It is commonly accepted that theatrical fictional worlds could serve as a potent tool for increasing man’s understanding of his own world. This research connects insights that have been developed in such diverse areas of thought as semiotics of theater and drama, philosophical logic and ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of science, so as to establish a model that suggests an explication of this epistemic effect and thereby a new observation of the theatrical enterprise. The theory advanced in this (...) study states that fictional worlds are a kind of thought experiment through which spectators’ theories about their own world may be tested, amended or even invented. (shrink)

Resumen: La obra videoescénica es un producto híbrido que presenta un mundo posible significado por medios teatrales y audiovisuales procedentes de dos modos de representación diferentes, el narrativo de enunciación audiovisual y el dramático. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo descubrir su funcionamiento. Para ello utiliza una metodología que pone en relación el campo interno de referencia del texto y el campo externo de referencia. Se señala a la pantalla de proyección, soporte material de la representación audiovisual, como interfaz entre medios (...) y modos de representación, permitiendo el acceso del personaje teatral al universo audiovisual y activando la participación del espectador en la construcción de sentido, porque comparte con el propio texto los niveles de producción y recepción de la cultura de la imagen en la que se encuentra inmerso. Abstract: The videoscenic play is a hybrid product that presents a fictional world meaned through theatrical and audiovisual media from two different modes of representation, the narrative of enunciation audiovisual and the dramatic one. This research aims to discover how it works. To do this, it uses a methodology that relates the Internal Reference Field of the text and the External Reference Field. It is pointed to the projection screen, material support of audiovisual representation, as an interface between media and modes of representation, allowing the access of the theatrical character to the audiovisual universe and activating the viewer's participation in the construction of meaning, since it shares with the own text the levels of production and reception of the culture of the image in which it is immersed. (shrink)

Both adults and children have the ability to not only think about reality but also use their imaginations and create fictional worlds. This article describes the process by which world creation happens, drawing from philosophical and psychological treatments of this issue. First, world creators recognize the need to create a fictional world, as when starting a pretend game or opening a novel. Then, creators merge some real-world knowledge with the premises of the fictional world to construct (...) a fuller representation, though there is some controversy about how much of the real world is represented in any given fictional world. After the world is created, events can be set in motion within it. While it is generally accepted that this basic process is used for a wide variety of fictional worlds, including fictional stories, pretend games, and counterfactual scenarios, this process of world creation can vary over the course of development and depending on the use to which it is put. (shrink)

Some works of fiction are widely held by critics to have little value, yet these works are not only popular but also widely admired in ways that are not always appreciated. In this paper I make use of Kendall Walton’s account of fictional worlds to argue that fictional worlds can and often do have value, including aesthetic value, that is independent of the works that create them. In the process, I critique Walton’s notion of fictional (...) worlds and offer a defense of the study and appreciation of fictional worlds, as distinguished from the works of fiction with which they are associated. (shrink)

How do readers create representations of fictional worlds from texts? We hypothesize that readers use the real world as a starting point and investigate how much and which types of real-world information is imported into a given fictional world. We presented subjects with three stories and asked them to judge whether real world facts held true in the story world. Subjects' responses indicated that they imported many facts into fiction, though what exactly is imported depends on two (...) main variables: the distance that a narrative world lies from reality and the types of fact being imported. Facts that are true of the real world are more likely to be imported into worlds that are more similar to the real world, and facts that are more central to the representation of the real world are more likely to be imported overall. These results indicate that subjects make nuanced inferences when creating fictional worlds, basing their representations both on how different a story world is from the real world and on what they know to be causally central to the real world. (shrink)

Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys todays diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their (...) reception, as well as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.". (shrink)

