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Magrini, James

College of DuPage
DigitalCommons@COD
Philosophy Scholarship Philosophy
3-2019
The Ontological Truth of Film-as-Philosophy:
Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account
of the Film Experience, by Shawn Loht
James Magrini
College of DuPage, magrini@cod.edu
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/philosophypub
Part of the Philosophy Commons
This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
Philosophy Scholarship by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@COD. For more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu.
Recommended Citation
Magrini, James, "The Ontological Truth of Film-as-Philosophy: Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film
Experience, by Shawn Loht" (2019). Philosophy Scholarship. 47.
https://dc.cod.edu/philosophypub/47
  
Joe (David Gordon Green, 2013) 
The Ontological Truth of Film-as-
Philosophy: Phenomenology of Film: A 
Heideggerian Account of the Film 
Experience, by Shawn Loht 
James Magrini 
  
 March 2019 
  
 Book Reviews 
  
 Issue 90 
  
Whereas the majority of film-philosophy essays incorporating the thinking of Martin Heidegger 
are limited to reading specific films from one or another Heideggerian perspective, Shawn 
Loht’s Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience is far more 
ambitious. The author incorporates Heidegger’s philosophy as a conceptual lens through which 
to argue a complex philosophy/phenomenology of film, and succeeds admirably in offering 
readers a unique and original “phenomenological” reading of film-as-philosophy. 
Loht breaks ties with traditional analytic readings, which adopt the “philosophy offilm” (x as 
object of study). Through an analysis of Being and Time, three of the mainexistential modes or 
ways of Being-in-the-world are related to the film-viewing experience, because Loht argues that 
the human’s Being-in-the-world is attuned within the context of the “film-world.” Loht provides 
an analysis of what Heidegger terms “understanding,” “discourse,” and “attunement,” which 
indicates that we are of a specific and fundamental “mindset” or mood, which can be altered 
through various experiences, and film-as-philosophy represents such a mood-altering force. 
Loht’s understanding of attunement or mood, from a Heideggerian perspective, is crucial to the 
transformative experience of film-viewing, because when our attunement changes, the ways we 
understand, interpret, and discourse about the world and others is altered. From an ontological 
perspective – and it is phenomenology that reveals ontological issues – film induces a change in 
our mood, and so a new form of attunement overtakes us when we are immersed in the film’s 
unfolding. However, as related to mood, we do not simply watch films as passive spectators, 
rather we are transformed (attuned) into participants in the events the film depicts, and these 
events comprise the “world” of the film and its characters, or the overarching system of 
meanings and significations giving structure and potential meaning to human life. 
To make the connection between his analysis of the three “existentials” (modes of Being-in), and 
our participation in the film experience, Loht links Heidegger’s philosophy of art to the 
understanding of Dasein (the word Heidegger uses for the human being) and its modes of Being-
in-the-world. Furthermore, he claims that film-as-art breaks open a context for the phenomenon 
of “truth-happening”– linked inextricably to the opening of a world. This indicates, in less 
obscure terms, that when we are attuned in the filmic experience, drawn into the context or world 
the film opens, certain truths reveal themselves to us, albeit always in terms of partial and 
incomplete revelations. This Heidegger calls an occurrence of aletheia, from the ancient Greek 
notion of “truth” as revelation or “un-concealment.” This understanding of truth as “revelation” 
is inseparable from and indeed inspires the attunement of the film-viewer – or the participant-as-
preserver of the truth-of-film – as she is drawn into the revelation of the world-of-filmand gleans 
new insight into both the film’s truth and importantly, how that truth potentially relates to her 
life. Loht ties Heidegger’s ontology of art to the ontology of film, and following Heidegger, 
contends that films hold the power to open historical worlds and generally film’s truth is 
expressive of cultural and historical milieus and epochs, which for Heidegger, is expressive of 
our historical relation to the manner in which we respond to Being’s manifestation in specific 
historical moments. For example, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) opens a world of America 
for the spectator-participant, expressing “some of the undercurrents of freedom, capitalism, 
success and failure, and birth and death definitive for American identify,” and film has the power 
to reveal a far more all-encompassing form of truth that extends beyond simply “portraying a 
fictional biography of one man” (p. 94), for there is a universal aspect to film-truth that is 
ontologically related to the human condition. In addition to Loht’s concern with our relationship 
to the film’s characters, he is also interested in the “emotive dispositions” that emerge from 
the moodof the worlds that are opened by the film, which are never solipsistic contexts we 
inhabit or internalize, rather they are worlds populated by the presence of other human beings 
(Daseins), and Loht’s claim is that when attuned we comport ourselves to those that inhabit the 
world of film, “whose fates are also existentially significant” for us, and these film characters 
along with the worlds they inhabit are substantially and existentially real for us, and as Loht 
argues, we “comport ourselves toward them just as we would actually existing Daseins.” (p. 53) 
 
