On Fiction and Philosophy

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty once told Sartre he wanted to write a novel about himself—not an autobiography, but a work of fiction. ‘In a novel,’ he explained to his colleague, ‘I would give an imaginary meaning to the periods of life I don’t understand.’

At first blush, there’s something very telling about this remark; something remarkably, peculiarly philosophical. At the heart of it is the idea that fiction is a cover-up: a facade plastered over the gaps in our knowledge. This, of course, was Plato’s fear. He saw everyday life as a great delusion, obscuring the eternal truths of the Forms. Worse still, art was a sneaky, deceptive copy of this life—a trompe l’oeil, which distracted truth-seekers and bred bad manners. To be a painter or poet was to be something of a lie-peddler, relying on slick tropes instead of thought. ‘The creator of the phantasm,’ said Socrates, Plato’s gregarious mouthpiece, ‘knows nothing of the reality but only the appearance.’ In simple terms, fiction and philosophy seem unalterably at odds: the former all sham and show, the latter enamoured with truth.

This might be the final word on the matter, if it weren’t for two uncontroversial facts: Plato himself philosophised in fiction, and many prominent philosophers have unashamedly followed suit over the ensuing two millennia. Alongside more formal speeches and letters, Seneca and Cicero wrote plays and dialogues. Voltaire wrote plays and short stories, including the brilliant, still-beloved Candide; and Nietzsche wrote the poetic novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In France, Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus wrote some of the most arresting novels of the twentieth century, and Iris Murdoch’s fiction and drama remain compelling examples of a fine mind at work. Contemporary Australian philosophers including Peter Singer and Graham Priest have written short stories of wit and human sympathy (I know, because I tried to publish them). If all of these scholars aren’t part of a grand Platonic brotherhood, they’re still bona fide philosophers—diligent, discriminating seekers of truth. And they’re proof enough that philosophy and fiction can comfortably, productively collaborate. Both impulses can not only coexist in the soul of thinkers, but they can also bear fruit.

Taking this somewhat for granted, I’d like to explore what happens when a philosopher writes fiction. More specifically, I’ll tease out some of the desires, assumptions and ideas that motivate and characterise my own fiction. If the result is to some extent introspective and specific, my hope is that it will have some broader relevance.

Importantly, fiction doesn’t always begin with an idea; with a firm, clear concept, or even a distinct impression. In my own case, it begins with a longing, perhaps even a loneliness. As a scholar, I frequently engage with the works of historical figures: scholars, artists, statesmen. Eventually I become accustomed to their ideas, their manner and style, and their singular vision of life. But after a certain point, no more can be gleaned. Regardless of how many arguments I comprehend, or how many facts I collect, the character in question remains distant, opaque—but still intriguing. And added to this is the unyielding arrow of history: the longer I live, the more years are put between us. Put simply but accurately, I miss them. I find myself absent-mindedly imagining our meetings: I eat fresh blackberries with an elderly Seneca, get drunk with a youthful Nietzsche, or help poor Pascal sew his scrawled religious epiphanies into his coat.

For me, fiction is a way to retain these reveries; to recover the prize of another psyche, by writing them into being. It’s something of a literary séance, without the mysticism or kitsch—an attempt to regain a familiar companion. Obviously, this isn’t strictly the case with all philosophers who turn their hand to fiction. Not all characters are canonical ghosts. But from de Beauvoir’s Mandarins to Priest’s ‘Sylvan’s Box’, even the most fictional or fantastic pieces are enriched by the personalities the author is entangled with. Against the tide of death and shifting intimacies, fiction is one way to maintain vital conversations—even if they’re monologues, so to speak, in reality.

Crucially, this isn’t the fantasy implied by Merleau-Ponty, and lamented by Plato: contriving illusory meanings for things I cannot conceive. This gives the impression of a band-aid, a scholarly patch-up job. Instead, the fiction is something more akin to surgery: detailing the physiology usually hidden by superfluous facts, interpretations, myths. I want to grasp the heart of the thinker; the motivating, vitalising organ.

And this is the basic philosophical compulsion—perhaps even Plato would have recognised and endorsed this urge. It’s the quest for an arche: a fundamental principle behind semblances; the primal theme or tension at work in a person, a relationship or a situation. For Plato in my short story ‘The Lesson’, the basic issue is the body. It is the source of his power, but also of his vulnerability. It is a lure for his admirers, and the brute force that kept underlings at bay. Yet it also leaves him open to violations: decay, passion, pain. He is torn between conceited, hedonistic adoration of physicality and an almost petulant disgust of change, transformation, transience.

