CAN FILM SHOW WHAT (ANALYTIC) PHILOSOPHY WON'T SAY? THE “FILM AS PHILOSOPHY” DEBATE, AND A READING OF RASHOMON

Following in the footsteps of Stanley Cavell and Stephen Mulhall, I will argue in this paper that film can offer genuine contributions to philosophy. I will do so by trying to show that the main obstacles to consider film as capable of doing philosophy stem from rather restrictive views of rationality, cognition, meaning – and ultimately of philosophy and film themselves. I will present some of those obstacles and suggest ways of removing them by adopting a broader construal of those notions. The resulting understanding will then be further worked out by means of a reading of a specific film – Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon – which I take as exemplary of a fictional work of cinema capable of reflecting philosophically about the nature of reality and of our own existence. That reading will be enriched by means of a “Heideggerian interlude” dealing with the importance of moods in attuning us to the world. Finally, and with those considerations at hand, I will conclude my analysis of Rashomon and try to bring the main lessons of the paper home.