Concepts in Film Theory is a continuation of Dudley Andrew's classic, The Major Film Theories. In writing now about contemporary theory, Andrew focuses on the key concepts in film study -- perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, evaluation, identification, figuration, and interpretation. Beginning with an introductory chapter on the current state of film theory, Andrew goes on to build an overall view of film, presenting his own ideas on each concept, and giving a sense of the (...) interdependence of these concepts. Andrew provides lucid explanations of theories which involve perceptual psychology and structuralism; semiotics and psychoanalysis; hermeneutics and genre study. His clear approach to these often obscure theories enables students to acquire the background they need to enrich their understanding of film -- and of art. (shrink)

Preface: The target of film theory -- Camera searching in the world -- Is a camera essential? -- Cahiers axiom -- Tracing Bazin's trace -- Images contested today -- Editor's discovery of form -- Bazin's forerunners -- Documentaries in the cauldron of history -- Cahiers line -- Pursuing cinema in the twenty-first century -- Projector as spectator's searchlight -- Power of projection -- Opening the screen's dimensions -- Frame as threshold -- Writing out of the frame -- Evolution of the (...) subjects of cinema -- Modern film: Between classic and avant-garde -- Ontogeny of cinema -- Credits and auteurs: An ecology of adaptation -- Fidelity: The economy of adaptation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 43-69 [Access article in PDF] Tracing Ricoeur Dudley Andrew François Dosse. Paul Ricoeur: Les Sens D'une Vie. Paris: La Découverte, 1997. [PR] The Time of the Tortoise Gilles Deleuze chose not to see the end of the century that Michel Foucault claimed would be named after him, a century that began just as philosophy registered the aftershocks caused by the work of his closest (...) progenitors, Nietzsche and Bergson. Amplifying the waves they made with tempests of his own, Deleuze tried to capsize the flat-bottom boat of academic philosophy by insisting that it look beyond its own discourse for both the life and the vocabulary to account for life that should be its only mission. Scanning French philosophy for what it might contribute to art, fiction, and cinema, I invoke the stirring character of Deleuze, but I do so to deflect attention to another figure, Paul Ricoeur, whom Deleuze conveniently sets off by contrast.Less than a decade since his death, Deleuze is in danger of having ceded his claim to Ricoeur, the real long-distance runner, who is now pressing his publications into the new century, moving relentlessly beyond his exhausted reviewers. Last year, a fanfare of publicity greeted La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli, another magisterial tome appearing too late to be included in François Dosse's intellectual biography or in my overview here, which lifts off from that biography. Ricoeur, destined to keep writing--unable to conclude his conversation with philosophy--has outlasted Deleuze, whose notoriety derives from the radical break he makes with the thought of our times, for his abrupt deviations and more abrupt conclusions. Ricoeur's reputation rests seldom on anything conclusive but instead on his persistent interaction with and deployment of so much of that thought. By accident or by savvy design, Ricoeur's trajectory (initiated in the phenomenological atmosphere of the prewar era) has taken him through myth criticism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, language philosophy, analytic philosophy, deconstruction, poetics, historiography, ethics, and epistemology. He carries his learning forward to each new endeavor, not believing in "the radical break" or the prefix post-.François Dosse tracks Ricoeur in a magnificent account that places its subject in relation to each of these movements. But Parisian academic fashion forms only one facet of a life whose brilliance is refracted as well by theology, politics, and a remarkable social network. The thickness of his life evidently provides Ricoeur the necessary ballast to maintain his orientation on the stormy seas of intellectual debate. In fact, across a span of seventy years of uninterrupted reading and writing, he has anticipated, invoked, or debated virtually every important school of French thought, doing so in a way that both establishes their value and serves his own agenda. Ricoeur profits from the productive tension that results, even--indeed, especially--when this brings about a dislocation of his views. These exchanges inevitably leave his own ideas clearer, more defensible, and invulnerable to charges of parochialism. Although Ricoeur concludes his three-volume Time and Narrative with an aggressive chapter explicitly asking, [End Page 43] "Should We Renounce Hegel?," there is something deeply Hegelian about this strategy of taking on, then managing to assimilate, all comers so as to emerge stronger. Ricoeur may not share Hegel's limitless arrogance (literally arrogating everything to himself), but his humility is equally ambitious.There was never any question for Deleuze about renouncing Hegel. His antipathy to this "philosophe de l'État" was immediate, total, and itself completely arrogant. As for Ricoeur, Deleuze apparently avoided the man Dosse dubs "philosophe de la Cité," at least before 1986. Then, he links their names after each had just published a multivolume treatise on temporality and fabulation, Deleuze's cinema books picking up the notion of "bifurcated time" that Ricoeur had just developed in Time and Narrative. Proust was explicitly a key source for both of their studies. But apparently, and outwardly, it gets no closer than this. In concatenating these two French philosophers, I follow the lead of Olivier Mongin, who finds them both to be supreme philosophers of time, yet incompatible on... (shrink)

