Let's Al Go to te Moves:

Two Thubs Up for

Hugo Misterberg's
Te Photoplay (1916)
... is it merely the law of psychcal contrast which maes me tn
that there is one Wng not less important than the center of our in
. erests, namely, the center of ou negiect?"
.
-Hugo Minsterberg, "The Problem of Beaut"
(1908 Presidental Address to the APA)
Intoduction
In the ff editon of Film Teo and Criticism: Introductor Readings,
published in.1999, there is a brief selecton fom Hugo Minsterberg's Te Film:
A PJcholgical Study, a work frst published in 19161 and reissued in 1970. We
thi fnd. te colleague ofWllam Jaes, Josiah Royce, and George Santayana2 in
te copny. pfsuch -fm :trst as Sergei Eisenstein, Ade Bazin, Christian
Metz,$iegfed.Iacauer, Rhd Bahes, Staney Cavell, and quite a few oters.
The focus of the selecton in. Film Teor and Crticism is the contast between
theatre and cinema; in fact it opens the part of tis anthology devoted to "Film
-Naratve and the OtherAt.''3 Minsterberg's purose in developing ts con
tast is clearly identfed: by te editors of these Intoductor Readings: the Har
vard psychologist and philosopher ''atempted in 1916 to delineate the features of
the slnt 'hotoply' by contrastng it wth the theater" (1999, 395; emphasis
aded).- Cinematc presentaton5 is, at least potentally, not the mechanical re
prqducton ofa_ theate performance: it is truy the creatve presentation (rather
than simply the reresentaton) of a sequence of actons and events in an artstc
medium not reducible to any one of the more established ar (or to any combi
naton of tese ari: s). It is a mode of narraton unlike any other, one ideally
suited to exhibitng various asp_ects of lived temporalit and also the conscious
ness of living through a sequence of scenes whose meaning is, for the most pa,
"e,er not yet" (to use James' expression).6 The more cinema becomes a puely
visa mode of narraton, the more this ar will (in Miinsterberg's judgment, at
least) realize ii:unique character.
Apart fom ths contention; it seems evdent that movng pictures are ideally
Tranractions of the Charles S. Peirce Societ
Fall. 2000. Vol. XXVI. No. 4
adaptable to an artstc presentaton of what has a just claim to be considered the
most crcial feature of our lived experience? If it is te, as Minsterberg's more
famous colleague8 famously asserted, that "life is in te tansitons as much as in
the terms connected"-perhaps more emphatcaly there than anywhere else
how better to convey a sense of these transitons than wth the daatc play of
cinematic images? (James 1912 [1971), 46).9 If we are interested in trritons,
can we overlook flm? The alleged inadequacies of language10 in ts and oter
respects are perhaps better compensated by tlls unique medium than by any
other (James; Gavin 1992, 69; 81-82; 171-72; see, however, Clapieto
1995)_11
A another of hs colleagues at Harard, Josiah Royce, 12 would insist in other
contexts, contrast is the mother of clearness (1901, 262)_13 Misterberg was
ting to become clea about the art of flm14 by contrasting it wit other ar,
including of course the one to which it seems so closely akin (theatre). To con
ceive cinema standing to theatre the way te gramophone stands to te concert
was, for him, to misconceive the distnctive features of this narratve art (1916,
38). Hence, the selecton in Film Teory and Criticism concludes with Munster
berg stressing that: "The photoplay shows us a signifcant confict of human ac
tions in movng pictes which, feed fom the physical forms of space;, me, and
causality, are adjusted to the fee play of our menta experiences ad which reach
complete isolation fom the practical world tough the perfect unity of plot and
pictorial appearance" (1916, 190; italics omitted). Wereas teatre is largely
bound to the forms of time, space, and causality, cinema in its feedom fom
these forms can become an objectifcaton of subjectivit, a sequence of vsual
images bodying forth the strea of human consciousness. The techniques of. ts
medium can, perhaps must, be correlated with the functons of the percepton of
depth and movement, attenton, memor, imagination, suggestion, and emo
tion;15 in turn, these fnctions are in cinema put into the serice of a narraton of
events as consciously experienced. To tae two obvious examples, the dose-up em
bodies the dramatic heightening of attenton so characteristic of our conscious
experience, whereas te fash-back (or what Minsterbcrg himself calls te "cut
back") embodies the jagged image of an unbeckoned recollecton, te disquet
ing usuraton of present consciousness by involuntar memor. The complex
ways in whichdistinguishable psychological fnctions are woven together-to form
the subtle textures of our everday experience can also, in principle, be;.boded
forth by tis unique artistc medium. Also two of te most salient 'eatres of
lived time, the varing rhythms of temporal succession and the damatc jUtapoc
sition of simultaneous occurences, lend themselves especially well to presenta
tion in this medi
u
m
.1
6
Such arc some of the conclusions for which Minsterberg
argued in his very early contribution to flm theory. It is truly astonshing, on te
basis of a short but intense immersion in the world of film (Margaret Munster
be
r
g
1922, 281-282), how keenly alive Minstcrberg is to these possibilites inc
herem in the newly emerging art of photoplay or moving pictures.
In a sense, what Minsterberg argues in Te Photoplay is secondar to the fact
that he focused O(. the phenomenon of flm at all. One might contend that he
was prescient, excpt that ths contenton would ordnariy imply that what he
saw witout te aid of any-intellectual tadton others eventually cae to see.
Today tere i, wtout queson, an etablished interdsciplinar feld of flm
st<es; mdtvl hlosophy is _one of the dsciplines contrbutng to these std.
ies. 'Bin' profelona pJlosophers working out of the analytc and other tad
tons ar prominent coil butors to this vast feld, whereas those unmistaably
rotd in cr philosophy are

extremely dfcut to fnd aong the theorsts

of c(nem;P Ths is certinly ironic, given te prominence of fm as a cui rural
phenomenon in the Unted States and also given the repeated insistence of con
temporar advocates of Aerican philosophy to be concerned with the problems
of women and men as they emerge in the cultual context of their everday lives.
In Art ar .penence (1934) John Deey showed himself to be not only unable
to hear jaz but also largely blind to flm.18 In 1953 Susanne Lnger appended a
"Note on the Film" to Feeling and Form, a work bearing the subttle A Teor of
Art. There she .opened her "Note" by proclaiming: "Here is a new art. For a
few ,decades it seemed liked no.thing mre than a new tech- nical devce in the
sphere ofdraa. .ut tqday its development has already belied this assump
ton. The screen is not the stage ... " (410}. But ts was in 1916 precisely Min
sterberg's contention. So when Lnger goes on to claim that: "It is too early to
systematze any theory of this hew art, but even in its present prstne state it ex
hibits - qut .. eyopd dolht.) tn . not only a new technique, but a new
poetc [or arstc] mode" (411). Again, ts was the view advocated by Min
sterbrg and, indeed,. Vachel Lindsay and other authors as early as the second
decade of the present centuy!9 Watdid Minsterberg see in 1916 that appar
ently escaped the notice of Dewey and Langer? How could such photoplays as
Te Birth ofa Nation and Neptune'r Daughter reveal so clearly to this "vain, lo
quacious, personally rather formal and fastdious" scholar (James in Perr 1935,
II, 141) the potental and signifcance of this artstc medium? In fairness r
Minsterbetg -and as a way of suggestng part of the answer to this question -
it is instuctve to recall what James goes on to say: In Minsterberg one sees a de
sire "to please an( to shine ... wt probably a certain superciality in his clever
ness,and. lack.ofie deeper}netaphysical humor [but] a man of bi ideas in al
direttionS<a 'ralgeniur. :( Jeil9 3 5, I, 14 r; emphasis added).
To suggest,: however, that,JhatMinsterberg argues in Te Photoply is sec
ondar to the

