This interdisciplinary study explores the relevance and application of Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology to key issues in the philosophy film. It develops a comprehensive look at how Heidegger’s thought illuminates historical and contemporary problems the film medium poses to philosophers.

This article examines selected texts in which Martin Heidegger thematizes the ontology of images, in order to adduce a view of how he under­stands their merits and limitations. I am primarily interested in the images seen in art works, especially those in film and photography, given Heidegger’s strong criticism of the latter alongside other 20th-century communicative media. The goal of the article is not to determine what is Heidegger’s central or overall position regarding images, as it is not clear that (...) he has such a position. Rather, the goal is to analyze how his various statements on images, as well as imagination, fit together. I contrast Heidegger’s critical views in “The Age of the World Picture” with other texts in which he describes images more favorably. I also devote some space to texts in which Heidegger treats imagination and the origin of images more broadly. (shrink)

This article responds to critical views of John Rhym, Martin Rossouw, Ludo de Roo, and Annie Sandrussi on my 2017 book Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience. The article also takes up positive footholds from the analyses of Chiara Quaranta and Jason Wirth. The main topics addressed include Martin Heidegger’s ontic-ontological distinction; the notion of film-as-philosophy; being-in-the-world read as being-in-the-film-world; and questions surrounding the facticity and identity of the film viewer.

Proposes a shift in thinking about the connection of Malick's filmmaking and the philosophy of Heidegger. My approach considers Heidegger's philosophy of art in order to develop some outlines of a Heideggerian philosophy of film. I also consider some aspects of Terrence Malick's films viewed as exemplar instances of the philosophical theory of film Heidegger's work can support.

Provides an account of philosophy adopted from Being and Time and later works of Heidegger in order to respond to key questions in the film-as-philosophy debate. I follow the school of Stanley Cavell, Robert Sinnerbrink, and Stephen Mulhall in the view that philosophy occurs in film in phenomenological ways that transcend mere argumentative discourse and logical analysis. Some of the views I counter include those of Bruce Russell and Paisley Livingston.

This article surveys influential views on the topic of film-as-philosophy, principally the positions of Bruce Russell, Thomas Wartenburg, Noël Carroll, and Stephen Mulhall. Historically, this conversation has been restricted to a somewhat conservative view initiated by Russell and defended by others, according to which the film medium is fundamentally incapable of generating positive philosophical achievement in purely cinematic fashion. One of my interests is to show how the dialogue initiated by Russell suffers from relying on overly restrictive notions of what (...) philosophy is and the ways in which it occurs. A goal of the article is to articulate the phenomenological suppositions embedded in the very concept of film-as-philosophy, particularly insofar as the concept seems to assume a phenomenological model that unites screen and viewer. I argue that the origins of the debate overlook the aspect in which films do not engage in philosophical activity completely in their own right, but that instead, this occurrence is essentially predicated upon the participative aspect of the viewer experience. In the course of summarizing each of the leading positions, I describe how the history of the debate has gradually anticipated an appreciation of the phenomenological manner in which screen and viewer co-instantiate philosophy’s occurrence through film. I defend Mulhall’s position and devote some space to drawing out the manner in which his argumentation regarding film-as-philosophy supposes a fundamental screen-viewer dynamic that is phenomenological in nature. (shrink)

Responds to the seminal claim of Bruce Russell that films cannot present philosophical arguments. Provides a reading of The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) in order to illustrate how this film presents an environmental ethics argument. Some reference to the environmental philosophy of Holmes Rolston III as well as Martin Heidegger.

