Qu’est-ce qu’une fiction ? Anatomie des fictions de Freud à Lacan

In this article, I discuss some influential Chinese theories of fiction and concepts of fiction in ancient times, as well as some contemporary trends in Chinese theories of literature, genre and fiction. This involves discussing several aspects, such as concepts of literature, genre and fiction, the role and status of fiction, recent developments in fiction theory, and the impact of cultural values and political climate etc.. I will also discuss certain features of Chinese theories of fiction and concepts of fiction in the context of influential theories and concepts of fiction in Western culture, such as those in Gregory Currie's The Nature of Fiction and Kendall Walton Mimesis and Make-Believe. Are these theories applicable to Chinese fiction? Are they reconcilable with Chinese theories and concepts of fiction? And finally, is it possible to create credible transcultural theories and concepts of fiction?

Métapsychologie et fictions

Possible worlds theory recognizes that what starts to form once a world is postulated with conditions different to the actual is the apprehensibility of a different (meta)physics. Situations implausible in the actual world could there take on outline and cohere, in keeping, as Ruth Ronen explains, with possible worlds providing ‘a philosophical explanatory framework that pertains to the problem of fiction’. They overturn ‘the long philosophical tradition, from Plato to Russell’ that skirts fiction, because this ‘has been viewed (…) as a sequence of propositions devoid of a truth value’. Possible worlds thereby rehabilitate fiction as ‘part of a larger context of discourses that do not refer to the way things actually are in the world’ (Ronen 1994, 6–7). This bears out the adjustment possible worlds theory brings to ‘theories of fictionality’ based on ‘the assumption that there is only one legitimate universe of discourse (domain or reference), the actual world’ (Doležel 1998, 2). The possibilities in fictional worlds instead occasion a ‘pragmatics of pretense’ (11), intuiting that ‘the one-world model is not a propitious ground for fictional semantics’ (5) and endorsing ‘uncountable possible, nonactualized worlds’ (13). This multiplicity can only grow, for ‘[t]he universe of possible worlds is constantly expanding and diversifying thanks to the incessant world-constructing activity of human minds and hands’ (ix).

Prosthetic Grand Synthesis

This text primarily deals with Hans Vaihinger?s fiction theory. Emphasizing the central role of scientific fiction in that theory, it attempts to give a critical account of Vaihinger?s philosophical theory of ?As if?. On the one hand, this analysis of the philosophy of ?As if? includes conceptual delimitation between the notion of fiction and concepts of fantasy, hypothesis, and regulatory ideas. On the other hand, it points out to some problems related to Vaihinger?s constructivist-pragmatic approach to the problem of fiction, such as a tendency towards an unreasonable extension of the notion of fiction, and a tendency towards the integration of other forms of fictionality into scientific fiction.

ars Ole Sauerberg's Fact into Fiction: Documentary Realism in the Contemporary Novel is an interesting investigation of the realist documentary mode that also explores the relationship between textual ontology and the reliance on outer references from the real world. Sauerberg's basic claim is that despite the tendencies toward fragmentary narrative and literary devices (vaguely compounded as the postmodern), the realist mode of representation still prevails. Indeed, it must prevail, considering that we share much the same obsession with the ontological condition as our nineteenth-century cousins. The continuation of bourgeois values into the twentieth century has meant that literary investigation and experimentation, indeed all forms of representation, have followed the basic patterns of realistic convention. The key to the continuation of literary realism (whether specifically documentary or not) rests with the necessity of language to represent and the obvious limitations that lie within this ground of representation. All fiction works on the level of representation, as does all nonfiction, and both rely on the naturalizing function of narrative. Thus whether the text makes the rhetorical conventions