fact that he argues about flm at al slights his ideas, ones stll wor
thy of our crtcal attenton and thus of hstorcal recovery. In Te Major Film
Teoriu: An Intoduction, J. Dudley Adrewl0 concludes his discussion of Miin
sterberg by retailing a remark made by Jean Mitty, provoked by te reprinting of
Te Film in 1970: "How could we have not known him all these years? In 1916
ths man understood cinema abo.ut as well as anyone wll" (26).21
My intenton here is, tus, to recover Minsterberg's work on cinema not
primarily to mae his name better known among us but to inaugutat i philoso
phical study of the cinematc at witin the philosophcal community of tose
expressly commited to advancing American phlosophy. Serious, sustained and
systematc reflecton upon the distnctve nature and perasive inerce of tese
contemporary ars seems, to me at least, a tsk made, to orde'r for t'e member'S of
this Society. Historical recover and teoretca inaugurator are :hefe of a piCcc:
Going back to Minsterberg's work can be a way of going 'orard- to take up a
task hardly yet conceived - yet inconceivably neglected until now, especially
given the example of Minsterberg himself Thus historography and philosophy
are, in this case, interoven: I am reclaiming a part of our hstory for a decidedy
phlosophcal puose, while reflecting on te phenomena of flm fom a deliber
ately historical perspectve.
Te Philsopher of Photoplay
In a famous photograph taken in 1908 by Wnifed Reber
)
hpieparaton
for a portait she was undertaking, we see four figure: (fom lefto. nht}osiah
Royce, Hugo Minsterberg, George Herbert Palmer, and Wllia James (the
only one seated and also the -ony one loking at any of the oters, appaeity at
Royce to his right?2 Royce and Miinsterberg are.lookng drectly into the cam
era, while Palmer is looking to his right. In the portait by Reber now hanging
in Emerson Hall at Harvard Universit there are three fgures: Royce, Palmer,
and James. What happened to Misterberg?23 Whatever the circwstances of
Minsterberg's exclusion fom this portrait, his absence here is an apt symbol of
his present status in American philosophy: once a promineni.member of the most
prominent deparment of philosophy in the countr, he is now invisible. :he
play of images/4 not only the diachronic play of cinematc images but also the
synchronic play of photographic and portrait images, is multdmensional and
thus variously interretable. Wen we move fom the more conteQpqrr ar of
photography to the more traditonal one of portraiture; we Joe te fgl e who,
despite some 'f his most fndamental philosophical comrinenr, appeas to
have been mote fnely attuned to the temper and textures of his tes than the
other thee, at least regarding the importance of cinema. This ofes another, apt
symbol; for the more taditonal we become, the more likely w .are to ocde
the innovators. So let us draw a porait in which te fgue of Mi1sterberg is
painted back fn. His insistence upon being in tht ccntei of te portrat, for
"aesthetic reasons," was the reason for his exclusion by the artist1 who had her
own aesthetic imperatves to honor. But his attention to the aestbetcs as wellas
psychology of flm entitles him, however briefy, to be the center of this prdimi
nar sketch for a larger study. 25
Miinsterbtrg's Te Photoplay appeared shorty afer Vachel Lindsay;s The Art
of the Moving Picture.626 The overarchng tesis of Lindsay's book is to establish
that flm should be accorded the status of art. It is to be counted (along with
painting, sculptre, poetr, archtectre, etc.) te seventh art. Lipdsay a1tci-
pateq the semiotc approaches oO;ter flm theorsts such as Christan Metz and
Peter' Wolki by asserng that flm is a language, though closer to hierogyhics
tan anyoer g

cqOspecifcally ted to show tat "cinema enjoyed

the :q:ae(.||Includng chitecte" (Adew, 12). In ts
Lndsay dealy anlcipaed Dewey, who claimed that "something architectual is
tou

nd In eve-,work of art in which there is manifest on a broad scale the harmo

nious mutua! ' ad;paton of.endqing forces of natue with huan need and pur
Cc.... 0c

j 8rCmLcCtul1 cxLm 1DywCrKwaetac:of ma.C,Icr1mrc 1|D!-

|Dg Cr rCh|tcCmrc . . . " (LW 10:234-5). Lnday also anticipated Dewey's more
general thesis stated that "such words as poetc, architectual, damatc, sculp-
. .
tural, pictoral, literar designate tendencies that belong in some degree to
cvcryart" (LW 10: 233). .
The principal concern of M1s:erbe:g'.book is to exhibit the dstinctive fea
tucs 'of:cineiacc preentaton a an art frm. In mc context of his own psycho
logic. ! | :aeor|e:,27 he identfes and explains these featues.28 His
fm :tleor' is - us mrrcdby ,te limitat9rs of his psychological and aesthetc
teories. ut,,:lllostmagically; it also tanscends those limitatons in some re
spcts. Wat makes ts possible is Munster berg's phenomenological attention
!.tle actUal fe, ature of cinelatc presentaton wth whch he WaS fmi!iar.29
This however implies yet another limitation upon his views regarding flm - a
hstCrcal one, He was afer all mting about flm in the second, not the last,
decade of t cent. Much has changed. Hence, he was attendDg !C mCv|Dg
|U\1gcw|IbCu!yDCBrCDZcdseuDd. Despite these limitatons, his views are wor
thy of consultaton and scrutiny.
Before saying more about mcc views, however, let me say a word or two
about Minsterberg hmself. He was born in Danzig in 1863. He sud|cd at
kipzig under Wlhelm Wundt, receivng his doctorate in psychology fom that
\D|vcr|q1D188S}0 wCc1r ||cf bc lcCc|vcd kCm Mc|dc|Ocrg his M.D. In
1892 Minsterberg was brought by James to Harard in order to relieve James ol
dc fesponsibility ofhaving to teach psychology; this allowed the author of Tt
Prtncipkf of Pchoigy 1890) tC-urn his attenton toward philosophy; for with
te publicdn ofre.Principies,-]ames marked the dose Of a distnctve period in
h intellectuaUife, not te |augatoaor, better, solidfcaton of hs carccr as a
psychologist; In 1895, at the conclusion of what was in efect "a trial
stnt,. (Kick, 16), Harardofered Minsterberg a protessorshp of psychol
ogy;. but he still hoped to secue a positon in Germany. Two years later, how
cvcr he made mc realistc assessment that a permanent C|bCD ClCCm1r1blc
stans in ms native land was |my not in te ofng. So, |D I7, he assued
te plolcssetsa.in .,cao|e@. He w1 not CDy Lbc 1UUCr C1 DCCK entted
Pscholgy: Genera/and Applied(N: D. Apleton, 1914) but also extremely in
terested in applying his psychological teories to a wide range of cultural phe
nomenz, incuding law; .ndus:;, psychotherapy, cducation (inc|uding art cduca-
t.on znd sccducauon), and ot coursc cincma.'
HCm Ihcc h\CtCz Inggc | u|Umztcy tC dvct them Cl Ihcl humzn g-
nifCanCe.
Two CCn!cmQCzy QCct QtCvdc mQCfUnt uggcuCn lCl hCw tC CCnCcvc
nC! Cmy |hc zH Cl QCcU Du! zC 8ft mCfc gcnctzy Uggc8UCB ccC|2y hcQ-
f for bringing ntC Cczt znd tczdy l>u thc cXQct|cnu 8nd wCtdy Chzfz0Lc|
ofanworks. Joric Grabam Vcw bcl Cwn QCcm nCt C muCb z tcIIIng QctCnzI
stCric or retelling peretual mys OuI "z ways of actually experiencing realt.
It sometimes seems to me tat the .frt umc tCugh zD cxQcfcnCc nCt ncCc
sarily the deepest encounter with that QieCe Cl cxQcttcnCc. Ay ktnd Cfwork that
yCu dC in Ihc ztt a wzy Cl gCtng OzCk tmCugh zny gvcn cxcncBCc and
glczning fom it whatcvcr yCu mght hzvc m|cd ln thc huty Cl vng ( 4; cm
Qhz added).37 The mBCtCn C zt| mcd thcn |C thc zHCu2DCB C cxcf|
cnCc OuI the process of zrtculztCn t itself an encouter wt fczQ thu zB in
stance of cxQctcnCc. It s z QtCCc whctcn zbtrzCbCn ztc mzdc lOf thc Quf-
pose Cl Uc tnIcnqng cxQcttcnCc znd z|C lCf !h1t Cl CCm|chcBd|Bg (thCugh
nCI ncCczry n z mznncf tfznztzOc ntC wCfd) thc zCtuz CCulc, CCnUtu
tve conficts, and QosstOle reolutons of an experience ( CL Langer; Lcwcy).
In Crediting Poetry [h! COc LCIutc) bcMu !czncy zC uggct thzt
QCct lCvdc u wt!h thc mczn Cl Cw|ng u !C cxcf|cnCc tC Uc zCQut-
tCn hCw|ng HCm and the cxgcnCc nhctcnt tn CUf cxQcf|cnz uzBzCuCn.
c QrO|zm Lhzt hc Clcdtt Cctty unmztcy OcCzuc it "CzD mae a Crder as
tre to the impact of external realit and as sensitve to the in!er laws of te
poet's bcing as the ripples thzt riQplcd out across te water in thzt cuIcQ bucket
[in his boyhood hCmc h ycM zgC (1VVb 1).`!c mmcdztcy go on:to
stress that this is an "order where we can at last grow uQ to thzt which we stored
up as we grew" -a confguaton allowing us to zruCuztc and thereby to appro
priate our zctual experience. This confguraton "satsfes all that is appetitve in
Ihc ntcgcnCc znd fchcnc n thc afectons" (1995, 10).
Art is paradoxical in that it enaOcs u tC cxQerienCc ou own experience and
whatever is cncountcrcd in our cxQcncnCc n uCh z wzy thzt wc hzvc zB CQQCt-
tun| actualy to experience what we habitually m "n thc hurry Cl vng.
h| should not be taken to mean that, in art, we experience our own experience
in a hghly thcCfctCz or predominantly tchcx|vc manner, but rathcr that we zC-
Iuzy live our experience fzLhcf thzB duzCtcCy Dh lfCm mCmcnI to mCmcn!
obivious of qualitative immedacies, emergent connections, and muCh cc. At
returns experience to itself in a more memorable and intelligible form tan the
|nchoate hzQc so characteristc of Ihc bulk of our vcd expdience:
0
It prCVdcs
u with Ihc transhgurzoon C! the materials of our own cxQct:cnCc zDd, !nOecd,
aC w the impetus to live through, mCfc B!0Hcy but zC mort rdlectivdy,
nCI C mCh whzI Cthcr hzvc vcd tCugh z hzt we Cutcvc have or
might4 1 have.
Heaney credits poetr and we might credit art morc gcnerally "both for be
ing itself and for being z hcp [1VV5 1U) a hcQ zOCvc z to humanity in its
stuggles againt tyranny in all of its fors. A we have seen, it is to poetr's
credt that this art provides us Wt the resources and inspiraton to care out a
space "where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew."
Lke' te .other arts, it is essentally educatve, though not in a direct or didactic
way (Cf. Dewey 1934, 328). Ast shape sensuous materials (stone and words,
tones
.
and gestres, etc.) in order to shape percepton and experence - and
thereby to re-shape habit of percepton and experience, interretaton and cri
tique.4
'he

