Abstract
This paper is about the metaphysics of fiction. It outlines a case for the existence of “fictional characters,” more precisely, fictive characters encountered in narrative fictions. In doing so, it tries to secure a niche for such entities within the familiar world of material objects, artefacts, and properties. Thus I advocate realism about fictive characters. “Realism” here denotes an ontological thesis. To be a realist about something is to believe it exists and is what it is independently of how one takes it to be. Realism, then, is associated with mind-independence. Macbeth and company may strike us as poor candidates for realism. But let’s not be hasty.
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Notes
John Heil’s From an Ontological Point of View (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003) develops this idea at length.
Andrew Kania, “The Illusion of Realism in Film,” British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 243–58.
Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 30–42.
David Park, The Fire Within the Eye: An Historical Essay on the Nature and Meaning of Light (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) introduces readers to the nature and science of light.
C. B. Martin, “On the Need For Properties: The Road to Pythagoreanism and Back,” Synthese 112 (1997); 193–231, at 205.
Proponents of this version of antirealism include Kendall Walton, Mimesis As Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)
Gregory Currie, The Nature of Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Amie Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Peter Lamarque, defending a version of artifactualism in “How To Create A Fictional Character,” in The Creation of Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics, eds Berys Gaut and Paisley Livingston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 33–52, contends that character creation necessitates creation of a narrative.
Among the vast philosophical literature on concepts, three recent studies have been especially helpful to me: Jesse Prinz, Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002)
Ruth Garret Millikan, On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay About Substance Concepts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Wayne Davis, Meaning, Expression, and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Paisley Livingston, Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 7–8.
Livingston’s understanding of intentions draws principally upon that of action theorist Alfred Mele, Springs of Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
For background on Throne of Blood’s literary and theatrical sources, see Keiko McDonald, “Noh intofilm: Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood,” Journal of Film and Video 39 (1987): 36–41
Joan Mellen, “On Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood,” The Literary Review 22 (1979): 461–71
Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
Creations of the Mind, eds Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007) is an excellent introduction to thought about the nature and definition of artifacts.
Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe; Jerrold Levinson, “Emotion in Response to Art,” in Contemplating Art: Essays in Aesthetics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 38–55.
Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart (London: Routledge, 1990), 60–88
Berys Gaut, Art, Emotion and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 203–26.
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© 2009 Trevor Ponech
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Ponech, T. (2009). The Reality of Fictive Cinematic Characters. In: Yachnin, P., Slights, J. (eds) Shakespeare and Character. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584150_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584150_3
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