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) 
 
Loht makes the important connection between the modes of Being-in discussed earlier and 
Heidegger’s later ontology of art, which opens the possibility for an authentic “communal 
existence” precisely because of the human being’s participation in works of art and the truth they 
reveal. How does Loht understand the human being in relation to Heidegger’s philosophy? In 
response, turning to the late essay, “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger refers to the human being 
(Dasein) as “ex-sistence” and contends that this references the “projective” or finite 
transcendent character of human existence, which is really our potential for “standing-out” from 
present moments in anticipation of becoming other, in and through projecting ourselves into the 
future for approaching possibilities in a way that transcends our current and present mode or way 
of Being-in-the-world. In an existential sense, human subject-hood indicates that we are what we 
are not, and are not what we are, because we harbor the potential to become 
something other, and it is our relationship to film that contributes uniquely to both our self-
overcoming and self-becoming. Indeed, the transformative experience of film, as expressed by 
Loht, in Heideggerian terms, is possible in the first instance because the viewer, as “Being-there” 
(Dasein), becomes a participant in the film-world through her disclosing projection into the film, 
and according to Loht, the spectator-participant is transported outside herself and world to 
another as of yet unfulfilled reality with unique and unforeseen possibilities for her life and 
potential appropriation. The phenomenon that Loht terms “Dasein’s disclosing projection” 
relates directly to the Heideggerian reference to Dasein as ek-sistence as explained above. 
It is important to understand Loht’s vision of philosophy, which he conceives as the ultimate way 
to think the truth of Being. To clarify, when referencing the “truth of Being,” per Heideggerian 
language, Loht is referring to those essential or existential aspects of our lives that hold the 
potential for making it meaningful, e.g., phenomenology is concerned specifically with the types 
of essential issues or themes related to the human condition that inspires film 
to philosophize, e.g., ontological issues such as death or mortality, profuse and inexplicable 
suffering, and the persistent burden of inexorable guilt. In addition, drawing from Heidegger, 
Loht stresses that philosophy must be attuned in advance to the mystery in all things, i.e., the 
manner in which all that we inquire into holds the originalpropensity for evading our 
philosophical grasp through the inevitable move into concealment. This is how philosophy, 
according to Loht, guided by phenomenology, should approach film in order to preserve and 
shelter its often over-looked ontological status. For example, the depths of a film’s meaning is 
never graspable in its totality, expressible in terms that resist further interpretive or hermeneutic 
exploration. Our renewed attempts to reveal and learn more about the secrets and meanings that 
film conceals are grounded in the antecedent understanding (or ontological truism) that the more 
we seek to understand film, to wrest its mysteries from concealment, the more mysterious the 
film becomes. In relation to this point, films “such as Citizen Kane clearly do not become ‘used 
up’ after viewing; if anything they require repeated viewing in order for their staying power to 
perpetuate,” for viewing a film “and safeguarding its truthful disclosure,” which also includes 
respecting, preserving, and sheltering its concealed and mysterious elements, “is an end in 
itself.” (p. 94) 
Loht’s phenomenological account of Heideggerian art-and philosophy contributes to the ongoing 
scholarship of thinkers such as Stephen Mulhall and Robert Sinnerbrink, e.g., although it is 
argued that film operates as philosophy, Loht gives us the “phenomenological conditions 
underlying the notion of film-as-philosophy” (p. 116), and those basic conditions, which are 
ontological in nature are traceable to film’s power to transport the spectator into the “space of the 
film” in terms of “Being-there,” which is “predicated on a presencing, a projective placing of 
oneself into an existing space,” i.e., the context or space of the world opened by the film, 
wherein our Being in connection with the Being of others becomes an issue of concern (p. 127). 
Loht’s analysis addresses ongoing film-as-philosophy debates, which includes the crucial issue of 
whether or not film itself – as an artistic medium and legitimate work of art – philosophises. 
Film-philosophy differs from film theory and what might generally be understood as “philosophy 
of film,” in that philosophy of film questions film theory by adopting a philosophical approach 
and is focused on such issues as the aesthetics of film. Conversely, film-as-philosophy embraces 
two claims, which Loht defends. First, film or cinema “illustrates” philosophical concepts or 
themes, and second, and most importantly, film isphilosophy. Film philosophizes in that it 
engages and draws us into the sway of the context of “living” and unfolding philosophical issues 
of which we become an integral part, inspiring our thought in new ways, transforming our 
understanding of the world and others. In other words, as Loht’s phenomenology of film would 
have it, the cinematic experience attunes our entire Being-in-the-world. 
 
Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978) 
The final sections of the book present filmic analyses, which are significant because they 
incorporate Loht’s film-as-philosophy approach to breathe ontological life into films such as 
Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu (Code Unknown, 2000) and Das weiße Band (The White 
Ribbon, 2009), and Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red 
Line (1998). Malick, we note, studied systematic philosophy at an advanced level, and Loht 
provides valuable insight into this issue. Not only was Malick interested in Heideggerian 
phenomenology, he also translated Heidegger’s essay, “On the Essence of Ground” into English. 
Because of Malick’s exposure to philosophical and Heideggerian themes, his films are rich in 
phenomenological depth. However, Loht stresses caution when seeking to attribute Heideggerian 
themes to Malick’s films, for although Malick studied Heidegger, “we need to treat the Malick-
Heidegger connection as a question rather than a given,” for the “application of Heidegger is just 
a little bit too easy and simplistic in helping to reckon with Malick’s work.” (p. 150) In a 
somewhat surprising move, only because this film does not appear to posses the gravitas of these 
other aforementioned art-house cinematic works, Loht examines David Gordon 
Green’s Joe (USA, 2013) from a Heideggerian perspective. For Loht, this film is crucial because 
many of phenomenological themes from his book can be understood through its analysis. Much 
like the other films that the author analyses, the chief reason why Joe lends itself to 
phenomenological analysis  – and indeed, lives at an ontological level – is that it fosters the 
occurrence of aletheia, which is the film’s ability to open and create a filmic-world, where the 
transformative power of images and themes are revealed in a way that draws in the spectator-
participant and attunes them in a new and unique manner. In an attempt to concretize the 
phenomenological analysis, I will briefly discuss Loht’s reading of this film to show how it 
accomplishes this ontological transformation to the spectator. 
Loht claims Joe is an instance of an “ordinary” film with philosophical significance, in one way 
it expresses a sense of solicitous care when faced with the existential plight of others, in a way 
where the issues are universalized, for our immersion in the film demonstrates that we all 
cohabitate the finite space of the human condition and hence all share the collective propensity 
for suffering. According to Loht, this film reveals the world of the characters, which becomes the 
potential new world for the spectators, one that is basically portrayed as a “run-down rural town 
without a robust economy or cultural life” (p. 194), and considering the downtrodden status of 
the characters and the burden of the problems they trundle around, the general mode of 
attunement or mood of the film is that of “death, decline, and decay” (p. 195). This attunement is 
one manifestation of the spectator’s experience of thetruth of the filmic-world, which occurs 
only because of the projective nature of the human being, i.e., the film has coaxed us out of our 
world and drawn us into a new world. Loht affirms that this experience lends itself to 
interpretation, for what is occurring in the presence of the film’s revelation of truth is the 
“activation of the understanding,” and so as related to our earlier discussion, there is at once a 
change to the mindset (mood) and a new understanding and articulation thereof emerging from 
the participatory experience of the film. For example, as we are attuned to the main character, 
who is troubled, harboring deep-seated regrets, we don’t merely observe his struggle, rather 
we assume it and take it up, and a sense of solicitous care is elicited and overtakes us 
as existential insight is revealed into his inner conflict. For as Loht argues, we comport ourselves 
toward Joe in such a way that we incrementally “disclose his pain, we uncover it” through the 
immediate experience and interpretation of the film. We benefit from the insight gleaned into 
this character’s pain, because our attunement is “rooted in an ultimately existential feature of 
Dasein,” and this relates directly to the phenomenology of film, the ability to reveal and interpret 
truth, to wrest it from concealment, to make partially “present what is not immediately present, 