help.' provided by art in 'general invit!S recollectng a queston posed by

Fredich Schiller,43 one nea (perhaps at) the center of the positons articulated
by Graham and Heaney. Aer noting that the gaze of everyone, including the
phil6sopher, "is fastened expectantly upon the politcal arena" (for it is here that
the destny of humannd appears to be most manifestly at stake) he asks: "Does
one not betray a reprehensible indference to the welfre of society by failing to
share in the generaf debate?" (quoted in Jameson 1971, 86; Schller 1965, 26).
And py devotng oneself to debates about art and beauty, rather than those about
power and feedom, does not one display such indference?44 Schiller's answer is
a bold one: The subject matter of aesthetc refecton "is not so much alien to the
needs, as rather merely to te taste, of our moment in hstory." Of even greater
pertnence, he states ta "it is precisely through the aesthetc question that we
ae obliged to take 'in any Utmate soluton of the political question, for it is
throUgh beaut that we arrive at feeqom." The ugliness of so much of our po
litic: Jives shoJd not blind us to the politics of beauty and, moreover, to the
toleiofartas a means ofemanci)nton (tf. Dewey).
;unster berg appeaistb have grasped the connection between the aesthetic
and te politcal. But he also tends to argue for a characteristcally modernist ap
proach to the problem of beaut, an approach in which the connecton between
the aesthetc and te

politc is so attenuated as to result, in efect, in a separa
ton of the to. Ths faw in .hs general aesthetcs has imporant consequences
for the adequacy of his flm theor. Though of contemporar relevance, Munster
berg's early contrbuton to flm teor is very much limited by several factors,
the shortcomings of his aesthetc theor and the undeveloped stage of flm itself
bein'g the most prominent of these factors. Even so, the editors of Film Teory
and Criticism ( 1999) were wse to include a selecton fom Te Photoply in teir
Introductor Readings for this ver early theorst, refecting on litle more than
an embronc art, was nonetheless able clearly to see flm as an art and also
shar!ly to dHneate some of the most crcial features of cinematic narration.
Durlng the last,eais of his lif; the author of Eternal Values did not dismiss pho
toplay 'S an ephemeral phenomenon of litte or no imporance: here rather is an
art Wth whch psyd1ologist, phlosophers and citzens must seriously reckon.4s
Wt an important excepton (to 'wit, television), Munsterberg's obseration in
1916 regard
.
ng cinema stll holds .today: "No art reaches a larger audience; no
esthetic influence fnds spectators in a more receptive frame of mind" (228-
229).
46
But no educaton is more demandng than that concerning the trly in
telligent percepton, interpretation, and crit
q
ue of aesthetc fors; and .nowhere
is the catering to "the mere likng of the pupils" more quiddy and lastngly 'de
structive than here. Is there any serious question regading an intate, compex
relatonshp between our curent crises in educaton47 and 'te.'massive impa
'
t of
moves and television? (see, e.g., Boudeu 1999). Is it possible 'squardy io ton
font these crises without careflly considering the predominant "educatonal"
agencies in contemporary Aerican cultue?48
Conclusion
In the number of The Moving Picture World for Januar 6t, 1917, a publica
tion described by Lindsay as "the thunderer of the screen journals" (1917, 76),
one can read in large print that: "In the death of Hugo of Minsterberg, the mo
ton pictures lose a firm fend and advocate. He was a close student of te possi
bilities of the pictures along educational and test lines, and had he .livcc it is ver
probable that pictures would have been liberally used in the unversites witin a
short time" (quoted in Lindsay). This actually slgts Mihsterberg's interest in
photoplay, for he was as much interested in film as a cultal phenomnon and
aestetc site as an educatonal devce. The vsual music of monon pictures rust
be appreciated for what it is or soon promises to become: a unique moe ofattis
tic narration in which the subtle textures of lived temporalit are bodle,d fort. in
an arresting play of fleeing images. This was, at least, Minsterbcg's principal
contention regarding this emerging art, the timeliness of whch Is ackowledged
by the editors of Film Theor and Criticism.
In 1915, te year before te publicaton of The Photoplay, Csmopolitan pub
lished a piece by Minsterberg enttled "Wy We Go t the Movies"49 So, it
seems appropriate for us, especially in this settng, to ask:so Why don't we go to
the movies? Most of us do in fact do go to the tovies, some of us quite fe
quently and even passionately. So why, ten, does te phenomenon of flm, so
prominent in our personal lives and contemporary cultue, receive so litte of our
philosophical attenton? Wy is such a vital part of our experence accorded' such
miniscule attention in our philosophy?51 Encrusted habits and _acaderiuc conven
tons go a long way toward answering these questions. Here be\cy' words, if
not his example in this specifc case, point toward the need "to. brea tough the
imprisoning crst of outworn taditions and customs .. . " (LW15, 17).
So let's just go to the movies with a copy of Hugo Munsterberg's book in
hand or, at any rate, with a lively sense of the immedate relevance of Aerican
philosophy, more generally, to te absorbing play of cineatic images, auditory
and visual. How can one who was only familiar wit silent flms have been so
eloquent and we who have had such a richer experence of cinematic presentaton
be so silent?52 My hope then is to have recalled Minst
erberg's book as a wa
y
of
renewing,
witin such circles of investigaton as are repr
esented in ts Society,
philosophical
attention to this truly contemporar art (with
Vachel Lindsay, we
might s8y wth dferent cmph8ss: this ty cCntcmpCrar ar). Such 8 tcncw8
C be lgely: .n in8UgurtCn, for wc kDCw C lUc of te wCr of Hugo
iitretg, N8Chc itnd8y 8nO other voices yet to b identfied. To recover
their wrk is to -ejon their eforY to take up anew what never shCu\C h2Vc
Dcpi dC\n -or,to:tak up at long last what should have been taken up long
agq.5Jogp U8Ck!C tem-is tC|ccl te nccOtCgC lCw8td tCw8fO thc 8lUCU8
ICnD|McfttI of Cinema nCCQOl8Ung thc n|ghU 8nO wOCm Cl thCc Qh
osCpC8 If8OICn1 wth whch-we n tis SCCict OcnU[ CUfcYc. h
fas}back tUs C8Hc mCtc th8E tcCQcCtVc gn|hC8nCc t mght Ochnc a f
tur drectCn ClQh|CCQhCz |nguqamong those whC dcnuq temselves with
Aerican thCUght .
' But, fom the perspectve of 8 Uy rCbust pragmatsm, acuatng teCrie
8DOUtbmmghtDc nUmCcnt.1t might b [8 8U cyct8DcnO 8tgUc ncCc
sar to make moVie, tC experiment in meda Cthcr !h8n aDgu8gc cQcctay a it
is ued in_ the COnVcntCn8 lClm Cl 8C8OcmC dCCUrc. mCCQhct h8Vc for
the most part Cnyinterpreted flms, whereas the QC|nt I tC m8kc tem! How
cctOCh8ngc te wCtO in wmch wcVc!" mCwcc tC rcCCnuCt mCI ccC-
UVcy8t c8t mCtmmcO|8tcythc OQCUCn 8nO 8IuIUOc ClCucVc 8nC
othrs- [Cl pwey tw 11: 42 )? A a discipnc, QhlosCQhy has scemeO epccialy
rcut8nt to :DVcUg8Ic te 1OVc 8QQ8fcnUyCUt Cl fear that tw| OtQ8Ic |tcl
on !he chcmcf8. But how often is 'ts reluctance symptomatc of "its inability
tC op,e wth the emergr:ce of ncwmCOc Clc CcXQctcnCc th8t Ocm8nC
new moes of expression" (Dewey LW 10 [1934], 307)?
, So; lees, 8 gC tO thc mCVc Qclh8Q ntC thc tUOC to m8kc !hcm 8 wc
as te nlC theatres simply to W8tCh-and let's not forget to t8kc Hugo with U!
t wCUO Dc mn tC dig Cut Can 8rchvc "Ncptune>s Daughter, the silent flm
Wt nncttc bccfm80 th8topened Mtnsterberg's "eyes to the dstinctve char
8cter 8nOQCDIc CUcphCtCp8y" (M8rg8ret MtnsterDerg 1922, 281 .
hCcnnyV8m8I8tc tBVctIy
AndrsOJ; Douglas
.1993 "Aerca .Lss in Cvell's Emerson." Ts,tnr of the Charles S.
Peirce Sciet, VOmcX, number 1: 69-89.
Adrw, J. Dudey
.
1976 Te Major Film Teories: An Intoduction. London: Oxford Universit
rc.
Acrdt;Hana
1968[1954]
Anheim, Rudolph
BetJeen Par and Future: Eiht Eercises in Political Tought.
N: Ving. . .
1957 Film as Ar. Berkeley, CA: Universit of Californa Press.
Bazin, Ade
1967
Berga, Ronald
1999
Bloom, Alan
1987
Bourdicu, Pierre
Wat Is Cinemal Selected and taslated by Hugh Gry fom te frst
two volumes of Q'esce que l cinema. Berkeley, C Unversit 'of
Calornia Press.
Sergei Eiensein: A Lf in Cnfict. Woodtoc, N: Oeriook Press.
Te Clsing of the American Mind. N: Simon & Schuster.
1999 O Teleision, tslated by Prscila Parkhust Fergson. New Press.
Braudy, Leo and Mashall Cohen
1999 Film Theor and Criticim: Introductory Readings. N: Oxord. Ur
versit Press.
Cavina, ltao
1993
Cavell, Staley
1980
1984
1996
"A Cinema-Gor's Autobiogrphy" i The Road to San GioBnni,
tanslated by Tim Paks. N: Pateon Books.
The Worl Vieed: Refctions o the Otolg of Film (Enlarged Edi-
ton). Cambrdge: Harard University Press.

