***
Bernard Williams was from time to time (not least in his obituaries) called one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Others felt that he was not a philosopher at all because he had not constructed a comprehensive theory of life and the world; they considered him more of a critical thinker, finding the flaws in others' theories rather than presenting his own grand theory. Which is partly true, and he agreed with that, as he thought that such grand theories were impossible to defend, since the world is too complex. It illustrates a central problem with philosophy; that there is no consensus of what it actual is, or even what a philosopher is. Anthony Quinton put it this way in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy: "definitions of philosophy are fairly controversial, particularly if they aim to be at all interesting or profound. That is partly because what has been called philosophy has changed radically in scope in the course of history, with many inquiries that were originally part of it having detached themselves from it." (p. 702)
About what philosophy is, Williams once wrote:
About what philosophy is, Williams once wrote:
The starting point of philosophy is that we do not understand ourselves well enough. We do not understand ourselves well enough ethically (how or why we should be concerned, positively or negatively, with some human dispositions and practices rather than others); we do not fully understand our political ideals; and we do not understand how we come to have ideas and experiences, and seem moreover to know quite a lot about the world. Philosophy’s methods of helping us to understand ourselves involve reflecting on the concepts we use, the modes in which we think about these various things; and sometimes it proposes better ways of doing this. So much is (relatively) uncontentious. (2002)For me, doing philosophy is to ask the questions Why? How? What? about our lives, our beliefs, ethics, arts, and about the world and all it contains. It is the art of questioning everything, including the questions themselves. Therefore, I am with Williams in that constructing some kind of all-encompassing theory about the world or existence (or cinema) is maybe tempting but will ultimately crumbled in the face of reality. To be truly philosophical in my view is to answer almost every question with "It depends." We might do speculative thought experiments about the world, but we should not confuse these for the actual world in which we live.
But many famous philosophers through the ages did create complex, all-encompassing theories about life, history and existence, so do I mean that somebody like, say, Hegel was not a philosopher, or a bad philosopher? That is the tricky thing with definitions, they almost inevitably end up with the person making them being caught, figuratively speaking, as having painted himself into a corner. Those who argued that Williams was not a philosopher, also, by implication, made the argument that many famous philosophers through the ages were really not philosophers because they did not have those grand theories either. Would they stand by that?
I will not deny Hegel's position as a philosopher. But he was a certain kind of philosopher. There are more than one kind. There are philosophers of ethics, of history, of the arts, of science, of logic, or language, and so on. If you are a philosopher of such a discipline, it would not be relevant to try to come up with some grand unifying theory about everything, your concern is asking specific questions only within your own field or area of interest. The increasing professionalisation of philosophy during the last 70 years or so has also narrowed the possibility for such grand theories of the past, or the need to have any theory at all. Today it has become more of an academic title, where the definition of a philosopher often being "a person who is working as teacher or researcher at a university's Department of Philosophy." There it does not matter much what kind of ideas and theories they have, if indeed they have any at all. I think this is a limited view of what philosophers are, or who can be one.
On the other hand, there are those who, in the spirit of equality and democracy, claim that anybody can be a philosopher, that anybody who has ever asked a question about ethics or the meaning of life (or something like that) is a philosopher. I think that is too broad, and that we should ask for more. Just because somebody asks a philosophical question does not make them a philosopher. I may cook dinner for myself but that does not make me a chef. To be a philosopher there has to be a consistency and frequency to the asking of questions and thinking about the issues at hand; a certain level of complexity to the questions and answers; and some larger aim than just spontaneously wondering about something philosophical. People are fond of saying about stand-up comedians that they were not particularly funny and implying that they themselves are much funnier than the comedian. But the challenge is not only to tell jokes but to do it every night, and in new surroundings, and with new audiences; to be able to handle not just jokes, but logistics and crowds. There is a parallel to philosophers (and chefs): it is not just asking a deep question or having a deep thought (or cook a good dinner), but how, why, and when you do it. It is also about providing principles and premises from which to conduct the work, as the basis for asking the questions. Not necessarily general principles or premises that are taken to be always true, but ones that are at least specific for each case, or each case study. To quote Williams again, from another article: "Philosophy comes into it when the discussion becomes more reflective or theoretical or systematic, and it is typical of philosophy that its discussions of ethics and politics have some connection with those other more theoretical questions, about knowledge, action and psychology." (1996)
In short, my definition of philosophy, of doing philosophy, is to ask fundamental questions (How? Why? What? When?) about life, humans and our world, and that includes ethics, art, politics, medicine, metaphysics and philosophy itself. Being philosophical is to question everything, including yourself and your questions. It is also an on-going process; you do not one day say "That's it! I have all the answers." And a philosopher is a person who does these things regularly, as a central part of their life, and does it at a certain level of complexity.
***
Where does cinema come into this? There are several instances where film and philosophy connect, and here are four such connections, let us call them a, b, c, and d. They can be summarised like this:
a) Films that are about philosophers, which is the most banal connection.
b) Films that can be used to illustrate a philosophical issue, or thought problems, and films have been used like this throughout film history.
c) Individual films, or whole oeuvres, that function as articulations of a philosophical position or beliefs of the filmmakers who made them.
