Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy

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Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy Paisley Livingston

Published in print: 2009 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2009 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199570171 eISBN: 9780191721540 acprof:oso/9780199570171.001.0001 Item type: book

The first part of this book critically assesses some of the bold claims that have been made about films' contributions to philosophy and defends a balanced perspective on the topic. It argues that in many cases, it is the philosophical commentator and not ‘the film itself’ that is the actual source of the philosophizing attributed to a movie. In some cases, however, it is the film-maker who, by working with a background of specific philosophical sources, creates a work that expresses philosophical ideas. With this possibility in mind, the second part of the book outlines a ‘partial intentionalist’ approach. In response to a series of objections, the book defends underlying assumptions about interpretation, expression, and authorship. The book's partial intentionalist approach is exemplified in the third part of the book, which focuses on the work of Ingmar Bergman. The book argues that Bergman was profoundly influenced by a Finnish philosopher, Eino Kaila. Bergman proclaimed that reading Kaila's book on philosophical psychology a tremendous philosophical experience for him and that he ‘built on this ground’. With reference to unpublished materials in the newly created Ingmar Bergman archive in Stockholm, the book shows how, in works such as Wild Strawberries, Persona, and In the Life of the Marionettes, the Swedish director took up and responded to Kaila's views on motivated irrationality, inauthenticity, ethics, and the problem of selfknowledge.

Art, Self and Knowledge Keith Lehrer

Published in print: 2011 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press January 2012 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780195304985 eISBN: 9780199918164 acprof:oso/9780195304985.001.0001 Item type: book

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Art changes the totality of human experience as Dewey emphasized. Goodman and Heidegger propose that art reveals a special contribution to the world-making experience of the artist and the receivers of the artwork. Art is often representational. It may, as Bell and Fry affirmed, contain significant form giving rise to a special emotion, it may be expressive of human feelings, as Croce and Collingwood averred. It may deconstruct previous artworks, removing them from their frames to assemble something new, as Derrida suggests. Some art does each, and I seek to explain how. But not all art does these things, and not only art does them. So what is the special contribution that art makes to experience that changes human life? Art uses sensory consciousness as the focus of attention to create new form and content out of exemplars of experience. The exemplars mark a new distinction in conceptual space. I call this exemplarization. We value art because of the new content it offers us in our lives. We are provoked by art to ask ourselves whether to transfer the content of the artwork to our world and ourselves beyond the artwork. Our answer reveals to us what we are like as we exercise our freedom and autonomy in how we represent our world. Art is that part of experience that uses experience to change the content of experience. Exemplar representation, exemplarization, unifies the aesthetic, creating a new understanding of our selves and our world.

The Meaning of Disgust Colin McGinn

Published in print: 2011 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press January 2012 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199829538 eISBN: 9780199919482 acprof:oso/9780199829538.001.0001 Item type: book

Disgust has a strong claim to be a distinctively human emotion. But what is it to be disgusting? What unifies the class of disgusting things? This book sets out to analyze the content of disgust, arguing that life and death are implicit in its meaning. Disgust is a kind of philosophical emotion, reflecting the human attitude to the biological world. Yet it is an emotion we strive to repress. It may have initially arisen as a method of curbing voracious human desire, which itself results from our powerful imagination. Because we feel disgust towards ourselves as a species, we are placed in a fraught emotional predicament: we admire ourselves for our achievements, but we also experience revulsion at our necessary organic nature. We are subject to an affective split. Death involves the disgusting, in the shape of the rotting corpse, and our complex attitudes towards death feed into our feelings of disgust. We are beings with a “disgust consciousness,” unlike animals and gods—and we cannot shake our self-ambivalence. Existentialism and psychoanalysis sought a general

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theory of human emotion; this book seeks to replace them with a theory in which our primary mode of feeling centers around disgust.

Introduction Keith Lehrer

in Art, Self and Knowledge Published in print: 2011 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press January 2012 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780195304985 eISBN: 9780199918164 acprof:oso/9780195304985.003.0001 Item type: chapter

The introduction concerns the role of art in human experience. That role is explained in terms of how sensory consciousness of an artwork provides us with an exemplar of experience used to exhibit what the form and content of the work is like. The exemplar represents the content it exhibits in a process I call exemplar representation, or exemplarization. Exemplarization explains content, form, and expression in art. It connects art referentially to issues in the world beyond art: feminism, value, the self, death, globalization, intentionality, and scientific representation. Exemplar is used as a term to refer to what it represents exhibiting what it is like. It ties experience to the system of representation in a keystone loop in art and science.

Introduction

Paisley Livingston in Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy Published in print: 2009 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2009 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199570171 eISBN: 9780191721540 acprof:oso/9780199570171.003.0001 Item type: chapter

This chapter identifies some influential contentions about film's contributions to philosophy and raises a number of basic questions about the source and nature of this cinematic philosophizing. Is it ‘the film itself’ that ‘does philosophy’, as has sometimes been claimed? Or is it the commentator who reads philosophical ideas into the film? Are there cases where it is the film-maker, or a group of collaborating film-makers, who intentionally raises and tries to answer philosophical questions in a film? What is the motivation for looking for philosophy in the cinema? A summary of the subsequent chapters is presented.

