Can cinema be a medium for philosophy? If so, how is the philosophizing done? Paisley Livingston explores the philosophical value of cinema. As a case-study for his intentionalist theory of authorship and interpretation he focuses on Ingmar Bergman's cinematic explorations of motivated irrationality, inauthenticity, and self-knowledge.

Paisley Livingston has a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University. He is Chair Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Humanities at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He has held teaching and research positions at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, McGill University, l'École Polytechnique (Paris), Siegen University, The University of Aarhus, Roskilde University Center, The University of Copenhagen, and Zinbin (Kyoto). His last book was Art and Intention (Oxford: Clarendon). His other books are Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Cornell), Literary Knowledge (Cornell) Literature and Rationality (Cambridge), Models of Desire (Johns Hopkins). He co-edited The Creation of Art (Cambridge) with Berys Gaut and The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film with Carl Plantinga.

• Introduction


• Illustrations


• Part One: Surveying cinema as philosophy


• 1: Theses on cinema as philosophy


• 2: Arguing over cinema as philosophy


• Part Two: An intentionalist approach to film as philosophy


• 3: Types of authorship in the cinema


• 4: Partial intentionalism


• Part Three: On Ingmar Bergman and philosophy


• 5: Bergman, Kaila, and the faces of irrationality


• 6: Value, authenticity, and fantasy in Bergman


• Conclusion