Those three, a, b, and c, are not difficult to understand, are not in any particular dispute, and film is not different in this regard from, for example, novels and plays. At least b and c are also possible with other art forms, such as painting and architecture. This is not film-specific.
d) This is the more vague one, where some film-philosophers have argued that films can themselves do philosophy. Judging by some scholars' articulation of d, it is no different from b and/or c, but according to others it is something different; it is for them when the medium of film itself presents a philosophical argument. This is something I am sceptical about, and find has not been properly argued for. In my previous article I gave a suggestion of how I thought this could be done, by saying that there is a visual consistency in the films of Anthony Mann that provides an idea of the world, of nature, as being at best indifferent, but might also be said to be hostile to humans, and that this idea is not presented in terms of plot, dialogue or characters but only visually, and therefore it could be argued that this philosophical perspective of the world and us humans is done by the film itself. But whether this is a meaningful way of talking about it, rather than just saying that this is a persistent theme in Mann's films, is doubtful.
Another idea of how films "do philosophy" has been formulated this way: "What I found in turning to think consecutively about film a dozen or so years ago was a medium which seemed simultaneously to be free of the imperative to philosophy and at the same time inevitably to reflect upon itself - as though the condition of philosophy were its natural condition." Stanley Cavell wrote that in 1981, in the article "North By Northwest", yet while it is true that some films, from Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton 1924), to Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock 1942), to Prison (Ingmar Bergman 1949), to Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard 1963), to The Honey Pot (Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1967), to On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter Hunt 1969), and so on, do reflect upon themselves, it would be difficult to argue that films by default do this, or why it should be the case that they should.
At least Cavell in that instance provided some kind of definition, but those who write about film and philosophy rarely provide that, and it is often not clear in what sense what they are doing is different from ordinary film criticism or film theory, or what they mean by philosophy. Yet arguing about definitions and to find first principles and premises on which to ground the argument, article or book, is to me a key aspect of philosophy. This is in general relevant, not just when it comes to philosophy, but in discussions about, for example, genre.
Before you bring philosophy to a film or a filmmaker, there are some things to consider. Martha Nussbaum's concerns about philosophers' discussing Shakespeare are relevant for the discussion of films too, so when you read this quote you can substitute "Shakespeare" with "film" or "cinema":
Ethics:
Alfred Hitchcock: transferred guilt and masochism.
Claire Denis: colonial guilt.
Henry King: forgiveness and acceptance from a Christian perspective.
Michael Haneke: denied (but shared) guilt.
Nicole Holofcener: imperfections and the acceptance of personal flaws.
Existential:
Clint Eastwood: the essentialness of community.
Don Siegel: the ironic meaninglessness of existence.
Douglas Sirk: the importance of personal respect.
Jean Renoir: shared humanity and the fragility of the bond between people.
Nicholas Ray: the loneliness of man.
Virtues:
Fred Zinnemann: responsibility to self.
Howard Hawks: responsibility to the group, and professional ethics.
Jean-Pierre Melville: responsibility to personal ethics and code of conduct.
John Ford: responsibility to history and/or society.
Yasujiro Ozu: responsibility to family.
Others:
Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Jacques Rivette: the performativity of self and life as storytelling.
Mikio Naruse: capitalist oppression of humanity.
Otto Preminger: relativism and objectivity.
a) Films that are about philosophers, which is the most banal connection.
b) Films that can be used to illustrate a philosophical issue, or thought problems, and films have been used like this throughout film history.
c) Individual films, or whole oeuvres, that function as articulations of a philosophical position or beliefs of the filmmakers who made them.
Those three, a, b, and c, are not difficult to understand, are not in any particular dispute, and film is not different in this regard from, for example, novels and plays. At least b and c are also possible with other art forms, such as painting and architecture. This is not film-specific.
d) This is the more vague one, where some film-philosophers have argued that films can themselves do philosophy. Judging by some scholars' articulation of d, it is no different from b and/or c, but according to others it is something different; it is for them when the medium of film itself presents a philosophical argument. This is something I am sceptical about, and find has not been properly argued for. In my previous article I gave a suggestion of how I thought this could be done, by saying that there is a visual consistency in the films of Anthony Mann that provides an idea of the world, of nature, as being at best indifferent, but might also be said to be hostile to humans, and that this idea is not presented in terms of plot, dialogue or characters but only visually, and therefore it could be argued that this philosophical perspective of the world and us humans is done by the film itself. But whether this is a meaningful way of talking about it, rather than just saying that this is a persistent theme in Mann's films, is doubtful.
Hannah Arendt (Margarethe von Trotta 2012)
Another idea of how films "do philosophy" has been formulated this way: "What I found in turning to think consecutively about film a dozen or so years ago was a medium which seemed simultaneously to be free of the imperative to philosophy and at the same time inevitably to reflect upon itself - as though the condition of philosophy were its natural condition." Stanley Cavell wrote that in 1981, in the article "North By Northwest", yet while it is true that some films, from Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton 1924), to Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock 1942), to Prison (Ingmar Bergman 1949), to Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard 1963), to The Honey Pot (Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1967), to On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter Hunt 1969), and so on, do reflect upon themselves, it would be difficult to argue that films by default do this, or why it should be the case that they should.
