My first post to this list, long and insomniac. I'd like to try to clear up
a few of the notions in play so far, and see what people think about the
possibilities available for a "ethical criticism" (now having undergone
something of a rennaissance in literary studies) of film.

I think "Aristotelian complexity" is key to this discussion, in that it
implies the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge
(phronesis).

Actually, the question of whether artworks "do" philosophy or not is
probably better posed as an issue of knowledge. What knowledge do we gain
from aesthetic experience? What knowledge do we gain from philosophy?

Let's say that philosophy produces knowledge that is (i) propositional and
(ii) about fundamental concepts such as those of ethics or epistemology;
that is, philosophy proceeds in a certain mode in order to arrive at
knowledge about certain questions. Say rather more contentiously that there
is such a thing as non-propositional knowledge, that it is possible for this
to be "about" something, and that aesthetic experience communicates such
non-propositional knowledge. We could then claim that artworks can
communicate non-propositonal knowledge about the same questions dealt with
by philosophy. That knowledge is thus pertinent to philosophy, but
inaccessibile via its propositional mode of inquiry. In this case, I think
it would be fair to talk of an artwork as "doing" philosophy. This is
potentially confusing, however, since we're talking about quite different
modes. The claim would be, rather, that artworks can contain knowledge about
ethics or epistemology that is inaccesible to "philosophy" as such.

Such an argument relies on a number of assumptions, the principal being that
"knowledge" should not be restricted to a propositional sense. (It's worth
also noting the difference between extending the definition of "knowledge",
and extending that of "truth" -- of talking about artworks representing
non-propositional truths, as eg. Adorno, Heidegger and Gadamer do, albeit in
distinct ways). In terms of ethics, though, "knowledge" is the guiding
concept. The idea that we can "know how" and not simply "know that" returns
us to the Aristotelian notion of phronesis: practical knowledge (how-to)
gained through action and experience. In order to avoid collapsing such
knowledge into a propositional/theoretic paraphrase (Knowing how to act
compassionately = saying "I know that being compassionate is to do x"), we
have to introduce a complex intentional distinction: "how-to" knowledge is
not propositionally articulated by a subject to herself, but is manifested
on a pre-relective level. It determines a subject's concept-use or, to put
things in Kantian language, is a part of the conditions of her experience.
The issues involved in pre-reflective/reflective conceptuality and
experience just get immensely complicated here; I expect they'll provide
much interesting work in the coming years, eg. in responses to McDowell that
touch on the entire western tradition. This is all getting quite far from
the issue of aesthetics and knowledge, but it is, however, important to
think about just what is at stake, cognitively, in these assumptions about
non-propositional knowledge. Such questions of pre-reflective conceptual
activity can also, I think, be pursued in the direction of psychoanalysis
and ideology critique (though from everything I've read, Zizek's film
criticism is "exemplary"/interpretative, i.e. the films just illustrate the
theories, which stand alone fine.) The question is, I suppose, How do
artworks provide us with pre-reflective knowledge? But this is a question of
aesthetics, rather than a useful basis for criticism.

In terms of genre/activity, I'm quite happy bracketing "philosophy" as a
distinct form of rational discourse comprised of the exchange and
questioning of claims and their justifications. Easier said than done, since
the actual business of unpacking whether an inference from one proposition
to another is valid depends on a complex analysis of that proposition's
content and concept-use, and there is no meta-linguistic or meta-conceptual
level from which such linguistic or conceptual analysis can be conducted.
The absence of a metalanguage is an interesting point of contact between
pragmatism and deconstrution, which offer quite different accounts of "art
as philosophy". I would claim that "doing philosophy" is an activity that
foregrounds certain inferntial processes and concomitant language-use; it is
a certain activity capable of being "cited" in a literary work, but
nonetheless a "purely philosophical" work is not difficult, on these
criteria, to distinguish from a work of literature. I would not claim that a
philosophical work is "true" because of rhetorical or literary features in
which it is couched: the mark of propositionality is paraphrasability. The
deconstructive collapse of "literature" and "philosophy" (or "secondary
literature") into "text" effectively eliminates both categories, and
substitutes its own problematic pertaining to paradoxical aspects of
textuality. There is nothing *but* rhetorical effect. In this sense, one can
approach "philosphical" issues that originate in textuality both as manifest
in literature or philosophy, and blur the boundaries between the two easily.
The argument I guess is also extendable to film, insofar as images, like
written words, mask an absence, etc., as well as being full of their own
rhetoric (not to mention actual *dialogue*). You could even pursue a Simon
Critchley line and talk of films that "do" an "ethics of deconstruction" (in
relation to any film that consciously takes apart film language and meaning,
I guess). But that is already dependent on a rather specific understanding
of "ethics".

