The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 425-437, May 2022.

At the centre of theories of film form is the idea that the montage of different scenes produces cinematic time. Montage creates a conflict between different shots, and time (as a purely functional relationship between shots) arises out of montage as an abstract element.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 masterpiece Nostalghia allows us to rethink our ordinary notion of nostalgia and move beyond the idea of nostalgia as sentimental longing for the past, the fruitless yearning that allows us to avoid living in the present. The film suggests that nostalgia can help us notice that which is not a part of our current situation and to introduce new threads into the fabric of our world. Because of nostalgia, we become aware of perforations in the (...) existing order of things and, as a result, become capable of altering the status quo. The protagonist of Tarkovsky’s film, Gorchakov, a Russian poet visiting Italy, shows us that nostalgia is a violent voyage that never leads home but only helps us find and found a new–and always temporary–dwelling place. Nostalgia, then, is a journey to the home that never was, but to the home that might be. The final sequence of the film beautifully confirms this by placing Gorchakov next to his Russian home that turns out to be inside the ruins of the Cistercian abbey of San Galgano in Italy. This cinematic merging of two very different places and cultures creates a new world for Gorchakov and asks us to continue creating the places in which we happen to find ourselves today. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the films of Andrei Tarkovsky are particularly suitable for inducing feelings of the numinous. This suitability is a formal rather than semantic feature of his films, and is tied indelibly to what film scholars call ‘suture’. I with a summary of what film theorists mean by ‘suture’, before providing a principled defence of the Merleau-Pontian suture theory outlined by George Butte. Second, I will demonstrate that, in spite of the strength of Butte’s (...) formulation, the numinousness of Tarkovsky’s films pose an analytical challenge to his suture theory. Finally, I will then provide my own extension of Butte’s suture theory, arguing that, by virtue of the formal properties they possess, we encounter Tarkovsky’s films more like religious objects than ordinary films. The tenor of these encounters is why Tarkovsky’s films are appropriate loci for feelings of the numinous. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a reconsideration of the complex concept of mimesis, as it is deployed in the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno, which, I argue, provides some interesting and original avenues through which we may interpret some of the infinitely engaging if enigmatic films of Andrei Tarkovsky. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first, I explore Adorno's development and usage of the concept of mimesis, as well as the latter's fall into disfavour (...) since Habermas's influential 'communicative turn'. In the second part, I undertake to read some of Tarkovsky's work in an Adornian vein, with the hope of reconfiguring mimesis as a valuable and fruitful concept in understanding the somatic and extra-discursive elements within communication. What I call Tarkovsky's 'mimetic method' can be seen to follow Adorno's epistemological principle of the 'preponderance of the object', while testifying to the mimetic potential of non-discursive communication. In so doing, Tarkovsky's filmic work - with Adorno's critical theory - refutes the purely linguistic/discursive grounds of Habermasian communication. This implicit refutation works on two levels. It enacts forms of mimetic construction, at the first level, and calls forth acts of interpretation and mimetic reception, at the second. I argue that these features are in need of greater attention and elaboration. The works of Adorno and Tarkovsky, in my view, provide useful grounds for challenging and enhancing existing understandings of aesthetic and philosophic communication, by more fully appreciating their interconnectedness and complementarity. (shrink)

En su libro The Cinematic Footprint (2012), la teórica de los estudios sobre el cine Nadia Bozak propone un análisis de la producción cinematográfica basado en su relación con los consumos y los recursos naturales de los que ésta depende. Desde este punto de vista, este artículo parte de tres escenas de la filmografía del realizador ruso Andrei Tarkovsky para examinar, desde las condiciones materiales de su producción, un campo de interacciones entre imagen y transformación del paisaje más (...) allá de la representación. El trabajo de Tarkovsky es entonces analizado en este texto desde el marco de las relaciones trabadas a lo largo del siglo XX entre imagen, extractivismo y crecimiento vegetal. En particular, los planos examinados son puestos en relación con programas de colonización agraria, agricultura de precisión y técnicas de reforestación como el bombardeo de semillas. El contraste entre la naturaleza extractivista de la mediación por la imagen en estos casos y el carácter de "práctica de cine vegetal" con el que ha sido descrito el cine de Tarkovsky (Uhlin 2015) invitan a rearticular la diferencia entre imagen y crecimiento vegetal en términos de los llamados "medios elementales" introducidos durante la última década en el ámbito de la teoría de los medios. (shrink)

