George M. Wilson (1942-2024)
George M. Wilson, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Southern California, has died.
A still taken from a video of a lecture by George Wilson on the Coen brothers’ “The Man Who Wasn’t There” at the 2010 Stanford Film and Philosophy Conference.
Professor Wilson worked in aesthetics, especially philosophy and film, as well as philosophy of action and philosophy of language. He is the author of Seeing Fictions in Film: The Epistemology of Movies (2012), Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (1988), and The Intentionality of Human Action (1980), among other works, which you can learn more about here and here.
Wilson became professor of philosophy and cinematic arts at USC in 2005. Prior to that, he was at the University of California at Davis, and, for 28 years, Johns Hopkins University. His first faculty position was at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his PhD from Cornell (with a dissertation entitled “The Nature of the Natural Numbers”) and his undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas.
A 2017 interview with Wilson may be of interest to readers. Here’s an excerpt:
“Were you conscious of being a new sort of philosophical film critic?”
…I don’t believe that I thought of myself as a new kind of philosopher of film. I would have been dubious that there was such an intellectual discipline as ‘philosophy of film.’ I don’t remember if I even knew at that time that there were senior Anglo-American philosophers who were writing on film other than Cavell. And, as much as I admired aspects of his brilliance, I didn’t think of him as conforming to the ideals and standards I cared about from my training in analytic philosophy.
“How would you characterize this tradition and the mental habits it formed?”
In retrospect, it is not easy to capture how I thought of ‘analytic philosophy’. As narrow as it was reputed to be, there was a fair amount of diversity among the leading practitioners. Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, Elisabeth Anscombe, Donald Davidson, and Michael Dummett all fell within the ‘analytic’ canon that I admired, but they are very different from one another. But within the ‘analytic’ paradigm, there was a great emphasis on clarity of formulation in discussion and on logical rigor in argumentation, and certainly these were ideals that influenced me enormously. As intellectually conservative as the movement seems in retrospect, I and many other young philosophers thought of ourselves as radicals in the following sense: we were going to sweep away all of the murky bullshit that, in our eyes, had dominated traditional philosophy and infected many other intellectual enterprises in the humanities. Film theory seemed overloaded with such bullshit, and certainly I thought that this needed to be replaced by something better. In my mind, I was just a guy who loved literature and movies whose intellectual education had mostly been influenced by analytic philosophy. I did not imagine that I was some new sort of philosopher. Of course, my perspective at that time now seems incredibly naïve.
You can read the whole interview here.
UPDATE (8/28/24): The Department of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins has posted a memorial notice for Professor Wilson.
Darn! He visited Princeton in around 1990 and did a reading group with a bunch of grad students over a summer, IIRC. I was only able to go sometimes but he seemed like a generous and unpretentious person and I believe he had a big influence on some of my peers at the time. My condolences to all who were/are close to him.
I strongly recommend that whole interview for getting a sense of the importance of George’s work on film. I taught his book Narration in Light for many years (until I retired) and found myself continually learning from it. I don’t think I would have ever written on film myself without his encouragement and inspiration. His essays on Kripke’s Wittgenstein and his piece “Again, Theory” are also well worth seeking out. As I have said on FB, he will always remain for me a model of philosophical integrity. He was also just a hell of a guy: genuinely kind, charming, funny, and truly brilliant.
I was a Graduate TA for George’s Philosophy of Film class at Hopkins in the early 90s. His “Narration in Light” is one of most subtle and sophisticated books in philosophical aesthetics. I learned a lot from him about aesthetics and film.
George was a brilliant philosopher and a wonderful human being. I took numerous courses with him at Johns Hopkins, including on action theory and on Kripke’s Wittgenstein. His teaching, like his writing, was often subtle and meticulous. The thoughts and ideas assembled in the early part of the action theory seminar, for instance, rewarded you in quite a profound way if you put the work in with George throughout. (I remember at the end of the seminar thinking: “Light dawns gradually over the whole!”)
If George was elegant in philosophy, he could be scatter-brained and eccentric in person. I once remember him coming to class with shaving foam still on the side of his face. He had a great, often slightly rueful smile, and an expressive face that saw the light and dark of life.
He could, on occasion, get riled up when talking about philosophy. I remember this, in particular, when he was defending his friend Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein. His essays in defence of Kripke’s interpretation are fine contributions to the debate, displaying much of George’s philosophical finesse.
He was unfailingly kind to me. He also talked to me in an enjoyable and memorable way about the issue of class in philosophy. (He had figured out that my own background was working class, even if this was something that people often didn’t realise.) He told an anecdote about some time he spent with an English philosopher that he really admired. The guy was great, super impressive, and from a working class non-Oxbridge background. Then a middle-class Oxford graduate popped in to say hello, and the guy just immediately fell apart, confidence completely gone. George told the story with a sense of almost incredulity about what class can do (especially in England), and with great sensitivity and pathos.
Many people have linked to the terrific profile of George by Leo Robson. It gives a sense of the importance of his work in the philosophy of film. Here is a link:
https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/a-weakness-for-complexity-an-interview-with-the-philosopher-george-m-wilson
I was really delighted to see George’s work highlighted in this way. He will be remembered with enormous fondness. I hope people unfamiliar with his work will seek it out.
George Wilson’s early-ish book on action theory is a real gem, which hasn’t been discovered by enough people. It is extremely well done, with remarkably insightful points throughout, but an especially helpful account of the role of feedback loops (and related phenomena) in acting freely. Although I didn’t know him well, I had the pleasure of spending an evening with him (dinner with Susan Wolf, George, and my wife) in Los Angeles. It was a totally delightful occasion, and I wish I could have spent more time with him. What a humble and sweet person! (Susan and my wife are also super-cool, of course).
George Wilson was an excellent philosopher. Early in my career, George was incredibly encouraging and supportive of me (brother Mark was on my dissertation committee and was the main influence on me in graduate school). My dissertation and first substantial publication were based on work George did in the mid 1980’s on the semantics of anaphoric pronouns and descriptions. George was my colleague twice over (U.C. Davis and USC) and my good friend. George was funny, kind and generous. He got ordained online so that he could marry me and Annie. The wedding ceremony he wrote for us was hilarious and touching. Annie and I still have a copy of it that we look at from time to time. I’ll miss George tremendously. May he rest in peace.
Johns Hopkins has now posted a memorial notice. Here is the link:
https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/08/28/george-m-wilson-philosophy/
As for myself, I fondly remember George’s dry wit and gravelly voice and will always be grateful for the advice and support he gave me when I was a grad student.
I am late in seeing this memorial thread, and so can mainly just echo the affection and admiration others have already expressed, and the listing of his most salient features: brilliant, drily witty, and extremely kind. He also seemed frequently beleaguered, but maybe that changed when he moved to the west coast. He was a wonderful friend and colleague, overlapping with me at Johns Hopkins for fourteen years.
George Wilson was my father. I shared some memories of my father, photos and more details on his life here: https://gnomechomsky.wordpress.com/2024/09/02/a-tribute-to-my-father-george-m-wilson/
George was a huge inspiration to me when I was a graduate student at USC. Besides being an outstanding philosopher, kind teacher, and amusing conversationalist, he taught me that I could do serious philosophy about the literature and film that I loved, and do it in ways that honoured both artistic and philosophical value. He was also a wonderful friend. I was always grateful and rather amazed that he seemed to regard me as an intellectual equal even though I was four decades his junior and really only at the beginning of my philosophical journey. I hope George understood how much I and others appreciated him. A one of a kind man who will be missed.