Puruits of Happines T Holywood Cmedy of Remmage.
C
bridge: Harad University Pres.
Contesting Tears: Te Holywood Meldrama of the Unknown Woman.
Chicago: Universit of Chicago Press.
Cohen, Monis Rphael
1919 "Basebal as a Natona Rligon." Te Dial, volue 67 (JUy 26,
1919): 57. Reprnted in The Faith of a Liberal: Selcted Esays (N:
Henr Holt & Co., 194): 334-336. Al references in ts paper are to
te reprint of this essay in Te Faith of a Liberl.
Colapieto, Vincent
1995 "The Vinue of Vageness ad the Vagaries of Precsion: .Re
Interpretng James and Re-Orentng Phosophy/' Metaphilsoph,
volue 26, nuber 3 (Juy): 300-312.
Cook, David A.
1981 A Hisor ofNBrative Film. N: W. W. Norton & Co.
de Lurets, Teresa
1984 Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotic, Cinem. Bloomngton, IN: Indiaa
Unversity Press.
Dewey, John
1917
1931
1934
"The Need for a Recovery of Phlosophy." Creative Intelience:psays
in the Pragmatic Attitude (N: Hen Holt): 3-69. Rprted i
Rchard ]. Bernstein (ed.), On Eerience, Nature, and Feedom
(Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrl, 1960): 19-69; aso in Te Midl
Work of fohn Dewe (Cabondae & Edwadsile, IL SIU Press), vol
ume 10: 448.
"Context ad Thought." lter Work of John Dlve, volliiie 6: 321.
Cited as LW 6.
Ar as Eperience. Al references in this paper ae to voilic lO,ofTe
Lter Work of John Dewey (Cabondae and 'Edwadl e, IL: SIU
:Pres, 1987). Cited as LW iO.
1935 "Liberaliim and Scial Acion. Al references ae to the critcally edited
verion of tis text fund in Te lte Wrtngs of Joh Dewe, volume
ll (Carbndae & Edwadsle, IL: SIU Press, 1987). Cited a LW
11.
1942 "Wila, Jae as Empiricist" in In CommemotRtiun of Wiliam James,
184-194 (N: Columbia Unversity Press, 1942): 48-57. All refer
,ence are to the reprnt of this paper i T lter Work of John Deey,
volume 15 (Cabondale and Edwadsville, IL: SIU Press, 1989): 9-17
Emrsor, Rph Waldo
'
1841" "A" in Esays: Firrt Series.
i84 "The Pot" !n Esays: Second Sres.
Feyrabend, Paw
'
1975
GaVin, Wilam
.1992
Graham, Gordon
.
199
i
Graam, Jore
"lt's Make More Moves. " Te Ol of Minera: Philsophers on Phi
lsoph; edted by Charle J. Bontempo ad S. Jack Odell (N:
McGrw-Hll): 20i-210 Rprinted in Knorrldge, Science, and Rel
tivim: P
h
ilrp
h
ical Paper, volume 3 (Cabridge, U Ca,bridge
Universit Press, 1999): 192-199.
Wiliam ]1me and the Reinratement of t
h
e Vague. Philadelphia: Tem
ple University Press.
Philsoph of the Arts: An Intoduction to Ae
h
etcs. N: Roudcdge.
197 Interew oh "Ail Thigs Considered" (Natonal Public Rdio) con
ducted by Jack Lyden. Transcript provded by NPR 35.
Harard Alumni Bultin
1950 "Minsterberg Was Panted Out." Harard Alumni Bulltin
(Febra 18, 1950): 384-385.
!eaney, Seam!S
.
1995
James Wil am
. 1890
1899
1908
l9li
Jatesin,' Frederic
:1971
CreditngPoet: Te NobelLectur. N: Fara Stauss Giroux.
1e Prncils of Pscholg. N:. Henr Holt & Co. Al references are
to te ctc ed'on of The Principls of Pscholg (Cambridge, M,
&Lndon; Engad: Haad Unversit Press, 1981).
"On a Ciin Blindess in Hua Beings. " Tal to Teachers on Ps
cholg; and to Students on &nne of Lif's Ideal. N: Henr Holt. Re
printed in On Some of Life's Ideal (N: Henr Holt, 1912)
"The Socal Value of te College Bred. " McClure1I Magazine, 30:
419-422. Addess at.Rdctife College (November 7, 1907) to the
Asociaton of Amercan Alumae. Reprinted in Memories and Studies
(N & London: Longmas, Green & Co.). Reprnted in The Moral
quivalnt of War and Other Essays, edited by Joh K. Roth (N:
Harer&Row, 1971): 17-24.
Esrays i11 Radical Empiricim. N: Longmans, Green.
Marxism and For: Twentieth-Cntury Dialectcal Teories of Litera
. ture. Prnce tor( NJ: Prnceton University Press.
Kuic, Brce
1977 Te Rise of American Philsoph: Cambridge, Masac/et, 1860-1930.
New Have and Lndon: Yae Univerit Press.
Lger, Susanne K
1953 Feeling and Fonn: A Teory of Ar. N: Charles Scrbner's Sons.
1967-82 Mind: An Esay on Htman Feelng, volue 1 (1967), 2 (1912), k3
(1982). Batmore, M: Johns Hopkins Universit Press.
Lindsay, Vachel
1916
1917
Met, Chrstia
1971
1974
1977
Te Ar of the Moing Pictre. N: Liveright.
"Photoplay Progres" (Review of Hugo Misterberg's Te Photoply:
A Prcholgical Study). Te Ne Republic (Febrar 17): 76-77.
-. .
Essais sur I sinifcation au cinima. Editons Kckiec. A refer
ences in this paper ae to Film Lnguage: A Smiotic of the Cnema
(N: Oxford Unversit Press, 1974), te taslaton of Esais into
English by Michael Taylor.
Lnguage and Cinema, translated by Donna Jea Umiker-Sebcok.
The Hague: Mouton.

L Signicant imaginaire. Unon Genere D':ditons. A references
in this paper arc to Te Imaginar Sinier: Prchoanalyis and the Cin-
ema (Bloomington, IN: Indiaa Unversit Pre5, 1982), the tnsla
ton of L Sinifcant imaginaire into Engsh by Celia Britton, .An
wl WLla, Ben Brewster, and Afed Guzzct.
' '
.
Miller. John Willam
1981 Te Philsoph of Histor. N: W. W. Norton & Co.
Milsterberg, Hugo
1898 "Psychology and A" in Atlantic Monthly (November): 22-32.
1904 Te Prncipls of Art: A Philsophcal, Aesthtical and Priotgical Dis
1909
cusion of Ar Education. N: The Prag Eductional C.
"The Problem of Beauty" in Philsophical Rwiew (March), XII:
121-146.
1915 "Wy We Go to the Movies" in Cosmopolitan (December 15): 22-32.
1916 The Photoply: A Prcholgical Study. N: D. Apleton. Te Film: A
Prcholgical Study is a unatered and unabrdged republicaton of the
1916 work.
Misterberg, Magaret
1922 Hugo Munserberg,: His Lie and Work. N: D. Apleton
..
Peirce, C. S.
1982 Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chonolgical Edition, edted by a
H. Fisch, eta. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Universit Pres. Cited a
WI.
Perr, Rph Baton
1935 The Thought and Charactr of Wiliam Jamer, to volues. Boton:
Litde, Brown, & Compay.