and to articulate the discourse latent therein” (p. 197) as it might relate to the eventual 
appropriation our unique possibilities that are shaped and informed by those revealed by the film. 
In line with a Heideggerian view of art, film does not merely “re-produce” an imitative two-
dimensional reality for the spectator on the flat plane of the screen in the theater or projection-
room. Rather, by merging creatively and artistically “image, character, place, and time” (p. 194) 
film creates an ontological context of involvement. And, as related to the phenomenological 
themes Loht has presented, we encounter in film “character” as attunement,“place” as existential 
space of a world, and “time” as the original temporal unfolding of the events comprising the 
world, which much like the viewer’s world, possesses ontological depth and is given structure by 
the modes of existential Being-in discussed above. This is why Loht claims, in relation to 
Heidegger, the attunement of film is always deeper than a mere psychological or fleeting 
emotional transformation, because we are brought into contact with the very ontological 
structures that first open the possibility for any form of meaning to arise, which indicates these 
structures provide an experience of reality that is antecedent to and always more primordial than 
experiences of both a psychological and emotional nature. The film-world becomes, in moments 
of attuned participation, not only a world added-on to the viewer’s, rather it is indistinguishable 
from the world because it becomes the new reality inhabited by the viewer. The essence, or 
ontological ground, of the film experience occurs not only through the phenomenon 
of recognizability, but more accurately, through an experience that is fundamentally grounded 
in relatability. This ontological function of film, while certainly relating to the apparatus of 
cinema – e.g. the ability of cinema to project a moving and living reality in sound, images, and 
light – is however, irreducible to it, because for both Heidegger and Loht the essence of art, and 
of course, film, defies reduction to a “thing”, a mere mechanical, technological “object.” 
Phenomenology of Film is written in a clear and direct style and is accessible to readers who 
might be unfamiliar with the highly technical philosophy of Heidegger. It will greatly appeal to 
film theorists and film-philosophers, students and scholars of philosophy, and educators 
incorporating the philosophy-through-film approach in their classrooms. Loht’s scholarship 
admirably contributes new thoughts to, and indeed invigorates, the field of film-as-philosophy. 
Loht effectively confronts Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology in order convincingly and 
successfully to think with and then beyond Heidegger, offering us an original and illuminating 
study into the phenomenological-ontological aspects of film-as-philosophy. 
Shawn Loht. Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film 
Experience (London: Lexington Books, 2017). 
 
 


English

The Ontological Truth of Film-as-Philosophy: Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience, by Shawn Loht

This paper describes the fundamental components of our design project for Engineering 2213, Intro to Digital Systems. The components and their interrelations are detailed. Concepts such as random number generation and shift registers are discussed, along with supplementary information required to complete the project.
Faculty Supervisor:  Dr. Alyssa Pasqual

Moravek, Eric

Thimmig, Maxwell

Designing Digital Logic Blackjack

In my research paper I explored the hypothesis that e-cigarettes could be used to help people quit conventional cigarettes. Analyzing three scholarly articles on the subject two of which were observational studies and one was a survey. I considered the dependability of each of the sources, researching into the publishing journal and the credentials of the researchers. I then broke down and scrutinized the researchers procedure for testing their hypothesis. Taking this information, I was able to draw my own conclusion that e-cigarettes were an effective tool in helping people quit conventional cigarettes.
Faculty Supervisor: Elizabeth Shaffer-McCarth

Madison, Kourtney

The Efficacy of E-Cigarettes for Smoking Cessation

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