Still, if we're happy accepting that "philosophy" is a form of writing
distinct from literature, and a distinctive activity (assuming that
propositional content is paraphrasable, along with some sort of
pragmatic-holistic theory of language), the questions that remain are about
the nature of non-propositional content and knowledge. Quite apart from just
finding films that cite or illustrate certain philosophical problems, or
provoke philosophical reflection -- that is, that have recourse to some form
of paraphrase -- a film that "does philosophy" is really a film that
contributes non-propositional knowledge about philosophical topics.

(On the issue of provoking philosophical reflection, though: how far can we
abstract such reflection from aesthetic experience? Aesthetic experience is
not ultimately passive: reflective thought such as questioning/curiosity
about matters of plot, intention, etc., is part of the *experience* of a
film, not just a part of its subsequent criticism. Then there is whole issue
of reflective engagement and the V-effect, which you can see Haneke or late
Godard striving for.)

So how do we gain non-propositional knowledge about ethics from films? Does
this represent a potentially fruitful form of criticism (ie. Not just
interpretation: "this film shows this dilemma / illustrates this theory")?
On this last question -- I'm not actually convinced it does; the issue seems
more to be about aesthetics than the interpretation of individual works.
Whatever is "of interest", ethically, is that unparaphrasable element; any
other kind of commentary is going to be a kind of paraphrase, no? A proper
"ethical" engagement as a genuine act of criticism would thus involve paying
close attention to aesthetic features and exlaining *how* they are exemplary
of "Aristotelian complexity"; that is, to link a close-reading of some kind
to the way in which a film develops (or contributes to) "thicker" versions
of a certain ethical concept. The task of criticism would thus be to show
how these concepts are constructed by specifically aesthetic means. This is
not, ultimately, an act of interpretation.

Theoretically, I'm tempted to suggest that the most promising way for
"ethical criticism" is along these neo-Aristotelian lines, since the notion
of "phronesis" as distinct from theoretical knowledge seems to provide the
best account of non-propositional knowledge pertaining to ethics that could
be contained in an artwork. This thus fulfills the criteria set out at the
start. Though Aristotle's ethics reposes on an essentialism that is
problematic both for deconstructive and historicist sensibilities. A
promising, but ambitious route, would be to try to recast this all in
neo-Hegelian thought, maintaining something of Hegel's Aristotelian animus.

Another option is the "artwork as cognition" line or "artwork as
interlocutor". But again I'm not sure how far these develop from an
aesthetic theory to a form of criticism.

Rather than just trying to sort out "what kind of knowledge" we are dealing
with here, we should also be asking "what is the business of criticism, as
distinct from aesthetics?" Is "Art as Philosophy" criticism ultimately
trying to find something interesting to say about the unparaphrasable?



Chris Fenwick
ENS-Ulm

 


>   But a typical way of doing ethics is by presenting a thought
> experiment, which can be related to film (or literary) narratives.
> Philosophical thought experiments gain clarity through their thinness;
> related films gain Aristotelian complexity through their thickness. One
> difference is that in the philosophical examples there is usually a
> well-defined theoretical position stated and there is more discussion.
> 
> Always have thought that Laurel and Hardy could make something of Smith
> and Jones in Gettier's epistemological thought experiments.
> 
> j
> 
> On 10/14/10 9:18 AM, Shaw, Dan wrote:
>> but it seems that the problem is the word 'doing' rather than the word 'eth=
>> ics'. Many many fiction films are 'about' the ethical dilemmas of their pro=
>> tagonists; and it's hard to think of a film that doesn't adopt some sort of=
>>   ethical (or for that matter 'unethical') position on the drama/action it p=
>> ortrays
>> 
>> Glen is on to something here, and let me explain more clearly what I mean. =
>>   As I understand it, doing ethical philosophy most often involves defending=
>>   one's position on a particular moral issue by reference to one of more eth=
>> ical theories, Less frequently, moral philosophers propose entirely new eth=
>> ical theories or (more often), suggest ways to better articulate already ex=
>> isting moral theories.
>> 
>> By analogy, films do ethical philosophy when they take positions on moral i=
>> ssues...this sometimes involves actually posing arguments, but always invol=
>> ves how the position is depicted within the narrative.  In Gone Baby Gone, =
>> it is clear that the film embraces Casey Affleck's ethical position, both f=
>> rom the arguments he offers to defend his choice (especially to his partner=
>> /lover) and from the way he occupies the central position in the narrative =
>> (as well as the other ways in which we are led to identify with him),  Sinc=
>> e I believe that Nietzsche was indeed a philosopher, and that his conceptio=
>> n of philosophizing was not offering deductive arguments but alternative wo=
>> rld views, that seems to qualify such films as doing philosophy.
>> 
>> Another good example for me is Dead Man Walking, which is convincingly agai=
>> nst the death penalty while providing a pretty good representation of the o=
>> pposite position (unlike the Life of David Gale).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Professor Daniel Shaw
>> Chair, Philosophy Department
>> Lock Haven University     (570) 484-2052
>> Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
>> 
>> "Hope is the thing with feathers--/ that perches in the soul--/
>> and sings the tune without the words--/ and never stops at all."
>> 
>> Emily Dickinson
>> ________________________________
>> 
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