Philosophy and literature
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Philosophy and literature involves the
The philosophy of literature
Strictly speaking, the philosophy of literature is a branch of aesthetics, the branch of philosophy that deals with the question, "What is art"? Much of aesthetic philosophy has traditionally focused on the plastic arts or music, however, at the expense of the verbal arts. Much traditional discussion of aesthetic philosophy seeks to establish criteria of artistic quality that are indifferent to the subject matter being depicted. Since all literary works, almost by definition, contain notional content, aesthetic theories that rely on purely formal qualities tend to overlook literature.
The very existence of narrative raises philosophical issues. In narrative, a creator can embody, and readers be led to imagine, fictional characters, and even fantastic creatures or technologies. The ability of the human mind to imagine, and even to experience empathy with, these fictional characters is itself revealing about the nature of the human mind. Some fiction can be thought of as a sort of a thought experiment in ethics: it describes fictional characters, their motives, their actions, and the consequences of their actions. It is in this light that some philosophers have chosen various narrative forms to teach their philosophy (see below).
Literature and language
More recently, however, philosophers of various stripes have taken different and less hostile approaches to literature. Since the work of the
As such, techniques and tools developed for literary criticism and literary theory rose to greater prominence in Western philosophy of the late twentieth century. Philosophers of various stripes paid more attention to literature than their predecessors did. Some sought to examine the question of whether it was in fact truly possible to communicate using words, whether it was possible for an author's intended meaning to be communicated to a reader. Others sought to use literary works as examples of contemporary culture, and sought to reveal unconscious attitudes they felt present in these works for social criticism.
The truth of fiction
Literary works also pose issues concerning truth and the philosophy of language. In educated opinion, at least, it is commonly reputed as true that Sherlock Holmes lived in London. (see David Lewis 'Truth in Fiction', American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 15. No. 1, January 1978) It is also considered true that Samuel Pepys lived in London. Yet Sherlock Holmes never lived anywhere at all; he is a fictional character. Samuel Pepys, contrarily, is judged to have been a real person. Contemporary interests in Holmes and Pepys share strong similarities; the only reason why anyone knows either of their names is because of an abiding interest in reading about their alleged deeds and words. These two statements would appear to belong to two different orders of truth. Further problems arise concerning the truth value of statements about fictional worlds and characters that can be implied but are nowhere explicitly stated by the sources for our knowledge about them, such as Sherlock Holmes had only one head or Sherlock Holmes never traveled to the moon.
The literature of philosophy
Philosophical poems
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Several
Many of the Eastern philosophers worked out their thought in a poetical fashion. Some of the important names include:
- Vyasa
- Laozi
- Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Omar Khayyám
- Al-Ma'arri
- Nizami Ganjavi
- Sheikh Saadi
- Hafiz Shirazi
- Muhammad Iqbal
- Matsuo Bashō
- Farid ud-Din Attar
- Salah Abdel Sabour
- Mahmoud Darwish
Notable Western philosophical poets include:
- John Ashbery
- Georges Bataille
- Giannina Braschi
- G. K. Chesterton
- Robert Creeley
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- T. S. Eliot
- Homer
- Søren Kierkegaard
- Lucretius
- John Milton
- Marianne Moore
- Pablo Neruda
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Mary Oliver
- Fernando Pessoa
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- St. John of the Cross
- Leslie Marmon Silko
- Hildegard von Bingen
- William Carlos Williams
- C. K. Williams
- James Wright
Philosophical fiction
Some philosophers have undertaken to write philosophy in the form of fiction, including novels and short stories (see separate article on philosophical fiction). This is apparent early on in the literature of philosophy, where philosophers such as Plato wrote dialogues in which fictional or fictionalized characters discuss philosophical subjects; Socrates frequently appears as a protagonist in Plato's dialogues, and the dialogues are one of the prime sources of knowledge about Socrates' teaching, though at this remove it is sometimes hard to distinguish Socrates' actual positions from Plato's own. Numerous early Christian writers, including Augustine, Boethius, and Peter Abelard produced dialogues; several early modern philosophers, such as George Berkeley and David Hume, wrote occasionally in this genre.
Other philosophers have resorted to
Several philosophers have had an important influence on literature.
Other works of fiction considered to have philosophical content include:
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment
- Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
- James Joyce, Ulysses
- Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
- Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
- Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth and Hamlet
- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and War and Peace
- Sergio Troncoso, The Nature of Truth
- Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
Philosophical writing as literature
Several philosophers are read for the literary merits of their works apart from their philosophical content. The philosophy in the Meditations of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is unoriginal Stoicism, but the Meditations are still read for their literary merit and for the insight they give into the workings of the emperor's mind.
Philosophy in literature
Philosophers in literature
Socrates appears in a highly fictionalized guise, as a comic figure and the object of mockery, in The Clouds by Aristophanes. In the play, Socrates appears hanging from a basket, where he delivers oracles such as:
- I'd never come up with a single thing
about celestial phenomena,
if I did not suspend my mind up high,
to mix my subtle thoughts with what's like them—
the air. If I turned my mind to lofty things,
but stayed there on the ground, I'd never make
the least discovery. For the earth, you see,
draws moist thoughts down by force into itself—
the same process takes place with watercress.
Early
Jorge Luis Borges is perhaps the twentieth century's preeminent author of philosophical fiction. He wrote a short story in which the philosopher Averroes is the chief protagonist, Averroes's Search.[3] Many plot points in his stories paraphrase the thought of philosophers, including George Berkeley, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Bertrand Russell; he also attributes various opinions to figures including George Dalgarno.[4]
A key plot point in
Also, Philip K. Dick, who has often been compared to Borges, raises a significant number of philosophical issues in his novels, everything from the problem of solipsism to many questions of perception and reality.
Fictional philosophers
Jorge Luis Borges introduces many philosophical themes, and several fictional philosophers, in his short stories.[5] A fictional philosophical movement is a part of the premise of his story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, and the unnamed narrator of his story The Library of Babel could also be called a fictional philosopher.[6] A fictional theologian is the subject of his story Three Versions of Judas.
Fictional philosophers occasionally occur throughout the works of Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land contains long passages that could be considered successors to the fictionalized philosophical dialogues of the ancient world, set within the plot.[7]
See also
- The arts and politics
- Literary translation
- Translation criticism
- Philosophy of language
- Science fiction as thought experiment
References
- JSTOR 1399947.
- ^ "The Philosophy Foundation - The Butterfly Dream". www.philosophy-foundation.org. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
- JSTOR 24879540.
- ^ "Characteristica universalis | Borges Center". www.borges.pitt.edu. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
- JSTOR 2252659.
- ^ "Borges, The Universe And The Infinite Library". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
- ^ Ross, Ethan (2019-10-20), "The Intellectual Martian Society of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein", Religion and Environmental Values in America, The Ohio State University, retrieved 2020-07-05
Sources
- The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Ted Honderich, ed., (Oxford University Press, 1995) ISBN 0-19-866132-0.
- Borges, Jorge Luis, Collected Fictions, 1998. Translated by Andrew Hurley. ISBN 0-14-028680-2.
- Magee, Bryan, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford University Press, revised edition, 1977) ISBN 0-19-823722-7.
External links
- Philosophy and Literature at Paideia Archive
- Philosophy and Literature at Stanford, directed by R. Lanier Anderson and Joshua Landy
- Duke's Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature, directed by Toril Moi
- Andrew Miller, The Truth Value of Statements Containing Names of Literary Characters as Subjects (2002 thesis)