And this tension was at the heart of Plato’s philosophy. In his slander of the physical world, and flight to ethereality, was the overzealous idealism of someone once enamoured with the body. By challenging Plato to a wrestling match, Socrates immediately cultivated an intimacy with the adolescent, and demonstrated the limitations of his swaggering physicality. And the same kinds of issues and tensions can be revealed for Nietzsche, Pascal or William James—the list is exhaustive. The point is not to fantasise about grey areas, but to use the stuff of fiction—gesture, speech, interiority, detailed milieu—to illuminate the basic, essential forces at work in a life and a philosophy.

As the example of Plato suggests, this enterprise involves conflict. And this is something common to fiction and philosophy—both are fuelled by tension, struggle, opposition. But their methods of dealing with it are often at odds. Since Aristotle formulated his famous law of non-contradiction (‘the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect’), philosophers have treated contradiction with a certain due contempt—something to be excluded, synthesised or explained away. If, as academics, we’re to reveal an ambivalence or ambiguity, it’s often to criticise, discard or redeem it as trivial.

Of course, fiction also routinely resolves or dissolves contradictions: boy finds suitable girl; soldier renounces war; middle-aged man finds his glorious destiny is to discover his life has been wasted waiting for this destiny (to take Henry James’ example from ‘The Beast in the Jungle’). In the standard beginning, middle and end of the narrative, we find countless oppositions reconciled, contradictions overcome or errors done away with.

But sometimes fiction steadfastly retains and amplifies these contradictions. When I write of Plato’s inconsistencies, for example, I’m less concerned about logical consistency. I don’t expect the neatness of academic scholarship, or the patronising clarity of a morality tale. On the contrary, it’s the ambivalence of characters, relationships and situations that makes the fiction so arresting. To discover the arche of his philosophical life, I don’t want Plato to gloss over the opposing longings that drive him; to fudge, intellectually, the genuine contradictions of his existence. And if he is somehow to work out his incongruities, this has to happen in time. It cannot be the frozen visage of an eternal idea. It can only be accomplished through the unfolding of the plot: the enduring, supple thread that holds together life’s vicissitudes. In this light, fiction’s distinguishing mark is transformation, not abstract mediation. I expect Plato to live, perhaps painfully, within his dilemma.

My justification for this is profoundly philosophical: some things, within the barriers and blind spots of mortal life, cannot be untangled with logic. Many ambiguities are embodied instead of solved, and recognising this is central to the philosophical endeavour. By expressing this with vividness, fiction enables a finer appreciation of the struggles that make life worth thinking about at all. And in this, the art of storytelling not only affords understanding, but also cultivates human sympathy: a familiarity with conflicting passions and anxieties, and their sometimes meddlesome influence on our ideals. In the words of Alan Bennett’s Queen from An Uncommon Reader, ‘it tenderises one’.

What this amounts to is a rule of thumb, which shouldn’t be raised to a universal law or infallible aesthetic principle: in philosophy I persuade, in literature I offer. And what is offered—to me at least, and hopefully to readers—is human experiences. These are informed by philosophical issues and arguments, but chiefly concerned with evoking the delicate, ambiguous nature of humanity: striving, undergoing, enduring and accomplishing. Of course, this is more grist to the philosophical mill. It offers extra ‘stuff’ for the mind to analyse; more examples, case studies, particulars. But it’s also a contribution to life itself; to a human span, enlivened and guided by lucid ideals or subtle, transient impressions. If ‘stories are lived before they are told’, as Alasdair MacIntyre put it, fiction enables more lucid, mindful living.

In this light, Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to give life ‘imaginary meanings’ takes on a new, constructive guise. If he was right, this wasn’t because the fictional enterprise was a fabrication of reality, a replacement for genuine knowledge. On the contrary, it is ‘imaginative’ insofar as it touches our own unfolding vision of life, our own groping, restless psyche. Fiction can rejuvenate our consciousness, by presenting, with enduring vivacity and variety, the panoply of the human condition. And if there is a ‘quarrel between philosophy and poetry’, as Socrates put it, it can only be the strife that accompanies all intimate relationships.