Philosophy of Film: A Book Series by Brill
Still from Hitchcock, I Confess
General Editor: Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Gulf University for Science and Technology
Over the last several decades an increasing number of people have studied film with a general interest in philosophy. Philos-sophia, the love of wisdom, is an attempt at interpreting or questioning human existence and the world in its entirety. Naturally film can be one of its subjects. In this series, philosophical writers account for their experience of specific films, directors, certain themes, or the phenomenon of film in general. Philosophy of film exceeds the schedule of mere interpretation and puts film in relationship with classical philosophical questions such as (its own) essence, truth, or beauty. These reflections can also take the form of film aesthetics and film theory, which are philosophical inasmuch as their approaches are methodologically sophisticated and transgress pure empiricism. Benefiting from the intellectual wealth of the entire history of the humanities, this series is an ideal source for anyone interested in the philosophical dimensions of cinema.
Link to Brill
Editorial Board:
Nathan Andersen, Eckerd College
Costica Bradatan, Texas Tech University at Lubbock
John Caruana, Ryerson University
Rey Chow, Duke University
Hye Seung Chung, Colorado State University
Dan Flory, Montana State University
András Bálint Kovács, Budapest University (ELTE)
Jason C. Kuo, University of Maryland
Robert Sinnerbrink, Macquarie University
Daniel Shaw, Lock Haven University †
Kevin Stoehr, Boston University
Hunter Vaughan, Oakland University
Call for Book Proposals
Submission Guidelines:
Monographs, edited volumes as well as "Companions To..." are welcome. The minimum length is 75000 words main text. Please send a book proposal to botz.t@gust.edu.kw and thorstenbotz@hotmail.com.
Your proposal should contain a “table of contents,” a summary (1000–1400 words), a CV and this SUBMISSION FORM. Do indicate when you expect the final manuscript to be ready. Also tell us how many chapters have already been published beforehand (typically we limit it to two). All final manuscripts must come in perfect English.
The complete manuscript will be double-blind peer reviewed by two external reviewers according to Brill guidelines. Manuscripts will not be accepted on the basis of proposals, sample chapters, or long abstracts.
Your MS should not be simultaneously submitted to another press.
Download Submission Guidelines Download Submission Form Style Guide
About Brill: Brill is an international academic publisher founded in Leiden, Netherlands in 1683. Brill today publishes more than 200 journals and around 700 new books and reference works each year. Link to Brill website
Important information for anybody considering publishing in this series: Brill books can also be used as textbooks. Brill's MyBook program enables students to purchase a paperback copy of any book provided they have access to the e-book version. More about the MyBook program here.
Open Access: oftentimes authors and contributors have funding to make their publication available in OA or may wish to consider applying for funding via their institutions. Please look at Brill’s General Open Access Information.
