Читать книгу The Matter of Vision - Peter Wyeth - Страница 18

This project represents the rejection of the whole of that philosophical tradition originating with Kant and German Idealism, in favour of a materialist analysis based in science and upon scientific method. The notion of scientific method identified here is one enlarged by the addition of Emotion into the paradigm, a change regarded in itself as revolutionary. That diplomatic addition to the paradigm is seen as marking a step-change in the potential of science to analyse the Arts and Humanities. In contrast, the whole philosophical tradition behind Film Theory is viewed as irredeemably in thrall to the word. That is the major reason it is unable to say anything of consequence about Vision. It is, in effect, blind to Vision.

This project returns to Hume’s closeting of Reason as necessarily always under the control of Emotion. The shadow of German Idealism falls sharply across the French thinkers of the 20th Century who form the background to Film Theory. Their ‘materialism’ is substantially rhetorical, a kind of wishful-thinking that is another form of Idealism, often fuelled by a wish to be associated with political radicalism. In fact, their abandonment of the Port Royal tradition of clarity in discourse, ‘If it is not clear it is not French’, seems historically to be part of a broader identification with German Idealism that parted company with materialism based in science even in the time of Kant.