This edited collection investigates the kinds of moral reflection we can undertake within the imaginative worlds of literature. In philosophical contexts of ethical inquiry we can too easily forget that literary experience can play an important role in the cultivation of our ethical sensibilities. Because our ethical lives are conducted in the real world, fictional representations of this world can appear removed from ethical contemplation. However, as this stimulating volume shows, the dichotomy between fact and fiction cannot be (...) so easily categorised. Moral perception, moral sensitivity, and ethical understanding more broadly, may all be developed in a unique way through our imaginative life in fiction. Moral quandaries are often presented in literature in ways more linguistically precise and descriptively complete than the ones we encounter in life, whilst simultaneously offering space for contemplation. The twelve original chapters in this volume examine literary texts – including theatre and film – in this light, and taken together they show how serious reflection within fictional worlds can lead to a depth of humane insight. The topics explored include: the subtle ways that knowledge can function as a virtue; issues concerning our relations to and understanding of each other; the complex intertwining of virtues and vices in the modern world; and the importance of bringing to light and reconsidering ethical presuppositions. With an appreciation of the importance of richly contextualized particularity and the power of descriptive acuity, the volume maps out the territory that philosophical reflection and literary engagement share. (shrink)

This paper critically analyzes the fiction-view of scientific modeling, which exploits presumed analogies between literary fiction and model building in science. The basic idea is that in both fiction and scientific modeling fictional worlds are created. The paper argues that the fiction-view comes closest to certain scientific thought experiments, especially those involving demons in science and to literary movements like naturalism. But the paper concludes that the dissimilarities prevail over the similarities. The fiction-view fails to do justice to (...) the plurality of model types used in science; it fails to realize that a function like idealization only makes sense in science because models, unlike works of fiction, can be de-idealized; it fails to distinguish sufficiently between the make-believe worlds created in fiction and the hypothetical worlds envisaged in models. Representation characterized in the fiction-view as a license to draw inferences does not sufficiently distinguish between inferences in fiction from inferences in scientific modeling. To highlight the contrast the paper proposes to explicate representation in terms of satisfaction of constraints. (shrink)

I argue that judgments of what is ‘true in a fiction’ presuppose the Reality Assumption: the assumption that everything that is true is fictionally the case, unless excluded by the work. By contrast with the more familiar Reality Principle, the Reality Assumption is not a rule for inferring implied content from what is explicit. Instead, it provides an array of real-world truths that can be used in such inferences. I claim that the Reality Assumption is essential to our ability to (...) understand stories, drawing on a range of empirical evidence that demonstrates our reliance on it in narrative comprehension. However, the Reality Assumption has several unintuitive consequences, not least that what is fictionally the case includes countless facts that neither authors nor readers could ever consider. I argue that such consequences provide no reason to reject the Reality Assumption. I conclude that we should take fictions, like non-fictions, to be about the real world. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 91-117.