So far published:
William C. Pamerleau:
Narrative, Film, and Identity: How Cinema Impacts the Meaning of Life (2024)
ISBN: 978-90-04-71107-5
Our identities are shaped by narratives, and cinema contributes to that process. While there is substantial scholarship on both narrative identity and film narrative, there is very little investigation of the intersection between them. This work provides that, with particular attention to how the interaction between film narratives and life narratives affect the meaning of life. Traditional issues like spectator activity and realism appear in a different light when viewed through this interaction. It also reveals how film can both help and hinder the meaning or our lives by sustaining oppressive narratives or promoting new narrative possibilities. Table of Contents
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and Giannis Stamatellos (eds.):
Parasite: A Philosophical Exploration (2022)
ISBN: 978-90-04-52151-3
Parasite is a philosophically interesting film because it presents the ethico-biological problem of parasitism in a metaphorical and artistic fashion. Michel Serres, in his book called The Parasite, holds that parasites are not useless, but that they establish communication between different spheres and are able to transform large scale organisms. Parasites import coincidences, activate defence systems, and establish new links with the host. In this book, philosophers explore the film from various philosophical angles: the ancient satirist Lucian’s De Parasito, Nietzsche’s concept of “the vengeance of the weak,” Dostoyevsky’s “Underground,” communism, and many more. More
Christine Reeh-Peters, Stefan W. Schmidt, and Peter Weibel (eds.):
The Real of Reality: The Realist Turn in Contemporary Film Theory (2021)
ISBN: 978-90-04-46676-0
This book provides philosophical insight into the nature of reality by reflecting on its ontological qualities through the medium of film. The main question thereby is whether we have access to reality through film that is not based on visual representation or narrations: Is film—in spite of its immateriality—a way to directly grasp and reproduce reality? Why do we perceive film as “real” at all? What does it mean to define as an ontological feature of reality its own reproducibility? And what does film as a medium exactly show? The contributions in this book provide, from a cinematic perspective, diverse philosophical analyses to the understanding of the challenging concept of “the real of reality”. Table of Contents
Martin Rossouw:
Transformational Ethics of Film: Thinking the Cinemakeover in the Film-Philosophy Debate (2021)
ISBN: 978-90-04-46087-4
What is ‘the good’ of the film experience? And how is this question answered by the prevalent idea that films can be a form of philosophy? Charting new routes for film ethics, Martin P. Rossouw develops a critical account of the transformational ethics at work within the ‘film as philosophy’ debate. Whenever philosophers claim that films can do philosophy, they persistently also put forward edifying practical effects – potential transformations of thought and experience – as the benefit of viewing such films. Through rigorous appraisals of key arguments, also with reference to the cinema of Terrence Malick, Rossouw pieces together from the debate a distinct vision of film spectatorship as a practice of self-transformation – an inner makeover through cinema: a cinemakeover. Table of Contents Read review
Shai Biderman and Michael Weinman (eds.):
Plato and the Moving Image (2019)
ISBN: 978-90-04-39829-0
Plato and the Moving Image shows how and why debates in the philosophy of film can be advanced through the study of the role of images in Plato’s dialogues, and, conversely, why Plato studies stands to benefit from a consideration of recent debates in the philosophy of film. Contributions range from a reading of Phaedo as a ghost story to thinking about climate change documentaries through Plato’s account of pleonexia. They suggest how philosophical aesthetics can be reoriented by attending anew to Plato’s deployment of images, particularly images that move. They also show how Plato’s deployment of images is integral to his practice as a literary artist. Table of Contents
T. Botz-Bornstein and Giannis Stamatellos (eds.):
Plotinus and the Moving Image: Neoplatonism and Film Studies (2018)
ISBN: 978-90-04-35716-7
Can the philosophy of Plotinus’ (204/5–270) be used for film studies? In this volume, twelve philosophers discuss Neoplatonic models of thinking in film and film theory. The result is an original contribution to the philosophy of film. Film is a unique medium for a rapprochement of our modern consciousness with the thought of this philosopher of Late Antiquity. The Neoplatonic vestige is worth exploring in the context of the newly emerging “Cinema of Contemplation.” Bergson’s and Deleuze’s time-image is compatible with Plotinus’ theory of time as a transitory movement of the soul. Plotinus’ search for the “intelligible” that can be grasped neither by mere sense perception nor by abstraction leads to a fluent way of seeing that is interesting for film theorists. More
Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience (2017)
ISBN: 978-90-04-35696-2
Moving Memento Mori Pictures explores how viewers experience documentary films as memento mori. The Latin injunction memento mori is commonly rendered in English as “remember mortality” or, more directly, “remember that you must die.” This powerful injunction is given in artifacts, including texts and images. Memento mori instructs, entices, and moves a viewer toward consciousness of one’s final demise. Memento mori appears widely in cultural history, including in art, literature, photography, and film, but relatively little sustained attention has been put upon them together. Documentary films in particular may be seen to take memento mori as their charge – they instruct viewers in consciousness of mortality. Table of Contents