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Thoughts on the 'paradox' of fiction

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 00:17 authored by Kathleen Stock
This paper concerns the familiar topic of whether we can have genuinely emotional responses such as pity and fear to characters and situations we believe to be fictional1. As is well known, Kendall Walton responds in the negative (Walton (1978); (1990): 195-204 and Chapter 7; (1997)). That is, he is an ‘irrealist’ about emotional responses to fiction (the term is Gaut’s (2003): 15), arguing that such responses should be construed as quasiemotions (Walton (1990): 245), of which their possessor imagines that they are genuine emotions. This is not to deny that an experience in response to a fiction may have a phenomenology very like a given emotion, but to insist that, nonetheless, such responses are not real instances of the emotions which they resemble (Walton (1997)). So, in his most famous example, Charles, who experiences fear-like emotion in relation to a film which depicts the approach of evil slime, does not, despite appearances, experience genuine fear towards the slime, but only quasi-fear (Walton (1990): 195-204)2.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics

Publisher

British Society of Aesthetics

Issue

2

Volume

3

Page range

37-58

Pages

21.0

Department affiliated with

  • Philosophy Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

N Dillon

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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