The authors explain our attraction to strange, literary places as resulting from our attraction to strange places in real life. I believe this is correct and important. The aim of the following commentary is to show that their main conclusion is closely related to – even (retrospectively) predictable from – the operation of simulation and the consequences of that operation for storytelling.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FÉLIX MaRTÍNEZ-?????? TOWARDS A FORMAL ONTOLOGY OF FICTIONAL WORLDS In this discussion ' I propose a few concepts for the description and classification of fictional "worlds." The variety of fictional systems of"reality" can be understood, I diink, as an aspect ofthe phenomenon of style in literary imagination.2 But styles of imagination or of vision, and die style of literary works, are more than simply (...) kinds of fictional worlds. To put in some perspective my attempt at classification of literary works according to their systems of reality, I will make first a few remarks on the notion of style. It is a well-known preliminary problem when speaking of style diat this word seems to have more than one meaning in ordinary usage. I think that some ofits current meanings are rich and important, and that literary knowledge would profit if we could reconstruct them in abstract and defined concepts, so that the notions involved were somewhat clarified. I doubt diat diis is possible with current conceptual tools. We can see what is meant, say, when we hear diat a certain person we know "has style"; and we certainly distinguish diis attribute from others such as elegance, good manners, character, taste, originality, mannerisms, or idiosyncracies. Thus, we occasionally perceive in personal behavior a phenomenon called style. A conceptual description or a satisfactory definition of such a given, however, seems very difficult. Speaking of matters of art and literature, "style" has been used, among other things, to designate both the conventional forms of traditional expression (as in "manuals of style") and the anomalous, convention-breaking forms of highly individuated creation (as in die classic conception of Vosslerian-Spitzerian Stylistics, or in Buffon's "Le style c'est l'homme même," as usually understood). Style, dien, as conformity and style as singularity and deviance; style as impersonal decorum and as presence of a unique personal essence in the work. This perplexing ambiguity may be reducible though. Whether conventional and common or personal and innovative, style appears to be a form that characterizes and holds together a creation or a phenomenal entity. Indeed, the fact that 182 Félix Martínez-Bonati183 singular innovations of style often become the common trait of a school or current and sometimes a part of general tradition seems to indicate that neither singularity nor general acceptance are the most basic elements of die notion of style. On first reflection, we may conceive of style as a formal principle that consistently determines the constitution of die pertinent objects. Nonetíieless, constitutive form is too weak a definition for style, since it would also apply to what is called "technique" and even to genre. We must look for a more specific determination. There is anodier ambiguity in everyday uses of die word "style" diat deserves attention. We speak often of "good style" and "bad style." But sometimes we speak as if no style is bad and the thing that matters is to have style at all and as much of it as possible. Thus, we condemn a work because of its having no style or only a weak one. This contradiction probably derives from the confusion of a particular normative, a general normative, and a merely descriptive notion of style. We should keep, if possible, to a merely descriptive notion. Still another uncertainty of usage, in literary matters, relates to the (not universally accepted) restriction of the notion of style to a linguistic one; style, in this restricted usage, is seen as primarily an attribute of diction. The most numerous of literary studies of die style of singular works have been, so far as I can see, descriptions of idiolects. In many cases, the linguistic peculiarity is taken as an index of the world-view or die style of imagination diat is supposed to have produced the work. Alternative to this approach, indeed complementary, is the study of literary style as an attribute of die fictional entities to which literary discourse refers. We find the latter kind of approach mostly in characterizations of genres or of periods ("the naturalist novel," "romance," "classicism," etc.). One may suppose that an exhaustive analysis of the idiolect of a work... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Welcome to Rapture Meet Niko Bellic Experiencing Game Worlds Acting in Game Worlds.

There are several attempts to build a theory of art starting from analytical philosophy, the best of which is probably the one provided by Nelson Goodman. Pavel's work is the first attempt to write a theory of literature from the premisses of analytical philosophy. Pavel, whose earlier work was influenced among others by Eco, Greimas, Hrushovsky and Brooke-Rose, begins with an analysis of recent philosophical positions regarding fiction and distinguishes on one side the hard-line "segregationist" position of Bertrand Russell which (...) denies "nonexistent individuals any ontological status" and maintains that any "statements on such individuals are false on logical grounds", a view more moderately followed by P. F. Strawson and G. Ryle. On the other side he finds the more tolerant and "integrationist" theories, derived from the views of Alexis von Meinong, according to which every kind of object is "equally endowed with being, although not necessarily with existence". Pavel clearly inclines towards broadly Meinongian theories but he would like to qualify them in a number of ways. First he finds it useful to speak, like premodern cosmologists, of "degrees of being". Furthermore he outlines a "speech-act theory of fiction" in which the measure of a genuine statement would be the epistemological adherence to the linguistic practice of a community or the correspondence to a "coordinate system" as Quine would say. (shrink)

Does telling a story imply a fictional world in which that story takes place? In contemporary philosophy, “fictional worlds” are one solution to the problem of how there can be true and false judgments about fictional characters. Fictional-world accounts generally disregard whether facts are explicitly stated in the story or not; it is enough for them to be logically implied. And yet, as Ruth Lorand has observed, whether a fact is stated or merely implied changes (...) the meaning of a story. “Imagine that the original text contains the following sentence: ‘Daisy Miller is human and as such she was born to human parents.’ Wouldn’t.. (shrink)