In autotheory as contemporary feminist practice, artists, writers, philosophers, activists, curators, and critics use the autobiographical, first person, and related practices of self-imaging (Jones, Self/Image 134) to process, perform, enact, iterate, subvert, instantiate, and wrestle with the hegemonic discourses of “theory” and philosophy. The term “autotheory” circulates specifically in relation to third wave and fourth wave feminist texts, such as American writer Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts and American filmmaker and art writer Chris Kraus's I Love Dick even as the act of theorizing from the first person is well-established within the genealogies of feminism; as a post-1960s practice it takes on a particularly conceptual and performative valence. This article serves as a historicization of what we are referring to in the present as “autotheory,” with auto theoretical antecedents having been referred to as “critical memoir,” “theoretical fiction” (Hawkins 263), “life-thinking” (Samatar), and “fiction theory” (Brossard). I turn my attention to “Sick Woman Theory” and “Sad Girl Theory” as twenty-first century examples of auto theoretical feminist practices that span out across social media. I consider how these post-internet practices of making space for sickness and sadness in auto theoretical ways can be understood in relation to the imperatives of intersectionality and the complications of neoliberalism in the present.

Fictionality is a term used in various fields within and beyond literary theory, from speech act theory through the theory of fictional worlds, to theories of “as if.” It is often equated with the genre of the novel. However, as a consequence of the rhetorical theory of fictionality developed from the early 21st century, the concept has gained ground as an autonomous communicative device, independent of its relation to any genre. Theories of fictionality have been developed (1) prior to the establishment of fiction as a genre, with Plato, Aristotle, Philip Sidney, and Pierre Daniel Huet; (2) with the establishment of fiction by Blankenburg and some of the first novelists, such as Daniel Defoe and Horace Walpole; (3) after the establishment of the novel, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hans Vaihinger, John Searle, Kendall Walton, Dorrit Cohn, Richard Walsh, and others. From the 1990s, the debates on fictionality have centered on questions of whether fictionality is best described in terms of semantic, syntactic, or pragmatic approaches. This includes discussions about possible signposts of fictionality, encouraged by the semantic and syntactic approaches, and about how to define the concept of fictionality, as either a question of text internal features as argued by the semantic and syntactic theorists, or as a question of contextual assumptions, as held by the pragmatists. Regarding fictionality as a rhetorical resource, among many other resources in communication at large, has a number of consequences for the study of fictionality and for literary theory in general. First, it contributes the insight that literature is similar to other acts of communication. Second, overtly invented stories do not have to follow the rules of non-invented communication. Third, a rhetorical approach to fictionality makes visible the ways in which fiction interacts with and affects reality, in concrete, yet complicated ways.

Throughout the history of Western philosophy there has been a remarkable consensus that the unique and distinctive feature of human nature lies in the human capacity to think — that is, to think rationally. Being rational is conceived of as being an essential property of human beings. The Amsterdam philosopher Otto Dirk Duintjer2 has made an impressive attempt to analyze this dominant intellectual tradition for the purpose of furnishing hints for an alternative conception of what goes into the essence of being human. This alternative is presented not as another, more promising route within, but as a way out of our Western intellectual cul-de-sac, as Duintjer sees it. In this essay I first want to give a brief exposition of Duintjer’s analysis of our philosophical tradition because, I think, it is worth our serious consideration. Secondly, I will review his alternative for the traditional conception of what it means to be a human being. And thirdly I will discuss the viability of his alternative by comparing it with Dooyeweerd’s transcendental philosophy.