***
The attentive reader has probably already noticed that I am not impressed by the film philosophy field. There is some good work done there, but I am not convinced that what is being done under that banner is necessarily philosophical, or much different from ordinary film theory or film criticism, and neither have I been convinced that film has unique properties that makes it especially worthy of philosophical inquiries, or that it can make its own philosophy, however defined. But you can talk about film and philosophy together, just as you can with other art forms. Films, books, and art in general, can cohabit with philosophy, to the benefit of either field.
Before you bring philosophy to a film or a filmmaker, there are some things to consider. Martha Nussbaum's concerns about philosophers' discussing Shakespeare are relevant for the discussion of films too, so when you read this quote you can substitute "Shakespeare" with "film" or "cinema":
To make any contribution worth caring about, a philosopher's study of Shakespeare should do three things. First and most centrally, it should really do philosophy, and not just allude to familiar philosophical ideas and positions. It should pursue tough questions and come up with something interesting and subtle--rather than just connecting Shakespeare to this or that idea from Philosophy 101. A philosopher reading Shakespeare should wonder, and ponder, in a genuinely philosophical way. Second, it should illuminate the world of the plays, attending closely enough to language and to texture that the interpretation changes the way we see the work, rather than just uses the work as grist for some argumentative mill. And finally, such a study should offer some account of why philosophical thinking needs to turn to Shakespeare's plays, or to works like them. Why must the philosopher care about these plays? Do they supply to thought something that a straightforward piece of philosophical prose cannot supply, and if so, what?She is not impressed though. "But armed with their standard analytic equipment, they frequently produce accounts that are laughably reductive, contributing little or nothing to philosophy or to the understanding of Shakespeare." One sympathises.
***
As I prepared these articles about film and philosophy, I made a list of several filmmakers and provided a basic principle which their respective oeuvres can be said to be about. I dismissed some of these because they were more political than philosophical, but here are some examples of how you could talk about philosophy in connection to specific filmmakers, combining b and c from above. I have ordered them thematically:
Ethics:
Claire Denis: colonial guilt.
Henry King: forgiveness and acceptance from a Christian perspective.
Michael Haneke: denied (but shared) guilt.
Nicole Holofcener: imperfections and the acceptance of personal flaws.
Clint Eastwood: the essentialness of community.
Don Siegel: the ironic meaninglessness of existence.
Douglas Sirk: the importance of personal respect.
Jean Renoir: shared humanity and the fragility of the bond between people.
Nicholas Ray: the loneliness of man.
Virtues:
Fred Zinnemann: responsibility to self.
Howard Hawks: responsibility to the group, and professional ethics.
Jean-Pierre Melville: responsibility to personal ethics and code of conduct.
John Ford: responsibility to history and/or society.
Yasujiro Ozu: responsibility to family.
Others:
Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Jacques Rivette: the performativity of self and life as storytelling.
Mikio Naruse: capitalist oppression of humanity.
Otto Preminger: relativism and objectivity.
Consider these as suggestions and starting points for conversations or analyses of these filmmakers' oeuvres. I am not saying that each and every film explicitly deal with these issues, or that their work are only about these issues, but I think that they could be interesting entry points for further thinking, both about philosophy in film and about these particular filmmakers. There are many other filmmakers to which one might add similar first principles, but these will do for now.
There is something that films perhaps have a unique capacity to provide, and which we might talk about in philosophical terms, and that is a sense of awe and wonder, of mysticism. I have written about that before (see here and here), and might come back to again. To the extent that I have a philosophy of film, that is where it can be found.
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Cavell, Stanley (1981), "North By Northwest" in Critical Inquiry, republished in Cavell on Film (2005)
Nussbaum, Martha (2008), "Stages of Thought" in The New Republic, republished in the anthology Philosophical Interventions (2012)
Williams, Bernard (1996) "On Hating and Despising Philosophy" in London Review of Books, republished in the anthology Essays and Reviews 1959-2002 (2014)
Williams, Bernard (2002) "Why Philosophy Needs History" in London Review of Books, republished in the anthology Essays and Reviews 1959-2002 (2014)
Quote from Anthony Quinton in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy - New Edition (2005)
My previous article about film and philosophy: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2020/06/film-and-philosophy.html
My article about awe and wonderment: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2014/05/of-wonderment-in-cinema.html
While Williams is not somebody invoked by film philosophy scholars, he wrote about film sometimes (such as about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine 1920) as an illustration of a philosophical point) and he chaired the British Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship (it was called the "Williams Committee"), set up by the Home Office, in the 1970s.
As a bonus, here is Iris Murdoch talking about the differences and similarities between literature and philosophy (and you can substitute literature with film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YspEHwV0f-I
