The following excerpts come from the site listed below.  They are copyrighted by Brendan Long and should not be reproduced in any manner, except for the immediate purposes of this class.  Please go to the original site to see the entire sequence of essays and lectures.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~brendan_long/index.html

© 1999-2002  Brendan Long
 

The following are notes developed from my Introduction to Philosophy Through Cinema course taught at the Institute of Continuing & TESOL Education at the University of Queensland, Australia.

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AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY THROUGH CINEMA
 
Knowledge and Scepticism:
What do I know?

Introduction

As a counterexample to Scruton’s claim that ‘there could not be a photograph of a martyrdom that was other than horrifying’, I used the Crucifixion sequence from The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). While the event depicted is no doubt horrifying, I postulated that this sequence does possess aesthetic qualities beyond the physical details experienced in the viewing of this film. For instance, there is an explicit acknowledgment of and reference to representations of Jesus and the Crucifixion in both art and cinematic history. Of particular import here is the acknowledgment and referencing of the tradition of ‘Jesus flicks’. The freedom to explore the central idea of The Last Temptation of Christ—the struggle between flesh and divinity—comes with freeing oneself of the cinematic images or conception of that story. The power of this sequence, thus, is dependent upon acknowledgment of the genre’s own past. At the very minimum, this acknowledgment of tradition and history is the least one could expect from art. The work in question also constitutes a transformation of the understanding of art, and how it can now find expression and realisation.

However, in taking issue with the matter of representation, the question of realism remains. That is, how does the realism of what I experience in the viewing of this film translate into talk of the reality of the subject of that experience? What have I experienced? What foothold—if any—does it have in the world outside of the movie theatre? Is its reality confined to the geography of the movie theatre, or to what is experienced in the viewing of a film? What can I know of this subject so revealed in my experience of the film?

To one end, the question could be put as one with respect to what extent the realism of this crucifixion sequence constitutes an awareness of the reality of a crucifixion. Am I dislodged from the grip of earlier cinematic depictions on the basis of this constituting a more realistic depiction of crucifixion? Do I know what it was like for Jesus to be crucified? Do I just know what crucifixion was like for anyone? Perhaps there are some things that I can (or do) know about crucifixion on the basis of this sequence, things of an empirical, scientific or archaeological nature. The question, I suppose, I am posing here is: what is the reality of what I am experiencing? Does that reality cross over from the movie screen to the world outside of the movie theatre? Does what transpires on the screen correspond with things in the actual world? Cinematic realism here accounts for how something looks and sounds. The question is: what is the status of the ‘something’—the subject of my experience—in question?

For instance, I do not experience Jesus being crucified—what I see is ‘Jesus’, in this case, Willem Dafoe. The crucifixion here does not take place at Golgotha; it occurs at ‘Golgotha’ (in this case, Morocco, which also acted as ‘Tibet’ in Kundun.) These are the things that are present as recorded (and projected) in space and time. Willem Dafoe and Morocco are the things that correspond in the real world to what transpires on the screen. They exist in space and time in the real world. But are they the things that exist in cinematic space and time? Something experienced in the actual world passes and goes, it is momentary, and is largely revisited through memory or recollection. What is experienced in the space and time of the experience of a film can be revisited over and over again: we can watch the film again, that thing is still frozen and intact in that spatial and temporal location.
 

The Question of Realism

Such questions take us to D. W. Griffith’s ‘The task I am trying to achieve is to make you see’. Visual realism opens up one sense of seeing; another sense pertains to consideration of reality, a cognitive claim. That is to say, Griffith also envisaged cinema as possessed of the cognitive power to engender a particular awareness of the world; to present aspects of a world we may be already familiar with in a light hitherto inaccessible or unrealised. However, if there is a gap between the world on film and the actual world—there is no direct correspondence between what is experienced in the viewing of a film and what exists in reality—how can one attribute to films such cognitive power (i.e. the capacity to enable us to know things about that world outside of the film)?

This is a matter of obvious philosophical interest, with respect to epistemology and metaphysics. It also provides the context for the theory of cinematic realism. According to Gregory Currie (Image and Mind pp.19-20), ‘realism’ here takes the form of three doctrines or claims:
 

(a) Transparency: cinema reproduces the real world, in that the camera captures real objects in the world. It is transparent in that we see through it to the real world, as one does through a window or lens. [André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer] If we take realism in the guise of transparency seriously, it gives rise to the metaphysical problem of requiring the existence of mind-observer independent reality or realm of entities. ('Realism' is access to a mind or observer independent reality.)
(b) Likeness: the experience of film is like the ‘normal’ perceptual experience of the world. [Bazin] 'Realism' in this instance pertains to issues of cinematic style.
(c) Illusionism: a film is realistic, to the extent that it has the capacity to engender in the viewer an illusion of the reality of fictional characters and events, through their presentness in an experience of a movie. [Rudolf Arnheim] 'Realism' here is a question of effect, pertaining to the objects of belief, and our emotional or psychological concern for and engagement with them. This is an issue that is largely pursued by some film theorists and film-makers, particularly in connection with scepticism with respect to the structure of reality. (Cinema can achieve some kind of 'reality' in realisation of the possibilities unique to it, but the 'reality' it achieves is still systematic illusion or delusion.)

Siegfried Kracauer, for instance, sees cinema as constituted by the task of ‘the redemption of physical reality’. Cinema is capable of holding up a mirror to reality, in that it actually reproduces the ‘raw material’ of the physical world. Due to the abstractions and categorisations of modern science and technology, we have lost sight of the ‘givenness’ of the concrete world, the material that exists outside of theory.
 
 

Realism: Siegfried Kracauer on Intolerance (1916)

It almost looks as if [Mae Marsh’s] clasped hands with the convulsively moving fingers were inserted for the sole purpose of illustrating eloquently her anguish at the most crucial moment of the trial; as if, generally speaking, the function of any such detail exhausted itself in intensifying our participation in the total situation ...
 But is this really its function? ... No doubt it is to impress upon us her inner condition, but besides making us experience what we would in a measure have experienced anyway because of the familiarity with the characters involved, this close-up contributes something momentous and unique -- it reveals how her hands behave under the impact of utter despair. Siegfried Kracauer, ‘The Establishment of Physical Existence’ p.253.

While the theory of cinematic realism works with certain epistemological assumptions, ‘realism’ is more addressed as a question of style. (André Bazin, for instance, claimed that the style and technique of cinema should be conditioned by the requirement of recording and presenting scenes and images with sufficient ambiguity, so as to enable the viewer or spectator to discover meaning for themselves. e.g. long take, deep-focus.) Such considerations of style have recently resurfaced, in the guise of Dogma 95. Lars von Trier [The Element of Crime; Epidemic; Breaking the Waves] and fellow film-makers have become signatories to a manifesto declaring that ‘the movie is not an illusion’. Dogma 95’s adherents are ‘restricted’ to location shooting, direct sound, absence of post-production effects and genre-based ‘narrative contrivance’.
 
 

Back to the Cave

Nevertheless, we can see that granting cognitive power to cinema locates us in the domain of epistemological concern, vis-a-vis the question of there being a gap between a subject’s experience of the world and the world itself. Is ‘the world’ commensurate with what is revealed by or encountered in experience? Is the true world something that lies behind experience? What are the conditions that enable or entitle us to see the world as it is, to think about it truly? Are we recreating or rehearsing this form of inquiry when we turn to the experience of films? Such thoughts invite us back to Plato’s Cave, and the kinds of considerations I foreshadowed in that earlier discussion. Perhaps we can assume that we are not tempted to equate the appearances or images on the movie screen with reality, in the sense of the actual world. (For instance, I do not actually believe that Willem Dafoe is Jesus; he is ‘Jesus’. Furthermore, I do not believe that I am witnessing the Crucifixion at Golgotha; I am viewing ‘the Crucifixion’ at ‘Golgotha’.) As such, we also believe that the experience of a movie is not an experience of the actual world. The world and space of the cinema screen is something that is physically inaccessible to me. There exists an irreconcilable physical gap between what is there on the screen (where I am not) and what is here with me. The recognition of such distance largely manifests itself, presumably, in the state of disengagement or detachment that the audience assumes with respect to what is projected onto the screen. They look upon a world whose physical details are similar to those of the world we are ordinarily familiar with, but also enjoy a kind of unreality that leaves them safe in the thought that the inhabitants of the world and space they peer in on cannot reciprocate that gaze. And it is an expectation that they will always bring to such viewing. One could almost characterise this as the viewing and experience of films as, and under the attitude of, a ‘view from nowhere’, a viewing of the world ‘not from any place within it’; an attitude specifically referring to what is countenanced on the cinema screen, and also applicable to one's own purported disengagement from the world outside of the screen in the viewing of films.

It would seem, then, that we are not entrapped like Plato’s cave dwellers, because we are cognisant of the appropriate distance between ‘the shadows’ and the world outside of the cave. It is interesting to note how the idea of the Cave has recently surfaced in Peter Weir's The Truman Show. This film, I believe, dramatises a 'meta-cave', a cave within a cave, in specifically referring to a 'film-within-a-film'. Where D. W. Griffith, say, had employed certain visual techniques to highlight a shot within a film, Weir uses similar techniques to specifically refer to a 'film-within-a-film', and, hence, a distinction between what are 'the shadows' and what is 'reality' (if not to blur the distinction in places). Of course, the point is that 'the shadows' and 'reality' are one for Truman Burbank, if not for all viewers of 'The Truman Show' the television series. The Truman Show's indictment is of television as the real Cave, as the real source of bewitchment and entrapment. It echoes the following observation from Desmond Lee:
 

As Cornford pointed out, the best way to understand the simile [of the Cave] is to replace 'the clumsier apparatus' of the cave by the cinema, though today television is an even better comparison. It is the moral and intellectual condition of the average man from which Plato starts; and though clearly the ordinary man knows the difference between substance and shadow in the physical world, the simile suggests that his moral and intellectual opinions often bear as little relation to the truth as the average film or television programme does to real life. Translator's Notes, The Republic, Second Edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974) p.316.

I can see where the makers of The Truman Show are coming from: the immediacy of television, in the sense of it is there, it is available 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year; it is an immediate presence in our lives, such that one literally becomes chained to the couch, bewitched and enslaved by the flickering tube. What about home theatre in this connection?

My problem with such claims, though, are that they take the metaphor of the cave too literally. First and foremost is the concern that, in taking Plato’s cave as transparently descriptive of the experience of watching a film, one is casting the issue as one of the difference between appearance (or illusion) and reality, in addressing the question of cinema within the context of knowledge and scepticism. This resonates more with the fireside scepticism of Rene Descartes’ ‘Method of Doubt’. This casts a particular sense of ‘being nowhere’ or being absent in the experience of a film; not so much nowhere in the film ‘world’ or absent from its affairs, but a detachment or absence from our own space and time.

