Abstract
It may seem natural to assume that philosophical and literary narratives are two distinct forms of discourse. Many philosophers therefore take on the task of theorizing about how literature may have philosophical (cognitive) value with bearing on our real world despite the fact that it is made up. Both Merleau-Ponty and Murdoch give us reasons to think that the whole idea of a gap between fictional and dramatic narratives, on the one hand, and factual and argumentative ones, on the other, is spurious. Building on their thoughts, it is here argued that attention to narrative literature can bring into view a form of conceptual elasticity that is part of all language—even if much of philosophy quite often has strived hard to eradicate it.
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Notes
- 1.
Gibson (2007, 4).
- 2.
Gibson (2007, 3f).
- 3.
Of course, there are more fruitful ways of talking about literature as being ‘about our world,’ and Gibson may be said to offer such an alternative view himself. ‘If literature does not represent reality, I argue that it plays a crucial role in the construction of those narratives in virtue of which we give sense to our characteristically human practices and experiences. Literature is in effect an archive of these narratives, a storehouse of the various ways we have developed for giving expression to the way our world is and our particular ways of finding ourselves within it’ (Gibson 2007, 10).
- 4.
Gibson (2007, 2).
- 5.
Gibson (2007, 4).
- 6.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 3).
- 7.
- 8.
This is why somebody like Stanley Cavell wants to say, and emphasize, that ‘Intimate understanding is understanding which is implicit. … We are, therefore, exactly as responsible for the specific implications of our utterances as we are for their explicit factual claims.’ Cavell (1976, 12).
- 9.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 4).
- 10.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 5).
- 11.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 4).
- 12.
Merleau-Ponty (1973).
- 13.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 5).
- 14.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 8).
- 15.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 15).
- 16.
Merleau-Ponty (1973).
- 17.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 17).
- 18.
Merleau-Ponty (1973).
- 19.
Ibid., p. 11. The right way to think about Merleau-Ponty’s thought here is not that it is a peculiar empirical hypothesis. Rather, the argument is more of a Kantian kind, as a form of explication of the conditions of possibility of genuine expression (a form of speech that is personal and not just a static transferal of dead symbols). It is an answer to the question: Given that we do have personal and authentic forms of expression, what must lived, authentic, language be like, harbor, and make possible?
- 20.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 17).
- 21.
Kuhn (1996).
- 22.
Kuhn (1996, 55).
- 23.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 12f).
- 24.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 11f).
- 25.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 90).
- 26.
Merleau-Ponty (1973, 28).
- 27.
Gibson (2007, 4).
- 28.
Gibson (2007).
- 29.
Murdoch (1999a, 35).
- 30.
Murdoch (1999b, 324f).
- 31.
Murdoch (1999c, 77).
- 32.
Murdoch (1999c, 79).
- 33.
Murdoch (1999c, 80–81).
- 34.
Murdoch says, for example, that: ‘… When we return home and “tell our day”, we are artfully shaping material into story form. So in a way as word-users we all exist in a literary atmosphere, we live and breathe literature, we are all literary artists, we are constantly employing language to make interesting forms out of experience which perhaps originally seemed dull or incoherent. How far reshaping involves offences against truth is a problem any artist must face’ (Murdoch 1999d, 6f).
- 35.
Murdoch (2003, 252–56).
- 36.
Murdoch (1999d, 6).
- 37.
Murdoch (2003, 192).
- 38.
Murdoch (1999d, 12).
- 39.
Gibson (2007, 3f).
- 40.
For a good discussion of this way of thinking about the philosophical value of turning to narrative literature, see Hämäläinen (2015).
- 41.
My thanks to Nora Hämäläinen for valuable comments to an earlier version of this text. This publication was supported within the project of Operational Programme Research, Development and Education (OP VVV/OP RDE), “Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value”, registration No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000425, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic.
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Forsberg, N. (2018). Narrativity in Variation: Merleau-Ponty and Murdoch on Literary and Philosophical Narratives. In: Stocker, B., Mack, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_4
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