Explores how the fragments of Heraclitus might yield an implicit understanding of the human body in distinction to the soul. In the history of scholarship on Heraclitus, soul is a much better understood concept, whereas it is normally assumed that Heraclitus, along with other figures of early Greek thought, shows only the most limited comprehension of the human being in terms of bodily form or substance. In this work I sketch some different ways in which Heraclitus’ accounts of nature and (...) human life can be said to exhibit a rudimentary picture of body. I suggest that Heraclitus depicts the human body as a special form of soul’s self-differentiation and logos. I attempt to consider how Heraclitus may represent an historical moment in understanding the human in terms of its physical makeup. (shrink)

Advocates an existential, phenomenological reading of Heraclitus suggested by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer observes that within the Heraclitean fragments lay a subliminal wonder at the contradiction and groundlessness of the human experience, particularly the unmediated experience of thinking. I take Gadamer to suggest in part that Heraclitus writes the fragments motivated by a sort of phenomenological disclosure, not necessarily of Being (pace Heidegger), but of the human experience as one of contradictory transitions and unrestricted movements between poles of opposition.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Basic Concepts of Aristotelian PhilosophyShawn LohtMartin Heidegger. Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Translated by Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009. Pp. xii + 279. Cloth, $39.95.Previously available as Volume 18 of the Gesamtausgabe [GA], this text contains a lecture course delivered by Heidegger at Marburg during the summer of 1924. Metcalf and Tanzer's translation is its first appearance in English. The editor (...) of this volume in the Gesamtausgabe reports that only a fraction of Heidegger's original course material survives in manuscript form. As a result, much of the text does not originate from Heidegger's own hand. The bulk of it represents a transcription of the lecture course based on multiple independently-recorded, complete sets of student notes in conjunction with Heidegger's extant course papers. However, the resulting text reads as continuously as Heidegger's other better-preserved lecture courses from the 1920s, and should be regarded as a legitimate source for studying early Heidegger. Only the reproduction of Heidegger's notes for the course appears in rough outline form, comprising approximately 50 pages, so readers should not anticipate a text consisting entirely of abbreviated sketches as one sees, for instance, in the recently translated Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy (GA 22).The content of the lecture course is not devoted to enumerating the basic Aristotelian concepts per se, but rather to accounting for the phenomenological dimensions of the Greek experience in which conceptuality as such could arise. However, Heidegger does treat most principal concepts of Aristotelian philosophy here, describing the ontological framework from which they originate and their interrelations with one another.Heidegger engages with Kant in the early sections of the course in order to locate the historical solidification of the concept as a guiding idea in philosophy, but he moves to Aristotle quickly on the premise that the decisive germ of conceptuality is exhibited in the Greek discovery of the significance of definitions. In the text that follows, Heidegger takes up central themes in Aristotle in order to unfold Greek being-in-the-world as occurring through language and, particularly, oral discourse. Strong focus is placed on Greek being-there in its everydayness as the hermeneutic for understanding conceptuality.Clear rudiments of the terminology of Being and Time emerge in the course of Heidegger's account of Aristotle. Themes appearing in that later work, including world, being-with-one-another, attunement, fear, and idle talk, inform Heidegger's reading of the Aristotelian account of human nature across the Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, De Anima, and Parts of Animals. Key Aristotelian terms Heidegger develops within this framework include 'prohairesis', 'hexis', 'pathos', and 'nous'. Early formulations of Heidegger's conceptions of logos and aletheia and their fundamental role in Greek experience also permeate his reading. Traces of Heidegger's more mature phenomenology are evident in the lecture course's late sections, in which he takes up the Aristotelian account of motion in the Physics. Here, Heidegger emphasizes the roles of nous as constitutive of the human agent's openness to the world and of kinesis as the fundamental mode in which beings come into view for the Greeks.Notable among the translation choices of Metcalf and Tanzer is their rendering of 'Dasein' and its variants. As they write in the Translators' Preface, Heidegger's use of this term in the lecture course reflects an understanding of Dasein in terms of its there-character. The result places less emphasis on the human subject as a dative agent of manifestation, as one sees in Being and Time, highlighting instead the manner in which Dasein finds itself in the world. This last is expressive of Heidegger's emphatic treatment in the course of conceptuality as tied up with human being-in-the-world.This text will be of vital interest to scholars interested in the genesis of Being and Time and Heidegger's early formulations of its central arguments in the 1920s. The text will also be an important addition to Heidegger's works on Aristotle available in English. The lecture course offers penetrating and incisive accounts of themes in Aristotle that Heidegger neglects or treats only briefly... (shrink)

