Abstract

One way that philosophy can be related to film is via the notion of experiment. This connection is usually discussed in terms of similarities between film and the thought experiments that can be found within philosophical texts. However, rather than subsuming film to the philosophical thought experiment, which risks missing what film itself contributes to the proceedings, it is more interesting to see how the cinematic medium might allow for forms of experimentation that go beyond what can be undertaken within the traditional philosophical text. Film as experimental in this sense offers enlarged possibilities for putting ideas and presuppositions to the test of experience. It can also be seen as pointing to an enlarged conception of what constitutes philosophical reflection itself. This is a Foucauldean idea of philosophy as a practice of thought that transforms the thinker, not through reasons justified by foundations, but through experiences that call one’s foundational assumptions into question and make it impossible to continue thinking in the same way.