This essay argues that Mark C. Murphy's original contribution to natural law ethics succeeds in finding a way between older metaphysical and newer purely practical approaches in this genre. Murphy's reconstruction of the function argument, critique of subjectivist theories of well-being, and rigorous formulation of a flexible welfarist theory of value deserve careful attention. I defend Kant against Murphy's critique and argue that Murphy faces the problem of showing that all his basic goods are morally inviolable. Although I endorse Murphy's (...) critique of radical virtue ethics, I raise objections to the basic moral norms he derives from his list of goods, and to the analysis of peace of mind and happiness as basic goods. (shrink)

“What do you see when you look at your face in the mirror?” asks J. David Velleman in introducing his philosophical theory of action. He takes this simple act of self-scrutiny as a model for the reflective reasoning of rational agents: our efforts to understand our existence and conduct are aided by our efforts to make it intelligible. Reflective reasoning, Velleman argues, constitutes practical reasoning. By applying this conception, _Practical Reflection_ develops philosophical accounts of intention, free will, and the foundation (...) of morals. This new edition of _Practical Reflection_ contains the original 1989 text along with a new introduction and is the latest entry in The David Hume Series of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Reissues, which keeps in print previously published indispensable works in the area of cognitive science. _ _ _ _. (shrink)

A recent focus on philosophical methodology has reinvigorated ordinary language philosophy with the contention that philosophical inquiry is better served by attending to the ordinary use of language. Taking cues from findings in the social sciences that deploy methods utilizing language, various ordinary language philosophers embrace a guiding mandate: that ordinary language usage is more reflective of our linguistic and conceptual competencies than standard philosophical methods. We analyze two hypotheses that are implicit in the research from which ordinary language approaches (...) take their cues. This pair of optimistic assumptions (a) bind word meanings to properties of their corresponding concepts and (b) regard language as a direct reflection of our underlying cognitive processes and competencies. Polysemy and pragmatics complicate each assumption. Because the ordinary language philosopher’s methodological mandate compels us to consider how individuals process the utterances they encounter in deciphering the communicative intentions of speakers, failing to attend to the import of polysemy and pragmatics in philosophical and empirical methods has the potential to frustrate the aims of their insightful mandate. The significance of those two complications is worked out with the case study of knowledge. (shrink)

For some, ‘transformation’ is the new non-reductive and non-normative ‘development’, attracting attention from interdisciplinary array, but of particular theoretical and practical interest to Spirituality scholars. In philosophical context, transformation theory has suffered greatly from ’agency-structure’ dualism and suspension of ontology in body-mind dualism and rationalist virtue controversy. Drawing on the work of Bhaskar, Segal and Slote, a renegotiated and more meaningful sense of transformation emerges from their cumulative analytical and conceptual enrichment. In the complexity of possible relations between self, self-concept (...) and society, lies the traditionally neglected transformative middle of sui-generis human depth. In redress, arguably, Bhaskar’s meta-philosophy accommodates Segal’s experiential depth analysis and Slote’s understanding of empathy and receptivity as valuable insights for ’awakening’ to transformative process. (shrink)

