Literature, Truth and Logic

Abstract

Analytic philosophy's characteristic downgrading of literature's putative concern with truth, and envisaging of its interest to philosophy merely in terms of material for logical analysis, was prefigured by Frege. The initial plausibility of this approach was in part a function of certain preferred models of philosophy as analysis which were themselves deeply flawed. An exploration of their weaknesses in the light of more adequate theories of language, truth and logic enables us to give proper weight both to rhetorical and imaginative aspects of philosophical discourse, and to the capacity of works of literature to bear on issues of truth—and thereby contribute to philosophical understanding.