Document Type : .
Authors
1 Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Tehran University
2 Postgraduate Student, Western Philosophy, Tehran University
Abstract
"Philosophy of media" is a term with a history almost more than ten years. Hansen, Hartman, and Sandbothe are among those who have employed and discussed the term positively or critically. Some others such as Debray, Mark Taylor, and Walter Benjamin have spoken of mediology instead of the philosophy of media and maintained that the latter is a wrong way to knowledge which is doomed to commit errors concerning media. As a very new branch of the contemporary philosophy, the philosophy of media is still the subject matter of deep discussions about media; and, in spite of its severe critiques of philosophy of media, mediology has not managed to stop it.
What is of importance concerning philosophical discussion about media may be introduced in the form of such questions as "what is the philosophy of media and how is it defined?", "is philosophizing concerning media some sort of ontology, epistemology, or phenomenology of the media?", "may one speak of and philosophize about the media and their functions in the way that the analytic philosophers do?"
While reviewing the history of emergence of the philosophy of media in brief, the present article tries to provide a definition for it; and to reply the above questions it discusses the kind of philosophizing about media. According to the authors, philosophy of media, in spite of claims made by the adherents of mediology, is possible; and it is the same as philosophical knowledge of the media. In other words, the philosopher is able to philosophically discuss the media like phenomena such as mind, knowledge, and arts. Though, independent from its relation to man (the addressee) and, somehow, independent from the nature of awareness, the media have no independent existence; they are of influence on man's awareness and perception. To speak about the kind of impacts exerted by media on perception concerns ontological, epistemological, phenomenological, and analytic views to the media.
Keywords
)