Jocelyn Benoist, Professor of the Philosophy of Knowledge and Contemporary Philosophy, University Paris 1 Sorbonne

“How Fiction Can Be Made True”

Philosophy has always been suspicious of fiction. In the philosophical tradition, fiction has often been equated with a lie, or at least a form of false speech. This is a consequence of philosophers’ fictional illiteracy, one aspect among others, perhaps, of their discursive illiteracy, which leads them to analyze statements independently of their inclusion in one discourse register or another – and in particular to think that every statement should therefore be intrinsically true or false. In this regard, the philosophical vindication of fiction in which modernity sometimes indulges, that advocates the truth of fiction, does not do better than the traditional condemnation. It is really questionable that truth and falsity are categories that can apply to fictional statements in general. However, once fiction is taken into account as discourse, the situation may prove more complex. Indeed, while there is no sense questioning the truth or falsity of fictional statements in abstracto, i.e. independently of the discourse in which they are inserted, a discourse responds to a certain extent to intentions, can also escape them, has various uses, and effects. At all these levels, the question of truth can play a part or at least become relevant. While it would therefore be absurd to approach fiction a priori through the prism of the philosophical -abstract- question of truth, either to disqualify it or, on the contrary, qualify it logically, neither should we be in a hurry to exclude the notion of truth on principle, as it may play diverse roles in our lives. It is a part of the reality of fiction that, under certain conditions, this question can be in order.