Discourse on human will has a long history in the Western philosophical tradition; in fact, this history is as old as the history of Western philosophy itself. In this regard, the discourse on human will remains evergreen, with changing subject-matter from one period to another. With regard to subject-matter, the discourse on human will has significant implications for other intellectual disciplines that deal with the study of human species. As such, the paper centres on the most recurring debate in the history of the discourse on human will. The paper re-examines the various controversies that have been generated by the question whether the human will is free or not. To date, this question has had serious implications for the way we construe existence in all forms. The paper re-considers the debate within the bounds of two distinct thought-systems in the Western and Yoruba philosophical traditions. Within the context of Western thought, the paper focuses on doctrines that have evolved in the attempt to address or respond to the question whether the human will is free or not. The reason for dealing with doctrines rather than individual scholars is that it avoids the unnecessary repetition of arguments. The paper examines the works of some scholars in the Yoruba tradition who have contributed to the discourse on the fundamental question; however, these contributions misrepresent Yoruba thought. Thus, the paper argues that the question of whether human will is free or not does not arise in the Yoruba philosophical system. Analytical and phenomenological methods of research are adopted in the paper. The analytic approach is important to achieve the twin goal of explanation and clarity of concepts and issues; that is, the method will afford us the opportunity to engage with the literature and subject it to critical exposition. The phenomenological approach is significant as an interpretative tool for interrogating oral account that would properly account for the notion and conception of the human will in Yoruba thought. Keywords: human will, determinism, non-determinism, quasi-determinism.

Reviewed by: Samuel Beckett's "Philosophy Notes." ed. by Steven Matthews and Matthew Feldman Marc Farrant Samuel Beckett's "Philosophy Notes." Ed. Steven Matthews and Matthew Feldman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 576. $125.00 (cloth). Samuel Beckett's "Philosophy Notes" comprises the Irish writer's (largely) complete notes on the history of Western philosophy, an autodidactic enterprise undertaken in the 1930s alongside—and between—the publication of his first forays in fiction, Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932), More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) and Murphy (1938). First discovered in a trunk in his cellar after his death in 1989, and hitherto unavailable to a general academic audience, this Oxford University Press edition of the notes consists of the full text of two manuscripts held at Trinity College Dublin, consisting of some 267 folios totalling over 110,000 words. The moniker "Philosophy Notes" derives from a prior publication of the volume's coeditor, Matthew Feldman's Beckett's Books: A Cultural History of Samuel Beckett's 'Interwar Notes' (2006)—a seminal publication of the archival turn in Beckett Studies. Feldman and his coeditor, Steven Matthews, do an excellent job of framing the material that is included here (which runs to over five hundred pages), suggesting ways for the reader to navigate Beckett's compendious research into what he referred to once as the "loutishness of learning."1 Indeed, this volume's introduction is exceptionally useful. Building on Feldman's prior work in this area, the introduction consolidates a narrative of Beckett's engagement with philosophy [End Page 598] that helps crystallize several significant hermeneutic focal points. Feldman lays out Beckett's engagement with philosophy in several works that argue that the "direct relationship between 'Beckett and philosophy'—meaning Samuel Beckett's struggle with Western philosophy as it influenced his poetics and outlook—lasted only a decade, from 1928 to 1938."2 Based on the extant archival notes themselves, Feldman's thesis is convincing and is further compounded by the publication of Beckett/Philosophy—a 2015 essay collection that might be considered a companion to this Oxford University Press edition of the notes (chapters are cited repeatedly in the editors' introduction). What follows from this narrative is a twofold skepticism towards both Beckett's own claims of ignorance regarding Western philosophy—"I never read philosophers"—and theoretical or philosophically inspired readings of Beckett's works.3 For Feldman, these readings all too often repeat their axiomatic premises at the expense of the works themselves. An implicit claim here is that a "work" of literature points more in the direction of its origin (its author; its archival beginnings) than its destination, the countersignature of the critic or reader. In other words, for Feldman's empiricist approach, the question of the philosophical meaning of Beckett's works is separate from the question of Beckett and philosophy (Feldman, "Beckett and Philosophy, 1928–1938," 167). This Oxford University Press edition follows Feldman's empiricist lead. This is amplified by the fact that the notes themselves, as the editors remark, consist of "a kind of edited version from parts of three major source texts" that Beckett largely copied verbatim, with a minimum of interventional commentary or "authorship" (Matthews and Feldman, xxv, xl). Thus, although the notes offer little to help form an idea of Beckett as philosopher, as a documentary record of his engagement with the philosophical tradition they do help categorically to refute the idea that he was writing from a position of ignorance with regard to the major ideas and debates that had preoccupied philosophers from the pre-Socratics to Friedrich Nietzsche (where the notes abruptly end). As a work of scholarship, too, the Philosophy Notes are a remarkable achievement. The footnotes that run throughout track every reference to Beckett's published works, allowing the reader to shuttle back and forth with ease. The introduction is also, on its own, a significant resource. Therein the editors extensively detail and date (where possible) Beckett's note-taking practice, developed alongside his period spent with James Joyce working on Finnegans Wake. The specific philosophy notes included in this volume were begun in 1932 in London (although they contain no internal dating). The first major...

