Philosophy as fiction

About this book

"Philosophy as Fiction seeks to account for the peculiar power of philosophical literature by taking as its case study the paradigmatic generic hybrid of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. At once philosophical - in that it presents claims, and even deploys arguments concerning such traditionally philosophical issues as knowledge, self-deception, selfhood, love, friendship, and art - and literary - in that its situations are imaginary and its stylization inescapably prominent - Proust's novel presents us with a conundrum. How should it be read? Can the two discursive structures coexist, or must philosophy inevitably undermine literature (by sapping the narrative of its vitality) and literature undermine philosophy (by placing its claims in the mouth of an often unreliable narrator)?" "Unlike the essay Proust might have written, his novel grants us the opportunity to use it as a practice ground for cooperation among our faculties, for the careful sifting of memories, for the complex procedures involved in self-fashioning, and for the related art of self-deception. It is only because the narrator's insights do not always add up - a weakness, so long as one treats the novel as a straightforward treatise - that it can produce its training effect, a feature that turns out to be its ultimate strength."--BOOK JACKET.