Pea, Jr., EdwardS.
1992 "The Origin ad Development of Peirce's Concept of Self-Contol."
Transactions of the Charls S. Peirce Scie
t
, volume XI, number 4
(Fal): 667-690.
Ryce, Josiah
'
1901
. i9r3
Said, Edward
1991
Te Worl tmd the IndiJidua Second Seres. N: The Macmillan
Compay .
Te Problm of Chrianit, to volwe. N: Macmilla.
"The Politic. ofKnowledge." !rtn.n 11:1 (Swer). Reprited in
Faling into Teory: Conficting Views o Reading Literature, edited by
Davd H.Rcher (Boston: Bedford Books, 1994): 193-203. Al refer
ences ae to ts reprnted version.
Schler, Fredch
.1795 [1965] O the Aeshetic Education of Man in a Seres of Ltters, tas
lated by,Regnald Snell. N: Frederc Ungar Publishig Co.
Silvehn;, Kja
. 1983
Updike,John
1996
Wollen, Peter
1972
NOT
The Subject of Semiotic. N: Oxord University Press.
In the Beaut of the Lilies. N: Fawcet Colwbine.
Sins and Meaning in the Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univer
sit Press.
l. Thoug Braudy ad Cohen, the editors of Film Teor and Criticim,
cite Misterberg'swork a Te Fim: APscholgicl Study, the ttle of the 1916 edition
wa 'e Phttply: A Pscholgical Study. In Te Rise of American Philsoph, Bruce Ku
lick ote in 1977 th.at Misterberg's book had a shorter lifespa tha most of his other
works bt tete'wa, "happily, a new editon which I have used: Te Film: A Pscholgical
Study (Ne Dover Publctons; 1970)" (213). Shory afer Te Photply ws reissued
under ts ti:e, Oonad Fredencson was awaded a Ph.D. fom the Universit oflowa for
his dssertaton on "The Aesthetc of Isolation in Film Theory: Hugo Minster
berg
"
(1973).
The brefselecton included by Brudy ad Cohen in their Introduc
tor Readingr c be found on pp. 401-407; it is chapter 9 of Te Photoply. The tii:le
( . The 'Means of te Photoplay") used by these edtors is, in fact, the ttle used by the au
tor hmself. It is remarkable jut how suggestve, intelgble, and in may respects con
tempora is ts selecton fom Tt Photoly.
2. See the photographs of Santayana, Minsterberg, Royce, ad James
placed on te se page to intoduce Part 3 of Brce Kuc's The Rise of American Phi
lsoph, "Te Golden Age at Haard (II)" (1977, 231). However odd it mgt soud to
us today, what this collage of photographs indicates is that, in prevous decades, it was not
unusua to speak of tese four fgres in the sae breath.
3. This certnly beft Minsterberg's orientton. A ]. Dudey Andew
notes', aer hsIntoducton" to Photoplay, "Minsterberg never agan mentons ay kind
of cinema excep.t naratve cinema: For hm, cinema is indeed mere gadget without na
ratvt. Ony when te gadgeo worked on the naratve capacity of the mnd did the
photoplay come into being and, through
i
t, the atstic wonders of flm we all recog-
nz" '(1976;16).
.
4. "At frst, stage plays and musica routnes were flmed as if trough the
eyes of a rigd font-row theatre-goer, but fom yea to yea the

cera had gw in cu
ning and fexibiit, fnding its vocabular of cut, dissolve, dose up tacking ad dolly
shot. Eyes had never before seen in this maner; imposibite of conecton ad ds
juncton formed a magc, glitterng sequence that lef real tme and it thee rgd dmen
sions behind" (Updike 1996, 106).
5. Given Mlnsterberg's own crtque of mimesis, found i Chapter VII
("The Purpose of A") of T Photoply as wl as in his other wtngs on aethetcs, it
seems more appropriate to refer to artstc presenttion tha reresentaton. ,
6. This is one of the aspect of Misterberg's book that Vachel Lndsay
highlights in his revew of that work. The poet-ctc suggets here that Minsterbcrg in
efect wote (posthumously!) "the gde-book to the newest photoplay experment" -
Grifth's "Intolerance." "People have spoken of Grfth's 'sheer sensatonalism' in his
plot in which he shows four perods of rme conversig wt one aother. But juping
back ad forth over barers of tme is the most accepted ting i te photoplay. hudle
race" (1917, 76).
7. The connecton bereen Minsterberg aud.]affes, on the one hand,
and Royce, on the other, is not in the lease forced, for he (lie hs to more fmous col
leagues) insisted that philosophical refecton is rooted in immediate experence and,
moreover, such refecton must contnualy return to the discloses of suc experience.
He afrmed that phosophy "sts ... not fom ay scientc resuts, as one of its fnc
tons is to fnd out what rght and value belong to science. It star fom te immediate
experience of life, ad fom here it must sttle, or at least understnd, the meaning ad
value of ever possible functon of life" (1904, 5).