Our purpose has been to illuminate questions surrounding the use of literature in medical education, and to propose criteria for selecting literature which is more likely to evoke readers to reflect on their personal and professional selves. We have suggested that literature promoting vicariousness and vulnerability may validate readers' questions, insecurities, and beliefs insofar as readers are willing to engage with the text cognitively and phenomenologically. This we call reader responsibility. Crucial to nurturing this responsibility are medical educators 2- ducators (...) in any context, for that matter – who are vulnerable themselves, who puzzle outloud, who admit their own incompleteness. Together as learners, teachers and students may come to realize that it is, in the end, the artist whopresses upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power... seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered. (shrink)

At the heart of our experience of literature is the idea that fiction can show us new possibilities for the world in which we live. I open up fictional worlds’ hermeneutic dimension by investigating the intersection of Roman Ingarden’s analytic phenomenology of the literary work with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Reading Ingarden together with Gadamer, I understand a fictional world as an orientation towards a fictional environment whose foundation is our capacity for language, showing how the (...) reciprocal relationship in which we discover its fictional objects and states of affairs is of the same kind that exists between language and world, so that fiction can be understood to orient us towards the happening of language. By thinking on the relationship between language and experience, I suggest that Ingarden and Gadamer propose to understand a fictional world as an orientation towards our very capacity to be otherwise and to exceed ourselves. (shrink)

By examining the idea found in the works of several contemporary philosophers that the multiplicity of worlds is no longer merely possible – as it was for Leibniz – but actually determines our experience of reality, the article proposes an understanding of worlds as transcendental structures that frame the ontological multiplicity. The article argues that such a proliferation of actual worlds implies that the concept of world should be seen today as a category that belongs to the (...) order of fiction, making the world-building devices of literature relevant for understanding the contemporary experience of reality. The first part examines the conceptions of multiple worlds of Leibniz, Deleuze, and Badiou through the structural differences and similarities between possible and fictional worlds. While Deleuze actualises possible worlds, Badiou actualises fictional worlds. The second part explores worlds as political fictions, revisiting Kant’s conception of cosmopolitanism via Rancière’s definition of politics as a conflict of worlds. Rancière’s formulation of political dissensus in fictional and narrative terms sheds a new light on Kant’s description of cosmopolitanism as a perspective that presents history as a novelistic narrative. (shrink)

In the paper we will study the notions of possible-worlds semantics, fiction, and creativity. The intention is to show how the notion of possible-worlds semantics allows us to generate a fresh interpretation of the notions of fiction and creativity. To do this, we have to consider the philosophy of logic. Possible-worlds semantics can be used in interpreting modal notions. The intention is to interpret the notions of fiction and creativity as modal notions. However, the analysis shows that (...) the notions of fiction and creativity are multimodal notions. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to provide a critical discussion of some key issues concerning the possible-world analysis of fiction. After a review of the most important philosophical questions concerning truth, reference, names and identity, and their bearing on fiction, I outline the possible-world framework, as used by David Lewis (1978) in his analysis, and examine its most important problems. A special interest is granted to the limits of the Lewisian pretense interpretation of fiction that are highlighted by (...) works of cinema. I conclude with an appraisal of the puzzles generated by the attempts to draw borders between and within the worlds of fiction, and emphasize the need for a better mutual understanding of the two perspectives that are essential for a possible-world interpretation of fiction: literary theory and philosophy. (shrink)

The canonical version of possible worlds semantics for story prefixes is due to David Lewis. This paper reassesses Lewis's theory and draws attention to some novel problems for his account.