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Theses on Cinema as Philosophy Paisley Livingston

in Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy Published in print: 2009 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2009 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199570171 eISBN: 9780191721540 acprof:oso/9780199570171.003.0002 Item type: chapter

This chapter criticizes what the chapter calls the ‘bold thesis’, which is the conjunction of the idea that films can make an original contribution to philosophy, and the idea that this contribution can be achieved primarily or even entirely through means exclusive to the cinematic medium. A dilemma argument against this thesis is set forth: either support for the bold thesis depends on a claim about a cinematic contribution that cannot be paraphrased and so can be reasonably doubted, or it rests on a contribution that can be paraphrased, in which case the clause about medium specificity is betrayed. As an alternative to the bold thesis, the chapter advocates a moderate thesis whereby a film-related contribution to philosophy can be of value even when the philosophical content is neither original nor conveyed primarily by means exclusive to the cinematic medium. This chapter discusses Aaron Smuts' proposed solution to the problem of paraphrase, which makes reference to an argument advanced by Sergei Eisenstein in the ‘For God and Country’ sequence of October.

Arguing over Cinema as Philosophy Paisley Livingston

in Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy Published in print: 2009 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2009 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199570171 eISBN: 9780191721540 acprof:oso/9780199570171.003.0003 Item type: chapter

This chapter takes up two Hegel-inspired objections to moderate theses concerning film's philosophical value. One objection it that it is inappropriate to use art to advance ends other than those that are properly artistic. The second is a rationality objection inspired by Hegel's suggestion that it is an error to try to use a work of art to achieve an instrumental payoff whenever some more complete or effective means is available. By responding to these Hegel-inspired objections, the chapter strengthens the case for a moderate thesis concerning film's philosophical value. The chapter considers the conditions under which a sufficiently complex and determinate philosophical interpretation of an audio-visual display can be articulated. In one, non-intentionalist line Page 4 of 6 PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2017. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 18 January 2017

of enquiry, it is the interpreter who shoulders the burden of creating or selecting assumptions and questions in relation to which claims about an audio-visual display's philosophical significance can be articulated. In the second type of approach, it is the film-maker whose ideas and questions are the target of the interpretation. The chapter applies results concerning the determination of a fictional film's content to the Hegelinspired objections to the search for a film's philosophical significance.

Types of Authorship in the Cinema Paisley Livingston

in Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy Published in print: 2009 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2009 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199570171 eISBN: 9780191721540 acprof:oso/9780199570171.003.0004 Item type: chapter

One objection that is often raised against intentionalist approaches is that many films have no author who could be the source of philosophical questions or claims. In response to that objection, this chapter presents a conception of authorship that embraces a broad range of cases, including joint authorship as well as individual authorship in a context of collaborative work. The chapter does not argue that all films have an individual author, or even a coordinated team of people functioning as a joint author. Yet it does contend that in some cases the conditions on authorship are in fact met: a person (or group of collaborators) exercises sufficient control in the making of a work designed to express the maker's attitudes. This proposal is developed with regard to the question, raised by Berys Gaut, whether a film actor's contribution to the artistic qualities of a film suffice to make that person one of the authors of the film.

Partial Intentionalism Paisley Livingston

in Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy Published in print: 2009 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2009 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199570171 eISBN: 9780191721540 acprof:oso/9780199570171.003.0005 Item type: chapter

This chapter defends a partial intentionalist approach that is distinct from the strongest forms of actualist intentionalism as well as the kind of conditionalist intentionalism advocated by some of the advocates of philosophically motivated interpretations of art, such as Page 5 of 6 PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2017. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 18 January 2017

Thomas Wartenberg. The chapter argues that partial intentionalism is not vulnerable to the objections leveled against other versions of intentionalism. One of those objections hinges on the fallibility of intentions and of the art-making actions related to them. This chapter responds to this problem by discussing the conditions under which intentions are successfully realized in the work. Different approaches to this question are surveyed with reference to the work of H. P. Grice and his followers. The chapter defends a proposal involving a ‘meshing’ or congruence relation between intentions and features of the audio-visual display. The application of this type of success condition is illustrated in a discussion of the determination of the fictional content of Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1943 film, Day of Wrath.

Bergman, Kaila, and the Faces of Irrationality Paisley Livingston

in Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy Published in print: 2009 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2009 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199570171 eISBN: 9780191721540 acprof:oso/9780199570171.003.0006 Item type: chapter

This chapter introduces the little-known connection between Ingmar Bergman's films and what the director identified as his major philosophical source — a treatise in philosophical psychology authored by the Finnish positivist, Eino Kaila, in 1934. Bergman proclaimed that reading this book was a tremendous philosophical experience for him and that he found some of Kaila's central claims shattering but true. Bergman added that he ‘built on this ground’. As Kaila's book has only been translated into Swedish and Danish, many Bergman commentators remain oblivious to its contents. This chapter surveys Kaila's positions and describes ways in which Bergman's work was informed by the questions and claims in Kaila's book. More specifically, the chapter focuses on Kaila's interest in various types of inauthenticity and motivated irrationality. Various Bergman films are discussed, but special attention is paid to his 1980 From the Life of the Marionettes.

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