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Responding Emotionally to Fiction: A Spinozist Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2019

Susan James
Susan James*
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, London
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Within contemporary analytical philosophy there continues to be a lively debate about the emotions we feel for fictional characters. How, for example, can we feel sad about Anna Karenina, despite knowing that she doesn't exist? I propose that we can get a clearer view of this issue by turning to Spinoza, who urges us to take a different approach to feelings of this kind. The ability to keep our emotions in line with our beliefs, he argues, is a complex skill. Rather than asking why we depart from it in the case of fictions, we need to begin by considering how we get it in the first place. Spinoza also considers the value of this skill. In his account, fictions function rather like Donald Winnicott's transitional objects. They enable us to negotiate the boundary between the real and the imaginary in a way that contributes to our philosophical understanding. These Spinozist proposals, I contend, suggest that the questions dominating current debate need to be reformulated.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 85: Passions and the Emotions , July 2019 , pp. 195 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2019 

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Footnotes

I'm grateful for comments and suggestions made by audiences at the Royal Institute of Philosophy and Manchester Metropolitan University.  I owe special thanks to Stacie Friend, Moira Gatens, Anthony O'Hear and Quentin Skinner.

References

2 Radford, Colin, ‘How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina?’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 49 (1975), 67–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 I take this formulation of the paradox from Friend, Stacie, ‘Fiction and Emotion’ in Kind, Amy (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination (Routledge, 2015), 217–229, 217Google Scholar.

4 For further discussion of the normative and descriptive aspects of current debate see Friend, op. cit.

5 References to the Ethics are abbreviated to ‘E’. Translations are from Curley, Edwin (trans. and ed.), The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. I. (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

6 This view contrasts with the view that ideas are belief-like as it is interpreted by Bennett, Jonathan, ‘Spinoza on Belief and Error’ in Learning from Six Philosophers, vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 2003), ch. 10Google Scholar; Lin, Martin, ‘Spinoza's Account of Akrasia’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 (2006), pp. 395–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rocca, Michael Della, ‘The Power of an Idea:  Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will’, Nous 37.2 (2003), 200–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 References to the Theologico-Political Treatise are abbreviated to ‘TTP’. Translations are from Curley, Edwin (ed. and trans.) The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

8 On the difference between affirmation and belief see Steinberg, Diane, ‘Belief, Affirmation and the Doctrine of Conatus’, Southern Journal of Philosophy XLIII (2005), 147–158CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Justin Steinberg, ‘Two Puzzles concerning Spinoza's Conception of Belief’, European Journal of Philosophy (2017), 261–82.

9 For powerful discussions of this view see Moira Gatens and Lloyd, Genevieve, Collective Imaginings.  Spinoza, Past and Present (Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Gatens, Moira, ‘Compelling Fictions: Spinoza and George Elliot on Imagination and Belief’, European Journal of Philosophy 20.1 (2012), 74–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Winnicott, Donald, Playing and Reality (Tavistock Publications, 1971; repr. Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar.

11 Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (abbreviated to TIE) in Curley, Edwin (ed. and trans.), The Collected Works of Spinoza vol. I (Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

12 Political Treatise in Curley, Edwin trans. and ed. The Collected Works of Spinoza vol. II (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2016), 532–3Google Scholar.

13 On this aspect of religion see Rosenthal, Michael, ‘Tolerance as a Virtue in Spinoza's Ethics’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001), 535–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.  On the relation between religion and artistic practices see Gatens, Moira, ‘Spinoza on Goodness and Beauty and the Prophet and the Artist’, European Journal of Philosophy 23(1), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.