The force of Descartes’ cogitations in this respect address the correspondence theory of truth. Its thrust is not intended to cast total doubt on the existence of a material world (reality), but upon the extent to which we could claim—within certainty—that the world is populated with, or constituted by, those particular experiences we have. Nevertheless, they do determine that sensory experience is of no consequence or irrelevant to determinations of truth and certainty. That can only be delivered by a particular method of thought, that employs reason as a rarefied, purified, sanitised abstraction of thought. The question of the difference between appearance and reality—and its resolution—only looms if one is prepared to consciously will one’s absence from all that belongs to experience and being located in the physical world.

That, I would argue, is not possible, nor should it be required. It certainly cannot be what is involved in talking of a ‘view from nowhere’, or an absence or forgetting of self, in the experience of viewing a film. (After all, what kind of view does one have from nowhere? what can you see from nowhere?) I also believe that such considerations do not come to bear with respect to Plato’s Cave. It cannot be the case that we leave our conceptual baggage outside of the cinema, before we occupy our ‘view from nowhere’ in the movie house. If anything, the experiential and cognitive dimensions of our viewings depend upon this baggage. We bring the actual world and ourselves to our viewings; and they similarly leave traces in our thoughts outside of the movie theatre. There is no outside, without one being grounded inside.

As Stanley Cavell writes on the relation between films and the cave:
 

The point of the relation is exactly that presenting yourself to these events cannot be a matter of walking out and literally going somewhere else. There is no time for me but the time I am in and there is no specific elsewhere to go. --Then why suggest that there is? --But I claim to be denying that there is. --Then why bother to so much as deny it since anyone with common sense cannot fail to deny it? --Because common sense is, and ought to be, threatened and questioned by the experience of film itself; and because the nature of our absence from the events on the screen is not the same as the nature of our absence from an historical event or from the events in a cartoon or in a novel or on the stage; and because the differing natures of our absence are internal to the differing natures of the audiences of the different arts; and because the nature of the audience of an art, its particular mode of participation and perception, is internal to the nature of that art (The World Viewed p.212).

To this end, our experience of films is placed fairly and squarely in this world -- both as a phenomenon and in terms of its requiring our presence in the world as a matter of our being present to what transpires on the screen. What this requires, above all else, is a deeply embedded acknowledgement -- both in the viewer and in the film -- as to the certainty of there being a world. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in On Certainty: ‘If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting presupposes certainty’. This, in a way, is probably what lies behind the sensibilities of realist theories of cinema, such as those put forward by Siegfried Kracauer.

Perhaps the idea of truth or knowledge we are getting at here is best revealed under the auspices of imagination.
 

Suggested Film References

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Dir: Martin Scorsese.
Torn Curtain (1966). Dir: Alfred Hitchcock.
Intolerance (1916). Dir: D. W. Griffith.
The Truman Show (1998). Dir: Peter Weir.
Total Recall (1990). Dir: Paul Verhoeven.
Dark City (1998). Dir: Alex Proyas.
The Matrix (1999). Dir: The Wachowski Brothers (Larry, Andy).
 
 

© 1999-2002  Brendan Long

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AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY THROUGH CINEMA
 

Imagination

At the end of the previous discussion, I was questioning two assumptions. The first involved a direct appeal to perception or perceptual experience, when considering the question of the power and capacity of film to act as sources of cognitive concern (‘enlightenment’). Thinking of films in merely perceptual terms is what generates the thought that cinema vividly acts as a site of scepticism, with respect to the deliverances of perceptual experience (is ‘the world’ commensurate with what is revealed by or encountered in experience?). Two things follow from this: (1) in being ‘enlightened’ by a film, our concern is empirical (our concern is with cataloguing an inventory of what things determinately exist in the actual world); (2) the assumption of a state of complete detachment or disinterest with respect to the objects of experience, if not the process of experience itself.

In this connection, the second assumption that needs to be questioned is the matter of how the ‘view from nowhere’ characterises or accounts for what is involved in the experience of a film, with respect to our displacement or absence from the ‘world’ on screen and the world outside of the movie theatre. We are not disinterested nor displaced in our viewing of a film, and this is something that underwrites our continually coming back to the movies and the movie theatre. This point is both psychological, and metaphysical or conceptual. This is an inescapable feature of our making sense of things, which lurks behind—acts as the background to—meaning, understanding and recognition. We are not merely spectators; neither can we be spectators without being participants, or involved in some sense.

Perhaps the idea of truth or knowledge we are getting at here is best revealed under the auspices of imagination. For example, Ralph Stephenson and J. R. Debrix write in The Cinema as Art:
 

The audience seeks to believe not what they see so much as what they conceive, and... it is not the fidelity of the image to reality which counts, but the ease with which it can be accepted as a reality in its own right. The impression it makes on us is not perceptual so much as psychological, emotional, and aesthetic...
 To move us a work of art must possess both authenticity and credibility; but the authenticity and credibility which we demand of a work of art are not those which we require of natural objects. In our eyes the two worlds are different and we do not adopt the same physical reactions or attitude of mind towards them. The real world appeals to our senses more than our imagination, while the world of art is designed to work the other way round (p.236).

[Perhaps, then, we can regard the cinematic medium as a way of organising our imaginative thoughts about the world and our relationship to it, as invited by the 'likeness' or 'reality' of cinematic images.]

What sense of imagination is being invoked here? Consider the following passage from Anthony Kenny’s The Metaphysics of Mind:
 

The imagination is clearly not a means of acquiring information about the world outside us in the way that the senses are. One cannot discover the way the world is simply by imagining. None the less there is a sense in which we can increase our knowledge of things by using our imagination. It is similar to the way in which we can learn to see things better by drawing them or modelling them. Using our imagination can increase our sensitivity to other people and thus our ability to inform ourselves about what they feel and are likely to do. Works of the imagination may teach us about human beings; great works of fiction are means by which the human race extends its self-awareness (p.121).

Again, these observations from Mary Warnock (Imagination & Time):
 

There is, then, a strong philosophical tradition which gives to imagination the task of allowing us access not only to the natural, external world as a whole, but also to the minds and thoughts and feelings of other people... We are separate, certainly, each with his own point of view, but we are not irrevocably shut up in our own bodies, peering out into the world (including the world of other people) whose real existence remains problematic. That we are not so boxed in is shown by the existence and the efficacy of language.
 ...Human beings are capable of grasping and understanding the world of which they form a part. They are observers, but not observers made of wholly different stuff. Their existence is in space and time, alongside all material objects, and alongside other humans (p.21).

This recommends an analogy between ‘perception’ and ‘imagination’. Just as one cannot see things in the world unless they are equipped with the right kind of sensory capacities, one cannot be sensitive to or aware of the lives and qualities of other lives without an appropriate capacity—that to feel sympathy for the concern of others, say. (For example, it makes sense to sometimes speak of a kind of 'blindness', in referring to someone's possessing a lack of imagination.) As David McNaughton writes in his book Moral Vision: An Introduction to Ethics:
 

Just as I cannot see colours unless I have the right kind of sensory capacity, so I cannot be sensitive to the moral qualities of people and their actions unless I have the appropriate capacity?a capacity to feel sympathy for the concerns of other human beings. Moreover, just as I will only see things in their true colours if I have properly functioning colour vision and am viewing the object under suitable conditions, so my moral feelings are only reliable if I am fully informed about the effects of the action on all people affected and if my view is not distorted by bias or prejudice (p.73).

Kenny's thoughts on imagination mark limits on the analogy between perception and imagination. In particular, he appears to claim that the analogy suggests the detached project of cataloguing what things exist in the actual world. Nevertheless, he still claims that imagination is able to provide us with some kind of epistemic access to the world. In this regard, and for the purposes of clarification, we should attend to the distinction between imaginary and imagination. 'Imaginary', in a crucial respect, refers to the illusory or non-existent (such as when we speak of something as 'a figment of one's imagination'). This is a disreputable or fanciful sense of granting reality or existence to that which is not existent in the actual physical world. (It largely refers to the content or object of imagination.) While this captures some aspects of our consideration of cinematic imagination, it is not what we are talking about here. Rather, imagination is a capacity for bringing alive or granting reality to what is normally inaccessible or is not present to us. Think of our emotional responses to characters in fiction (e.g. crying at the fate of Anna Karenina.) What seems odd is our manifesting behaviour or emotional responses in relation to what is abstract or has no physical reality. The work of imagination here lies in recognising the genius and art of the writer in bringing something so abstract to life, as something we acknowledge as bearing some relationship to real people in the world.

Imagination, in this connection, is a matter of attending to possibilities. To this end, responses to imaginative works such as film and literature reveal as much about ourselves, as they do about the object of such responses. Imagination, amongst other things, addresses itself to the understanding and conception of myself in relation to others.
 

Further Philosophical Issues for Imagination and Cinema

Anthony Kenny, The Metaphysics of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)
According to Kenny, there are two senses of 'imagination' he wishes to address:
 

1. The 'fancy': the ability to introspect, in terms of the ability or power to call up or recall mental images (p.113).

(Perhaps this is the sense of imagination Scruton is relying upon in his denial of the representational character of the photographic image [there is no interior dialogue or monologue in the experience of, or confrontation with, the photographic image].)
 

2. The 'creative imagination': what Kenny calls imagination proper, at least in terms of what he shall address as 'imagination' (p.114).

(1) is claimed to be a power that, in general, is available to or shared by humanity. (2), on the other hand, is, according to Kenny, 'a much less evenly distributed faculty' (p.113).
 

The ability to imagine the world different in significant ways; the ability to conjecture, hypothesize, invent?this is a different form of imagination, creative imagination, possessed par excellence by persons such as poets, story-tellers, and scientists of genius (p.113).

Initially we could take this as applying to the film-maker as artist. However, what about the viewer as appreciative of the expression or realisation of such creative imagination in a film? This also requires creative imagination on their part. (Perhaps it will be of a different kind to that required of, or evidenced by, the artist.)

According to Kenny, the creative imagination is superior to intellect, in that it 'form[s] new thoughts and discover[s] new truths and build[s] new worlds' (p.114). Furthermore, it is public, rather than personal or introspective. Perhaps this means: 'public' in that the creative imagination is an exercise of imagination that is publicly expressed or manifested (not just addressed to the 'I' of introspection), and the imaginative capacity exercised by an audience in their appreciation of creativity draws upon the artefact as a publicly observable phenomenon. (Does this suggest that film, as an exercise of creative imagination, is essentially public in nature?) In addition, there appears to be a vital connection between the creative imagination and language. Its importance lies not in the images or the publicly observable phenomena themselves; it is in being able to articulate our thoughts, and to attribute meaning to images (in the case of cinema).

Perhaps this is what gives rise to 'language of film', as the supposedly appropriate language in terms of which to articulate or attribute meaning to cinematic images, and our experience of them. Problem: while this is a 'language' vitally connected to a particular kind of 'experience', 'language of film' is still only a technical grammar, pertaining to the techniques used to cultivate a particular kind of effect, which is taken to be 'necessarily' separated from ordinary experience and reality. [Film as necessarily separate from 'the world', constituting as it does a 'necessarily' systematic illusion or delusion.] This appears to ignore the 'likeness' relied upon for suspended disbelief (acceptance of illusion or delusion). Such grammar also focuses on cause-effect response mechanisms (stimulus-response mechanisms), in generating certain beliefs or reactions with respect to the film world, and one's experience there.