This article examines Martin Heidegger's concept of conscience in Being and Time as it is manifested by the characters Don Draper from the television series Mad Men (Matthew Weiner, 2007-2013) and Chauncey Gardiner in the film Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979). The article suggests that Draper hears and occasionally responds to what Heidegger terms the “call of conscience,” whereas Gardiner neither hears this call nor responds to it. Gardiner poses a problem case for Heidegger’s account of Dasein by virtue of (...) failing to exhibit conscience. A question latent in Gardiner’s makeup is what causes him to be this way. The contrast of the characters Draper and Gardiner is approached through the lens of the portrayal of secret identity in filmic media. Both characters live public lives that are at odds with their genuine selves, but they react to this disconnect differently. Core concepts addressed vis-a-vis Heidegger’s account of conscience include facticity, falling, discourse, authenticity, and death. The article concludes that Draper hears and responds to conscience’s call because he has a discursive comprehension of the disconnect between his true self and the public life he has lived; a crucial component of the phenomenon of conscience according to Heidegger is the existential capacity for discourse. Gardiner, in contrast, does not hear conscience at all because his Dasein lacks the discursive element that conscience requires in order to be activated. Gardiner’s being-in-the-world is such that he fails to understand the divide between his lived self and his public self. For Gardiner, these are the same. (shrink)

Develops Heidegger’s understanding of the Greek gods in the summer 1943 lecture course on Heraclitus. Of particular note is Heidegger’s assertion at the beginning of the lecture course that “there is no Greek religion,” though Heraclitus is said to “have” gods. Heidegger holds that the essential activity of gods consists in "giving signs." An explanation of the connection between gods and their signs gains clarification by a study of how Heidegger understands the Greek concepts of theoi and daimones in the (...) earlier but related Parmenides course of winter 1942-43. (shrink)

This chapter surveys foundational concepts in the history of phenomenology for the purpose of highlighting their relevance for key contemporary issues in the philosophy of film. A central argument concerns phenomenology’s capacity for unraveling the ontology of film, given phenomenology’s emphasis on accounting for the ontology of phenomena through description based in first-person experience. On this ground, the chapter defends the claim that film’s ontology stems from the projective intentionality of the film viewer, where the communicative nature of embodied vision (...) also figures into play. The principal phenomenological frameworks taken up are those of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as the work of contemporary film scholar Vivian Sobchack. (shrink)

Previously available as Volume 18 of the Gesamtausgabe [GA], this text contains a lecture course delivered by Heidegger at Marburg during the summer of 1924. Metcalf and Tanzer's translation is its first appearance in English. The editor of this volume in the Gesamtausgabe reports that only a fraction of Heidegger's original course material survives in manuscript form. As a result, much of the text does not originate from Heidegger's own hand. The bulk of it represents a transcription of the lecture (...) course based on multiple independently-recorded, complete sets of student notes in conjunction with Heidegger's extant course papers. However, the resulting text reads as continuously as Heidegger's other .. (shrink)

