by Bret Stalcup

Created on: March 05, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

The purpose of this essay is to examine Steven Mulhall's thesis that films can philosophize and make contributions to the field of philosophy. It is my position that film does have the capacity to do this, and that Mulhall's tripartite model of the ways in which films can exist philosophically is accurate and useful.

To begin with, I would like to look at the telos of his thesis; to what possible end could film serve philosophy? Mulhall states that he sees filmin this case, the Alien seriesas "making real contributions tointellectual debates" (Mulhall, 2002, 2). In this regard, the definition of "real contribution" has been argued among philosophers. For example, Paisley Livingston creates a dichotomy between philosophy that illustrates previously published philosophical ideas, and philosophy that realizes "a historically innovative contributionthe contribution would not be dependent on a subsequent paraphrase" (Livingston, 11). Leaving aside the question of illustration for the moment, this definition of philosophical contribution is problematic, as it implies an objective standard for philosophical knowledge; as if there is one great frontier of philosophy where only those who go where none have gone before are worthy to hew their mark. In philosophy, how much of the body of knowledge is truly independent of the influence of the history of philosophical thought? Knowledge sets a precedent, it builds upon itself and increases; much of philosophy is an ongoing process involving analysis, reflection, and the questioning of concepts that have been in play for, in some cases, thousands of years. If philosophy must be historically innovative and independent to make a genuine contribution then it is a primarily stagnant field, as by the same criteria would be most other fields of human endeavor; and this is not the case.

To explore further this concept of the contribution of film to philosophy it is useful to now examine Mulhall's definitions of the various ways in which "one might think of the films themselves as attuned to specifically philosophical concerns" (Mulhall, 2005, 67). First is "film as philosophizing" in which films "not only incite us to think about a variety of interrelated issues.but are themselves thinking about those issues (italics mine)" (Mulhall, 2005, 67). This is a very provocative phrase; what does it mean for films to think?

Baggini thinks that Mulhall is deliberately vague on this matter because "For if, as I have suggested, Mulhall is

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