In recent work, Walton has abandoned his very influential account of the fictionality of p in a fictional work in terms of prescriptions to imagine emanating from it. He offers examples allegedly showing that a prescription to imagine p in a given work of fiction is not sufficient for the fictionality of p in that work. In this paper, both in support and further elaboration of a constitutive-norms speech-act variation on Walton’s account that I have defended previously, I critically (...) discuss his objections. In addition to answering his concerns and developing the account further, I provide additional abductive support for its explanatory virtues vis-à- institutional accounts like Walton’s, and Gricean speech-act proposals. (shrink)

A partir de las nociones de ficción, de animalidad y de mundo, el presente artículo pretende establecer ciertas ideas directrices para pensar los vínculos que las producciones culturales mantienen con la categoría de lo animal. El análisis de esta categoría se vincula igualmente a la problemática del sacrificio. Taking the concepts of fiction, animality, and world this article intends to lay down some leading ideas for analyzing the link between cultural productions and the animal category. This is also related to (...) the concept of sacrifice. (shrink)

Imaginary worlds are extremely successful. The most popular fictions produced in the last few decades contain such a fictional world. They can be found in all fictional media, from novels (e.g., Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter) to films (e.g., Star Wars and Avatar), video games (e.g., The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy), graphic novels (e.g., One Piece and Naruto), and TV series (e.g., Star Trek and Game of Thrones), and they date as far back (...) as ancient literature (e.g., the Cyclops Islands in The Odyssey, 850 BCE). Why such a success? Why so much attention devoted to non-existent worlds? In this paper, we propose that imaginary worlds co-opt our preferences for exploration, which have evolved in humans and nonhuman animals alike, to propel individuals toward new environments and new sources of reward. Humans would find imaginary worlds very attractive for the very same reasons, and under the same circumstances, as they are lured by unfamiliar environments in real life. After reviewing research on exploratory preferences in behavioral ecology, environmental esthetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary and developmental psychology, we focus on the sources of their variability across time and space, which we argue can account for the variability of the cultural preference for imaginary worlds. This hypothesis can, therefore, explain the way imaginary worlds evolved culturally, their shape and content, their recent striking success, and their distribution across time and populations. (shrink)

I discuss Gregory Currie’s taxonomy of explanations of the fictional. On the one hand, there is an important kind of relation between internal and external explanations of some fictional truths that Currie leaves out, where both are salient and yet in a relation of harmony with each other. On the other hand, I do not see that he has established that there is a genuine relation of tension between some pairs of internal and external explanations, and thus I (...) question the usefulness of the category of collapse. I also consider a further kind of explanation: the exterior explanation. (shrink)

In "World Literature, Industrialization, and the Two Faces of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction" Yiping Wang discusses contemporary Chinese science fiction against the backdrop of the influence of world literature and the development of industrialization in China. Wang argues that two sides represented respectively by Liu Cixin and Han Song constitute the feature of contemporary Chinese science fiction. The side characterized by the works of Liu Cixin is the close connection with world science fiction and the positive attitude and consistency with (...) technological innovation and industrialization in China while the other side has Han Song as its representative, whose works, with similarities to high literature of world canons and the mainstream Chinese literature, reflect on the development of technology and industrialization focusing on individuals and disasters in the shadow of modernization. These two sides join together in the illustration of the basic image of science fiction in contemporary Chinese literature. By absorbing the essence of world literature and echoing the concerns of the nation, contemporary Chinese science fiction surmounts the hierarchy of literary genres and make its way into the active center of world literature. (shrink)

We present a theory of truth in fiction that improves on Lewis's [1978] ‘Analysis 2’ in two ways. First, we expand Lewis's possible worlds apparatus by adding non-normal or impossible worlds. Second, we model truth in fiction as belief revision via ideas from dynamic epistemic logic. We explain the major objections raised against Lewis's original view and show that our theory overcomes them.

