What Is Fiction and the Scope of the Literary Imagination: How May it be Understood Philosophically?
Currently, I am reading, 'One Man's Bible', by Gao Xingian, a novel of 1999, which raises questions about fiction and philosophy. It looks at lies and fiction, saying,
'Lies are everywhere in the world, and you similarly create lies in literature...More cunning than animals, humans need to use lies to conceal their own ugliness in order to seek a reason a reason for living.'
He goes on to say, that ,
'The magic of literature lies on the part of the author and the author. Unlike political frauds that even the unwilling are forced to accept, literature may either be read or not, there is no coercion. You do not choose literature because it of its belief in its purity; for you , it is simply a means of release'.
This may show the psychological and philosophical understanding of 'truth'. However, I am wondering about its significance in the mythic dimensions of understanding, especially in the arts, in contrast to more 'concrete' views of 'realism' in science. What do you think about the juxtaposition between logos and myth in the scheme of philosophical understanding?
Comments (18)
Well, at least as far back as Thales, logos (re: "laws") has been used to demythologize but cannot fully eliminate mythos (re: "gods") in order to raise intelligible questions about 'reality or ourselves' which we do not know (yet) how to decisively answer. Suppositions and interpretations, not explanations, are the best, imho, (we) philosophers can do with nothing more than 'conceptual schema'.
Demorhysing is important, but even science may be based on mythology or story. Does it come down to removing narrative explanations? What are we.left with, models and, on what basis?
Also, in thinking about life experiences what is left if narratives, and symbolic aspects are cast aside. Surely, this would amount to meaninglessness. Stories, even if fabricated, are central to human understanding. They may have subjective rather than objective rendering, but they are central to human experience
It's not a matter of 'narrativity' or the absence of it but to use logos to transform mythos into narratives which frame - interpret as explanable models (i.e. 'predictive' fact-patterns). This, I think, is what Thales and other Pre-Socratics (6th-4th century BCE) were up to.
9kay, but that is about ancient thinking. What about fiction and 'story' in contemporary imagination and thought?
This seems off to me. Lies are meant to deceive. If fiction is presented as fiction, which it usually is, no deception occurs. Do you see something more here?
In other words, ancient people may have thought in terms of story. But, what about the twentieth first century, and how relevant is narrative history and understanding?
It is complicated because facts are raw material and may be constructed or deconstructed by individuals depending on motivation and how ideas are presented.
I think we still think "in terms of story" how could humans not? such that philosophy produces reflective and suppositional stories about concepts (whereas modern science produces mathematical model-based stories about factual aspects of the world).
In trying to reformulate the question I could ask, Is story and metaphor central to all understanding of 'truth'?
History is constructed from perspectives. Of course, it is brought together by a certain collective experience, but it is understood so differently by individuals. Epistemology has cultural and individual angles. Even one person's viewpoint alters, affected by state of mind and external influence.
In speaking of constructed and deconstructed I am influenced by sociology, especially postmodernism.
I think so.
The nature of images and the symbolic are likely to be important in human understanding. So much thinking may become so concrete, as if models, including the mathematical and scientific ones, are seen as all encompassing. This may show a bias and diminishing of human reason, especially in favour of science and arts based understanding, which may be complementary to one another.
How much which is taking place historically, is being seen concretely, as opposed to symbolic dramas? To what extent is politics and its historical dramas an expression of cosmic or human dramas in embodied action?
The way I see it if such models, for all their limitations, are both prevalent and more adaptive than the alternatives, then all the better for our reasoning capabilities and practices.
Michel Foucault 'Les rapports de pouvoir passent a l'interieur des corps', in Quinzaine Litteraire 247, 1-15 January 1977.
Autobiography, which might contain objective material ("I was born in North Dakota during a snow storm" for example), will also contain subjective material -- of necessity in the case of autobiography. More, the act of writing an autobiography is likely to a) alter one's identity to some degree and b) is likely to be somewhat misleading/.
I wrote an 80 page autobiography some years ago (which will never see the light of day). I attempted to be objective -- warts and all -- but inevitably, the text became slanted in my favor. "In my favor" was as misleading as the text becoming increasingly "against my favor". I find myself editing my internal, unwritten, autobiography quite often -- seeking to find a positive spin on periods when I was spinning my wheels.
I suppose if one wants to know a person's history well, one should read his autobiography and the best biography available.
The issue of "lying" is especially important in biography and autobiography both. There ARE facts about a life, and then there are aspects about a life that can't be factual. We can agree on what Robert Moses built, but I'm not sure we can agree on whether Robert Moses (The Power Broker) was a "great man"; much less can we agree on whether he was a "good man". Was he "good" for New York City? I don't know that we can say for sure, either way.
Autobiography is an extremely interesting form of writing in relation to the spectrum between non fiction and fiction. That is because it is all about framing.
One of my own important experiences was the task given of writing a 'spiritual autobiography' in Religious Studies, during sixth form. I had never really stood back and reflected on my own inner experience in writing before. It felt like a significant step in the direction of philosophy.
One writer who wrote philosophy autobiography was Bryan Magee. Reading his writing made ideas come to life with the way he spoke of his own engagement with ideas.
Of course, a lot of fiction has an autobiographical slant. It allows for 'playing'with one's life experiences in a creative way. This may be partly to protect the people in one's life and also about being able to keep some distance and 'secrecy' about oneself. In the philosophy of authenticity, there is a lot of emphasis on self disclosure. But, I wonder how far this needs to go. Who benefits when we disclose so much, especially painful experiences? Fiction allows for the careful interplay between the basic 'facts' of experience and how one would like it to be.
Fiction involves developing personal mythology, and so does autobiographical writing, in what is selected to share and what remains unsaid.