Film and the Emotions, Volume XXXIV

Film and the Emotions explores the complicated relationship between filmed entertainment, such as movies and television shows, and our capacity to feel emotions. This volume of The Midwest Studies in Philosophy covers topics such as the role of imagination in our capacity to respond emotionally to films, how emotions felt in response to films relate to emotions felt about real events, and the moral implications of responding emotionally to fictions, among others. This collection includes nineteen original articles from experts on film and emotion, including Noel Carroll, Gregory Currie, Susan Feagin, Stacie Friend, Robert Hopkins, Peter Lamarque and Peter Goldie, Derek Matravers, Carl Plantinga, and Murray Smith.

Movies, the Moral Emotions, and Sympathy / Noel Carroll

Film Appreciation and Moral Insensitivity / Susan L. Feagin

"I Followed the Rules, and They All Loved You More": Moral Judgment and Attitudes toward Fictional Characters in Film / Carl Plantinga

American History X, Cinematic Manipulation, and Moral Conversion / Christopher Grau

Getting Carried Away: Evaluating the Emotional Influence of Fiction Film / Stacie Friend

The Rationality of Emotion toward Fiction / Seahwa Kim

Seeing and Imagination: Emotional Response to Fictional Film / E.M. Dadlez

Empathy and Identification in Cinema / Berys Gaut

Fiction Film and the Varieties of Empathic Engagement / Margrethe Bruun Vaage

Hybrid Truths and Emotion in Film / Robert J. Yanal

Why We Should Give Up on the Imagination / Derek Matravers

Moving because Pictures? Illusion and the Emotional Power of Film / Robert Hopkins

The Ghost is the Thing: Can Reactions to Fiction

Reveal Belief? / Aaron Smuts

Vivid Abstractions: On the Role of Emotion Metaphors in Film Viewers' Search for Deeper Insight and Meaning / Anne Bartsch

Feeling Prufish / Murray Smith

Mixed Feelings: Conflicts in Emotional Responses to Film / James Harold

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as an Emotional Event / Tarja Laine

Whimsicality in the Films of Eric Rohmer / Peter Lamarque and Peter Goldie

Bergman and the Film Image / Gregory Curry

Peter A. French is the Lincoln Chair in Ethics, Professor of Philosophy, and the Director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Miami and he did post-doctoral work at Oxford University. He was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) honorary degree from Gettysburg College in 2006. French is the author of twenty books including War and Moral Dissonance; The Virtues of Vengeance; Cowboy Metaphysics; Ethics and College Sports; Responsibility Matters; Corporate Ethics; and Collective and Corporate Responsibility. He has published dozens of articles in the philosophical and legal journals. Works by him have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, German, Italian, French, Serbian, and Spanish.

Howard K. Wettstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a M.A. and Ph.D. from the City University of New York and a B.A. from Yeshiva College. He has authored two books, The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language and Has Semantics Rested On a Mistake? and Other Essays, and edited others including Themes From Kaplan (co-edited) and Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity. He is currently writing a new book in the philosophy of religion; his work in that area includes such topics as doctrine and the viability of philosophical theology; the Book of Job and the problem of evil; the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac); the character of religious experience and religious life; and the roles of awe, ritual, and intimacy.

Michelle Saint is a lecturer at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Arizona State University as well as a B.A. from The College of William and Mary in Virginia. Her dissertation focused on the nature of emotional engagement with fictional characters, and she works generally within the philosophy of fiction.