I first ask what it is to make up a story. In order to answer that question, I give existence and identity conditions for stories. I argue that a story exists whenever there is some narrative content that has intentionally been made accessible. I argue that stories are abstract types, individuated by the conditions that must be met by something in order to be a properly formed token of the type. However, I also argue that the truth of our story (...) identity attributions---sentences like, "Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is the same story as JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings''---are relative to their context of use, so that the same attribution of identity might be true in one context or false in another because of a change in what's being said about the works in the differing contexts. From those existence and identity conditions, I draw the conclusions that story is best understood to be a phase sortal of some abstract types, and that what it is to make up a story is to identify a type of narrative representation and its content, such that the content is neither based on actual events nor on the content of other stories to an objectionable degree. In chapter 2, I ask what it is for a story to be complete. I argue for the general meta-thesis I call "Completion Pluralism", viz. that there are many kinds of artwork completeness, many corresponding senses of 'complete', and no kind of artwork completeness is objectively more important than any other. I give a pair of arguments against those who would deny Completion Pluralism, endorsing Completion Monism instead. First, I show how Monistic analyses of the one (or one most important) kind of artwork completeness fail. I also show that each Monistic theory's failure is contingent on the assumption of Completion Monism: the denial of Completion Monism dissolves each argument against the extensional adequacy of extant theories of artwork completeness. I argue that this is all best explained by the idea that Completion Pluralism is true. Second, I argue that Completion Pluralism fits best with the variety of interests that we bring to questions about artwork completeness: there is no single or overriding concern we have when we want to know whether an artwork is complete. We shouldn't expect completeness to be a single sort of thing, then. I show how to put Completion Pluralism to work by identifying different kinds of artwork completeness in artworks. Finally, I introduce a new kind of completeness particular to stories, what I call "narrative completion", and show how it's distinct from other kinds of completeness discussed. In chapter 3, I argue that the distinction between fictional and non-fictional stories is the degree to which stories are made-up. In short, a fictional story is a made-up story. I first provide a couple desiderata for thinking about theories of fiction, then show how the two most popular extant theories of fiction---the prop theory and the genre theory---fall short in meeting one or more of those desiderata to some extent. I then show how the theory that fictions are made-up stories better meets the desiderata, using my account of what it is to make up a story from chapter 1. I turn to explicitly ontological matters in chapter 4. Addressing the question of what stories are, I show that both the theses that they are eternal and immutable and that they are created and historical seem plausible for independent reasons. I discuss a schema of an argument some philosophers who hold to the latter view (those I call "Creationists") attempt to give for their view. However, I show how those who hold to the view that stories are eternal and immutable ("Platonists") can account for all the same appearances as the Creationists, usually at least as well and sometimes with a better accounting. Similar, deductive arguments for Platonism will give rise to similar responses from the Creationist, however. In the end, then, the style of argument in particular is unlikely to advance the discussion much. Finally, I attempt to advance the discussion by building an abductive case for Platonism. First, I vindicate a particular metaontological methodology for the debate at hand, a methodology that allows for "revisionary" outcomes in our ontologies of art objects. Second, I build a case for Platonism by arguing that it best explains a number of features of stories discussed in the previous chapters. Moreover, I argue that Creationism is committed to an implausible account of how some abstract objects come into existence. Given the combination of those facts, I argue that we should prefer Platonism to Creationism. (shrink)

"Perfect Worlds offers an extensive historical analysis of utopian narratives in the Chinese and Euro-American traditions.

