Aristotle (384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and the nature of taste; and functions as the philosophy of art. Aesthetics examines the philosophy of aesthetic value, which is determined by critical judgements of artistic taste; thus, the function of aesthetics is the "critical reflection on art, culture and nature".
Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Film theory is not to be confused with general film criticism, or film history, though these three disciplines interrelate.
John Henry McDowell is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, nature, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. McDowell was one of three recipients of the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, and is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the British Academy.
Peter Thomas Geach was a British philosopher who was Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds. His areas of interest were philosophical logic, ethics, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion and the theory of identity.
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In this text Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry and more literally "the poetic art," deriving from the term for "poet; author; maker," ποιητής. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into verse drama, lyric poetry, and epic. The genres all share the function of mimesis, or imitation of life, but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes:
- Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter, and melody.
- Difference of goodness in the characters.
- Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out.
The Physics is a named text, written in ancient Greek, collated from a collection of surviving manuscripts known as the Corpus Aristotelicum, attributed to the 4th-century BC philosopher Aristotle.
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions by being critical and generally systematic and by its reliance on rational argument. It involves logical analysis of language and clarification of the meaning of words and concepts.
Philosophy of matter is the branch of philosophy concerned with issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology and character of matter and the material world. The word matter is derived from the Latin word materia, meaning "wood", or “timber”, in the sense "material", as distinct from "mind" or "form". The image of wood came to Latin as a calque from the ancient Greek philosophical usage of hyle (ὕλη).
Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Focusing on modern European thought from Kant and Hegel to Adorno and Heidegger, Hammer’s research includes critical theory, Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, phenomenology, German idealism, social and political theory, and aesthetics. He has also written widely on the philosophy of literature and taken a special interest in the question of temporality.
Noël Carroll is an American philosopher considered to be one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy of art. Although Carroll is best known for his work in the philosophy of film, he has also published journalism, works on philosophy of art generally, theory of media, and also philosophy of history. As of 2012, he is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.
James Opie Urmson was a philosopher and classicist who spent most of his professional career at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a prolific author and expert on a number of topics including British analytic/linguistic philosophy, George Berkeley, ethics, and Greek philosophy.
Eliot Sandler Deutsch was a philosopher, teacher, and writer. He made important contributions to the understanding and appreciation of Eastern philosophies in the West through his many works on comparative philosophy and aesthetics. He was a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Caroline Joan S. Picart is a Filipino-born American academic who has written and edited numerous books and anthologies on philosophy and cultural studies, especially horror film. She is also a lawyer and had a radio show, The Dr. Caroline (Kay) Picart Show. In 2011, she received the Lord Ruthven Award, non-fiction category, for the book Dracula in Visual Media Film, Television, Comic Book and Electronic Game Appearances, 1921-2010, co-authored with John Edgar Browning.
Mary Margaret Anne McCabe, known as M. M. McCabe, is emerita professor of ancient philosophy at King's College London. She has written books on Plato and other ancient philosophers, including the pre-Socratics, Socrates and Aristotle.
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty was a Belgian-born American philosopher known for her work in the philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and moral philosophy.
Ann E. Cudd is an American philosopher and academic. She is the president of Portland State University as of August 1, 2023. She was previously the provost and senior vice chancellor and professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and dean of the college and graduate school of arts and sciences at Boston University. She also served as vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies, as well as university distinguished professor of philosophy, at the University of Kansas, and was an affiliated faculty member in the Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies Program during her time there. Cudd is considered one of the founders of analytical feminism, was a founding member of the Society for Analytical Feminism, and served as its president from 1995 to 1999. On March 10, 2023, Cudd was formally selected as the 11th president of Portland State University.
Feminist aesthetics first emerged in the 1970s and refers not to a particular aesthetic or style but to perspectives that question assumptions in art and aesthetics concerning gender-role stereotypes, or gender. Feminist aesthetics has a relationship to philosophy. The historical philosophical views of what beauty, the arts, and sensory experiences are, relate to the idea of aesthetics. Aesthetics looks at styles of production. In particular, feminists argue that despite seeming neutral or inclusive, the way people think about art and aesthetics is influenced by gender roles. Feminist aesthetics is a tool for analyzing how art is understood using gendered issues. A person's gender identity affects the ways in which they perceive art and aesthetics because of their subject position and that perception is influenced by power. The ways in which people see art is also influenced by social values such as class and race. One's subject position in life changes the way art is perceived because of people's different knowledge's about life and experiences. In the way that feminist history unsettles traditional history, feminist aesthetics challenge philosophies of beauty, the arts and sensory experience.
Murray Smith is a film theorist and philosopher of art based at the University of Kent, where he is Professor of Philosophy, Art, and Film and co-director of the Aesthetics Research Centre. He is the author of three books and numerous articles on film and aesthetics, and the co-editor of three collections of essays. He was President of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image from 2014 to 2017, and has served on the editorial boards of Screen, Cinema Journal, the British Journal of Aesthetics, Projections and Series. He has held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2005–6), and a Laurance S Rockefeller Fellowship at Princeton University’s Centre for Human Values (2017–18). He delivered a Kracauer Lecture in 2014 at the Goethe University Frankfurt, the inaugural Beacon Institute lecture in 2015, and the Beardsley Lecture in 2018, sponsored by Temple University at the Barnes Foundation.
Film and Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic journal that examines films from a philosophical perspective. It was established in 1994 and is sponsored by the Society for the Philosophic Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts. The journal has examined various film genres, including horror and science fiction films, and contributed to feminist philosophy of film. It has also published special issues on ethical issues and existential themes in film, as well as philosophical themes in the films of Woody Allen. For many years the journal was edited by Daniel Shaw at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. It is currently edited by Laura T. Di Summa. Publication of the journal is managed on the Society's behalf by the Philosophy Documentation Center.
