Dinner-party guests trapped in the matrix

The burgeoning field of philosophy and film is reflected in the number of books, journals, conferences and websites appearing over the past ten years. There had been various kinds of philosophical borrowings by film theorists since the 1960s, of course, but with the advent of films such as The Matrix and Memento , philosophy students found a new way to think about difficult abstract concepts in lively, concrete and dramatic situations, while philosophy professors suddenly found that they were not necessarily the geeks they always feared they were. "If Keanu Reeves can look good in Prada, why can't I?"

Sadly, geeks tend to reveal their inner selves sooner or later, and this is also true of their approach to film. Because of its infancy, no doubt, the philosophy of film has been unable to avoid being highly partisan thus far: analytical v continental; naturalist v culturalist, cognitivist v Freudian and so on. Furthermore, the type of dialogue engaged in between philosophy and cinema has often been reductive, filmic comprehension becoming entirely the remit of one or other specific paradigm: logical analysis, cognitive science, semiotics, cultural studies or Freudian psychodynamics. To date, the semiotic and Freudian approaches have represented the vast majority of what has counted as philosophical film theory since the 1960s. Over the past 15 years or so, however, an analytical school has emerged in some strength, taking empirical, cognitivist psychology and logical analysis as its guiding lights.

If you happen to know two philosophers of film from these different persuasions, take care not to invite them to dinner at the same time: being geeks at heart, they will squabble and ruin your evening. Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi's Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology is a case in point.

One would imagine that this collection of reprinted essays would tackle film in the largest sense possible, given the broad sweep intimated by the book's title as an anthology of film and philosophy. Alas, Carroll's general introduction fails to mention that it is the analytical approach alone that informs every choice of text in the collection. He sets out both the discipline of philosophy as such and its pertinence to film in the following terms of unalloyed purity: it concerns logic, the "analysis" of "concepts", the "clarification" of relations between concepts and categories, the "resolution" of paradoxes, and the "discovery of metaphysical presuppositions". Philosophy of film should also take note of the importance of the sciences when addressing film experience, he tells us, especially cognitive science. Simply put, this is all that philosophy of film does, period, a position that many other philosophers of film will find bizarrely narrow-minded.

Most worrying, though, is Carroll's lack of acknowledgement of any other theoretical approach - especially the combined French semiotic and psychoanalytic one, no matter that this perspective has comprised the greater part of the philosophy of film over the past 40 years. Of course, the retort could be that the French approach to film through the 1960s to the 1980s was theoretical rather than philosophical, but again this assumes that it is not the business of philosophy to meddle with psychoanalysis or linguistics, which is, to say the least, a moot point.

The fact remains that Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures is a highly partisan selection masquerading as something universal, a settling of scores that its intended market - mostly undergraduate students - will be mercifully oblivious of. Even so, the content of the essays themselves is often valuable, covering standard divisions of the topic such as film as art, the ontology of film, film and emotion, film and knowledge, film and ethics lucidly and interestingly. Nonetheless, even here the compendious nature of the collection is diminished by the fact that Carroll includes three of his own pieces, along with three by Gregory Currie. There are other multiple entries (though the two by George Wilson do pay their way handsomely) that together cast more doubt on the objectivity of the anthology. By contrast, I would recommend the collection edited by Thomas Wartenberg and Angela Curran, The Philosophy of Film: Introductory Text and Readings (2005), which fits its name much better with a selection of articles from every perspective and thus lets the reader judge properly the respective merits of the different paradigms without any evidence being withheld.

Another piece in the Carroll/ Choi collection that earns its keep is an extract from Stanley Cavell's pioneering book, The World Viewed . Cavell has been influential on the philosophy of film, and his work has inspired a collection of essays edited by Rupert Read and Jerry Goodenough, Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell . This makes no pretence to being a general reader; it sees itself as promoting a very specific approach to philosophising about film. In fact, Cavell provides an interesting case of ecumenism in film philosophy no less than in his other philosophical interests, which include Heidegger and Wittgenstein.

It is frequently said by philosophers and film theorists that the real challenge for them is to imagine how film itself can be said to think without being reduced to merely an illustration of a philosophical text.

The pieces gathered here can be commended in their endeavour to try to avoid this tendency, even if they do not always succeed. Certainly, they do not try to illustrate Cavell or Wittgenstein with the films in question ( Fight Club, The Thin Red Line and Memento ) in any crude one-to-one manner.

As a work in philosophy, moreover, they also have to be complimented for being a very good introduction to Cavell's film-philosophy. The pieces by Stephen Mulhall, Stuart Klawans and Simon Critchley are exemplary. The others are less straightforward in their relation to Cavell (invocations of his name notwithstanding), but are all the more welcome by enriching the philosophical mix. They do, however, sometimes betray the film-as-illustration style (of Wittgenstein, of Levinas and so on) despite their best intentions and protestations. But they are very interesting and inventive readings nonetheless.

The two introductions to the collection are no less good, the first, longer one being an exemplary treatment of many of the different dimensions to film and philosophy. The concluding interview with Cavell himself is equally useful, if a little long, and provides helpful insights into the pitfalls awaiting any professor of philosophy aspiring to bring some coolness to his or her lecturing style. The advice is: do not expect any overnight transformation.

John Mullarkey is lecturer in philosophy, Dundee University.