'Language of film' is still tied to consideration of matters physical or bodily: (i) the relevant artefact itself, and (ii) the cognitive mechanisms of the spectator. In this it is taken to address 'belief'. However, what about imagination in the sense being addressed here (that is, the way I am putting it)?

Kenny would agree that imagination and the language of appreciation and understanding do not work in such literal terms.
 

The imagination is clearly not a means of acquiring information about the world outside us in the way that the senses are. One cannot discover the way the world is simply by imagining. None the less there is a sense in which we can increase our knowledge of things by using our imagination. It is similar to the way in which we can learn to see things better by drawing them or modelling them. Using our imagination can increase our sensitivity to other people and thus our ability to inform ourselves about what they feel and are likely to do. Works of the imagination may teach us things about human beings; great works of fiction are means by which the human race extends its self-awareness (p.121).

If imagination is to be a genuine source of knowledge, we must be able to distinguish between what is discovered by the imagination, and what is created by imagination (p.121).

According to much contemporary film theory (a view, for example, that is largely on display in The Matrix), this distinction is bogus. Cinema and its requisite creative imagination is essentially systematic illusion or delusion. Furthermore, it essentially involves subjectivity, as opposed to objectivity. The focus in such theory, as typified by talk of a 'language of film', is all about what is created by the cinematic imagination or intelligence. However, even that acknowledgement depends an acknowledgement of there being an actual world including myself (reality). That serves to enable me to distinguish between discovery and creation or invention. The world, and thoughts about its true nature and structure, as mediated by my relationship to it, are not far removed from one's appreciation of cinema. It is emphasised, rather than dissolved, by the 'likeness' of cinematic experience.

'Cinematic reality', thus, is a way of exploring or thinking about reality in general, for its power depends upon the acknowledgement of the latter (which takes us back to the claims of cinematic realism).

Gregory Currie, Image and Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Currie's account of imagination is from the perspective of cognitive science. In this, it is another stimulus-response mechanism account of cinema, appreciation and imagination, which differs from that of film theory in having a substantive scientific basis for its account of cognition.
 

My proposal has closer methodological affinities to such essentialist identifications as the claim that water is H2O. This is not to be understood as offering an analysis of the concept of water; the claim is rather that water has a hidden inner structure that is explanatory of its more evident surface properties, and which may bring with it some surprising consequences – that water is not really a continuous substance, for example. Likewise, the cash value of the claim that imagining is simulation lies in its explanatory power [i.e. hidden inner cognitive structure or 'architecture'] (p.152).

On this view, films, as fictions, produce 'raw iconic data', as accessed by the appropriate sensory apparatuses. that is processed by corresponding psycho-physiological processes of the brain.

The engagement with fiction in imagination is accounted for in terms of Currie's 'Simulation Hypothesis':
 

On the knowing-how view, our basic mode of access to the minds of others works like this: I imagine myself to be in the other person's position, receiving the sensory information the other receives. Having thus projected myself imaginatively into that situation, I then imagine how I would respond to it: what beliefs and desires I would have, what decisions I would make and how I would feel having those perceptions, beliefs and desires, and making those decisions. But, crucially, this process of "imagining how I would respond" is not a matter of my calculating how I would respond by appeal to rough-and-ready principles of mental functioning. Imagining having certain beliefs and desires is not a matter of considering the proposition that I have those beliefs and desires, and then deducing, on the basis of a theory, what I would do as a consequence. Rather, I simply observe how I do respond in imagination. To imagine having those beliefs and desires is to take on, temporarily, those beliefs and desires; they become, temporarily and with other qualifications I shall describe in a moment, my own beliefs and desires. Being, thus temporarily, my own, they work their own effects on my mental economy, having the sorts of impacts on how I feel and what I decide to do that my ordinary, real beliefs and desires have. I let my mental processes run as if I really were in that situation – except that those processes run "off-line", disconnected from their normal sensory inputs and behavioural outputs. In that way I use my own mind to simulate the mind of another (p.144).

If my own mind is a reliable model of the other person's mind, then this process of mental simulation is a good guide to the mental states of the other. I can simply note that I formed, in imagination, a certain belief, desire or decision, then attribute it to the other. Let us call the hypothesis that we do, at least sometimes, come to a view about other people's mental states in this way, the Simulation Hypothesis (p.145).

Distinction between 'primary' and 'secondary imaginings':
 

Primary imaginings. Where we imagine what is fictional; where our engaging with a fictional work consists in imagining what makes it fictional.

Secondary imaginings. '[W]hen we imagine various things so as to imagine what is true in the story' (p.152).

It is when we are able, in imagination, to feel as the character feels that fictions of character take hold of us. This process of empathetic reenactment of the character's situation is what I call secondary imagining. As a result of putting myself, in imagination, in the character's position, I come to have imaginary versions of the thoughts, feelings and attitudes I would have were I in the situation. Having identified with those thoughts, feelings and attitudes ostensively, I am then able to imagine that the character felt that way. That is how secondary imagining is a guide to primary imagining (pp.153-54).

Imagination and the Holocaust on the Screen—Schindler’s List (1993), Life is Beautiful (1997)

Perhaps we can illustrate and clarify the discussion thus far with reference to the 'genre' of Holocaust films. This might be a tricky proposition, considering that the subject of such films is a particular historically determinate event. Nevertheless, even our comprehension of that—understanding what the Holocaust means, with respect to the manner in which it constituted a particular evil—requires imagination. Consider two contrasting styles of approach: the pseudo-documentary realism of Schindler’s List, and the magic realism and humanism of Life is Beautiful.

Firstly, Schindler’s List. This is incontrovertibly a striking and powerful film (particularly considering Spielberg’s past track record as a film-maker). A great deal of its images resonate with tremendous emotional intensity and power, in virtue of their authenticity (e.g. that of the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto). There are also considerable moments of cinematic genius (e.g. train leaving station, camera follows porter pushing suitcases to room, where their contents are being disseminated and shelved; photos, clothing, valuables; it brings alive a moment of great indifference to life, as well as the mass scale of deception that is taking place; to finish on gold teeth being plonked on table; representative of what is the end result of the process and train trip). Flo Leibowitz, in ‘Personal Agency Theories of Expressiveness and the Movies’, makes a clumsy attempt to account for some of this cinematic artistry:
 

In Schindler’s List, black and white is meant to be appreciated in historical context, too, although it is a different context. In the black and white scenes, the movie looks like the dramas that were made during the 1940s. There are period clothes and automobiles in it, and they are shot and lighted so they look in Schindler’s List much as they do in period movies. It is sometimes supposed that the loss of black and white expresses nostalgia, and I think that is right as long as this is understood as nostalgia for period movies, that is, for the kinds of heroism that they celebrated or perhaps for the artistry in the movie-making of that time. There are awful events depicted in Schindler’s List, and it is hard to be nostalgic about awful things. Alternatively construed, the images in Schindler’s List might be supposed to look like old photographs do, and thereby invest the film with the quality of a family album. Seen this way, the film’s look is expressive of the feelings that you get when you look at photographs of relatives you have never met, but about whom you may have heard stories.

She neglects to mention the camera’s following the little girl scurrying through the streets during the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto—her instance of colour (red coat) in the midst of black and white. This contrast is expressive of something else: black and white is the medium of hell, of the loss of colour, depth and richness. It is the medium of loss.

Yet, for all these instances of artistry, there is still a decided lack of imagination in Spielberg’s film; something that Robert Manne calls ‘a deep divide between the power of Spielberg’s visual imagination and the banality of his moral imagination’:
 

My case against Schindler’s List can be put simply. With visual genius Spielberg has created images of horror concerning the Holocaust as perhaps no other film-maker has or will. But because of a moral thoughtlessness he has undermined these images with a story irrelevant to his larger ambition and, in the end, subversive of it. The contradiction between Spielberg’s deeper purpose, to produce a work of art which takes us to the heart of the Holocaust darkness, and the story he has chosen as the vehicle for his purpose, the story of Schindler’s salvific mission, have in the end destroyed the integrity of the film. Almost unbelievably, a film about the darkest chapter in human history has an uplifting and even, in a curious way, a happy ending (‘The Problem of Schindler’s List’ p.209).

 Note the ‘hiddenness’ of the crematoria, a physical ‘hiddenness’ there are no qualms with in Saving Private Ryan (a ‘reality’, utilising cinematic imagination, that can be revealed). In Jaws, suspense and engagement was achieved by keeping the shark ‘hidden’ or ‘unrevealed’ -- until it finally was revealed to the audience, and all our thoughts were for ‘Bruce’, the mechanical shark, rather than the original source of menace. It is as if the same thought is at work here.

The charges regarding imagination are possible, when considering such ‘background knowledge’ or testimony of people such as the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, who speaks not of hope, but  of the extinguishment of all hope or consolation.

A similar ‘hiddenness’ characterises Roberto Benigni’s recent Life is Beautiful, although in this case it is an explicit feature of the narrative, along with question of the appropriateness of framing a comedy within the context of the Holocaust. One could characterise it as a response to horror or absurdity, but what it is that it is responding to, the sense of absurdity, is so absent or removed from the world of Life Is Beautiful as to render our responses to it nothing short of sentimental. The ‘game’ in question applies not only to Guido’s son, but also to Life Is Beautiful's audience. What is appropriate for a child is not appropriate for adults. We cannot be child-like in our innocence. Benigni’s imaginings fail to imaginatively activate an understanding of what the horror is that the child must be shielded from. [e.g. factory scenes]. What transpires in the camp -- the whole rationale for the deception of the ‘game’ -- is rationalised upon the basis of our understanding of Guido’s character garnered from the first half of the film. To this end, Guido’s behaviour is true to the logic and terrain of the world of Life Is Beautiful. As to whether it would be true of the Holocaust is another matter. That is to say, it is extremely questionable that it would be a possibility with respect to the Holocaust itself, in terms of understanding or comprehending it. Cf. Primo Levi, ‘This Side of Good and Evil’, in If This Is a Man.
 

In conclusion: theft in Buna, punished by the civil direction, is authorized and encouraged by the SS; theft in camp, severely repressed by the SS, is considered by the civilians as a normal exchange operation; theft among Haftlinge is generally punished, but the punishment strikes the thief and the victim with equal gravity. We now invite the reader to contemplate the possible meaning in the Lager of the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘just’ and ‘unjust’; let everybody judge, on the basis of the picture we have outlined and of the examples given above, how much of our ordinary moral world could survive on this side of the barbed wire (p.86).