The science fiction films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris (1973) and Stalker (1979), are complex responses to the repressive atmosphere of Brezhnev’s rule, after the 7-year delay in seeing Andrei Rublev (1971) released publicly. By using science fiction—a genre that Tarkovsky openly maligned—he was able to fly beneath the radar of State censorship, and develop a nuanced response to the application of Marxist theory of religion in the Soviet experience. Arguing in these films (and in others in (...) his oeuvre) that humans still need the affective dimension of religion (though not the hierarchical, institutional elements of it that Marx had identified with sedation), Tarkovsky hid within his science fiction films a thoroughgoing critique of the Soviet application of Marx. This article uses the concept of “war machine” from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to analyze how Tarkovsky did this, and demonstrates that Tarkovsky’s engagement with Marx’s philosophy in these two films shares much in common with Deleuze and Guattari’s way of understanding human meaning making. (shrink)

En la película de Andrei Tarkovski _Sacrificio_ el mundo vive una amenaza de III Guerra Mundial apocalíptica, a la vez que las relaciones familiares del protagonista se hallan en una crisis que parece definitiva. Pero un último ritual tal vez invierta la situación. El artículo argumenta que el planteamiento y la cosmovisión de este gran clásico del cine pueden interpretarse según los códigos simbólicos de la alquimia, empapados de teología cristiana y de la mitología y la cosmología de la (...) Antigüedad, con Hermes como patrón, aunque el director lo lograra de una manera probablemente involuntaria, debido a sus intereses poéticos y espirituales. (shrink)

In this article I examine Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1962 film Ivan’s Childhood. The film tells a story about a twelve-year old Russian boy, whose family was killed by the Germans at the onset of WWII. Orphaned and dispossessed, Ivan began to scout for the Soviet troops. Eventually, he was captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo. Using a wide gamut of mythopoetic “articulations,” in this film, Tarkovsky shows how Ivan’s victimization affected him beyond repair, leading to the erosion (...) of his child identity and the emergence of a traumatic duality. The film therefore is not only a poignant condemnation of the war, but a disclosure of the victim phenomenon carried out by mythopoetic means. In my analysis of Ivan’s Childhood, I approach this phenomenon by focusing on the effects of trauma on the child, with a special emphasis on dreaming. For my theoretic, I employ the phenomenology of the child. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to outline a Spinozian-Deleuzian analysis of audio-visual experience and to combine this account with an embodied cognitive perspective on cinema. Thus, film experience integrates affection and intellection and is not a passive and contemplative phenomenon, but a constructive interaction that involves a creative encounter between the screen and the viewer. Furthermore, I will address the role of sad passions and the problematic relation between creation and resistance, also by drawing upon Primo Levi’s work on (...) memory and on the shame of being human. Consequently, I will argue that my Spinozian-Deleuzian perspective involves an idea of cinema and art as ethically productive events since they allow a creative opposition against all those forces that mortify and enclose existence. Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece Andrei Rublev offers the possibility to develop this discussion; in this biopic, the life of the famous Russian painter is pervaded by problematic questions upon the nature of God, the necessity of Evil, the role of art within a world of violence and misery and, at the same time, the tension and the marvel in the discovery of the real. Following the ideas on spectatorship outlined by Deleuze and combined with Spinoza’s thought, we can say that the film makes us perceive these issues through the embodiment and the engagement of the relations it describes. At the same time, the movie gives us the possibility to re-discuss these terrible questions revealing the active and productive nature of art, as different sequences (like the enigmatic prologue) demonstrate. A further aim of this article is, then, to show how this assemblage of different concepts is possible through the vivid and interactive dimension of film experience. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to outline a Spinozian-Deleuzian analysis of audio-visual experience and to combine this account with an embodied cognitive perspective on cinema. Thus, film experience integrates affection and intellection and is not a passive and contemplative phenomenon, but a constructive interaction that involves a creative encounter between the screen and the viewer. Furthermore, I will address the role of sad passions and the problematic relation between creation and resistance, also by drawing upon Primo Levi’s work on (...) memory and on the shame of being human. Consequently, I will argue that my Spinozian-Deleuzian perspective involves an idea of cinema and art as ethically productive events since they allow a creative opposition against all those forces that mortify and enclose existence. Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece Andrei Rublev offers the possibility to develop this discussion; in this biopic, the life of the famous Russian painter is pervaded by problematic questions upon the nature of God, the necessity of Evil, the role of art within a world of violence and misery and, at the same time, the tension and the marvel in the discovery of the real. Following the ideas on spectatorship outlined by Deleuze and combined with Spinoza’s thought, we can say that the film makes us perceive these issues through the embodiment and the engagement of the relations it describes. At the same time, the movie gives us the possibility to re-discuss these terrible questions revealing the active and productive nature of art, as different sequences (like the enigmatic prologue) demonstrate. A further aim of this article is, then, to show how this assemblage of different concepts is possible through the vivid and interactive dimension of film experience. (shrink)