.
8. Though a shon paper written specifcally for the 2000 annual meetng
of SM, I want to embed my dscussion of Misterberg's vews on creta in a. densely
scdirented histor (at once, persona, textua, and instttona, though the emphais wl
fl on the textual and to a slighty less extent the personal). A a way of accomplishg
ts goal, I will annotate my dscussion with extensive and, in some isccs, lengthy
footnotes. In the labyrintne network of (a it were) sbterea an otton, it' is im
possible for me to resist citng in a footote a footnote on footnotng! Thus, see Frederc
Jameson's 1971,9, n. 2; cf. 52. Wle such a citaton might seem to exceed te point of
diminishing returns (returns of information and insight on the investment of time and
energ), my hope is that te tc hstor in which I embedmy recover mission wl
deepen the reader's appreciaton and undertanding of Hugo MisterbCrg's groudbrek
ing work in fm teor; Also, since his wrtngs arc both largely uriknown and ofen df
cut to obtan, I have quoted extensively in the footnotes to substtate ad il ustte r
interretations and critques.
For insights into ad detls of Minsterberg's relatonship to James,
see Perr 1935, II, chapter L ("James and Minsterberg") ad :aso Margaret. Mlnster
berg 1922. James brougt Minsterberg to Haad to tech psychlog, to relieve hm
self of this responsibilit! Despite James's misgivigs (upon leang ofMisterberg's in
tenton, James wote that if te book to b dedicated to him is in lne WtlMisterberg's
other work in psychology, ten he woud b at odds with may of it key claims: "Ad
how will that comport wth the dedcaton1 Can I then critcize it openy, if the devi
tempts me to do so? Ad if I do, won't you feel as if you had thrown a good dedcaton
away1" [Perry 1935, II, 148])-despite James's msgivings ad qute strenuous protet
Miinsterberg did in fact dedicate Grndzuge der Prchlgie (1900) to Wila James.
9. In his discussion of the technques of cinema (e.g., te close-up, te
cut-back in the setice ofmemor, ad the cut-ofin the setice of suggeston), Munster
berg ofers inigt into not only experenta tasitons but as the Jaesia noton of
tose e:erentaly-layered mment wherein much at once is going on. So-too does fm
itdofer-a telng exaple of the Jaesia noton of pue experence, wherein experen
ta dat; in teir Preenttonal imeacy, ae neither subjectve nor objectve but acquire
thei srrs a eiter or both depending on how they are taken up in the subsequent
stea of imedate experence.
10, These aleged inadequacies can however ony be identifed if a ines-
capable ambigit is noted ad tereby neutalized. For ts purose, one canot do bet
ter tan mae explicit te dstctons ipled in Dewey's obseratons in "Context and
Thought" (1931), ones made in reference to "the contovers about te relaton of
thought-to language": "lf langage is idented wit speec [i.e., with lngstc sigs, i.e.,
verbally aiculated symbols ad. their graphc repreematonsJ, there is undoubtedly
thought .wtout speech. But if 'lagage' is used to sigif all knds of sigs ad symbols,
ten asuedy tere is no thougt witout langage; whe sigs and smbols depend for
teir meang upon the contexta situaton in which they appear and ae used" (LW 6: 4;
cf. Lnger;Colapietro).
.
. 11. The menton of ]ames in conecton wt a cuta phenomenon such
as popta fi lm invites recolecton ofan anecdote told by Mors Rphael Cohen. Cohen
opens "Baebal a a Natonal Rligon" by notng that: "In the world's histor baseball is
a new game: hence new to song ad stor ad ucelebrted in the fne ar of paintng,
scuptre, ad muic" (1946 [1919]; 334). He goes on to note that: "When my revered
fena ad teacher Willia James wtcte a.essayon ''A Mora Equvlent for Wa," I sug
gested to hm tat baseball aeady;embodied al te mora vaue of wa, so f as wa had
ay ioral. value. He listened Smpathetcaly, ad was amused, but he did not te me
serously enoug. Algreat men have their limitatons [ad indeed blindnesses] and WL
liam Jaes's were dueto the fact that he lived in Cbrdge, a cit which, in spite of the
fct tat it has a popuaton c100,000 souls (includng te professors), is not represented
in ay baseball legue that ca be detected without a microsope" (335-6)! Sec James's
own "On a Cenn Blindess in Hwa Beings." Ae not te blindnesses of paents most
visible to teir chldren, thos of teachers most visible to their stdent, especially ones
who in tme have themselves become faous?!
In a diferent connecton, Dewey does not appea to be at al blnd to
te releince of basbal or atleat athletcs. "In order to undertnd the estetic in its
ultmate .and approved forms, one must beg with it in the raw; in the events and scenes
that ho! te atentve eyeand ea of ma; aousing his interet and afording him enjoy
mentas he looks and listens: te sigti that hold te crowd -the fre-engine rshing by;
the rachine excavatng enoriousJoles in the ear; the huma-fy cmbig the steeple
side; ti: mer. perched high in air on girders, throwng ad ctching red-hot bolt. Te
souries of ar in hman tpe'ienae ''ilbe lared by him who sees how the tense grace of the
bat-'l
y
er infect the 'onloking cod; wh notes-the deliht of th housewi in tending her
plants, etc.'' (LW 10: 10-11; emphasis added).
.
12. Minsterberg appeas to have been personally and (of couse) philoso
phcallydoser to Royce than to James. See Margaret Misterberg 1922. Like Royce, he
ws President of bot te American Psychologica Asociaton and the Aerca Phloso
phcal Asociaton; :lso like hm, he was an indeftgable defender of the idealist perspec
tve.:
13. Minsterbetg's teatment of cinema vis-a-vis teatre is an exemplifca-
ton of what Royce exhibits i Te Problm of Chisanit a the logc of compariso1 (II,
169f.; 194f.; 264f. Another compelling exhibiton of this logc is foud hi Mister
berg's caefl y delineatng contst between the scholarly ad the artstc attde (1916,
1461.).
14. I take it to be signfcant that, in the lat sentence of the frt capter of
Te Photoply ("The Outer Development of the Moving Pctures"), Minsterberg stesses
that ths outer development, "ts technical proges and this temendous incease of the
mechanica devices for producton [of ciematc imager], have their te meanig in te
iner growth which led fom nfe episodes to the height of temendous acton, fom tv
ial routine to a new ad most promsing ar (1916, 20; emphais added). In chapter
two, he discsses this iner development. This chapter itself concludes by posing the psy
chologcal and aestetc questons (respectvely, "What are the psychologq factors ip
volved when we watch the happening on the screen?" and "What charcteriz the inde
pendence of an at, what consttte the conditons uder which the ,works f a sda a
stnd[?]" [1916, 39]) to whch te book is principally devoted.
,
15. Part I of Te Photoply ("The Psychology of te Photoplay") is made
up of fou chapters, coverng just these topic: Chapter 3, "Dept and Movement"; Chap
ter 4, "Attenton"; Chapter 5, "Memory ad Imagnaton"; and Chapter 6, "Emotons."
16. Photography is, accordng to Andre Bazin, "a feeble techique in the
sense that its instantneit compels it to capture tme only piecemal. The cnema [i con
tast] makes a molding of the object a it exist in tme and, fherore, makes a im-
print of the duraton of the object" (1967, 96).
.
17 Of course Staey Cavell is a notble excepton in this regd. At te
1997 annual meeting of SA he in fact presented a paper dealing with (among other
topics) cinematc representaton ("Has-Beens and Comebacks: Quetons of Prase in
Shakespeare and Astaire"; Albuquerque, NM; Mach 7, 1997). Bt. t may inSA:con
sider him an "outsider" because of training in the analyc tdton . of contemporar A
glo-Aerican philosophy. He is, in their judgent, a Emersonia come lately! This is,
in my judgment, lagely unfair. An infored, balanced, and appropriate te on Cavell's
relatonshp to Aerica philosophy can be foud in Douglas R Aderson 1993. Ander
son is at once appreciatve of Cavell's concern to recover Emerson a1 a phiw1ophe and
critcal of Cavell's tendency to t t w respectbility for Emerson by exclusively high
lghtng the afnites between ths Amercan tscendentst ad such contempora
European phosophers as Wittgenstein ad Hidegger. A importnt a these afrites
are, the ones between Emerson on the one side and Jame and Dewey on te other are, at
least, equally imporant. But even countng Cavell as someone who in some measure and
maner truly represents Americ phosophy makes my point: he is te excepton who
proves the rule. He is a American phlosopher (it would b uair,
,
not simply ungra
cious, to deny him ts status) who is concered with the philosophy of fm; hs eforts in
tis regad make hm somewhat exceptonal.
18. Ths judgment does not imply te inapplcabity of hs theor of a. to
these ty contempora ar forms. In fact, the inherent dve of Deweyan aesthetc
would appear to be inclusive of these "popular" or "low" ar.
This neglect trs out to be al the more remakable since Dewey met
Sergei Eisenstein when the latter was on a sojour, frst, to Europe and then t'tc United
States ad Mexco (Bergan 1999). Aso, by the tme of Dewey's death i 1952, cinema of
couse had evolved far beyond what Mtnsterberg witneSes at te tme of hi death in
1916,
19. Given her ow atempt to connect cnema and deas, it is ironic that
Lger; who w in so may respect such a caefl scholar, mised a saent feare of fm
theor .In its inaugural phase: "Inumerble esys of ths period ( 1912-25) loudly dfer
entate cinema fom teate. Most suggest that because cnema in it inc w eco
nomcaly oblged to record theatca perormace, it had never looked beyond the thea
te fnr it ow essence. The avt-gde of the tentes stssed to qualites of music,
pot, ad abve al deam inherent in the fm experence. Delluc ted to sum up his
concepton of the new at i one mystc word, photogenie, that special quality avalable to
cinema alone whc ca tfor the world ad ma in a singe gesture. Cinema is pho
tograp,y,. to be slire, but photogphy which ha. been rased to a rhythmic unity and
which>in tn,haHhe'power torais.e_and uplif ou. dreas" (Ahdew, 12).
20.-- That Andrew incudes Miinstcrberg is of course itself signifcat, even
if whRt hc says is les tan accuae (e.g., his cla. that Minsterbrg fils to appreciate that
fm is a colabortve a),
:21. Tis remak cre theauthort of one who devoted two volumes to
te ver topics to which Mlstcrberg devoted the to main pats of The Photoply (Par I
being concerned with "Te Psychology of the Photoplay" ad Pat II wth "The Aestet
ics of the Photoplay"); for Jea Mtt is the author of Ethetique et pscholgic du cinema
(Pas: Editons Unversitaes, 1963 & 1965) as well as Dictionnaire du cinem (Paris:
Louse, 1963), Hitoire du cinima (Pars: Editons Universitaires) in three volue
( 1967; 19.69, & 1971 }, ad other importnt works in ths feld.
22. An atcle in the Harard Alumni Bulltin ( "Misterberg Wa
Pated Out") -quotes at lengt fom a letter by Ms, Ir B. J oral em on, the daughter the
artst. !The tesis of this ade.is that-Minsterbcrg coud not have been painted out of
ts porat pecause .be was never paited in!
3, Of course .this is, in a diferent conecton, te queston to which this
paper is devoted ..
24. There is obviously a abiguit in te obsolete ter photoply, for it
mght .be :te-play or dama prented cnematcal y or it might mea te play of moving
images: Of course, it might be used inclusively, thus comprehendng both of these senses.
tis incusive sense seeis closest to Misterberg's chacterstic usage; also te noton of
the play of images nicely suggest the play ofsignifers, a associaton wory of explorng
ad exloitng at aoter tme.
25. My hope is to Wte a monogaph on the theories of fm ariculated
by, at least, Misterbetg ad Lindsay, wit special atenton paid to how their views
square or conflict wth the genera positons of Dewey ad Lger.
26. Mtnsterberg died in the same yea as his book on cinema wa pub-
lished, so he had litte or no opportUnit to take into account the paralel refectons by
this Aercan poet. But his poet dd te note of the philosopher and psychologst who
also took Wth the utost serousness the newly emergng a of sient flms. Lidsay's
Photoplay Progres" was a revew of Mlsterberg's book publshed Te New Republic
(Februar.l7, 1917}, pp. 76-77
27. The 'hotoply i:k dvided into three: ut. Ater a Introducton made
up of two. chapters ("The Outer Development of te Moving Pkrres" ad "The Iner
Development of the Movng Picres"), Misterberg deotes Part I to "The Psychology
of te Photoplay" and Pa II .to "The Aestetc of the Photoplay." Hs theor of aes
tetc is deeply indebted to Kt's positon.
28. I do not mea to imply too shar a contast beteen Lindsay and
Minsterbcrg. For Undsay te gret pans to exhibit te dstncve fearre of fm, just
as Minsterberg makes an explicit efor to accord fm te status of ar. The tte page of
the 1992 edton of Linday's book beas ths annoucement. imedatly under te te:
"Intended, first of all, for the new a musus springng up alover te cout. But te
book is for ou universites and insttutons of lernng. It conts a appeal to ou whole
critcal and literary world, ad to our creators of sculpre, archtectue, paintng,. and the
Aercan cites they ae buidng. Being te 1922 reissue of the book first issued i 1915,
and begnning wt an aple dscouse on the great new prospect of i92i." B1t Mt
sterberg's book is a less embattled one: he is not -a Lindsay mafestly is-so much
fghting against the rther deep prejudces of a cult elite whch tends to be dismissive
of fm, as he is tryig to get at what is unque about this for of a.
29. Miisterberg cae to cinema quite late in his life. In fact, hs book on
Te Photply w published in the yea of hs death, while hs acle {"Wy We Go to te
Movies") was published in Csopolittn one yea ad one day before hs death. His im
mersion in te pleaures of this medum can, apparently, be dated fom hs encounter wt
a mermaid (Magaet MUsterberg 1922, 281)! He "had not been a 'movie' paton; in
deed, he had looked upon moton pictures, wt the exceptqn -of tavel pictres like
Ramy's Hunt, as rather in a cass wt vaudeville, whc he never approache. Or a )our
ncy, however, he saw Annette Kelleran's mermad pranksin 'Neptune's Daughter/ .ad
dls not only <elighted him, but opened his eyes to the distnctve cha.cter .ad possibil
tes of the photoplay. Durng the sumer of 1915, he spent Jany hours in motion
picture houses. In June of that yea the Vit gaph Company i New. York showeclim,
wt ready hospitalty, its studios, its methods, its actors ad actesses. A snapshot. picture
was taen of Minsterberg listening attentvely to Ata Stewat. He as a eager pupil
and the more he studied this fscnatng field, the more he wa convinced of te. unique
ness of its arstc mission n (Margaret Minsterberg 1922, 281-2 ).
30. His firt dssertaton, crtcal o[Wurdt, was rejecte< by te psycholo-
gist who would, afer proposing another topic to Minsterberg, eventually. become his
Doktorater (Kuck, 187). A Kuc. explans, ths event wa signifct in Mfter
berg's life.
31. Kuc clams tat Misterberg literally created the feld of applied
psychology (209). He also assert that: "Minsterberg wa the one Haad tiner whose
appled speculaton was extensive enough to war nt him the ttle of social philospher,
athough of a'low grade: in hndight hs pontfcatng was ludcou" (211.).
32. "Those who, like Edson, had a technica, scennfic; and social interest
but not a genuine esthetc point of view in the development of the movg pictures natu
raly asked themselves whether this optcal imitaton might not b improved by an acoust
c imtaton too. Then the idea woud be to connect the kematosope wt te phono
graph and to synchronize them so completely that wt ever visible movement ofte lips
the audible sound of the words woud leave the daphragm of the appartus. ! who de
voted themselves to ths problem had considerable difcultes ad when their ventures
proved practcal failues with their theate audences, they were inclined to blame their
inabilir to solve te technca problem perectly. They were not awae tat the real dif
culr was an esthetc and internal one. Even if te voices were heard wit ideal perfecton
and exactly in Lme wth tl1c movement on the screen, the efect on a csthctcatly consci
entous audience would have been dsappointng. A photoplay cannot gain but only lose
if its visual purity is destoyed. If we sec and hea at te same tme, we do indeed come
neaer to the real theatre, but this is desirable only if it is our goal to imtate the_ stge.
A soor a we have clealy undertood that the photoplay is a a in itelf, the consera
ton of' te spoken word is as distubing as color woud b on te cotg of a marble
statue" (i916, 202203; cf. 199-200).
.
33. "Our cief dam ; .. w that we flsif the meaning of the photoplay i
we s(rply subrdnate it to the esthetc conditons of te da. It is dferent fom mere
pictes and itjdifernt fom the drama, too, however much relaton it ha to both. But
we cble neer to the unoertadn. of it te positon in the esthetc world, if we tn
ai the se trie "of thai oter a upon which we touched, the a of the musical tones.
Theyhave overcome the outer wor'd ad the soca world entrely, they unfold our iner
life, :out ment play; wt its felingsad emotons, i a matera which seems exempt
fom t iiws of the world of substce ad matera, tones which ac futtering and feet
ing le ou own menta sttes. b{course, a photoplay is not a piece of music. Its mate
ra is not sound but lgt. But the photoplay is not music in te same sense in which it is
not drama and not pictures. It shae sometng wit al of them. It stands somewhere
among ad apart fom them and just for ts reaon it is an a of a partcular tpe which
must be undertod through it.own conditons and for which it own etetc rules must
be ted instead of drawng tem simply fom te res of the theate" (Minsterberg
1916, 168-9; c. !ger; aso Lndsay).
' . 3.4. .
1
'e do not wat to paint te eheeks of the Venus of Milo: neither do
we wt to 5ete coloring or Ma Jicord or At Stear [cf. Maget Minsterberg
192i,'i82]. We becre wae [in the couse o6u investgaton) that the unique task of
te photplay a e be fed mly by a f-reaching disregard of realit. The real hu
man persons' ad te realadscpe5 must be lef bhnd and ... must be tnsformed into
pictora suggestons only. We must be stongly conscious of their pictoral ureait in
ordef'tlat tat wondet play tf our inner hpeiences may be reaized on the screen.
This -tonstiusnei of U.ealty mit senously stf er fom the addton of color. We arc
oncemore brought to ne to te world whc realy suround us and the more we
.proach it the less we gan tat inner feedom, that 1ictor of the mi11d oper nature, whic
remine ideal of th photoly" (Misterberg 1916, 209-210; emphasis added).