We can also refer to Andrezj Wajda’s Landscape After Battle, based on the stories by another Auschwitz survivor, Tadeusz Borowski.  Wajda's film addresses the so-called 'liberation' of Polish Jews from the concentration camps. What it is that these survivors are 'liberated' from is not shown, but the film at least reveals a sensibility of the kind of horror or evil that it is responding to. [For example, 'liberation' camp attendants constantly admonish or remonstrate with the Jews for their insatiable appetites: 'You are free men now! What is this obsession with food and eating?'.] The attitude to the Holocaust here is akin to Levi's remarks above: how it involved the extinguishment of all meaning, purpose, and that that is part of the absurdity and its legacy. (The trappings of 'freedom' and 'liberation' are somewhat absurd, considering the subversion of order and meaning in light of the concentration camp survivors' experience.) It is interesting to note that both Levi (1987) and Borowski (1959) committed suicide, something which does not sit well with the 'hope' or 'happy ending' approach.
 

Suggested Film References

Schindler's List (1993). Dir: Steven Spielberg.
Life Is Beautiful (1997). Dir: Roberto Benigni.
Landscape After Battle (1970). Dir: Andrzej Wajda.
 
 

© 1999-2002  Brendan Long

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AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY THROUGH CINEMA
 
 

Self and Identity

 

The very consideration of imagination naturally impels us towards questions of self and identity. For example, if one is seeking to determine what they have knowledge of, or the nature of one’s beliefs, it follows that self-knowledge would occupy some pride of place. That is, the self—my self—will feature as a primary object of knowledge. What am I? What do I know of myself? What is my true nature? Furthermore, what role does imagination play in the manner of conceiving of myself and of my being located in the world with other things and people? The very function or nature of imagination suggests that there is some gap between myself and others, such that I must sometimes step outside of myself, and reconcile my own projects, plans, desires, choices or wishes with those of other people. Who are these ‘other people’? How are we similar, or of like kind? What is it about being a person that requires one's being sensitive to their plight and concerns? How or why do I acknowledge someone as of the same kind as myself? What is significant about ‘projects, plans, desires or choices’ as figuring in how I identify myself, both in relation to and as distinct from others? If this maps out the territory of the imagination, it can be seen how it necessarily involves us in consideration of ‘self’ and ‘identity’.

These are the types of concerns that arise from the nature of the metaphysical problem established by philosophical speculation with respect to ‘self’ and ‘identity’. Are these the kinds of considerations that figure in our imaginative response to films? Do films present a problem of ‘other minds’? Does imagination ‘put flesh’ on the threadbare, skeletal offerings of philosophical theory? In what way—if at all—does imaginatively attending to a film cross-pollinate to how I conceive of my projects, plans, desires, choices or wishes?

Blade Runner—The Director's Cut (1991)
From the scrolling prologue to the film:
 

Early in the 21st century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced Robot evolution into the NEXUS phase – a being virtually identical to a human – known as a replicant.

The NEXUS 6 Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them.

Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets.

After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 combat team in an Off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth – under penalty of death.

Special police squads – BLADE RUNNER UNITS – had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicants.

This was not called execution.

It was called retirement.

LOS ANGELES NOVEMBER, 2019

One question that is usually raised in response to Blade Runner—The Director's Cut is that of 'Is Deckard—the Blade Runner in question—a replicant?'. (This is certainly the intention of Ridley Scott, the director. Hampton Fancher – one of the film's screenwriters – has also said in an interview that he wanted the audience to walk away asking 'Is Deckard like Roy Baty (the leader of the renegade Nexus 6 replicants)?'.) That question is obviously tied to consideration of the narrative point of the film. But it is not the only question that the film raises. There are others arising out of the specific philosophical challenge Blade Runner—The Director's Cut poses. What is it to be a human being? What does it mean to be human? How is it possible to acknowledge that another has a mind? Does the significance we attribute to our humanity arise out of our natural state as members of the species homo sapiens? Is this status secured through our capacity for rationality and self-consciousness? Is it a matter of social determination, in that we only have a significant status to the extent that we are persons, or are seen to have rights that are of a legal or social nature?

Take our first clip from Blade Runner—The Director's Cut, where Deckard (Harrison Ford) interviews Rachael (Sean Young) using the V-K test, a test which is used to determine whether or not the subject is a replicant. (Deckard is not aware that Rachael is not Tyrell's niece but is, in fact, a replicant. Furthermore, Rachael herself is not aware of this.) The V-K test is a test for human emotional and behavioural responses –a testing of emotional experience and memory—of the kind that is meant to be absent in replicants. As such, it is a test involving the application of criteria for what counts as 'human being'.

This takes us to the so-called 'problem of other minds' arising from Rene Descartes' distinction between mind and body.
 
 

Rene Descartes: 'I' as a thinking thing

[A]fter considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.

…But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions (Second Meditation, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984] pp.17, 19).

According to that distinction, consciousness, thought and feeling are the distinctive properties of one kind of substance—mind as something immaterial—which are separate from the properties of another distinctive kind of substance—body, or things material. As such, one is always aware that they exist as a thinking thing (one can be identified with their mind and mental activity). Furthermore, one cannot doubt that they exist as a thinking thing, in that even entertaining the thought that one does not exist is a self-affirming exercise. Thus, 'I am, I exist', and the self-knowledge that entails, comes to act as Descartes' 'Archimedean point' of certainty, as the foundation upon which all knowledge can be built.

According to Descartes, I can be certain as to my having, or being identified with, a mind, because of the immediate access I have to, and acquaintance I have with, my own thoughts and inner life. One's having a mind, thus, is essentially private. However, how can I be certain of the existence of other minds, if I cannot directly access their immediate thoughts or mental life? At best, according to Descartes, I can only indirectly access other minds on the basis of behavioural criteria. (The implication here is that another's having a mind is modeled on my own mind and mental activity.)

[There are also implications for the idea of cinema itself. If, for instance, literature--through the use of language--is able to access to, or provide us with insight into, the inner thoughts and lives of its characters, does this confine cinema to endlessly raising or being involved in the problem of other Cartesian minds? That is to say, if the photographic medium of cinema is said to capture the physical details of physical bodies in a material world, does this, in turning to human beings as cinematic objects, emphasise the inaccessibility of the private inner life of others? It would follow from this supposition that cinema only provides us with access to the behavioural manifestations of what is private and hidden. Perhaps more: that it commits us to a physicalist or materialist view of minds and the world.]

One response to Descartes' dualism and the 'problem of other minds' has been to claim that there is no distinction between immaterial and material; that there are only physical things in the world. To refer to the mental, on this account, is to refer to, or to be talking about, something physical; namely, the brain or some physico-chemical processes of the brain that correspond with mental activity. Furthermore, according to materialist or physicalist accounts of mind, mental states lose their 'essential' privateness, in becoming publicly observable phenomena.

For example, behaviourism was once the dominant attempt to explain the mind, claiming that all talk of mental events and activity could be translated into talk of publicly observable physical behaviour. In philosophical circles, this viewpoint found expression in the form of logical behaviourism. For the logical behaviourist, all meaningful claims about mental events had to trace back to some overt and verifiable behaviour. In this, it was claimed, all mental language refers to behaviour or dispositions to behave. That is, ascriptions of mental terms are, according to the logical behaviourist, really ascriptions of dispositions to behave in appropriate ways. In addition, the ascription of a mental event (e.g. hunger, being in pain) enables us to make predictions about a person's behaviour, given certain dispositions to behave in certain ways when appropriate conditions are in place (a kind of input-output or stimulus-response mechanism). In the latter part of the twentieth century, such behaviourist sensibilities have also surfaced in the guise of functionalism, a theory dominant in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. According to functionalism, mental states are identical with internal states that perform the same function. Where a mental ability is the ability to generate a given output from a certain input, then having that mental ability is identical with having a structure capable of producing that output from that input. (To that end, anything could be seen as having a mind, so long as it is behaved in the same way as a human mind does; i.e. is functionally equivalent with the mental states of a human mind.)

Behavioural criteria for ascribing minds and mental states have long been objected to by philosophers. Such criteria are also rejected through the course of Blade Runner—The Director's Cut. By the same token, though, the insistence on any fixed system of criteria is also being questioned. For example, how is the matter of appropriate criteria for acknowledging the existence of a mind to be slotted in with the question of Deckard realising he is a replicant, or that of his showing empathy for replicants? Are any or both of these proposed instances of a significant 'reawakening' in Deckard, predicated upon the basis of the correct application of relevant criteria for something's having a mind, or being human? Does he come to realise he is a replicant by applying to himself the same 'template' he used to apply to replicants in general? Does he empathise with replicants such as Rachael or Roy Baty, because he comes to realise that they fulfil or meet the criteria for what counts as having a mind? That appears extremely doubtful, in terms of addressing both the questions the film poses and the philosophical significance of those questions.

Let us turn to the rest of the clip under consideration. Deckard comes to realise not only that Rachael is a replicant, but also that she does not know that she is a replicant. There is a question of self-knowledge here—that Rachael lacks a vital knowledge of who she is, because she does not know what she is—and Deckard's questioning Tyrell on this matter has the force of a demand or challenge (well, why does she not know that she is a replicant?). The capacity for self-consciousness, above all, would seem central to our sense of humanity, involving as it does the ability to reflect on ourselves and our lives. (It is certainly central to John Locke's definition of 'person'.) This does not mean that Rachael does not have this capacity, nor that it is absent in other Nexus 6 replicants. Rather, she lacks a piece of information that structures the self of her consciousness.

Tyrell cites considerations of commerce—that replicants are 'products' of the Tyrell Corporation—as the reason for the absence of this vital piece of knowledge. To compensate for this lack, he says, replicants are 'given' memories as a cushion or means of control. ('Memories…You're talking about memories'.) This reference to commerce is quite poignant. It also accounts for the extent to which humans in the Los Angeles of 2019 themselves lack self-knowledge as a mark of their humanity. In the industrial wasteland of that future, in which there are no traces of the natural environment, humans are just as much a 'product' of the commercial interests that structure or act as foundation to that technological society, as are replicants. Human beings in that society aspire to the pursuit and possession of commodities in the form of 'electronic' animals. This is taken as a means to seeking status in the form of social legitimation (a concern more forcefully brought into the foreground in Phillip K. Dick's source novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). The pursuit of commodities and possessions may also be seen as the kind of activity ratified by 'rights' claims, and underwritten by conceptions of 'personhood'. In this, though, humans are in pursuit of the semblance or facsimile of reality. They become 'products' of the Tyrell Corporation in becoming dehumanised. Replicants, on the other hand, while also 'products' of the Tyrell Corporation, seek to claim their humanity, through the pursuit of the reality of their existence. They seek to legitimise their lives, their history, and their memories—the very things taken to act as a 'cushion' for their lack of self-knowledge.

These concerns with memory and authenticity, and how the self is to be understood within the context of time, also pervade our next clip. This involves Rachael's confrontation of Deckard over the legitimacy of her past (that she cannot be a replicant, because she has memories of a human life and past). She comes clutching photographs as proof of this past or reality ('Look…It's me with my mother'). Deckard, however, reveals that Rachael's memories are implants, in that he knows what she claims to remember. This cuts to the heart of the claim that memories are, in some sense, an exclusively (or uniquely) private property, constituting who and what we are. Rachael's memories, in this instance, are neither private nor authentic. Furthermore, they are somebody else's property (in this case, Rachael's 'memories' are the memories of Tyrell's niece).
 
