New lecture series: Cinema and the mind

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Fridays, weeks 5 to 8 (starting 28 May), 4pm (UK time) on Microsoft Teams
 

This is a new lecture series convened by Emmanuel Ordonez Angulo under the Philosophy Faculty’s graduate lecture scheme.  Many students on the MSt in Film Aesthetics will be interested in this series and wish to attend.  The lectures will allow much room for discussion, aiming at fruitful interaction between philosophers and film scholars.

A course breakdown with readings is attached, and there follows a summary from the lecturer (whom you may contact directly with any questions).


The assumption is often found in the study of film that there is a passage running from the aesthetic to the epistemic to the ethical to the political. Films don’t only have a power to induce aesthetic experiences; they also have the power to give us knowledge. And this knowledge can be normative in nature. It can be knowledge about what is good, both ethically – in terms of how we treat our fellow creatures – and politically – of how we relate to the community. Much of the epistemic and normative power cinema is regarded to have stems from its distinctive resources. These resources can be cashed out in terms of the medium’s power to steer the phenomenology of the audience’s perceptual and affective experience. 

In these lectures we will draw on recent work in both philosophy of film and fiction and philosophy of mind to attempt an exploration of cinema’s power to engage the moral imagination by taking, as a guiding thread, a paradigmatic end of art: to have viewers empathize with the suffering of others. The lectures are conceived as a space of discussion rather than of information delivery. We will read and view material from academic and non-academic sources, written by philosophers, scientists and artists. Film scholars, philosophers, film buffs and everyone else welcome!

View the full programme