Philosophy Through Film

Expanding scholarly practice and public engagement

Philosophy has always travelled through different forms. Dialogue, print, radio, television and now digital film have each changed the way ideas are shared and encountered.

Philosophy Through Film asks a simple question: what can film do for philosophy that other forms cannot?

Supported by a British Society of Aesthetics Small Grant, the project will produce three films in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. These are not filmed lectures. Each begins with a serious philosophical question and is then developed specifically for the screen.

The aim is to see whether film can help us think more clearly about difficult ideas, without making those ideas simpler than they are.

Why film?

Aesthetics is a natural place to begin because so many of its questions arise from things we can actually look at: paintings, buildings, objects, exhibitions and collections.

Film allows the object and the argument to occupy the same space. A philosopher can show what they are talking about, draw attention to a detail, move through a gallery or building, and let images do some of the philosophical work.

That changes the nature of the explanation.

We are also interested in the possibility that filmmaking can generate philosophy rather than simply communicate it. Translating an argument into images can reveal gaps, force choices, and sometimes make a problem look different.

The films

The project will produce three films, each shaped around the question it is trying to answer. Some may be made in museums or galleries. Others may use animation, archive, voice-over or more experimental forms.

The first is Francis Bacon and the Time of Monsters, written by philosopher Ben Ware and made with the support of the Estate of Francis Bacon.

The film looks at Bacon’s paintings through questions of violence, embodiment, historical catastrophe and the monstrous. It asks why these distorted figures still exert such a powerful hold on us, and what they might tell us about the pressures and anxieties of the modern world.

[Watch Francis Bacon and the Time of Monsters]

Further films will be added here as the project develops.

Learning to make philosophy on film

Part of the project is practical.

The philosophers involved are not simply handing over a script to a production company. They take part in the whole process: developing the idea, writing for film, thinking about locations and permissions, working with the director and editor, recording voice-over or appearing on camera, and considering how the finished work reaches an audience.

The hope is that each contributor comes away not only with a strong film, but with a much clearer sense of how film might become part of their own philosophical practice.

We also want to share what we learn so that others can make use of it.

The team

Vanessa Brassey leads the project and is Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art at King’s College London. Her research focuses on emotional expression in art, imagination and perspective. Alongside her academic work, she is a painter and has more than twenty years’ experience in film and creative production.

Sacha Golob is Vice Dean and Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London, as well as the founding Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art. His work spans post-Kantian philosophy, phenomenology, aesthetics and contemporary European philosophy. He has also developed a number of projects exploring how philosophy can work in film.

Derek Matravers is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. His work includes aesthetics, philosophy of art, fiction, empathy and cultural heritage.

Film production is undertaken with Envis Media, which has worked with the Centre for Philosophy and Art on its films to date.

Our ambition

We want to make philosophy films that are genuinely philosophical.

That means keeping the difficulty, ambiguity and seriousness of the ideas, while also taking film seriously as a medium in its own right.

The ambition is to make work that is rigorous, visually strong and worth returning to.