 

John Locke on 'person' and 'self'

[A ‘person’] is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, as it seems to me essential to it; it being impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this everyone is to himself that which he calls self; it not being considered, in this case, whether the same self be continued in the same or diverse substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking and it is that that makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e., the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now as it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.xxvii.9).

[‘Person’] is a forensic term appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of law, and happiness and misery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence to what is past, only by consciousness; whereby it becomes concerned and accountable, owns and imputes to itself past actions, just upon the same ground and for the same reason that it does the present. All which is founded in a concern for happiness, the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness; that which is conscious of pleasure and pain desiring that that self that is conscious should be happy. And therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate to that present self by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in, than if they had never been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i.e., reward or punishment, on the account of any such action, is all one as to be happy or miserable in its first being without any demerit at all. And therefore, conformable to this, the apostle tells us, that at the great day, when every one shall 'receive according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open'. The sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all persons shall have that they themselves, in what bodies soever they appear, or what substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same that committed those actions, and deserve that punishment for them (II.xxvii.26).

John Locke draws a distinction between ‘human being’ and ‘person’. The idea of a human being is, according to him, that of a living organised body of a particular organism (particular functional organisation). [‘Human being’ as a biological sortal or natural kind.] Thus, when one speaks of ‘same human being’, one is referring to the identity of a living creature, in terms of the continuity of life of that organised living body. The idea of a person or self, Locke claims, refers to something separate from our biological humanity. There is a tendency in our speech and thought to equate ‘same human being’ with ‘same person’ (if not ‘human being’ with ‘person’). Rationality is not essential to the idea of a human being, or to the identification or individuation of human beings.

‘Person’, on the other hand, is taken by Locke to necessarily refer to rationality and consciousness. Consciousness and awareness of self are what make a person or self the kind of thing it is, and in turn the identity of that self is determined by the same consciousness the self has of thought and actions past and/or present. “For it is by the consciousness it has of present thoughts and actions that is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come; and would be by distance of time, or change of substance” (Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.xxvii.10). The self, further, is more than the introspective awareness of thoughts and sensations: it is that for which it is itself concerned for; a particular continuance of existence, for which it is concerned with respect to happiness, for example.
 

Self is that conscious thinking thing...which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends...That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to itself and owns all the actions of that thing as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive (Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.xxvii.17)

Locke's concerned consciousness is framed in terms of accountability (the praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of a person; the right and justice of punishment and reward). Thus, ‘person’ is a term of particular moral and legal significance: the idea of a thing standing in a certain relation to the law and others.

On a Lockean account of personhood, we would consider Rachael to be a 'person'. Furthermore, we might tempted, if thus convinced of Locke's account of things, to also regard her as the same person as features in her memories and recollections. That is to say, according to the so-called 'Memory Theory of Psychological Continuity' attributed to Locke:
 

The self is that which someone remembers as part of their continuous personal history.

A here and now is identical with B at an earlier time and place if A can remember or recollect here and now what B remembers or recollects earlier.

A here and now is identical with B at an earlier time and place if those A-events A can remember or recollect here and now are the same as those B-events that B can remember or recollect.

But there are perceived to be problems with this 'Memory Theory'. For instance, if memory is the sole determinant and unifier of self, then the Memory Theorist will have to face up to the possibility of there being gaps in that continuous self-history as a result of amnesia, or some other failure to recall or remember events, along with issues of paramnesia or misremembering. For example:
 

Butler's Gallant Officer. A brave officer flogged as a boy for stealing an orchid, takes the standard from the enemy in battle and becomes a general later in life. Our intuition here would be to regard the boy, the officer and the general as the same person. However, if the general remembers taking the standard but not the flogging, and the officer all too painfully recollects his hiding as a boy, we are faced with the conclusion that the general is the same officer, the officer the same as the young thief, but that the general and the boy are not the same. This is in virtue of the gap in memory and recollection between the general and the boy.

George IV. According to Antony Flew, when the melancholic vapours of mind set in later on in King George IV's life, he 'remembered' leading the troops at the Battle of Waterloo. Although his belief was genuine and sincere, there was no factual basis for this being a part of George IV's self-history.

Memory as introspection also gives rise to David Hume's famous challenge of the presupposition of self. Any attempt to locate a 'self' as the distinctive object of introspection is, Hume argues, bound to elusive and fruitless.
 

When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception…If any one upon serious and unprejudic'd reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.
 But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement (A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975] p.252).

These challenges appear to force two options upon us. One, give up identity as validated by memory claims, in favour of physical or spatio-temporal continuity as the only means of ascertaining personal identity. Two, give up the division between mind and body as the only options available for personal identity, and work instead with the interdependence of bodily and psychological characteristics in determining personal identity.

These are problems that seemingly pass over to Rachael's case in Blade Runner—The Director's Cut. Rachael is not identical or psychologically continuous with the little girl that features in her memories, or is depicted in the photographs she clutches. Her memories are the implants of the memories of someone else who is identical and psychologically continuous with the girl in those memories, and captured in those photographs. The photographs Rachael possesses are proof of someone else's memories and life, not hers. Furthermore, she is not physically continuous or identical with the girl in the photographs. That girl is someone else—Tyrell's niece—not her. (In that case, the girl in question is a human being, and not a replicant.)

On this front, the replicant search for the authenticity of their memories as authenticating their own selves appears to be thwarted on philosophical grounds. But something distinctive remains in the context of the film under discussion, if it is structured in consideration of what it means to be a human being. The replicant search for authenticity, and their capacity for self-consciousness and reflection, still stands apart from the unreflective conduct of so-called human beings proper. The replicant attitude and concern towards themselves and their lives is, it has to be said, something that is decisively human.

This is something that comes out of our last clip, which shows Deckard's showdown with Roy Baty (Rutger Hauer). This particular scene could be taken as further evidence for the claim that Deckard is a replicant. For instance, Baty says 'Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave'. There could be two ways of interpreting what he says here as a basis for empathetic response. One, he could be saying that Deckard is a slave like himself, because he—Deckard—is in reality a replicant (thus, like Rachael, Deckard has been denied that vital piece of self-knowledge with regards to what he is). Two, Baty could be saying that he, Deckard and all of us—as human beings—are slaves, in that we have lost our 'souls' or humanity. Whatever interpretation we favour needs to be tempered by the moment of Baty's death. Before dying Baty says:
 

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears. Time to die.

Presumably these are Baty's real and authentic memories, those that belong to his four year lifespan and experience, and not to those 'memories' implanted as a means of psychological control. His face, at first, registers pain and sadness. This sadness, however, gives way to a smile of resignation in the acceptance of his death, the moment of which is metaphorically captured in the release of a white dove, rising like a soul to the heavens. It is at this point that we see Deckard's face in the register of empathy, responding to the serenity of Baty's death. At this point, the questions of 'what are human beings missing about themselves?' and 'what is it for Deckard to feel empathy for his "skin jobs"?' come together.

What could we make of this scene? There is an interesting point worth pursuing here. According to Stephen Mulhall in his paper 'Picturing the Human (Body and Soul): A Reading of Blade Runner', '[t]o show that Roy Baty misconceives [his quest for life, a life which is on a par with that of human beings] as one for more life, as if a replicant might become human by living longer, is the goal of the film'. I do not know if this is the goal of Blade Runner, but Mulhall does raise a point that pertains to our appreciation of the film in this instance. Baty is mistaken to think that he will become human if he lives longer than four years—if, that is, he lives as long as a human being. If he were to achieve that, then he would merely become human in the biological sense. However, his quest (and that of Rachael) is to achieve recognition as a human being, in the sense of having an authentic and meaningful life, or as being seen as a respectworthy being and not just a slave or mere 'product'. In rescuing Deckard and in the moment of his death, Baty succeeds in all this. As short as his life has been, Baty is still able to reflect on it and embrace his mortality (such is the point of the wondrous dialogue I have reprinted above). In death he reclaims his humanity and it is this, it seems, that constitutes Deckard's coming to empathise with replicants. (Baty's death, for instance, is not a moment of 'retirement' or the expiration of his 'use-by-date'. It is the end of a distinctive perspective on the world, the moments of which, as Baty says, 'will be lost in time like tears'.)

(Some may feel that this avoids the question of Deckard's being a replicant, especially if this was the explicit intention of Ridley Scott and Hampton Fancher. There are two responses to this. One, none of the above is at tension with answering 'Is Deckard a replicant?'. In fact, I would suggest that they need to be taken on board in addressing that question. They also feed into making sense of the replicants' quest for meaning and authenticity, in that this quest is underwritten by concerns of the status of a human being. Two, I doubt that we can only appreciate the film and think about it accordingly, in terms set solely by 'authorial intention'. Often our discerning meaning in a film and coming to understand it transcends what the film-maker explicitly intends. For example, the voice-over narration of the 1982 release of Blade Runner is removed from 1991's The Director's Cut. Surely this leaves it open to the viewer to work out what is going on, not just from the point of view of narrative, but also in terms of the issues and questions that arise out of the film.)

Our thoughts on self and time here are also invited by the futuristic genre to which Blade Runner belongs. Following Stanley Cavell (The World Viewed p.183), we could characterise the futuristic genre as telling stories in the mode of 'What if one day…'. To frame stories around the structure of 'What if one day…' is not just to indulge in pure supposition, speculation or fantasy. It can also call for reflection on what is familiar, on what we enjoy and on what would happen if we were to lose or gain something. To some extent films in such a genre are extensions of the present to the future, prompting questions such as 'Do we want to go down that path?' or 'If not, what attitude do we take to the present? Do we want ourselves to be that way?'. Good futuristic films largely style a vision of a believable future, in the sense that it logically follows from our present situation; more so if it is a future that is not too distant from the present. (See, for example, Robocop [1987] and Mad Max [1979].)

 

The Searchers (1956)
Where the futuristic genre imaginatively invites us to reflect on where we stand now, by looking from the present to the future, the genre of the western—of which The Searchers is an acknowledged masterpiece—involves us looking from the present to the past, through addressing our attitude to where we stand now in terms of the past. In this respect, The Searchers shares a thematic concern with Blade Runner—The Director's Cut, in so far as one's past is constitutive of one's self and identity. But there are also differences. Whereas the narrative mode of Blade Runner as part of the futuristic genre is prefixed by 'What if one day…', the narrative mode of The Searchers as a western is set by 'Once upon a time…'. (See, for instance, the title of Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West [1968].) This appears to set differing attitudes to the 'reality' of the cinematic images of these genres, and our imaginative responses to their fictions. If the visual imaginings of the futuristic genre can transport us to a future time and place that may or may not appear, then the visual imaginings of the western can bring to life a past that may or may not have occurred.

