Arthur C. Danto’s seminal work, Analytical Philosophy of History, was published in 1965 and aimed to defend historical knowledge against arguments that deemed it impossible because of the lack of direct experience of the past. According to Danto, to fully understand a past event, one must consider it ex post facto. In 1985, Danto released a revised edition that included three additional essays. The purpose was to expand on themes from the first edition and construct a comprehensive knowledge system based on representation. This conception is paralleled in Danto’s writing on art from 1964 to 1981. Danto’s theory suggests that historical knowledge mirrors the nature of the ens representans, paralleling our conscious system, constructively intended. The representations generated by history and art can be interpreted as a cognitive instrument – an “instant epistemology” – highlighting how “storytelling” is a crucial aspect of human beings.
Whether we like it or not, we have emotional reactions to fiction. We may cry when Anna Karenina dies, or feel joy when the characters we root for achieve a happy ending. Yet what do these reactions tell us about ourselves? Are they mere emotional outbursts that are unconnected with who we are, or are they in some sense a source of self-knowledge? In this paper, I argue that emotional engagement with fiction can lead to knowledge of our moral character. I do this by suggesting that emotional reactions to fiction constitute evidence that we have certain desires for the course of the narrative, which in turn serve as evidence for the presence of moral character traits.
Philosophers have considered many different paradoxes concerning our emotional engagement with fiction. In this paper, we outline a new paradox in this area: the paradox of junk recidivism. The puzzle we address is why fiction consumers regularly return to familiar fictions which lacked much literary merit to begin with. This appears to be irrational, as there is no literary or aesthetic value to be gained from continued engagement with such fictions. However, we will argue that these works can be understood as affective scaffolds that people draw on to help regulate their emotions. Once we view these works in this way, then continued reengagement with such fictions is no longer puzzling. People often turn to such works to regulate their emotions because they are trusted affective scaffolds that can be relied upon to bring about the desired feelings.
Much philosophical work has been done, and continues to be done, on whether there is anything distinctive about our emotional reactions to characters and states of affairs as depicted in fiction. Showing this would require showing that such reactions differed from our emotional reactions to characters and states of affairs as depicted in non-fiction. However, extant work is directed as showing that our emotional reactions to characters and states of affairs as depicted in fiction differ from emotional reactions to characters and states of affairs we encounter face to face – a contrast not obviously relevant to the question at issue. This paper argues that once this is realised, there is no reason to think there is anything distinctive about our emotional reactions to characters and states of affairs as depicted in fiction.
Walton (1978, 1990, 1997) has influentially argued that the emotions we have towards fictional people and situations do not motivate behavior, despite having phenomenological, physiological and expressive features in common with the emotions we have towards real-world people and situations. Because emotions about fictional objects have their motivation thwarted, Walton concluded that they are quasi-emotions. This proposal has been widely rejected, and quasi-emotions have been reconceptualized as full-fledged emotions essential for explaining our engagement with fiction. What has largely survived in the post-Walton debate is the view that emotions towards fiction lack motivational force. Critics of Walton’s quasi-emotions support this view, but add that having motivational force is not essential for being an emotion. I disagree on both counts: emotions are, or essentially involve, motivations to act, and emotions about fictional objects are motivationally powerful. The difference between emotions about fictional objects and emotions about the real world is to be found at the level of regulation, not at the level of motivation. Regulation of emotions about fictional objects can lead to various outcomes, ranging from expressing our motivation directly or indirectly to inhibiting such motivation entirely, depending on the emotion and the circumstances.
