“Not to explain, but to accept”: Wittgenstein and the pedagogic potential of film

Abstract: The current use of film in education is limited to either its illustrative function in the service of other ideas, or as the object of empirical and theoretical study. Wittgenstein sees both illustration and explanation as extensions of the Cartesian legacy of psychologism, and thereby disengaged from the actual experience of the world. Film, Wittgenstein’s followers argue, provides a unique opportunity to reconnect with that immediate experience: firstly, by exposing the neuroses of psychologism; and secondly, by inviting the viewer to relinquish the tendency to explain film’s hidden meanings prior to accepting what it has to say on its own terms. Finally, where film is currently being taken very seriously by some philosophers as a mode of philosophising in itself, or a medium that philosophises in front of our eyes, I will argue that the same attention has not yet been given to the ways in which film can act as an educator (how it can teach).