Walking around any public library, or a book store, we predictably discover that Philosophy belongs to the non-fiction section. When “naïvely” asked about the difference between non-fiction and fiction, the answer provided by the layman will probably be the best: fiction is either poetry, or, if prose, it is a story revolving around its author’s made-up plot. So far, so good, but now suddenly a lot of questions start popping up. Say, Plato makes an effort to create a minimal plot in his Dialogues, or Kierkegaard is an even more pronounced storyteller (and such examples may go on and on!)… Well, one may argue that Plato’s attempt to construct his story is artificial and disingenuous, and as for Kierkegaard, he is a much better thinker than a writer. On the other hand, superb writing has nothing to do with it: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are both geniuses of writing, but there they are, on the same shelf with the other philosophers, whether those are good writers or not.
But let us return to the definition of fiction, as opposed to non-fiction, and this time address a professional source, namely, Webster’s Dictionary. Of the four separate definitions, only one is relevant to our subject, and here it is: “Fiction is any literary work portraying imaginary characters and events, as a novel, a play, etc., and also all such works collectively.”
Our poor layman is now at a big disadvantage: his definition has just been thrown out of the window by an unimpeachable professional authority. “But what about poetry?” he must be muttering to himself, “It may have none of those ‘imaginary characters and events,’ and still they will put it in the Fiction section!”
How right he is, and, confronted with his argument, our esteemed professionals are now themselves at a loss for an answer: perhaps, they have forgotten all about poetry, or else, in their opinion, the libraries and book stores are making a terrible mistake, which has just been brought to their attention!
But I will have no more of this nonsense, thank you! Apparently, the core of the fiction problem lies not in the conflict between the layman and the professionals, but among the professionals themselves. Librarians and the booksellers have a different understanding of fiction than the linguists of the dictionaries. Perhaps, the word fiction is in itself a trick word, and it is too hard to supply it with a professional definition which is capable of covering all bases?
Let us now figure out a few things for ourselves. Starting with the following question: is philosophy really different from fiction, just because the two of them always find themselves on different bookshelves, miles apart from each other?
The absurdity of this situation is further highlighted by this light-hearted follow-up question: Considering that mathematics is thought of as an art, rather than science, by many authoritative professionals, why is it placed with science, and not with art, in all libraries and book stores, and why are most laymen misled to believe that it is a science, and not an art?
The answer to these, and numerous similar questions ought to be the same: let us throw all preconceptions out of the window, and address this question independently, limiting it, like we started doing it in the first place, to the two terms in the title of this entry: philosophy and fiction in their relationship to each other.
In the first place, let us make it clear that, in the Russian perception, philosophy and fiction not only form an organic union, but are often indistinguishable from each other. Every Russian intellectual, that is, a member of the intelligentsia, is a philosopher by definition, and all Russian poets and writers of fiction are members of the intelligentsia, and therefore, necessarily philosophers as well.
Ironically, all Russian philosophers in the Western sense of the word (be that Solovyev or Berdyaev, etc.), are “philosophically” inferior to their Western counterparts, but Russia’s greatest creative writers, starting with Pushkin on to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and into the twentieth century of poetry and prose, are superb philosophers, although in their philosophical writings they never resort to that incomprehensible technical lingo, which has earned every second- and third-rate philosopher his “professional” stripes.
Summarizing what I have said so far, good writing of fiction and good poetry are in relation to philosophy “birds of a feather,” although technically one might say that these three types of philosophy do not exactly employ the same means. Poetry may be described as “irrational” philosophy, in the best sense of the word “irrational,” which we have discussed in a previous entry Reason And Passion. The instrument of creative prose is the metaphor in the larger sense, and finally, the classic philosophy may be considered as the least imaginative of the three, with regard to its formal aspect.
This is not to say, of course, that of the three forms, pure philosophy is in any way deficient and inferior to the other two. The three of them are mutually complementary. Each great writer, here and there, resorts to the straightforward expression of his thoughts, Dostoyevsky’s Writer’s Diaries being an excellent example of that. Alexander Herzen, universally accepted as a writer, rather than a philosopher, has left us his most significant work Byloye i Dumy, which is a work of philosophy in every respect, except that it does not use either the traditional structure or the language of academic philosophy.
But enough of the form, let us talk about the substance. Substantially, I would argue that philosophy too is fiction, rather than non-fiction. Being complementary to poetry and ‘fictional’ prose, academic philosophy differs from the other two in its form, but complements them in substance. Like the other two, it weaves a web of imaginary constructs out of its creator’s mind, and, come to think of it, there is not a single sound argument out there, to distinguish its substance from fiction, pure and simple.