.
35. This is perhaps nowhere more explicitly and emphaticaly expressed
ta i Te Prncipls ofAr Education (1904): "Te highest tt about te tng must
be te kowledge of the thing itclr
"
. .. the tng itself wit alit rchness ad al its mea
ings to the hlrmnd. The tg itel is not its past or its ftue, it want to be un
detood just a' it ofers itself to our md in the present experence, and there cannot be
any rest for us it we accept what it ofers ts moment .... The hghest truth thus lies
not in. the inference to fture trasfrmatons, but in the appreciaton of present oferings
tus, if you realy wat the tllng itelf, there is ony one wy to get it: you must sepa
rte it fom evertg else, you must disconnect it fom causes and efects, you must
brngit 'before te rnd so tha:t notng else' but tlts one preentton fils the mind . . . . If
that ca eer be reclicd, te resu rust be dea: for the object it meas complete isola
ton; for the subject,. it meas complete repose i te object, and thar" is complete satsfc'
ton Wt te object; ad that is, fi:ly merely aother nae for the enjoyment of beaut.
To isolate the objea for the mnd, meas to make it beautf" (19-20). Wle the work
of scence i,s conecton, "the work of at is isolaton" (21). "Werever nature [hersel
gves'Us such an experience which is closed in itelf and does not point to anything else,
and brngs to sience ever practcal demand ad maes us forget all things besides the one
which,ofcrs itelfto.our mind, tere natre herselfis the atst" (22). The world or total
it itself present par of itself a self-enclosed totalites or worlds. Hua a does this in
a more deliberate, intense ad arestng way tha the natral world,
36. To make this point, one might appeal to Friedrh Schiller or Edwad
Said or coundess oter theorst of a. "Live wth you centur, but ,do not,bdt crea
tue [do not be merely it creare?]; render to you contempor:e whit thefneed; not
what they prase. Etc." (Schler 54).
37. Cf. thee lines fom T. S. Elot's "The Dr Savages" (Il):
We had the exprence but missed te meanng;
Ad approach to the exerence restores the exerience
In a dif erent for.
38. "Te diferent a are dferent ways of abstactng fom

reality
... " (Mistcrberg 1916, 231).
39. Speang of hmself and hs siblings a young chldren, Heaey sttes
tt: "We took in evertg tat was goig on .... Astorcal, pre-sexua, in suspension
between the archaic and the modern, we were as susceptble and impressionable as the
dg water that stood in a bucket in our sculler: ever tme a passing train made the
eat shae, the surfce of the water used to rpple delictely, concentcaly, and in utter
silence" (1995, 4-5; cf 10; 52).
40. A Dewey notes, "the orgaism hungers nataly for satsfcton in te
material of experence. The hunger of the orgasm for satsfcton through the