This handbook brings together essays in the philosophy of film and motion pictures from authorities across the spectrum. It boasts contributions from philosophers and film theorists alike, with many essays employing pluralist approaches to this interdisciplinary subject. Core areas treated include film ontology, film structure, psychology, authorship, narrative, and viewer emotion. Emerging areas of interest, including virtual reality, video games, and nonfictional and autobiographical film also have dedicated chapters. Other areas of focus include the film medium’s intersection with contemporary social (...) issues, film’s kinship to other art forms, and the influence of historically seminal schools of thought in the philosophy of film. Of emphasis in many of the essays is the relationship and overlap of analytic and continental perspectives in this subject. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis review essay of Shawn Loht’s new book, Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience, not only offers an ontological reading of the filmic experience inspired by Heidegger’s philosophy but also contributes substantially to the ongoing debate of whether or not film is a medium that is legitimately philosophical. In addition to confronting unique ideas about film that emerge from Loht’s analysis of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology of Dasein, including a reading of later Heidegger of (...) the “Turn,” this essay also seeks to think with and then beyond Loht in a way that might inspire readers to further pursue these issues in relation to a potentially reconceived understanding of the practice of film-as-philosophy. (shrink)

This is a philosophical rumination on Shawn Loht’s important extension of “film as philosophy” into a Heideggerian phenomenological account of the philosophical response that cinema can engender. After considering the importance of these kinds of approaches, I turn to Loht’s phenomenological engagement with Terrence Malick’s early masterpiece, Days of Heaven (1978). After sympathetically reviewing his “interpretation”, I expand upon its delineation of “earth and world” to include the “fallenness” of the world as well as the possibility of (...) a metanōetic awakening to the vocation of “mud doctor”, that is, to heal the rift between earth and world, a rift made more exigent by world war, economic exploitation, and the ecological catastrophe of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Relevant logics are a family of non-classical logics characterized by the behavior of their implication connectives. Unlike some other non-classical logics, such as intuitionistic logic, there are multiple philosophical views motivating relevant logics. Further, different views seem to motivate different logics. In this article, we survey five major views motivating the adoption of relevant logics: Use Criterion, sufficiency, meaning containment, theory construction, and truthmaking. We highlight the philosophical differences as well as the different logics they support. We end with some (...) questions for future research. (shrink)

Few debates in environmental philosophy have been more heated than the one over the nature of wilderness. And yet, when one surveys the present scene, one finds that a variety of different conceptions of wilderness are still quite popular – some more so in certain professions than others. In this paper, I look at three popular conceptions of wilderness with an eye toward sussing out the good and the bad them. I look at what I call (1) the folk view (...) of wilderness, (2) Leopold’s conception of wilderness, and (3) the legal conception of wilderness (as found in the Wilderness Act of 1964). In the final part of the paper, I sketch out a sort of spectrum account of wilderness, one that I argue allows us to capture more cases of wilderness and might serve as a useful tool in future conservation efforts. (shrink)

Environmental philosophy plays an important role, directly and indirectly, in many parts of society, including land and wildlife management (Leopold, 1949; Minteer, 2015), political activism (Abbey, 1968; Malm, 2020),and technological research and development (Baum & Owe, 2022; Donhauser et al., 2021). Environmental philosophy uncovers the ethical relationships existing between humans and the living and non-living world. It reveals the nuances of our scientific ecological concepts. And it tries to tell us how we might act – individually or collectively – to (...) better achieve our environmental goals. The aim of this special issue is to explore the limits and ever-expanding outer edges of this increasingly important area of philosophical thought. (shrink)

An “insightful” and in-depth look at anti-science politics and its deadly results (Maria Konnikova, New York Times–bestselling author of The Biggest Bluff). Thomas Jefferson said, “Wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” But what happens when they aren’t? From climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense, we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress—and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them (...) most, scientists and the very idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a vast, well-funded war on science, and the results are deadly. Whether it’s driven by identity politics, ideology, or industry, the result is an unprecedented erosion of thought in Western democracies as voters, policymakers, and justices actively ignore scientific evidence, leaving major policy decisions to be based more on the demands of the most strident voices. This compelling book investigates the historical, social, philosophical, political, and emotional reasons why evidence-based politics are in decline and authoritarian politics are once again on the rise on both left and right—and provides some compelling solutions to bring us to our collective senses, before it's too late. “If you care about attacks on climate science and the rise of authoritarianism, if you care about biased media coverage and shake-your-head political tomfoolery, this book is for you.”—The Guardian. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary analysis presents an innovative examination of the nature of pride and humility, including all their slippery nuances and points of connection. By combining insights from visual art, literature, philosophy, religious studies, and psychology, this volume adapts a complementary rather than an oppositional approach to examine how pride and humility reinforce and inform one another. This method produces a robust, substantial, and meaningful description of these important concepts. The analysis takes into account key elements of pride and humility, including (...) self-esteem and self-confidence, human interconnectedness, power's function and limitations, and the role of fear. Shawn R. Tucker explores the many inflections of these terms, inflections that cast them by turns as positive or negative, emboldening or discouraging, and salubrious or vicious depending upon the context and manner in which they are used. (shrink)

