Usually good philosophical texts exude passion, emotion and underlying dramatic structure of intellectual kind. Their structure comes from their thesis, assumptions, inner conflicts and the way points are developed. Therefore one could break down a philosophical discourse into a dramatic grid not unlike the Hollywood three (or four or seven or whatever) act structure. Once that is done, it would be possible to seek proper emotional or dramatic representations of the elements of this structure and present them visually. (Various attempts to revolutionize the aristotelian/hollywood structure are still returning to the basis)
A single “philosophical thought” is never a hundred percent purely abstract. It is so because, language, even when dealing with abstract terms (such as truth, justice, beauty, knowledge, meaning etc), does not leave them in our minds totally abstract. Each of the above terms (and any other philosophical word) triggers some sort of mental image. For example when we say or hear the word “truth” it never stays in our minds removed from reality. It is always a specific truth. It is always “the truth”. We may not fully realize the specificity of our abstract thinking but it is always there, obvious or hidden yet always present. Therefore it is safe to assume that underneath an abstract term lies always a specific image. Respectively no specific image is devoid of abstract meaning: whatever we see triggers associations in our mind.
The above point gives hope to the thesis that there is a common ground between visual and abstract: perhaps a translation of the world into a language and translation of the world into visuals both come from the same base. This primal ground would be a pre-language and pre-visual unity. It could become a well from which one could dig out primal “communicative elements”. “The communicative elements” would be the images and sounds laced with pre-cognitive meanings joined by their common origins. They would be the alphabet for a true philosophizing cinema. Would it push the field into a new form? Hopefully, yes.
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