eye is
hardly less tha it ugent impulsion for food" (LW lO [1934), 345). But the taW stUfof
human experience needs to be cultvated ad cooked in order to be pleasing nourshng.
The a thus feed ou hunger for satsfcton in the materals of experience.
41: The modat of possibilit (to what merely mih be) is one.intately
associated with at. In one of Peirce's most fmous essays, "The Negected ArgUent for
the Ralt of God" ( 1908), he comes close to identfng tis modalit wth the ceatons
of the artists as well a those of the mathematcians: "Of the three UniverSes ofExperence
familiar to us all, the frt comprses al mere Ideas [or abstctble Fors], those air
nothgs to which the mnd of poet, pue mathematcian, or aother might gve loal
habitaton and a name wtin tat mind. Their ver air-nothingneSs, the fd tat their
Being consists in mere ca
p
abi
t
of gettng tought, not in anybdy's Actaly thlg
them, save teir Reat" (Clcted Paper, 6.455). But, however prominent is ths mo
daity in a work of at it would be a mistake to suppose that at is limited to te ream of
possibility. Intactable conicts (i.e., instaces of secondes, of the modat df actuiit)
and intellgible conectons (e.g., instances ofthirdness, of te mait ofa form of being
destined or at least disposed in a cerain directon) are obviousl{so integ to a;_Even
so, art uniquely investgates ad projects possibiites. Herein te :taditon3lin beteen
art and imagnaton fds one ofits justfcatons.
42. Much of contempora a is designed not so much to factte as to
frst.ate what Royce caled the will td teang; for ths will'has historic;ly become so
tighdy interoven with te will to assimate and to domnate others. So ite be the case
that a work of art calls for an act of interretation (i.e., the enactnent of the wl t mean
ing) while blockngthc ver possibilit of inter
rettion. The work ofa enacts tis con
tadiction so as to resist being asimlated in the dominat form of aesthetc appreciaton
in a bougeois cutue -a form at one wt te ethos of that culture: consumpton. In
efect, te work is desiged to resist consumption ad, ifcoisued, to prove indigestble.
43. Schller was te frst philosophical author to whom C. s, Peirce de-
voted serious attention. See Pet 1992; aso, e.g.,,one of Peirce's own earliest wtngs
("The Sense of Beaut never fered the Perormace of a single Act of Duty"), a de-
fense of Schiler agst Rskn ( l: 10-12; 26 Mac 1857). This w wrtten while he
w;J st a std<nt at Ha: gduatng fom there ro yeas later (a yea marked also by
the'bi of Deey and the pibleion of Chale Darn's T Oigin of Species) .
. . >:44,, )nresponse to Jorie Gra's caim that a al ows us to go back
t9ug a gven exerence :d .gean fom it "whateer you might have missed in the
.hurr ( lig . the interiewer asked: "Te way a panter or a fmaker might t to
cptut light for examplel" To ts te pOt hersel responded: "The way a pater or a
fmmaer might udergo repeted tes of any event ut they get what they call the
rghf te. The dference beteen poltc ad poetics is precisely that poltcs compel s
one t form a rgd opinion, but te paradox tat potcs alows perits you to hold si
multaneous tuths at once. Wat Yeats would cal realit and justce in one thought" (4).
It is_ie re/romhpbreen poltc and poetc (or a) that obviously concerns us in te
concludng paagraphs of this crtcal secton, for Misterberg's aesthetic teory is, in my
judgent, especialy weak at this precise point.
45. The concluding chapter ofTe Photoplay is entted "The Fucton of
the :Photbplay." Minsterberg is acutely conscious of wtessing te birh of a new a and
thu ;being in no positon to forecat its ftre Even s, te fctons of cinema can, even
at this stge, be delireated in some manner ad measue.
4. . _In "The Social Value of the College Bred" James argued that the best
cam war a clkge eduto.n c. posibly mae is to help us form quattve judgments
regardg human agents, actons and aract (1908, 17; 20): At te concusion of this
essay, owever, he noted that: "In ou essental fcton of indicating the beter men, we
now Have fondable compettors outide [the coleges and uiversites]. McClure's
Magazine [te ver publcton in whch ts essay orgnal y appeaed], te American
Magazine; CUie"s Weekly, ad, in its fshion, the Worl Week, consttute together a real
popUa uversit aong this ver .lne. It would be a pity i ay ftre historian were to
wite words lke these: 'By te middle of the twentieth centur the higher insttutons of
leaning had lost all inuence over public opinon in the United Sttes. But the mission of
raisirg the tone of democrac, whic tey had proved themselves so lamentbly utted
to exer, wa. asumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extaordinar skill ad
succes by a new eductona power; ad for the cafcton of their hua sympathies
d:_eleaton oftheir huma preferences, the people at large acqured the habit of resort
ing 'excusivey to the gdace of certn prvate litera advente, designated in the
raetby the afctonate name oftercent magazines"' (2324 [1908]). In hs discus
sion :of "he Inner Development of the Moving Pictes" Miinsterbcrg himself suggests
that one of te nost signfcant achieVement "in this universe of photokowledge is 'the
magzne on the screen.' It is a 'bbld step which yet seemed necesar in ou day of rapid
kine.f tos'copic proges. The popua printed magaines in Amerca had their heyday in
the mdcg perod about ten yeas ago [i.e., the tme when James's essay appear in
McClure's Magazine]. Their hold on the imagnaton of the publc which wats to be
inforincd and entertained at te .same tme has steadly deceased, whe the power of the
moving pictue house has increased. The picture house ought therefore to take up the
tsk1ofthe magazines which it ha partly dsplaced. The magaines gve ony a small place
to aces in whch scholars ad mer .ofpublc life dscuss sigfcat problems. Much
Aerca hstor in -the last two decades was deeply inuenced by the columns of te illus
tttd magaines, Those men who r eached the mllons by such arcles cannot overlook
the fct - they may approve or condem it - that the masses of today prefer to be
tugt by pictes rather tha by words. The audiences are assembled ayhow. Instead of
feeding them with mere enterinment, why not gve tem food. for serious thought?
The editors wl have to tae cae that the discussions do not degenerate ito onecsjded
propaganda, but so must the editor of a prted magazine"(l916, 26-28). Mtnsterbcrg
kew, however, that te iMer development of this emergng an pointed prncpaly in a
aesthetc directon, albeit one closely linked to popular entertinment: !Yet tat- power of
the moving picrures to supplement the school room ad te newspaper ad the lbra by
spreading informaton ad knowledge Is, afer al, secondary to their genera .task, to brng
entennment and amusement to the mases. This is the chief road on which the forard
mach of the last twenty years has been most rapid. The theate and the vaudevile ad
the novel had to yield room and ample room to the play of the mttng picrres. What was
the rea principle of the iMcr development of ts artstc side?" (1916, 28). lote how
easily he links, in ths text, at wit entertainment ad ausement.
47. In "The Crisis in Educaton" Hana Aendt notes that: "There is. of
course a connecton beteen the loss of authorty in public ad .poltc life ad in .the
private pre-poltcal reams of te family ad the school. The more mdm te. disust of
authority becomes in the public sphere, the geater the probabilty natly becomes. that
the private sphere wll not rema inviolate" (1968 [1954], 190). (f course, the role of
movies and television of actualy engenderng t tust in al sphere ha been enorous.
The fact that teenagers have or tae themselves. to have more dscretona income than
their paents maes tem a target audience for vaous segments of te "cre idustr."
The relatonship between what movies are judged by producers ad other to .b maket
able, on the one hand, and what adolescents and youg adults ac disposed to watc ca
not be gainsaid:
48. The work of liberalsm, as Dewey notes in Liberalism and Scial Ac-
tion, 's frst of all educaton, in the broadest sense of that term. Schoolng is a. pa of the
work of educaton, but educton in it fl meaning includes all the infuences that go to
form the attudes and dispositons (of desire a well as of belief, which consttte domi
nat habits of mind ad character" (LW 11: 42). "The greatest educatonal power, the
greatest force in shapig te dispositons and attitudes of indviduas, is the social medum
in which they live. The medium that now lies dosestto us is that.ofunifedactonfor the
inclusive end of a sociaized economy" (LW 11: 63 ).
49. The Editor's Note intoducing this acle opens by claming tat:
"Professr Minsterberg is a wizad at telling us why we do things. He is the fst ps
chologst to tae up the study of the strong appeal of the photoplay,and his importnt
conclusions and discoveres here given are quite interestng ad fscinatng a tose whch
have proved so helpf to commerce, industr, educton, medicine, law, ad .other
spheres of practcal life" ( 1915, 22; cf. XH). On the openng page of ts piece we see
a photograph of this wizad in his Psychologica Lborator at Hard and one of him in
converaton with the actress Ata Stewat at the Vitgraph Cmpay-in New York Cit
(cf. Magaet Minsterberg 1922, 281-2).
50. This paper was witten for te 2000 annual meeting ofSA, held in
Indanapolis.
Sl. Wat Dewey al eged about classical Britsh empiricism. can, in some
measue, be alleged aganst our umagnatve appropratons of classica Amerca prag
matsm: "Historic empiricism has been empirca in a techCa ad contoversia [or po
lemcal] sense.: It has said, Lrd, Lrd, Experence; Experjence: but in practce ithas
sered ideas [src:d :nrs experence, not gathered fom |t" (1 9IJ Bctnstc|n{cd.|,, 90,
28 ). But ts point might b extended to felds of inquir caed out in advace of our
acta experenc, rather ta one opened due to the tajectores inherent in a dynamic
prseQt, GiPen. or actal epernc, flm theor would be one such tajector.
.
52. I mgt as ask in ths conecton: How could such a uncomproms-
ing::champion of eternal values prove to b s attentve to new developments wtn the
everday life of his contemporar cutre whle so many of us who prde muselves on be
ing:more historcist continueto neglect the signicance of fm for cute and, indeed, for
philosophy?
53. The America phiosopher who makes this poit perhaps more insis-
tenty: and eloquently ta any oter is John William Miller (18951978). In Te Philso
phofHisory,he contends that: "'Histor is the place one goes when one gives up passing
judgent ad accep identfctons. It is te aternatve to seeing al tngs sb specie
tetmitatis. They ae to be seen sub secie temporis. This is the heresy of history. But it is
als<,the conditon of all huastc concers" (85). "Histor is not 'about' the past; it is
the '9scosue and vehcle of !e past. Except as a caeer and a.contnuu there is no past
to wrie 'about. Ad if a caeer, then the preent ha joined ad embraced it past" (179;
emptasis added). If one speas of ever those predecesors of ous who would deny his
to
r
, temporaity, or chage, ad "if one speaks of them in the hstorical temper, it is not
to pverow or to excommWcate [tose who presume the possibility of transcc:ndng
tm( 3d mutability], but to brng tem into the contnuum of ou living hertge" ( 186).
,

54, In 1976 J. Dudley Adrew stted that: "Perhaps Musterberg's [sic]
ft)mpact is stl to come. Te reprntng of his stdy [by Dover in 1970, six years before
Du4ey's T Major Film Teories: An Intoduction] has provoked considerble interest in
hs,theor ad Jean Mt, for one [to quote. her cam once again] has said, "How could
we have not kow him all these yeas? In.1916 ts ma understood cinema about as
we::as anyone ever wl" (26). But then he opens the ver next chapter by obsering that:
"H\go Minsterberg's ideas, no matter how advaced or cogent, had little efect on subsc
qucnt fm theor, Rdolf Arnheim [the second fgure whom Andrew considers as a key
fg.in ''The Formatve Tradton",) many of whose notons ae substantally the same as
Mtnsterberg's [sic] in Te Photoply: A PzrholJgical Study, has on te con
t
had a vast
etect'1 (27).
55, The accent should fall on te plural. We do not so much need a te-
or as simply theories fom dvere perspectves (ofen ones even animated by rval mo
tves). Moreover, the we here is by. no means monolithic: it is a lage faily wth long

staing, deep-cutng rivalres. At least rent-fve years ago, Cluista Met made this
central point in a tellng'way: "Wat is referred to globally as 'cinema' is, in reality, a
vat ad complex socio-cural phenomenon which, if taen as a whole, does not lend
itelf to any rigorous or unifed stdy, but only to a heteroclite collecton of obseratons
involving multple ad diverse points of view (pluality of relevace of critera)" ( 197 4, 9 ).
56. At the 1999 anua meetg of the Semiotc Society of Aerca (SSA)
there w at least one pael devoted to C. S. Peirce and fm (Duquense Universit; Pitts
burgh, PA October 1999). Joseph Brent, the biographer of Peirce, presented a paper on
flming Ieirce's own life. Other parcipats explored the relevance of Peirce's semeiotic
(i.e;,his theor of signs and symbols) to te investgaton of flm.
57. Hugh Josck, a fiend ofmine, wote a dssenaton at Yale (under the
direclo1'of]ohr .E. Smit) .on Peirce's theor of signs bur has spent most of his career in
fm.'.

5", Q[course ter.e,are .vaous ways in which phoso
p
hers can help to
cae theworld, not.only thisw:y.