THE IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS IN THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE COME together in the form of a monograph were it not for the support and encouragement of a number of institutions and individuals. My thanks to the British Academy for the award of a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship that enabled me to pursue the project in film theory and philosophy that evolved into the present book, and to the University of Edinburgh for hosting the Fellowship. I would like to thank past and present colleagues within the Film Studies Program at Edinburgh for their support of my interdisciplinary research, as well as for their helpful suggestions with respect to this book, especially Martine Beugnet, the late John Orr, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, and David Sorfa. For assistance and encouragement along the way (or earlier) many thanks to Ian Christie, Bill Germano, Andrew Klevan, Jane Sillars, Susan Kemp, Laura Marcus, David Martin-Jones, Annette Davison, Julian Kilverstein, Ben Winters, David N. Rodowick, Raymond Bellour, Christa Blümlinger, Dudley Andrew, Andrew Ward (and other past and present members of the Philosophy Department at the University of York), Tony McKibbin, Mark Cousins, Chris Fujiwara, Jason Gaiger, and Robert Sinnerbrink. Thanks also to my manuscript editor, Joe Abbott, my production editor Roy Thomas, and, especially, Wendy Lochner, my editor at Columbia University Press, for her great patience and expert advice. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the wonderful teachers at Connecticut College who first opened my intellectual horizons to many of the worlds of films and philosophy explored in these pages; my thanks, especially, to the Philosophy Department and to its members Kristin Pfefferkorn-Forbath, J. Melvin Woody, Marijan Despalatovic, and the late Lester J. Reiss. Finally, I wish to reserve special acknowledgment for my parents and for Kathrin. Their support has made this and so much else possible, and this book is dedicated to them.