From Reflex to Reflection: Thinking and Feeling in the Cinema

Lecture by Murray Smith (University of Kent). Respondent: Julian Hanich (University of Groningen).
This is the fourth episode of the lecture series Thinking Cinema: New Approaches in Film Philosophy .

Recent debates around the idea of ‘film as philosophy’ – filmmaking as a vehicle rather than an object of philosophical activity – stress the ability of film to engage us cognitively at a very sophisticated level; in these debates, the word ‘philosophy’ functions first and foremost to bring into play a notion of high-level cognition. In this paper I seek to contextualize these debates, and the claim that films can in some sense ‘do’ philosophy, in two ways. First, I consider the variety of senses...(continue reading...)