If Blade Runner involves empathy, The Searchers transports us to the darker recesses of human personality signified by revenge, hate and contempt. This is essayed through the examination of the nature of racism. This is an issue that is the focus of much imaginative and philosophical attention. Witness, for example, Shylock’s exhortation in Act III, sc.1 of The Merchant of Venice:
 

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

One way of reading philosophical import into Shylock's cry for recognition as a human being, is to claim that the racist he confronts essentially denies that Jews are persons in the sense outlined by John Locke. In this it is claimed that the racist denies Shylock his rights as a human being. Another way would focus on the list of attributes that Shylock details. Perhaps what he is drawing attention to is the fact that he fits the relevant criteria for being recognised as another mind (that, perhaps, he and all Jews have as much an inner life as do Christians). Essentially, it may be claimed, the racist's 'blindness' emanates from a failure to recognise something about Shylock.

Here is another attempt to make analytic sense of this issue, that of  Kwame Anthony Appiah's ‘Racisms’ [in Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, ed. Hugh LaFollette (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) pp.375-86]. According to Appiah, ‘racism’ is a composite of certain propositions and dispositions.

Propositions
 

Racialism: the claim that there are heritable characteristics (some kind of ‘racial essence’) shared by members of the species homo sapiens, which effectively divide humans into groups (races) which share in those traits and tendencies that distinguish them from other races.
Extrinsic racism: the belief that moral distinctions can be made between members of different races, because ‘racial essence’ entails morally relevant qualities that warrant differential treatment. [The ‘truth’ of extrinsic racism is founded in some kind of ‘cognitive incapacity’.]
Intrinsic racism: the discrimination (moral differentiation) between members of different races purely on the basis of race. Each race has a different moral status independent of the moral characteristics entailed by its racial essence. ‘For an intrinsic racist, no amount of evidence that a member of another race is capable of great moral, intellectual, or cultural achievements, or has characteristics that, in members of one’s own race, would make them admirable or attractive, offers any ground for treating that person as he or she would treat similarly endowed members of his or her own race’ (p.377).

Disposition: ‘racial prejudice’
 

The tendency to assent to false (moral and theoretical) propositions about races that support policies or beliefs to the disadvantage of some race(s) as opposed to others, and continuing to do so in the face of argument or evidence that should lead to those propositions being given up or untenable.

All of these issues may come to bear in consideration of The Searchers with respect to its examination of racism, through the character of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne). However, perhaps there is more to this than Appiah's analytic gaze suggests, which comes to life in this film.

This is a matter of moral void: that one is devoid of value, status and meaning—is excluded from and denied consideration and acknowledgment—purely on the basis of some empirical or racially inheritable characteristics. Ethan Edwards’ attitude towards the Comanche typifies this. It also countenances white people, though. Edwards has nothing but contempt for the young women ‘defiled’ during their capture. They are no longer white...they are now Comanche. Thus, Edwards’ disgust and revulsion is connected to his seeing these women in light of what they have forfeited and what they have become in this forfeiture. The character of Ethan Edward's racism, however, also exemplifies a sense of what he is missing about himself. His ‘blindness’ to seeing the Comanche as fellow kind emanates from a certain ‘blindness’ with respect to himself. It is the kind of blindness such that ‘respect’, ‘reconciliation’, or ‘reparation’ is not possible unless there is shame, guilt or remorse, and this comes from a critique of oneself.

This suggests a strategy different to that seen in recent 'revisionist' westerns such as Dances With Wolves [1990]. Such 'revisionist' westerns adopt the strategy of more faithful representations of Native Americans, as the means to righting the wrongs of the western's past.  We find something different with The Searchers. Its attention is less on the specific representation of Native Americans, and more on the mind that would cultivate such evil perceptions. In previous westerns, the Native American as enemy was not so much integral to those stories' heroes and dynamics of action, as they could be no more than this. The Searchers, in its shift to a deeper territory that informs action, posits a concern with the Indian as something more, to the extent that it is almost visibly uncomfortable with Ethan Edwards as the focus of attention and action, although it never loses sight of the need to pity him. (The great tragedy is that we can accord to him that evaluation of worth through critique that he cancels out in his dealings with himself, let alone with others.)

The thought that Ethan Edwards is blind to himself is connected to another aspect of self and identity, which serves as a central theme to John Ford films: the virtue and values of community, and one’s identity through community. (With respect to the Western genre in particular, this figures with respect to the justification or rationalisation of the action and behaviour of the heroic figure, within the mythology of the taming of the Wild West and the ties of community. The heroic figure is defined in relation to a community, and the virtues and values that define or identify it. We can see this in the clip from Fort Apache [1949] I use.) It is no wonder that Ethan Edwards is ‘blind’ to the generic community of humanity (vis-a-vis the Comanche), as he is effectively detached and isolated from the consolation of any form of community. This much is brought out with the opening and closing shots of The Searchers. Also consider the clip where Ethan Edwards and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) inspect the young white girls rescued from the Comanche, in the hope that one of them may be Debbie. When the Cavalry officer asks of their relationship to the young girl they are looking for, Martin goes to answer 'She's my sister', but is interrupted by Ethan, who says 'She's my niece', while glaring at Martin. Here Ethan effectively denies that Martin Pawley has any familial attachment to Debbie. In one respect, it is because Martin is a half-breed who was adopted by the Edwards' family. More significantly, it reveals how the search for Debbie is structured and framed in terms of Ethan Edwards' obsessions; it is all about himself, and he is oblivious to how the object of his search (Debbie) could stand in a deep relationship to anyone else besides himself.

[This sequence ends with the 'extreme' close-up of Ethan Edwards' face, twisted in revulsion and contempt for the women driven mad by their years spent in Comanche enslavement. This whole passage is the culmination of an elaborate sequence that offers an insight into another racist mind, that of Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles), who is amorous towards Martin Pawley. It begins with her reading a letter from Martin Pawley. Visually, the episodes attending the reading of the letter are uncomfortable and out of place with the overall treatment of racism in The Searchers. In many respects, it verges on the racism and racial stereotypes that are being critiqued. We might miss out here on the driving force of the 'reading voice'. Laurie's reading voice becomes that of Martin Pawley, but what we see is not that of Martin Pawley's vision or sight of the things written of. The visualisation, in this instance, is all of Laurie Jorgensen's imagination. This constitutes an episode of the imaginings of a prejudiced mind, whereby reality 'reasserts' itself when we come to the 'extreme' close-up of Ethan Edwards' disgust and revulsion. Here Laurie is imagining what she reads in Martin's letter, not visualising what is actually described by its contents. We have in this instance a 'fiction-within-a-fiction', which can be set apart from the dominant fiction. It also provides us with the perspective of the settlers at home, the members of the community Ethan Edwards is not a part of. But in this Laurie Jorgensen shares something with Ethan Edwards in the matter of racial prejudice. In addition, she and Ethan Edwards are not demonised within the film as racists, in that they are not presented as caricatures of evil. Even recognisably decent people are capable of such distorted perceptions and radical insensitivity towards other human beings.]

More significantly, The Searchers addresses these themes of self and identity through addressing the question of cinema’s relationship to mythology and identity. To say that The Searchers is Ford’s questioning of his part and of his promulgation of Western mythology, is not to say that it is the denial of myth. It is, rather, a reaffirmation of the critical distance that belongs to mythology. John Wayne—the archetonic embodiment of Western mythology—for example, questions his own myth and its place in this kind of story-telling. (Here we can pay particular attention to Ford's use of close-up shots of Ethan Edwards' face in the various clips I have used: that of his face when coming across the Edwards' homestead laid to waste by Scar; of his contempt for the imbecilic noises of the young women rendered insane by their Comanche enslavement; and that of his face after having scalped Scar. Structured within the bookend shots of The Searchers, these close-ups capture a progression of Ethan Edwards' stages of understanding, in the realisation of who or what he is, of what he has become. However, these close-ups do not just capture Ethan Edwards the fictional character. They also capture John Wayne, the actor associated with earlier cinematic forays into the mythology of the West.) If I speak of cinema as mythology, I may be meaning ‘genre’ in this connection with cinema’s propensity for telling, propagating and expounding myths. However, I intend something wider than this. ‘Cinema as myth’ speaks of its own existence as myth, as something actually larger than life, a temporality outside of ‘real time’. Thus, it would seem, a film can only question the propagation of mythology by affirming the mythical status of the medium itself.

Two things follow from, or attach to, this. Firstly, the casting of John Wayne in the role of Ethan Edwards, and the framing of action against the backdrop of Monument Valley, is the mark of the questioning of that history. Note, for example, that Monument Valley is the backdrop to the clips from both Fort Apache and The Searchers. Visually it is the same location used for both these stories. Our regard for it within the specific contexts of those stories and their respective fictions, however, sees the same backdrop in different lights. This also translates into different understandings of the past through our imaginative responses to these films. In Fort Apache, Monument Valley serves as the visual legitimation for the heroic endeavours of the Cavalry officers in 'conquering the West'. (It is the justification for this action.) Monument Valley in The Searchers, on the other hand, embodies the loner status of Ethan Edwards and his inability to co-exist in the community of others. Furthermore, it embodies another kind of community—that of whites and Native Americans as fellow human beings, who share the same wilderness.

Secondly, in this we find Ford redeeming the genre in assuming responsibility for its past. This accounts for the distinctive character of cinema, and the objectivity it can achieve. The responsibility of acknowledging its own particular existence and its past (self-referentiality through imagery as representations of the world lies at its core) enables cinema to achieve a kind of objectivity that one cannot find in literature, say. This also captures something about the kind of imaginative task that belongs to the audience in their viewing and appreciation of films.
 
 

Suggested Film References

Blade Runner - The Director’s Cut (1991). Dir: Ridley Scott.
Fort Apache (1949). Dir: John Ford.
The Searchers (1956). Dir: John Ford.
Unforgiven (1992). Dir: Clint Eastwood.
 
 

© 1999-2002  Brendan Long
 

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AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY THROUGH CINEMA
 
 

Ethics on Screen and the Ethics of the Visual:
How should one live?

 

Introduction

We began the previous topic addressing self and others (or 'the other) as objects of metaphysical and epistemological concern. Our reflections have now introduced consideration of self and others as a matter of moral and ethical concern. When thinking about our relations to and with other human beings, along with the values in terms of which we conceive of that humanity we share with others, we inevitably address questions concerning right conduct or the kind of person we want to be. How should I treat or think about other people? What is the right way to act? How should I live my life? What sort of character should I have or develop?

Another question of moral import arises in connection with the idea of cinema itself. This could be styled as the question of the morality of cinema, with respect to the nature of cinema itself (and the trappings of realism that attend it as a photographic medium), and the nature of our imaginative engagement with cinematic fictions. Is cinema conducive to shaping a morally healthy consciousness? Is it possible for us to be better people through watching certain films? Is cinema in the grip of a problem that is unique to the kind of artistic medium that it is?

It appears that the very idea of watching films and our imaginative responses to them, along with that of how we think about films and the objects that feature in our experience of them, already imports a moral concern. This is a concern that belongs to both the history and the intellectual discussion of cinema, in so far as our thoughts about cinema go hand-in-hand with consideration of the nature of cinema and the power it exerts and possesses. These are some of the questions we will next turn to.
 