Come to think of it (I am becoming increasingly fond of this little phrase, like Wagner of his Grundthemen), what is non-fiction, after all? All creativity creates fiction. Non-fiction is nothing better than a second-hand take on creation, an interpretation, essentially, a derivative effort. In this sense, non-fiction must always be seen inferior to fiction. (Let the reader think through the implications of the latter and make the appropriate conclusions.) And good philosophy is always bona fide fiction, no doubt about it!
But let us return to the definition of fiction, as opposed to non-fiction, and this time address a professional source, namely, Webster’s Dictionary. Of the four separate definitions, only one is relevant to our subject, and here it is: “Fiction is any literary work portraying imaginary characters and events, as a novel, a play, etc., and also all such works collectively.”
Our poor layman is now at a big disadvantage: his definition has just been thrown out of the window by an unimpeachable professional authority. “But what about poetry?” he must be muttering to himself, “It may have none of those ‘imaginary characters and events,’ and still they will put it in the Fiction section!”
How right he is, and, confronted with his argument, our esteemed professionals are now themselves at a loss for an answer: perhaps, they have forgotten all about poetry, or else, in their opinion, the libraries and book stores are making a terrible mistake, which has just been brought to their attention!
But I will have no more of this nonsense, thank you! Apparently, the core of the fiction problem lies not in the conflict between the layman and the professionals, but among the professionals themselves. Librarians and the booksellers have a different understanding of fiction than the linguists of the dictionaries. Perhaps, the word fiction is in itself a trick word, and it is too hard to supply it with a professional definition which is capable of covering all bases?
Let us now figure out a few things for ourselves. Starting with the following question: is philosophy really different from fiction, just because the two of them always find themselves on different bookshelves, miles apart from each other?
The absurdity of this situation is further highlighted by this light-hearted follow-up question: Considering that mathematics is thought of as an art, rather than science, by many authoritative professionals, why is it placed with science, and not with art, in all libraries and book stores, and why are most laymen misled to believe that it is a science, and not an art?
The answer to these, and numerous similar questions ought to be the same: let us throw all preconceptions out of the window, and address this question independently, limiting it, like we started doing it in the first place, to the two terms in the title of this entry: philosophy and fiction in their relationship to each other.
In the first place, let us make it clear that, in the Russian perception, philosophy and fiction not only form an organic union, but are often indistinguishable from each other. Every Russian intellectual, that is, a member of the intelligentsia, is a philosopher by definition, and all Russian poets and writers of fiction are members of the intelligentsia, and therefore, necessarily philosophers as well.
Ironically, all Russian philosophers in the Western sense of the word (be that Solovyev or Berdyaev, etc.), are “philosophically” inferior to their Western counterparts, but Russia’s greatest creative writers, starting with Pushkin on to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and into the twentieth century of poetry and prose, are superb philosophers, although in their philosophical writings they never resort to that incomprehensible technical lingo, which has earned every second- and third-rate philosopher his “professional” stripes.
Summarizing what I have said so far, good writing of fiction and good poetry are in relation to philosophy “birds of a feather,” although technically one might say that these three types of philosophy do not exactly employ the same means. Poetry may be described as “irrational” philosophy, in the best sense of the word “irrational,” which we have discussed in a previous entry Reason And Passion. The instrument of creative prose is the metaphor in the larger sense, and finally, the classic philosophy may be considered as the least imaginative of the three, with regard to its formal aspect.
This is not to say, of course, that of the three forms, pure philosophy is in any way deficient and inferior to the other two. The three of them are mutually complementary. Each great writer, here and there, resorts to the straightforward expression of his thoughts, Dostoyevsky’s Writer’s Diaries being an excellent example of that. Alexander Herzen, universally accepted as a writer, rather than a philosopher, has left us his most significant work Byloye i Dumy, which is a work of philosophy in every respect, except that it does not use either the traditional structure or the language of academic philosophy.
But enough of the form, let us talk about the substance. Substantially, I would argue that philosophy too is fiction, rather than non-fiction. Being complementary to poetry and ‘fictional’ prose, academic philosophy differs from the other two in its form, but complements them in substance. Like the other two, it weaves a web of imaginary constructs out of its creator’s mind, and, come to think of it, there is not a single sound argument out there, to distinguish its substance from fiction, pure and simple.
Come to think of it (I am becoming increasingly fond of this little phrase, like Wagner of his Grundthemen), what is non-fiction, after all? All creativity creates fiction. Non-fiction is nothing better than a second-hand take on creation, an interpretation, essentially, a derivative effort. In this sense, non-fiction must always be seen inferior to fiction. (Let the reader think through the implications of the latter and make the appropriate conclusions.) And good philosophy is always bona fide fiction, no doubt about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment