Abstract
The chapter mainly deals with the questions about the ontological status of emotions that we experience for a character or incident, say, a novel, movie, etc. Is the experience we have of, say, anger, pity, sympathy, etc., in relation to the characters in a novel, poem, play, etc. real and rational? Or, is it the case that these are “make-belief” and “irrational?” This also brings in its wake the question about relation between literature and truth. It is important to understand that the feelings experienced in the context of a literary work are experienced without their attendant consequences and the anticipated reactions thereto. These feelings are savoured without being affected by their attendant consequences. By way of understanding the nature of such emotions, a distinction is being suggested between “pretending to oneself” and “pretending to others”. The argument has been developed that in creative works it is the case of “pretending to oneself”.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
“How then can I really be experiencing fear? Or if, alternately, I really am experiencing fear, must I not either have forgotten that nothing dangerous is really happening to any real person, in which case I am childishly deluded, or else simply be afraid where there is no cause for fear, in which case I am childishly irrational.” (New 1999, pp. 53–4).
- 2.
Walton takes a position when he compares it to a situation in which a child is playing “a game of make-believe” with his father who is pretending to be a monster. The child screams and runs, but he knows that it is only a “game”. So he remarks thus: “When the slime raised the head, spies the camera, and begins oozing towards it, it is make-believe that Charles is threatened…. Charles is playing a game of make-believe in which he uses the images on the screen as a prop.” (Walton 1978, p. 13).
- 3.
“Just as an analysis of the concept of fear must, if it is to have real explanatory value, allows to distinguish fear from other emotions, so on account of what constitutes make-believably fearing something must allow us to say what distinguishes that state from others such as being make believably anxious or angry or upset. I shall argue that Walton’s account fails to satisfy this requirement, and that it lacks the explanatory value that would warrant, its acceptance.” (Neil 1991, pp. 52–3).
- 4.
Peter McCormick holds the view that “we are not moved by something we know does not exist. What genuinely moves us, rather, are our actual thoughts about something that does not exist. The objects of our feelings are not beliefs but thought-contents. We respond emotionally, then, to thought-contest and not to beliefs at all” (McCormick 1988, p. 137).
- 5.
For although I may be moved by imagining that my house is on fire, or that someone had committed suicide, or been strangled by an unjustifiably jealous husband, I would probably be moved, or at any rate more moved, by putting that event into some kind of context. For it is quite possible to imagine such events without being moved at all. The thought of my house being on fire is more likely to move me because the context in which I place this imagined event (destruction of what has given my life meaning or whatever). I am, in other words, imagining story, a fiction. The imaginary moves more the closer it moves towards the fictional.
- 6.
As Morris Weitz sums up this point: “Literature can no more be married to philosophy than falsehood can to truth.” (Weitz 1983, p. 4).
- 7.
I.A. Richards has the following to say: “It will be admitted – by those who distinguish between scientific statement where truth is ultimately a matter of verification as this is understood in the laboratory, and a emotive utterance, where ‘truth’ is primarily acceptability by some attitude, and more remotely is the acceptability of this attitude itself – that it is not the poet’s business to make the scientific statements. Yet poetry has constantly the air of making statements, and important ones; which is one reason why some mathematicians cannot read it.” (Richards 1970, p. 568).
- 8.
Also, for an interesting discussion on the uses of fiction in analytically oriented philosophers’ writings, see Anderson (1992, pp. 203–213).
- 9.
Also, for a fuller discussion on some of these aspects, see Ghosh (1979).
- 10.
As Daya Krishna remarks: “In art, the function of the imagination has been primarily conceived as not giving us truth or helping in the exploration of truth, but basically as creating a world which is essentially different from the world as it is actually there. It is so to say, the creation of a second order world which has a reality of its own but which has no relation except that of indirect derivation with the actual world” (Krishna 1989, p. 126, emphases added).
References
Anderson, S. L. (1992, July). Philosophy and fiction. Metaphilosophy, 23(3).
Dammann, R. M. J. (1992, January). Emotion and fiction. The British Journal of Aesthetics, 32.
Dilman, I. (July 1993). Art and reality: Some reflections on the arts. Philosophical Investigations, 18, 3.
Ghosh, R. K. (1979). Aesthetic theory and art: A study in Susanne K. Langer. Delhi: Ajanta Publications.
Krishna, D. (1989). Art and the cognitive enterprise with the actual world. In The art of the conceptual: Exploration in a conceptual maze over three decades. Delhi: ICPR.
Langer, S. K. (1953). Feeling and form. New York: Routledge/Kegan Paul.
McCormick, P. (1988). Fiction, philosophies, and the problems of poetics. Cornell University Press.
Mitchell, Julian, “Truth and fiction”, Philosophy and the arts: Royal institute of philosophical lectures, 1971–72 Vol 10 Macmillan, 1973.
Neil, A. (Winter, 1991). Fear, fiction and make-belief. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 49(1).
New, C. (1999). Philosophy of literature: An introduction. Routledge.
Richards, I. A. (1970). Poetry and beliefs. In M. Weitz (Ed.), Problems in aesthetics (2nd ed.). Macmillan.
Walton, K. (1978). Fearing fiction. Journal of Philosophy, 75.
Weitz, M. (1983). Literature and philosophy. In J. P. Strelka (Ed.), Literary criticism and philosophy. Pennsylvania.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ghosh, R.K. (2018). Emotions in Art. In: Essays in Literary Aesthetics. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2460-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2460-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-2459-8
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-2460-4
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)