The provenance of perfect being theology is deep in the history of Western philosophy and theology. Certainly the most familiar source of perfect being theology is St. Anselm's Proslogion , but the tradition goes back to Greek and Roman philosophers and other early thinkers including Zeno, Cicero, Chrysippus, Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, and St. Augustine. In the first section of the entry there is a discussion of the perfect being argument as developed in St. Anselm and its roots in the philosophical tradition. A posteriori approaches are distinguished from a priori approaches to the perfect being argument in the second section and the productivity of perfect being arguments is addressed in the third section.

Although feminist philosophers have been critical of the gendered norms contained within the history of philosophy, they have not extended this critical analysis to norms concerning disability. In the history of Western philosophy, disability has often functioned as a metaphor for something that has gone awry. This trope, according to which disability is something that has gone wrong, is amply criticized within Disability Studies, though not within the tradition of philosophy itself or even within feminist philosophy. In this paper, I use one instance of this disability metaphor, contained within a passage from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in order to show that paying attention to disability and disability theory can enable identification of ableist assumptions within the tradition of philosophy and can also open up new interpretations of canonical texts. On my reading, whereas Hegel’s expressed views of disability are dismissive, his logic and its treatment of contingency offer up useful ways to situate and re-evaluate disability as part of the concept of humanity. Disability can in fact be useful to Hegel, especially in the context of his valorization of experiences of disruption and disorientation. Broadening our understanding of the possible ways that the philosophical tradition has conceived human beings allows us to better draw on its theoretical resources. Keywords: Hegel; contingency; history of philosophy; feminist Hegel scholarship

Socrates was and is one of the most influential figures in the history of Western philosophy. Yet it remains an open question just what the real, historical Socrates stood for: he wrote nothing, and none even of our most ancient sources can probably be relied upon to give us anything like an accurate picture of his ideas and methods. As if to fill the gap, successive individual philosophers and philosophical traditions—from Plato to Nietzsche and beyond—construct a range of different Socrateses, to serve either as a model for emulation or as a target of attack. Nevertheless, the single most vivid picture of Socrates is that provided by Plato, who was his immediate philosophical successor, and who gave the character 'Socrates' the leading role in the majority of his fictional dialogues. What is this Socrates like, and does he have any use for us?

The article focuses on the problem of social inequality in the Western cultural and civili-zational paradigm. It is noted that in the history of Western philosophy and culture, there have always been two different approaches to understanding inequality. The first path of elitism involved the apology for inequality, proposing ideas of aristocracy (inequality within a single society) or racial domination (inequality between peoples and civilizations). This phil-osophical tradition can be called traditional-authoritarian (Plato, Aristotle) or romantic-conservative (H. Chamberlain). The second way is egalitarian, which insists on creating a society built on the idea of equality (the philosophy of liberalism and Marxism). If representa-tives of the liberal wing of egalitarianism (Locke, Bentham) focus on the justification of a society of equal opportunities with an emphasis on natural human rights, the tradition of Marxism tends to consider social contradictions caused by inequality as antagonistic. There-fore, protest, revolution, rebellion become a specifically Western way of eradicating inequali-ty (Marx, Camus). At the same time, the article notes that the deep worldview basis of this way of solving the problem of inequality is the nihilistic nature of Western civilization, its "Faustian spirit" (Spengler).