I take it that the following is a desideratum of our theories in the philosophy of mind. A theory in the philosophy of mind should help us better understand ourselves as agents and aid in our theorizing about the nature of action and agency. In this paper I discuss a strategy adopted by some defenders of nonreductive physicalism in response to the problem of causal exclusion. The strategy, which I refer to as “intralevelism,” relies on treating mental causation as intra (...) level mental to mental causation, rather than as involving any inter level mental to physical causation. I raise problems for intralevelist theories of mental causation that stem from action-theoretic considerations. Specifically, I focus on the failure of intralevelist proposals to account for the problem of basic causal deviance in the etiology of action. To the extent that intralevelism fails to make room for basic causal deviance, the strategy fails to satisfy the aforementioned desideratum, viz ., that our theories in the philosophy of mind should be of use in theorizing about action and agency. The upshot is that intralevelism is a less promising strategy for nonreductive physicalists than it appears at first glance. (shrink)

This book examines three authors – Plutarch, Iamblichus and Augustine – who deeply impacted the ancient philosophical debates about divination, and highlights the complex relationship between philosophy and religion in Antiquity. Ce livre examine trois auteurs - Plutarque, Jamblique et Augustin - qui ont marqué les débats philosophiques antiques sur la divination et met en évidence la complexité des rapports entre philosophie et religion dans l’Antiquité.

Cultural schemas are a central cognitive mechanism through which culture affects action. In this article, we develop a theoretical model of cultural schemas that is better able to support empirical work, including inferential, sensitizing, and operational uses. We propose a multilevel framework centered on a high-level definition of cultural schemas that is sufficiently broad to capture its major sociological applications but still sufficiently narrow to identify a set of cognitive phenomena with key functional properties in common: cultural schemas are socially (...) shared representations deployable in automatic cognition. We use this conception to elaborate the main theoretical properties of cultural schemas, and to provide clear criteria that distinguish them from other cultural or cognitive elements. We then propose a series of concrete tests empirical scholarship can use to determine if these properties apply. We also demonstrate how this approach can identify potentially faulty theoretical inferences present in existing work. Moving to a lower level of analysis, we elaborate how cultural schemas can be algorithmically conceptualized in terms of their building blocks. This leads us to recommend improvements to methods for measuring cultural schemas. We conclude by outlining questions for a broader research program. (shrink)

Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as “Lorches have purple feathers” as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence (...) levels (e.g., even when only 10% or 30% of lorches had purple feathers). A second hypothesis, also confirmed by the results, was that novel generic sentences about dangerous or distinctive properties would be more acceptable than generic sentences that were similar but did not have these connotations. In addition to clarifying important aspects of generics’ meaning, these findings are applicable to a range of real-world processes such as stereotyping and political discourse. (shrink)

In MemoriamElena Mamchur8 July, 1935–14 December, 2023. The principle of ‘maximum inheritance’, put forward by Elena Mamchur, presupposes its effect in scientific cognition even during ‘radical cha...

