Mitchell Stephens, "Thinking 'Above the Stream'"

Questions for Making Connections Within the Reading:

1. How, in Mitchell Stephens's opinion, does the new video enlarge the range of questions we can ask? What sorts of questions might the new video be incapable of asking? What questions are best suited to the medium of print, and what questions does print tend to ignore? Are print and the image destined to be rivals, or might it turn out that each can supplement the other? Can you think of anything both media--the moving image as well as print--leave out?

2. Stephens quotes the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as saying, "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." How can language "bewitch" us? Is it possible to think without words? Can the new media help us to avoid getting bewitched? If our words can bewitch us, what about images? In the age of the moving image, do we need a new kind of philosophy that battles against its spell? What might that new philosophy look like?

3. What does Stephens mean in this passage: "When we speak of our inner natures, it must be remembered, we are speaking metaphorically. Exactly where our own unvoiced thoughts might be located in some topology of consciousness is unclear." What does he mean when he says that the distinction between our inner and outer natures is metaphorical? Does experience have an "inside" or an "outside," or do we attach these terms to our experience after the moment has passed? If our thoughts do not come from inside us, where might they come from?

Questions for Writing:

1. Do you feel that Stephens offers an accurate account of the way you approach the new media and the contemporary world in general? Or does Stephens give both videos and books too much importance? For most readers of times past, after all, even the greatest novels, poems, and plays were fundamentally entertainment, a point easily lost on those who study them professionally. Do you really view the new media as opening doors into uncharted reality, or is most of what you see just mind candy?

2. Do images have meanings in the same way as poems or stories? Is there any single, correct way to appreciate a video or understand a television program? To determine the meaning of a video or television episode, might it be more appropriate simply to ask viewers what they got out of it?

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:

1. Would Jan Willis agree with Stephens's celebration of the new culture of images? Would she agree, in particular, with his claim that although the "fall of the printed word . . . is a large loss," the "rise of the moving image, as we perfect new, nonvapid uses of video, should prove an even larger gain"? Is Stephens's notion of liberation from the power of print comparable in some respects to Willis's attempt to recognize that the "mind is like the sky"? What is the relationship between spiritual and philosophical liberation?

2. In a note, Stephens praises "Continental" European philosophers for their willingness to accept that "multiple levels of understanding can exist at the same time." By contrast, he contends that "analytic philosophers tend not to be as light on their feet." Would you say that Nussbaum's treatment of "multiple levels of understanding" is more, or less, sophisticated than that of Stephens? Does she see, in other words, problems and solutions that Stephens overlooks, or is it the other way around? Once we have recognized the coexistence of "multiple levels of understanding," what are we supposed to do?

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