Through a study of a sophisticated contemporary scientific experiment, it is shown how and why use of the term 'observation' in reference to that experiment departs from ordinary and philosophical usages which associate observation epistemically with perception. The role of "background information" is examined, and general conclusions are arrived at regarding the use of descriptive language in and in talking about science. These conclusions bring out the reasoning by which science builds on what it has learned, and, further, how that (...) process of building consists not only in adding to our substantive knowledge, but also in increasing our ability to learn about nature, by extending our ability to observe it in new ways. The argument of this paper is thus a step toward understanding how it is that all our knowledge of nature rests on observation. (shrink)

This paper argues that the dominance of linear models has led many sociologists to construe the social world in terms of a "general linear reality." This reality assumes (1) that the social world consists of fixed entities with variable attributes, (2) that cause cannot flow from "small" to "large" attributes/events, (3) that causal attributes have only one causal pattern at once, (4) that the sequence of events does not influence their outcome, (5) that the "careers" of entities are largely independent, (...) and (6) that causal attributes are generally independent of each other. The paper discusses examples of these assumptions in empirical work, consider standard and new methods addressing them, and briefly explores alternative models for reality that employ demographic, sequential, and network perspectives. (shrink)

An impressive characteristic of Dudley Shapere's studies in the philosophy of the sciences has been his dogged reasonableness. He sorts things out, with logical care and mastery of the materials, and with an epistemological curiosity for the historical happenings which is both critical and respectful. Science changes, and the philosopher had better not link philosophical standards too tightly to either the latest orthodox or the provocative up start in scientific fashions; and yet, as critic, the philosopher must not only (...) master the sciences but also explicate their meanings, not those of a cognitive never-never land. Neither dreamer nor pedant, Professor Shapere has been able to practice the modern empiricist's exercises with the sober and stimulat ing results shown in this volume: he sees that he can be faithful to philosoph ical analysis, engage in the boldest 'rational reconstruction' of theories and experimental measurements, and faithful too, empirically faithful we may say, to both the direct super-highways and the winding pathways of conceptual evolutions and metaphysical revolutions. Not least, Shapere listens! To Einstein and Calileo of course, but to the workings of the engineers and the scientific apprentices too, and to the various philosophers, now and of old, who have also worked to make sense of what has been learned and how that has happened and where we might go wrong. (shrink)

This article presents a response to Néron and Norman’s contention that the language of citizenship is helpful in thinking about the political dimensions of corporate responsibilities. We argue that Néron and Norman’s main conclusions are valid but offer an extension of their analysis to incorporate extant streams of literature dealing with the political role of the corporation. We also propose that the perspective on citizenship adopted by Néron and Norman is rather narrow, andtherefore provide some alternative ways in which corporations (...) and citizenship might be brought together. We conclude by suggesting that, rather than simply applying the concept of citizenship to corporations, we now need to go further in exploring how corporations might play an active role in reconfiguring the whole notion of citizenship itself. (shrink)

This paper examines the "causal theory of reference", according to which science aims at the discovery of "essences" which are the objects of reference of natural kind terms (among others). This theory has been advanced as an alternative to traditional views of "meaning", on which a number of philosophical accounts of science have relied, and which have been criticized earlier by the present author. However, this newer theory of reference is shown to be equally subject to fatal internal difficulties, and (...) to be incompatible with actual science as well. Indeed, it rests on assumptions which it shares with the purportedly opposing theory of meaning. Behind those common assumptions is the supposition that the nature of science can be illuminated by an examination of alleged necessities of language which are independent of the results and methods of scientific inquiry. An alternative view of science is proposed, according to which the goals and language of science develop as integral parts of the process of demarcating science from non-science, a process in which the notion of a "reason" gradually assumes a decisive role. On this view, the comparability, competition, and development of scientific ideas are understood without reliance on either common "meanings" or common "references" as fundamental tools of analysis. (shrink)

An examination of Galileo's thought and work that focuses on his contributions to modern science.