We propose that human reasoning relies on an inherence heuristic, an implicit cognitive process that leads people to explain observed patterns (e.g., girls wear pink) in terms of the inherent features of their constituents (e.g., pink is an inherently feminine color). We then demonstrate how this proposed heuristic can provide a unified account for a broad set of findings spanning areas of research that might at first appear unrelated (e.g., system justification, nominal realism, is–ought errors in moral reasoning). By revealing (...) the deep commonalities among the diverse phenomena that fall under its scope, our account is able to generate new insights into these phenomena, as well as new empirical predictions. A second main goal of this paper, aside from introducing the inherence heuristic, is to articulate the proposal that the heuristic serves as a foundation for the development of psychological essentialism. More specifically, we propose that essentialism—which is the common belief that natural and social categories are underlain by hidden, causally powerful “essences”—emerges over the first few years of life as an elaboration of the earlier, and more open-ended, intuitions supplied by the inherence heuristic. In the final part of the paper, we distinguish our proposal from competing accounts (e.g., Strevens' K-laws) and clarify the relationship between the inherence heuristic and related cognitive tendencies (e.g., the correspondence bias). In sum, this paper illuminates a basic cognitive process that emerges early in life and is likely to have profound effects on many aspects of human psychology. (shrink)

Mainstream political liberals hold that state coercion is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. Critics argue that this public justification principle is self-defeating, because it depends on moral justifications that not all may reasonably be expected to accept. To rebut the self-defeat objection, I elaborate on the following disjunction: one either agrees or disagrees that it is wrong to impose one’s morality on others by the coercive power (...) of the state. Those who disagree reject PJP, they understand politics as war. Those who agree accept PJP, they understand politics as competition. Political competitors abide by PJP to avoid politics as war, by enforcing PJP on political combatants they engage in a war that is unavoidable. In both cases their exercise of political power has a justification that is reasonably acceptable to all. (shrink)

This book, a history of a religious category of ancient philosophy, is the first synthesis on the notion of daimōn in the Platonic tradition. It focuses on the relationship between demonology and, respectively, cosmology, the philosophical hermeneutics of religion and theories of the soul. Histoire d’une catégorie religieuse de la philosophie ancienne, ce livre représente la première synthèse sur la notion de daimōn dans la tradition platonicienne. Il étudie les relations de la démonologie avec la cosmologie, l’herméneutique philosophique de la (...) religion et les théories de l’âme. (shrink)

According to traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. This volume shows that philosophy of religion needs to take seriously alternative concepts of the divine, and demonstrates the considerable philosophical interest that they hold.

Some philosophers working on the metaphysics of agency argue that if agency is understood in terms of settling the truth of some matters, then the power required for the exercise of intentional agency is an irreducible two-way power to either make it true that p or not-p. In this paper, the focus is on two-way powers in decision-making. Two problems are raised for theories of decision-making that are ontologically committed to irreducible two-way powers. First, recent accounts lack an adequate framework (...) for explaining decisions by the reasons of agents. Second, accepting ontologically irreducible two-way powers into one’s metaphysic of agency implies an ontological commitment to substance dualism. An ontologically less-costly alternative to irreducible two-way powers is offered. It is argued that a reductive account of two-way powers in terms of what George Molnar called “derivative powers” should be accepted. The reductive account can provide us with the truthmakers for talk about two-way powers. Moreover, the reductive account does not share the liabilities of accepting irreducible two-way powers. (shrink)

This Element focuses on some core conceptual and ontological issues related to pantheistic conceptions of God by engaging with recent work in analytic philosophy of religion on this topic. The conceptual and ontological commitments of pantheism are contrasted with those of other conceptions of God. The concept of God assumed by pantheism is clarified and the question about what type of unity the universe must exhibit in order to be identical with God receives the most attention. It is argued that (...) the sort of unity the universe must display is the sort of unity characteristic of conscious cognitive systems. Some alternative ontological frameworks for grounding such cognitive unity are considered. Further, the question of whether God can be understood as personal on pantheism is explored. (shrink)

