Introduction I: A Philosopher Goes to the Cinema

Abstract

Why might a philosopher want to go to the cinema? One reason, of course, could be just to watch the film, to be entertained, etc. Wittgenstein is alleged to have spent many happy hours in the Cambridge fleapits of the 1930s where his choice of viewing was often the most banal of Hollywood fare: ‘oater’ cowboy movies, Busby Berkeley musicals, and so on. We might see film here as a relief from the pressures of thinking philosophically.² In this sense, film is philosophically no more significant than reading detective novels, going fishing, or indulging in any other pastime that distracts one or stimulates other aspects of oneself than the purely intellectual.

Film is made for philosophy; it shifts or puts different light on whatever philosophy has said about appearance and reality, about actors and characters, about scepticism and dogmatism, about presence and absence. — Stanley Cavell¹