RESUMO:A hipótese desenvolvida nos leva a confrontar três textos do corpusrousseauísta: o Segundo Discurso, Júlia ou A Nova Heloísa e o extrato do Primeiro Diálogo, em que há a ficção do mundo ideal, textos que, apesar do seu estatuto genérico diferente, estão em coerência e convergência teórica. Desejamos evidenciar um aspecto da unidade problemática do pensamento de Rousseau concernente à abordagem crítica da sociedade de seus contemporâneos e sua concepção do papel das Letras e dos Espetáculos. A preocupação do filósofo (...) é de refundar a natureza humana, a fim de lançar as bases de uma nova organização social. Nessa empreitada, a ficção desempenha um papel crucial, o prefácio do Segundo Discurso o comprova: para bem conhecer o homem atual, deve-se supor o que ele não é mais. O homem do estado de natureza, ser de ficção, cujas paixões são retas e naturais, é o modelo teórico que reativa a sociedade dos seres ideais de Júlia. Dessa forma, a ficção é chamada a desempenhar um papel referencial fundamental para o pensamento social e político de Rousseau, aparecendo como um poderoso meio de ação sobre o público. O romance pode reeducar os povos corrompidos, pois, assim como o teatro, como denuncia a Carta a d’Alembert, possui os meios para perverter uma sociedade tida como virtuosa. ABSTRACT:The hypothesis that we will develop leads us to confront three texts of Rousseau’s corpus: the Second Discourse, Julie, and the extract of the First Dialogue that speaks of the pedagogical fiction of the ideal world. These three texts, despite their different types, are theoretically coherent and convergent. We intend to highlight an aspect of the problematic unity of Rousseau’s thought, an aspect which concerns his contemporaries’ critical approach to society and Rousseau’s conception of the role of letters and spectacles. Rousseau’s concern is to refound human nature in order to lay the basis of a new social organization. In this effort, fiction plays a decisive role, as the preface to the Second Discourse affirms: in order to know modern man, we must consider a hypothesis about what he no longer is. Man in the state of nature, a fictional being whose passions are right and natural, is the theoretical model that reactivates the society of ideal beings in Julie. For Rousseau, fiction is called upon to play a fundamental referential role for social and political thought, and it appears as a powerful means of action on the public. The novel can reeducate depraved peoples, because, like the theater, it also has the means to pervert a so-called virtuous society. (shrink)

This article will examine Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea from the perspectives of philosophical fiction and world literature. Philosophical fiction is a specific kind of literature that insists on its absolute modernity. However, the literary aspects of philosophical fiction place it within its political and historical context, thus threatening this pretense to universality. Our examination of Nausea will show the internal tension between philosophy and fiction and how the interplay of both of those elements informed the structure of the novel. The (...) formal, literary aspects help further the actual philosophical content that purports to be the central focus. The implications of that interplay will lead us to a new understanding of the inner logic of world literature. (shrink)

This paper finds its origin in a debate between Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and Octavio Paz (1914-1998) on what is central to the idea of eroticism. Bataille posits that violence and transgression are fundamental to eroticism, and without prohibition, eroticism would cease to exist. Paz, however, views violence and transgression as merely intersecting with, rather than being intrinsic to, eroticism. Paz places focus on imagination, and transforms eroticism from a transgressive, to a ritualistic act. Eroticism thus functions as an intermediary, turning (...) animal sexuality into ceremony and rite. In this paper, I argue that Paz and Bataille are not fundamentally at odds in their conceptualisation of eroticism. Instead, Paz redefines the locus of eroticism by subverting its unsettling aspects. His conception of eroticism gives precedence to the imagination, which in itself is an act of violation. Imagination transgresses normal life, but this transgression – the violation of the habitual world – also introduces a glimpse of the numinous that Paz associates with belongingness. The paper further explores eroticism, as this is perceived today, and argues that it ultimately eliminates the threshold marked by transgression. The rise of the contemporary pornographic society is marked by a loss of imagination and transcendence, which ultimately reduces the subject into a mere automaton that demands instant gratification. (shrink)

A team of leading contributors from both philosophical and literary backgrounds have been brought together in this impressive book to examine how works of literary fiction can be a source of knowledge. Together, they analyze the important trends in this current popular debate. The innovative feature of this volume is that it mixes work by literary theorists and scholars with work of analytic philosophers that combined together provide a comprehensive statement of the variety of ways in which works of fiction (...) can engage questions of worldly interest. It uses the problem of cognitive value to explore: literature’s contribution to ethical life literature’s ability to engage in social and political critique the role narrative plays in opening up possibilities of moral, aesthetic, experience and selfhood This remarkable volume will attract the attention of both literature and philosophy scholars with its statement of the various ways that literature and life take an interest in one another. (shrink)

Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages. By Steven D. Fraade. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, vol. 147. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. xix + 627. $251.