The standard liberal egalitarian approach to religious exemptions from generally applicable laws implies that such exemptions may be necessary in the name of equal respect for each citizen’s conscience. In each particular case this approach requires balancing the claims of devout believers against the countervailing claims of other citizens. I contend, firstly, that under the conditions of deep moral and ideological disagreement the balancing procedure proves to be extremely inconclusive. It does not provide an unequivocal solution even in the imaginary (...) case based on the biblical story of Abraham’s sacrifice, not to speak of real-life cases that are far less suggestive. Secondly, I argue that it is possible to consider demands for religious exemptions respectfully, without even challenging the way they are justified, but still reject them for principled reasons—namely, because these demands cannot be met without arbitrarily bending popular sovereignty to the dictate of religious doctrines. (shrink)

It has become increasingly popular to argue that legal positivism is actually a normative theory, and that it cannot be purely descriptive and morally neutral as H.L.A. Hart has suggested. This article purports to disprove this line of thought. It argues that legal positivism is best understood as a descriptive, morally neutral, theory about the nature of law. The article distinguishes between five possible views about the relations between normative claims and legal positivism, arguing that some of them are not (...) at odds with Hart’s thesis about the nature of jurisprudence, while the others are wrong, both as expositions of legal positivism or as critiques of it. Legal positivism does not necessarily purport to justify any aspect of its subject matter, nor is it committed to any particular moral or political evaluations. (shrink)

In her recent paper, “A Defense of Substance Causation,” Ann Whittle makes a case for substance causation. In this paper, assuming that causation is a generative or productive relation, I argue that Whittle’s argument is not successful. While substances are causally relevant in causal processes owing to outcomes being counterfactually dependent upon their role in such occurrences, the real productive work in causal processes is accomplished by the causal powers of substances.

This paper examines the ability of countries in Central and Eastern Europe to ensure appropriate protection of research participants in the field of increasingly globalizing biomedical research. By applying an analytical framework for identifying gaps in policies and programs for human subjects protection to four countries of CEE—Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, substantial gaps in the scope and content of relevant policies and major impediments to program performance have been revealed. In these countries, public policies on the protection of research (...) participants lack consistency and reliable mechanisms for their implementation. Impediments to program performance most often relate to inadequacies in the national research ethics systems with regard to organizational structure, budgetary support, supervision, and training. The level of research ethics capacity varies from country to country and depends on socio-economic and political factors of post-communist transition. The breadth and depth of the problems identified suggest that the current level of protection for research participants in CEE might be inadequate to the challenges posed by the globalization of biomedical research. In CEE countries, there is a need for strengthening research ethics capacity through modification of relevant policies and improvement of program management. The differences among the countries call for further research on identifying the best approaches for filling the gaps in the policies and programs aimed at ensuring effective protection of research participants. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Defending the distinction between believing and accepting a proposition, I argue that cases where agents allegedly exercise direct voluntary control over their beliefs are instances of agents exercising direct voluntary control over accepting a proposition. The upshot is that any decision to believe a proposition cannot result directly in one’s acquiring the belief. Accepting is an instrumental mental action the agent performs that may trigger belief. A model of the relationship between acceptance and belief is sketched and defended. The (...) consequences of the distinction between belief and acceptance, and the model of belief control sketched are then applied to the recent case made by Carl Ginet in defense of the conceptual and psychological possibility of agents exercising direct voluntary control over their beliefs. n. (shrink)

The article analyzes the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence. The article considers the subjectivity of artificial intelligence, determines its necessity for solving intellectual problems depending on the possibility of representing the real world as a deterministic system. Methodological limitations of artificial intelligence, which is based on the use of big data technologies, are stated. These limitations cause the impossibility of forming a holistic representation of the objects of cognition and the world as a whole. As a tool for deterministic (...) description of the universe it is proposed to use empirical-metaphysical general theory of systems, which is an extension of existing general theories of systems due to ontological justification of the phenomenon of isomorphism and definition of a limited set of laws, rules, patterns and primitives of forms and relations of objects in the universe. The distinction of natural (human) and artificial intelligence is considered, including the realization of multisystem integration of intelligence in physical, biological, social and spiritual systems. A philosophically grounded approach to ensuring the evolutionary properties of artificial intelligence is formulated, based on the inclusion of non-equilibrium mechanisms through which stability is realized. (shrink)