology , ed. Philip Rosen (New York:
Columbia UP, 1986), pp. 299-318.

[4] Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, "Culture Industry Reconsidered,“ in

The Cult ure I ndust ry. Select ed Essays on Mass Cult ure
(London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 98-108.

[5] Kracauer, for example, ascribes to the medium of film,

with its techniques of slow motion and fast motion, the
potential to “redeem” aspects of reality, meaning the potential
to make aspects of reality visible that would otherwise remain
unseen. Cf. Theory of Film : The Redem pt ion of Physical Realit y
(New York: Oxford University Press,1960). While the analogy
of film with the sciences is usually explained in relation to its
photographic dimension, its status as an art form is rather
linked to the formal, narrative, and aesthetic features of film.

[6] Cf. Josef Früchtl, Vert rauen in die Welt . Eine Philosophie
des Film s (München: Fink, 2013).

[7] For example, Paisley Livingston points out the philosophical

significance of Ingmar Bergmann’s movies in his book, On Film
as Philosophy ; Stephen Mulhall concentrates on big Hollywood
productions in On Film ; Martin Seel, in his book on the
movies, again deals with the whole artistic range of cinematic
production. Cf. Paisley Livingston, Cinem a, Philosophy,
Bergm an. On Film as Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009);
Stephen Mulhall, On Film (London and New York: Routledge,
2008); Martin Seel, Die Künst e des Kinos (Frankfurt: Fischer,
2013).

[8] Cf., for example, Thomas Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen:

Film as Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2007),
pp. 20ff.

[9] Cf. the dilemma as formulated in Paisley Livingston, Film ,

Philosophy, Bergm ann , pp. 21ff.