In Steve Jobs and Philosophy, sixteen philosophers take a close look at the inspiring yet often baffling world of Steve Jobs. What can we learn about business ethics from the example of Jobs? What are the major virtues of a creative innovator? How could Jobs successfully defy and challenge conventional business practices? How did Jobs combine values and attitudes previously believed to be unmixable? What does it really mean to “think different”? Can entrepreneurs be made or are they just born? (...) If Jobs didn’t make any major inventions, just what was his contribution? How is Jobs’s life illuminated by Buddhism? How does a counter-culture transform mainstream culture? What does Jobs teach us about the notions of simplicity and functionality in design? How do Jobs’s achievements alter the way we think about technology in relation to human life? (shrink)

Justification logics provide frameworks for studying the fine structure of evidence and justification. Traditionally, these logics do not impose any closure requirements on justification. In this paper, we argue that for some applications they should subject justification to closure under some variety of logical consequence. Specifically, we argue, building on ideas from Beall, that the non-classical logic FDE offers a particularly attractive notion of consequence for this purpose and define a justification logic where justification is closed under FDE consequence. We (...) show the resulting logic to be sound and complete. Lastly, we discuss how the closure of justification under FDE ontrasts closure under related non-classical logics and how our approach contrasts with some alternatives. (shrink)

Growth in CSR-washing claims in recent decades has been dramatic in numerous academic and activist contexts. The discourse, however, has been fragmented, and still lacks an integrated framework of the conditions necessary for successful CSR-washing. Theorizing successful CSR-washing as the joint occurrence of five conditions, this paper undertakes a literature review of the empirical evidence for and against each condition. The literature review finds that many of the conditions are either highly contingent, rendering CSR-washing as a complex and fragile outcome. (...) This finding runs counter to the dominant perception in the general public, among activists, and among a vocal contingent of academics that successful CSR-washing is rampant. (shrink)

Attention to care in modern society has fallen out of view as an ethos of personal responsibility, free markets, and individualism has been in the ascendant. The Liberalism of Care argues that contemporary liberalism is suffering from a crisis of care, manifest in a decaying sense of collective political responsibility for citizens' well- being and for the most vulnerable members of our communities. The book maintains that this practical crisis stems from a theoretical one. We have lost the political language (...) of care, which, prior the 19th century, was commonly used to express these dimensions of political life. To recover that language, Shawn C. Fraistat turns to three prominent philosophers-Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and William Godwin-who illuminate the varied ways caring language and caring values have structured core debates in the history of Western political thought about the proper role of government, as well as the rights and responsibilities of citizens. The Liberalism of Care presents a distinctive vision for our liberal politics where political communities and citizens can utilize the ethic and practices of care to face practical challenges. (shrink)

Various theorists have endorsed the “communication argument”: communicative capacities are necessary for morally responsible agency because blame aims at a distinctive kind of moral communication. I contend that existing versions of the argument, including those defended by Gary Watson and Coleen Macnamara, face a pluralist challenge: they do not seem to sit well with the plausible view that blame has multiple aims. I then examine three possible rejoinders to the challenge, suggesting that a context-specific, function-based approach constitutes the most promising (...) modification of the communication argument. (shrink)