Fictions, Philosophy, and Truth
2003; Modern Language Association; Volume: 2003; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1632/074069503x85562
ISSN1938-1522
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Philosophy and Thought
ResumoFor someone who finds himself in my situation?that is to say, a philoso pher fallen among students of imaginative literature?the traditional starting point is the age-old quarrel of philosophy and poetry. The stan dard accusation made by philosophy in the course of that quarrel is that poetry does not tell the truth, whereas philosophy tries to. But one can ask straight off: the truth about what} What is it that poetry allegedly doesn't tell the truth about? This question acquires special force when one goes back to the original Platonic setting for the quarrel. According to Plato, the poets and those who loved their creations labored under an error that was only a more extreme version of one made by most of us all the time?the error of mistaking ordinary empirical, political, social, and personal life for reality. So the falsehood of the poets, as it was under stood by the philosopher who started the quarrel, was simply a brighter version of a falsehood shared by everyone, and it was a falsehood about everything. I suppose that my disposition has always been to take the other side in this famous Platonic quarrel?or, rather, I should say, one of the other sides, since there are clearly many directions in which one can move away from this famous doctrine (some of them taken by Plato himself). I think that some fictions can tell the truth in ways that give the lie to a lot of phi losophy, and I think this despite being a philosopher, or, rather, I suppose,
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