Ethics on Screen

The issue of ethics within philosophy appears to be ‘set’ by the consideration of two questions. The first is what is sometimes referred to as ‘Socrates’ Question’, or that which constitutes a starting-point for moral philosophy: ‘How should one live?’. How one takes that question suggests either normative ethics (what should I do? what one does, with respect to choice and action) or meta-ethics (what is a good life? what is a life worth living? what is ‘the good’? what one thinks).

Take, for example, the following remark by Peter Singer on ethics as ‘practical’:
 

[W]e cannot rest content with an ethics that is unsuited to the rough-and-tumble of everyday life. If someone proposes an ethic so noble that to try and live by it would be a disaster for everyone, then—no matter who has proposed it—it is not a noble ethic at all, it is a stupid one that ought to be firmly rejected. Ethics is practical, or it is not really ethical. If it is no good in practice, it is no good in theory either. Getting rid of the idea that an ethical life must consist of absolute obedience to some short and simple set of moral rules makes it easier to avoid the trap of an unworkable ethic. An understanding of ethics that allows us to take into account the special circumstances in which we find ourselves is already a major step towards attaining an ethics that we really can use to guide our lives. Peter Singer, How Are We to Live? Ethics in an age of self-interest (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1993) pp.172-73.

As straightforward as these observations may seem at first, we should note that Singer’s thoughts are shaped by his being a consequentialist. According to consequentialism, actions are not intrinsically right or wrong, good or bad. Firstly, the determination of the moral value of any action (its being right or wrong, good or bad) is case specific (or case sensitive). Secondly, the moral value of any action lies in its foreseeable consequences. Thirdly, the consequences of any action justify that action; i.e. actions can only be justified with reference to their consequences (providing that the action in question can indeed be justified).

Thus, there are a number of things going on here, or being claimed by Singer. First—and foremost—it is being claimed that there is a convergence between moral reasoning and practical reasoning, to the extent that ethics, or the ethical life, is fundamentally practical. (The practical as a criterion of morality, that which captures what is particular to or special about ethics.) Moral reasoning, as something expressed in a philosophical theory, or of the kind being espoused here, converges with that which is already available or accessible to us. That might seem to invoke a distinction between ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’. ‘Practical’ here, though, like ‘consequence’, is being used in a specifically technical sense, a term of art. ‘Practical’ is shaped by contrast with ‘absolute obedience to some short and simple set of moral rules’ and ‘the trap of an unworkable ethic’. This indicates the particular normative nature of consequentialism, in terms of its flexibility or case-sensitivity (or case-specificity). The contrast in question is between consequentialism as a teleological (the locus of value lies in the consequence, outcome or end of action) and those ethical theories which are deontological in nature, where deontology (acts are intrinsically right or wrong, good or bad, in themselves) is perceived to be moralistic or insensitive to the practical demands of life. Similarly, meta-ethics (in terms of which philosophers address questions such as ‘What is the good?’, ‘How to define goodness?’) is likewise insensitive to these demands.

To one end Singer is speaking about the move from meta-ethical to normative: guiding and directing practice. It is also a claim about the proper conduct of moral philosophy. Prior to WWII, moral philosophy was largely characterised as meta-ethical. However, post-WWII, this was perceived as inadequate, a  dereliction of the duty of moral philosophers. Given the nature of ethics, its practical dimensions, it was felt that moral philosophers should change, revise or give up the kind of questions they pose or respond to. If ethics is practical, then what moral philosophers should be asking are questions that directly pertain to decision-making, to guiding and directing practice. Hence the turn to ‘practical’ or ‘applied’ ethics; a field not so much dominating contemporary moral philosophy, but in some way independent of it.

Within the context of ‘Socrates’ Question’, philosophical responses to this question involve consideration of reasons and consequences (consequentialism), the rightness of acts (deontology, Immanuel Kant) or virtue and character (virtue theory and virtue ethics).

The ‘second question’ is Thomas Nagel’s ‘how the lives, interests, and welfare of others make claims on us and how these claims of various forms, are to be reconciled with the aim of living our lives’. This purportedly frames a ‘central question of ethics’, in terms of the divide between self-concern (ethical egoism) or other-concern (altruism). It also generates a certain kind of scepticism with respect to ethics and morality, vis-a-vis ‘Why be moral?’.

What role does the imagination play in this connection? Immanuel Kant wrote extensively of the role of moral examples, assigning them a significant role in moral instruction in that examples of good work and people engage our imaginative faculties and so constitute an opening of mind to the development of a predisposition to the good and a refining of moral thought. The power of example in this instance, though, is limited and diminished by Kant’s distinction between imagination/experience (as a sensuous function) and reason as the determinant of moral action. Examples serve as grounds for inspiration, engaging the imagination so as to open the ‘portals’ of the mind and allow reason to determine morally correct behaviour in accordance with the Moral Law. Imagination in this instance serves to bring the imperatives of the Moral Law closer to intuition, but in this it serves more of a sensuous function, pandering to the threatened incursions of our sensuous beings in the determination of action. The revelations of imagination (the very examples used, their particular detail) add nothing more to our understanding of goodness, morality or others as ‘ends-in-themselves’. They merely buttress the recognition of authority in the Moral Law in determining principles of action.

How, then, do films address the question of ethics? Are they confined to addressing normativity? Do they offer up exemplars of moral virtue (or vice)? Do they dramatise one’s difficulty in arriving at various choices and acting upon them? Do they dramatise the life of ‘a person’? Are the characters we identify with the stuff of our background beliefs, e.g. individuality, rights?

Take, for example, the film Seven (1995). How do we go about assessing that film’s morality? Do we (can we) ask of it ‘Is its “morality” true or moral?’. In posing the question of that film’s ‘morality’ and subjecting it to philosophical scrutiny, we may take ‘morality’ as a normative (or practical) concern, in the way we would concern ourselves with prescriptions for action or would turn to an area such as applied ethics (as if anything else here is anything but practical or applied). This belongs to one aspect of the question of what is arguable or comprehensible . Outside of ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘moral’, ‘immoral’, we may want to speak of - and assess - Seven’s ‘morality’ as ‘cheap’, in terms of its shaping thoughts about the world, with respect to human nature and the nature of good and evil. In exclusively emphasising the fear of evil, it deprives us of any sense of the possibility (let alone the relevance or practicability) of goodness (the realm of foolish, nonsensical ‘idealism’). The sense in which such attitudes or sentiments are out of place is not so that it is subject to extinguishment by the ‘facts’ or arguments in the world as a matter of fact (i.e. it is hopeless, cannot achieve or change anything), but its extinguishment is solely subject to the whim and fancy of the director’s (and screenwriter’s) particular vision, which sets itself up as beyond questioning or doubt. It is totally subject to that viewpoint and refuses (despite gestures) to countenance anything outside of that viewpoint. (Failings here not so much normative as metaphysical or ‘meta-ethical’.)

My thoughts on Seven may be subject to a number of possible objections, largely on the front of my somehow denying that this is indeed the way a number of people do experience and think of the world (my being guilty of some kind of moralism). What I have said does not deny that some people may be so afflicted or experience the world that way. That, indeed, is a distressing possibility, if not reality. But that does not necessarily entitle the general statement that the world is totally devoid of value, particularly the kind that fuels the very so-called ‘idealism’ snuffed out as mercilessly as that film’s own John Doe extinguishes life. It is still open to ask: should the world be that way? Do we wish that - consciously or willingly - upon our lives and those of others? I’d be surprised if anyone did.

Addressing ethics on the screen is a question of addressing complexity and ambiguity: not just a feature of films, but of any thoughts in attending to the nature of ethics. Films, I believe, act as a counterexample to the conceptualisation of morality that informs its treatment in moral and ethical theory.
 
 

Dead Man Walking (1995)

I turn to Dead Man Walking in this connection. Here, reasons and justifications are in the foreground; the question of value is what is in the background. That is to say, the point of this film, as well as our understanding of it, is grounded in matters more extensive than just essaying the issue of capital punishment, and its justification or permissibility. It is also not just a story about capital punishment or the value of human life (often taken today in terms of ‘worthiness’ or ‘valuable’). We are involved here in the very process of addressing the question of what value attaches to or is generated by the meaning of a human life: what it endlessly questions and what it means; how we act on it; how others respond; what it asks; how to express it. Dead Man Walking itself is an expression of that meaning. Thus, when we are confronted with the images of Matthew Poncelot’s execution, these images have the capacity to haunt us. Not so much because of their ‘shocking detail’ (emotional shock in the service of anti-capital punishment), but in virtue of the shocking realisation of the shallowness of this simple resolution to a complex question.

One may say: how does this help me? Can I be expected to do the same thing? It all seems too difficult, too complex. It is good enough for Sr Helen (and Earl Delacroix, for that matter), but surely I cannot be expected to do the same?

That seems a premature worry, if not somewhat misplaced as a concern. The film provides us with the vantage (detached) position to experience and comprehend this complexity; this denial only accesses one aspect or viewpoint. But in approaching such issues as questions, arguments or problems, it entitles us to recognise the complexity of detail involved, that cannot simply be dispensed with for the sake of clarity or simplicity. Okay, we may not do the same. It may not be asked of us, but: (1) that does not diminish recognising the specialness of Sr Helen. We dare not discount what she does; (2) her example offers a possibility of behaviour, of thinking and doing that is far from irrelevant or impractical; (3) being able to approach this complexity offers up possibilities for understanding, for discussion that very much have a part to play. They are far from idealistic, impractical or ruled out of question. That tendency only remains if you keep stressing a universalising tendency with one’s mind solely on ‘the individual’. Dead Man Walking indicates a much richer mode and form of moral discussion than can be properly attended to in a legislative mode.

The point being made here is that self-interest cannot be disengaged from other-interest or consideration of others. (1) That what counts as interest to my own  self is also an interest for other human beings. (2) In order to properly (and truly) understand what is of interest to myself - to properly appreciate or understand what counts as of interest to me, self-knowledge or understanding - necessarily involves consideration and understanding of others. (3) One is drawn to this understanding in that it underwrites the desire to be true to what one is essentially is. (Not as an isolated, abstract or rarefied entity, but as standing in relatedness to others.) In fact, the proper understanding of things such as, for example, pity, belongs to the acknowledgment of relatedness. This is what gives meaning to such things. (4) The sense of this necessity, hence all talk of motivation, is not too exhaustively cached in material or physicalist terms. (5) The spiritual dimensions of the ethical here are just as natural as any material, physical or physiological motivations, needs, desires.
 

The relation between art and morality

Art as vital to moral health and well-being [there is a close and direct relation between art and morality].

-lies in the contemplative dimensions of aesthetic appreciation. Attention to the specificity and individuality of objects standing in relation to other aspects of the world is a characteristic shared by moral and aesthetic attitudes and judgements.
-moral education.
-specific example of films: explore, dramatise a vast array of character types and forms of human interaction. [Consequences; exemplary figures, virtues, desirable character traits.]
 

Art as morally harmful or questionable [the tension between art and morality, in so far as moral value is taken to be the dominant value]

-if art is intended to challenge or confront our preconceptions and value schemes, even if this involves resorting to 'shock tactics', or morally questionable subject matter, where necessary in the pursuit of the aesthetic ideal, then art will involve us questioning the very categories of value that we apply and reflect upon.

