Cognitive and Philosophical Approaches to Horror
Aaron Smuts · 2014
Philosophical work on horror has been predominantly focused on the horror film, though little of what has been written on horror is medium specific. It is just that the overwhelming majority of examples in the literature are movies. This entry concerns a relatively small topic in a sub-area of film theory that is often called the analytic-cognitivist tradition. This chapter evaluates some of the leading answers to four questions that occupy center stage in the analytic-cognitivist literature on horror: (i) What is horror? (ii) What is the appeal of horror? (iii) How does it frighten audiences? (iv) Is it irrational to be scared of horror fiction?