Screen Stories, Ethics, and Practical Reason
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Abstract
This article questions the priority that Carl Plantinga accords to the viewer's emotions in his theory of the rhetorical power of screen stories, and makes the case that reason, in the sense of practical reasoning, plays just as important a role as emotion in our ethical response to such fictions. Practical reasoning is the form of reasoning concerned with the actions of agents and what they should do in specific situations. The protagonists of screen stories often engage in practical reasoning, articulating and deliberating about the reasons for their actions, and secondary characters around them regularly question their reasons. In this way, these stories prompt us to understand and question their reasons too and thereby to engage in practical reasoning, a species of which is moral reasoning. Screen stories also often stage a confrontation between divergent ethical perspectives and ask audiences to reflect about which one is more morally compelling.
Contributor Notes
Malcolm Turvey is the Sol Gittleman Professor in the Department of Art History and Director of the Film and Media Studies Program at Tufts University. His most recent book is Play Time: Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism, which is forthcoming from Columbia University Press in fall 2019. E-mail: malcolm.turvey@tufts.edu