Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective

by Peter Lamarque, Stein Haugom Olsen

This book examines the complex and varied ways in which fictions relate to the real world, and offers a precise account of how imaginative works of literature can use fictional content to explore matters of universal human interest. While rejecting the traditional view that literature is important for the truths that it imparts, the authors also reject attempts to cut literature off altogether from real human concerns. Their detailed account of fictionality, mimesis, and cognitive value, founded on the methods of analytical philosophy, restores to literature its distinctive status among cultural practices. The authors also explore metaphysical and skeptical views, prevalent in modern thought, according to which the world Ptself is a kind of fiction, and truth no more than a social construct. They identify different conceptions of fiction in science, logic, epistemology, and make-believe, and thereby challenge the idea that discourse per se is fictional and that different modes
of discourse are at root indistinguishable. They offer rigorous analyses of the roles of narrative, imagination, metaphor, and "making" in human thought processes. Both in their methods and in their conclusions, Lamarque and Olsen aim to restore rigor and clarity to debates about the values of literature, and to provide new, philosophically sound foundations for a genuine change of direction in literary theorizing.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Peter Lamarque is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York. He joined the Department of Philosophy in 2000. Prior to that, he was Ferens Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hull and Head of the Philosophy Department between 1995 and 2000. He was a lecturer and then senior lecturer at the University of Stirling between 1972 and 1995. From 1995 to 2008 he was Editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics.

Reviews

[Gaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un maledetto parto, maledetta tesi