An attempt to secure a value and significance for art that is independent of moral categories and judgements. (No matter what the moral effects of an aesthetic object [expand], those moral effects are deemed to be irrelevant to the determination of the aesthetic value or worth of that object.)

-one claimed difference between art and morality: morality is presumed to be essentially concerned with what we ought to do, as recommended or proscribed in the form of general rules, principles and judgements. No such obligations are taken to be entailed by art and aesthetic value. Art, for instance, is claimed to be about the object in all its specificity and particular detail, not so much as a means of capturing how the world is (how we experience it) but more as an expression of one's attitude towards the world. [See how the 'imposition' of moral value would be taken as a limiting of aesthetic technique as an action, with respect to subject matter, and the means of aesthetic realisation]
- attempt to break the claimed dominance of moral value. We find it in contemporary moral theory (Bernard Williams). We also find it in aesthetic theory, cultural studies and film theory. (There, in particular, moral value has come to be 'trumped' by political or ideological value as the dominant aesthetic value or ideal.) There is also a tendency to do away with all talk of 'aesthetic value', given its connection with ideals of truth, beauty and goodness and categories of moral evaluation. A kind of nihilism: art has nothing to do with value.
Click here to view a paper on the contemporary scepticism surrounding the dominance of moral value.
-absence of the contemplative attitude (in the case of films).
-source of emotional engagement, giving expression to some emotional states or attitudes that are best discouraged, than encouraged or promoted.
-connected to the enjoyment of morally deplorable acts or attitudes; degrading portraits of human beings and human nature, as models of life. For example, with literature, we enter into the thought processes and inner life of a morally deplorable individual. With film, we see morally deplorable acts performed within a particular context of identification and association. (1) Emotional engagement; (2) involving our emotionally and imaginatively lauding immoral behaviour or character traits. Also attitudes towards people as objects of emotional contact (e.g. objectification).
-Is the harm in question inner or outer? That is to say, is the relevant harm to be captured in empirical terms? In that case, we would be talking about the psychological harm to the viewer, along with the social ramifications and effects of certain films. [See where this sets up the poles of opposition in the debate on censorship and free speech. In the one corner, are those who claim that moral effects have no bearing on the aesthetic value of a film. In the other corner are those who argue that the moral effects do have a specific bearing on the aesthetic value of a film, to the extent that consideration of these moral effects 'trump' aesthetic considerations. By and large, these moral effects are subject to empirical determination and analysis, such as to give such analysis an air of objectivity. They also treat the film-maker or film as part of a causal chain, whereby one can remove the offending cause in order to stave off potentially harmful moral effects.

 There are also problems with the libertarian response to such issues, in emphasising the matter of rights. Rights claims typically entail that, if someone has a right to X, then others have duties or obligations towards that person in respect of X. In this they are largely concerned with procedural matters of justification and validation. Within the context under discussion, though, it can be used to effectively immunise films and film-makers from criticism outside of aesthetic concerns.]
 

A particular problem for cinema?

To reprise Roger Scruton's objection against the 'pornographic' dimensions of our responses to films:
 

The cinema has been devoted from its outset to the creation of fantasies. It has created worlds so utterly unlike our own in their smallest details that we are lulled into an acceptance of their reality, and persuaded to overlook all that is banal, grotesque, or vulgar in the situations which they represent. The cinema has proven too persuasive at the level of mere realization and so has had little motive to explore the significance of its subject. It is entirely beguiling in its immediacy, so that even serious critics of literature can be duped into thinking that a film like Sunset Boulevard expresses an aesthetic idea, instead of simply preying on the stereotyped fantasies of its audience.
 Moreover, the cinema, like the waxworks, provides us with a ready means of realizing situations which fascinate us. It can address itself to our fantasy directly, without depending upon any intermediate process of thought. This is surely what distinguishes the scenes of violence which are so popular in the cinema from the conventionalized death throes of the theatre. And surely it is this too which makes photography incapable of being an erotic art, in that it presents us with the object of lust rather than a symbol of it: it therefore gratifies the fantasy of desire long before it has succeeded in understanding or expressing the fact of it. The medium of photography, one might say, is inherently pornographic ('Photography and Representation' p.126).

These are fears shared by Maxim Gorky writing in 1896:
 

Your nerves are strained; imagination carries you to some unnaturally monotonous life, a life without colour and without sound, but full of movement, the life of ghosts, or of people, damned to the damnation of eternal silence, people who have been deprived of all the colours of life, all its sounds, and they are almost better for it....
   It is terrifying to see this gray movement of gray shadows, noiseless and silent. Mayn’t this already be an intimation of life in the future? Say what you will?but this is a strain on the nerves. A wide use can be predicted, without fear of making a mistake, for this invention, in view of its tremendous originality. How great is its productivity, compared with the expenditure of nervous energy? Is it possible for it to attain such useful application as to compensate for the nervous strain it produces in the spectator? This is an important question, a still more important question in that our nerves are getting weaker and weaker, are growing more and more unstrung, are reacting less and less forcefully to the simple “impressions of daily life” and thirst more and more eagerly for new, strong, unusual, burning, and strange impressions. The cinematograph gives you them?and the nerves will grow cultivated on the one hand, and dulled on the other! The thirst for such strange, fantastic impressions as it gives will grow ever greater, and we will be increasingly less able and less desirous of grasping the everyday impressions of ordinary life. The thirst for the strange and the new can lead us far, very far, and “The Saloon of Death” may be shifted from the Paris of the end of the nineteenth century to the Moscow of the beginning of the twentieth ['Gorky on the Films', in Herbert Kline ed. New Theatre and Film 1934 to 1937: An Anthology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1985) p.229].

The Ethics of the Visual: Censorship and Pornography

John Stuart Mill on Paternalism:

-’One very simple principle’ is actually two principles:
 

(1) Self-protection or the prevention of harm to others is sometimes a sufficient warrant for paternalism.
(2) The individual’s own good is never a sufficient warrant for the exercise of compulsion or coercion either by the society as a whole or by its individual members.

The argument [from Ronald Dworkin, ‘Paternalism’, in Morality and the Law, ed. Richard Wasserstrom (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company Ltd., 1971) pp.107-26]:
 

(1) Since restraint is an evil, the burden of proof is on those who propose such a restraint. [Does that restraint minimise harm or maximise benefit? Reasons that appeal to a greater good]
(2) Since the conduct which is being considered is purely self-regarding, the normal appeal to the protection of the interests of others is not available. [Purely self-regarding acts cannot be counterweighed by utilitarian appeal to a greater good]
(3) Therefore we have to consider whether reasons involving reference to the individual’s own good, happiness, welfare and interests are sufficient to overcome the burden of justification. [Paternalistic justifications are those that appeal to the good of the individual concerned; non-paternalistic justifications will appeal to a greater good in terms of the interests of others]
(4) We either cannot advance the interests of the individual by compulsion, or the attempt to do so involves evils which outweigh the good done.
(5) Hence, the promotion of the individual’s own interests does not provide a sufficient warrant for the use of compulsion. [Principle (2) above]

The ability or capacity to choose is more important than the wisdom of the choice.
 

With respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else.

He is the man most interested in his own well-being: the interest which any other person, except in cases of strong personal attachment, can have in it is trifling, compared to that which he himself has.

All errors the individual is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each other to live as seems good to the rest.

Mill’s only exception lies with slavery: ‘The principle of freedom cannot require that [one] should be free not to be free. It is not freedom to be allowed to alienate [one’s] freedom’. Ronald Dworkin has questioned Mill's exception. According to Dworkin, it is not implausible or incoherent that a person should freely choose to become a slave in order to preserve or enhance their autonomy, because it enables or defines the kind of life they want to lead. That is, there is nothing in the concept of autonomy that makes such a claim implausible or incoherent. Thus, an argument against slavery, according to Dworkin, cannot make an appeal to autonomy as its grounds. One would have to appeal to the idea of what is a fitting life for a person, which would be ‘a direct attempt to impose a conception of what is “good” on another person’. I am not sure what they means, nor what such an attempt would amount to.
 

Mill on Freedom of Speech

(1) Opinions are right or wrong.
(2) If an opinion is right it should be expressed in order to correct error.
(3) If an opinion is wrong, exposing its mistakes will enable us to develop a much clearer conception of the truth.
(4) Therefore, silencing free expression is always wrong.
 

Some further matters for consideration:

A distinction between ‘pornography’ and ‘the pornographic’: one refers to a specific determinate content (or representation), the other refers to a mode of presentation or representation, in terms of an attendant mode of consciousness (question of imagination, a psychologistic or cognitive concern). Something being pornography entails the pornographic, in that that is the mode of consciousness that attends that determinate object or content. However, the pornographic does not necessarily entail that what one is attending to is thereby pornography.

When Roger Scruton speaks of the medium of photography (hence cinema) as ‘essentially pornographic’, he takes photography and cinema as standing in a causal - as opposed to an intentional - relation to its subject. Here, the pornographic addresses nothing further than the subject offered or presented, as the immediate gratification or realisation of a narrowly restricted (and restrictive) fantasy or desire, in terms of which the recipient addresses the world or conceives of (identifies) themselves. There is something inherent in the medium that requires a flawed mode of consciousness or awareness, in thinking about and identifying with the world, what is in it and oneself.

A claim of this nature is conceptual, rather than empirical. In fact, it suggests that there is some failure - at least with respect to the aesthetic - in not rising beyond the empirical. There is the presumption here that the cinematic only stands in a causal relation to its subject, which triggers a similar causal mechanism between the viewer and what is viewed. The depiction of harmful actions causally triggers the realisation of these actions by a viewer. Is the further converse assumption that the depiction of correct action will generate the same activity in and by a viewer? That is, should we get the right kind of causal connection in place?

By and large, the question of harm is addressed here in empirical or causal terms. What we are often silent on is the issue of harm in its conceptual dimensions, vis-a-vis something being a harm in itself, or as harmful to the person who holds such views or entertains such questionable delights. More often than not, this is in virtue of its pointing to a more complex question, rather than the comforting simplicity of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. This is the domain of a significant conceptualisation of harm, that touches how one thinks of the world one moves in; not so much encouraging certain behaviour (causal question), as it is the uncritical promotion of certain attitudes out of which such behaviour stems (conceptual question).

The distinction between ‘cause’ and ‘symptom’: ‘Cause’ refers to some specifically causally determinate of action, such that, if objectionable, one merely staves off that cause. ‘Symptom’ is reflective of attitudes and conceptualisations pertaining to one’s relations to others in the world. (What it is a symptom of is something to be considered conceptually, rather than that over which action is to be taken.)  The two are not connected in the sense that, to remove a cause is to remove the symptoms (hence likelihood of the occurrence of certain actions).
 

Suggested Film References

Seven [aka Se7en] (1995). Dir: David Fincher.
Dead Man Walking (1995). Dir: Tim Robbins.
 
 

© 1999-2002  Brendan Long