Cosmos and Camus. Shai Tubali
approach, most prominently expressed by Stephen Mulhall (2016: 3–10), rejects both previous approaches on the basis that their use of film only serves to reconfirm theories to which they are already committed. Maintaining that films are, in fact, active participants in the making of philosophy, Mulhall argues for their capacity to expand philosophy beyond the reach of formal arguments.2
There is, however, agreement among many scholars that films can be “philosophical exercises” (Mulhall 2016: 4), an extended form of the philosophical thought-experiment. The traditional thought-experiment is conceived by the philosopher’s imagination within the “laboratory of the mind”; it tests a hypothetical situation, which often transcends current technology or laws of nature, to “illustrate a puzzle, lay bare a contradiction in thought, and move us to provide further clarification” (Schneider 2016: 1). Similarly, films introduce us to a fictional world, often with “sufficient context” to interpret their key elements as a thought-experiment (Litch 2010: 5).
In his 1938 review of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea, Camus offers an explanation that could be indirectly applied to the discussion of film as philosophy: A “novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images” and, therefore, a good novel is one whose entire philosophy has been successfully translated into images (Camus, quoted in Golomb 2005: 120). Great novelists are philosophers who have preferred “writing in images” ←2 | 3→over “reasoned arguments,” since they have had more confidence in the “educative message of perceptible appearance” (ibid.). They have insisted on relying solely on what experience allows them to say (Hughes 2007: 62).3
When we consider films as philosophical thought-experiments translated into perceptible appearances, science fiction seems to be a genre whose philosophical exercises are often centered on the nature of human consciousness and existence (Sanders 2008: 1). Knight and McKnight suggest that “it is a feature of this genre to pose such questions as, What is it to be human?” (Sanders 2008: 26–27). A continuation of the “early myths and epic sagas of many narrative traditions,” science fiction employs the dimensions of space and time in order to gain perspective on our place in the universe; the cosmos is therefore a backdrop against which the interior space and present angst of the human are explored (Sardar 2002: 1).
While science fiction films seem to both pose fundamental questions and attempt to answer them in their own way through the perceptible realization of thought-experiments, in order to become a fully realized philosophy, they require philosophers. They “demand to be understood metaphysically” (Mulhall 2016: 7). They may evoke new philosophical thought-patterns, which should then be passed into philosophy to become illuminated for the viewer. After all, even Camus, who preferred concrete ←3 | 4→experience over thought, felt compelled to supplement his literary works by writing essays, as essays constitute the more abstract and argumentative form. Art, he stated, has the power to awaken many people to authentic life, but this awakening can only be completed through the elucidation of the implications of the art’s philosophy (Golomb 2005: 120–121). Thus, to evaluate the contribution of this genre to philosophical discussion on human consciousness and existence, we must add “philosophy’s voice” (Mulhall 2016: 10); that is, we must engage in a philosophical dialogue with the films.
One of the most intriguing ways in which this genre’s thought-experiments explore the nature of human experience is through imagining encounters with nonhumans. Where does the urge to envisage self-aware artificial intelligences and beastly or godlike aliens come from? Schelde (1993: 3–4) argues that sci-fi nonhumans are merely a new manifestation of the monsters, ogres, trolls and elves of olden times. Such anthropomorphic folkloric creatures could thrive only so long as nature remained uncapturable and elusive; as soon as science tamed the wild by offering explanations of the natural world, forests once teeming with dwarfs and fairies became just forests. Since outer space, with its billions of galaxies, now represents the new unknown it has begun to accommodate space monsters and sprites
While this may account for the cultural and psychological dynamics that brought sci-fi nonhumans into being, their philosophical value remains undetermined. Rowlands (2005: 1–2) claims that this is the very “intellectual underpinning of sci-fi”: The stark otherness serves as a mirror through which we see our own reflection; as we stare at the monster, we realize that it is ourselves who are staring back at us. In discussing the role of sci-fi aliens, Sardar (2002: 6) suggests that they are the “dark antithesis” that make the patches of light within the narrative’s structure appear brighter, thereby throwing into sharp relief the nature of humanness. The aliens demonstrate that which is not human in order to illustrate that which is human; indeed, by reinforcing our sense of self, they complete the “chain of science fiction as normative genre” (ibid., 6). When Knight and McKnight analyze Blade Runner (Sanders 2008: 21–37), they deal not with what it is to be replicants, but with what it is to be human.
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Philosophically, there can be no definition for something or someone that has no “other.” A definition is possible only through comparison. Given that, in our present human condition, we do not have any self-reflective other who could hold up a mirror to us, this subgenre could represent one possible way for humans to transcend their anthropocentric worldview and outline the boundaries of human existence and consciousness. As the “conception of ‘us’ would lose meaning” in the absence of aliens, we need aliens to define a “conceptual, epistemological and innate” boundary (Sardar 2002: 9–10).4 Moreover, their threatening non-humanity, and sometimes inhumanity, often lead us to re-evaluate human values and human instincts (ibid., 4).
This capacity to test the limits and limitations of human existence is, perhaps, the original contribution of science fiction film – and, more specifically, the subgenre involving nonhuman encounters – to philosophical thinking. By placing humans within larger cosmic contexts and in contact with unfamiliar elements, they delineate and clarify the frontiers of human nature. Whether it is an individual’s journey in space, a malignant or benign alien invasion, or humanity’s end of days, human beings are set against archetypical antitheses in order to call into question the preconceived metaphysical notions of viewers and to trouble the limits of their experience as “finite and embodied beings” (Anderson, 2018).
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Camus’ philosophy of the absurd
The very phrase “Camus’ philosophy” seems to pose a problem: Can Camus’ absurdism be considered a real philosophy? This question has stirred up a great deal of controversy among philosophers – both in relation to Camus’ stature as a philosopher, which he himself questioned,5 and the philosophical wholeness of his notion of the absurd.
While highly esteemed for his literary genius, Camus’ importance as a philosopher has been disparaged even by the “few scholars still interested” in him (Golomb 2005: 119). Golomb suggests that Camus is at least partially responsible for this, as he refuted his association with existentialism and was content to employ only “the explicatory-descriptive side of phenomenology,” in contrast to Heidegger’s and Sartre’s efforts to ground their intuitions in valid systems (ibid., 119, 141). Foley (2008: 5) adds that nowadays the term “absurd” appears only rarely in academic discourse, including discussions dedicated to existentialist philosophy.
One of the most widespread criticisms of Camus’ philosophical works is that they unequivocally fail the test of formal arguments. His ideas appear in the “fragmented fashion typical of artistic works” (Sagi 2002: 1). The unsystematic, perhaps even anti-systematic, nature of his philosophy has led most scholars to overlook its depth and complexity (Aronson 2017: 2). Some, on the other hand, compare Camus’ philosophical endeavor with the work of Plato, Montaigne, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, all of whom have made major contributions to philosophy, despite not being philosophers in the modern academic sense (Sagi 2002: 2; Golomb 2005: 119; Zaretsky 2013: 50–51). As I shall argue in