The author makes the point that these are philosophers, but our current pure, strict definition of that makes them just writers and filmmakers. Like you said, more people have seen one of their films, or read one of their books, than read an academic philosophy paper
Well, yes. My complaint is really about the idea of "our current pure, strict definition". Who gets to make that definition, and when was it ever different?
When Randy Cohen ran "The Ethicist" column in the NYT, and a similar program for NPR ... didn't most non-academics consider it philosophy?
When people talk about "The Trolly Problem" ... isn't that also philosophy?
So it seems to me that many more people are engaged in philosophy - "not only our cognition, but also our imagination, emotions, artistic sensibility, religious impulses" - than the author acknowledges.
> To complicate matters, often fiction writers (think Dostoyevsky, Huxley, or Borges) turn out to be particularly insightful philosophers, and so do filmmakers — such as Bergman, Kurosawa, and Tarkovsky — who philosophize just as insightfully on screen. All these entanglements and contaminations mark philosophy profoundly — indeed, they make it what it is.
These two quotes are compatible only if the author thinks that modern fiction writers and modern directors are no longer insightful philosophers.
Mmm, I see. The quote you referenced was in the context "mainstream philosophy", which the author implies is synonymous with academic philosophy. (Even though more people have watched Bergman films and read Borges than have ever read an academic philosophy paper.)
Still, I think the author shifts the definition of philosophy too much, and in such a way that it bends to fit the thesis, rather than the other way around.