What are the most important similarities and differences between "Literature" and "Philosophy"? Akbar Baharlou

Comments

First, I would like to say that I don't think there's a clear or distinct line marking the difference between "literature" and "philosophy." Rather, I think that philosophy is a type of literature, or better a family of sub-types of literature. My own sense is that for any specified criteria distinguishing philosophy and literature, significant exceptions can be found. Plato and Kierkegaard use characters and plot, Kundera writes essays, Nietzsche is poetic, Berkeley wrote dialogues, Heraclitus and Wittgenstein are oracular, aphoristic and paradoxical, Dostoevsky uses arguments, etc.

Having said this, as a rule one might say that philosophy uses fictitious character, plot, setting, and poetic trope in a less central way. It's easier to think of philosophy without plot or character or metaphor than it is to think of fiction or poetry.

One might also, I think, say that philosophy has more often aspired to formulating general truths and doing so through modes of argumentation, while other forms of fiction exhibit them in other ways and, anyway, attend more to the particular.

One might say that philosophy orbits around a defining set of topics: forms, substance, essence, the nature of truth, the best life.

Finally, one might also say that philosophy calls upon a specific history and set of seminal authors--Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger--authors not central to other forms of literature.

Works of literature and works of philosophy are both the meaningful products of human thought and action. This makes them interpretable, which is an important characteristic of both. Moreover, both philosophy and literature are predominantly linguistic, although non-linguistic representations such as pictures and diagrams can play a part in either. In the contemporary context, both literature and philosophy are 'text-centric', but the centrality of texts is not a necessary part of either practice. Think of Socrates (who didn't produce any written texts) as well as traditions of oral literature.

Both literature and philosophy often address issues of deep human concern (e.g., serious ethical issues), and this is an important feature of both practices. But it is also plausible that this is a not a necessary condition of either. Philosophy doesn't have to address deep human concerns (e.g., you can philosophize about horror movies and--though I like them--I don' t think they're a matter of deep human concern), nor does literature. For example, a work of literature might involve the exploration of literary form and language rather than addressing any ethical issues.

We value works of philosophy and works of literature for many of the same reasons. For example, we praise both sorts of works for their originality, creativity and for their cognitive value. The last is particularly interesting. It does seem that we value both philosophy and literature for what we can learn (in some broad sense) from them.

But philosophy and literature also differ quite significantly. Philosophy is centrally concerned with truth and argument, with justification and the presentation of reasons. These are not central concerns of literature. It is plausible that fiction is the core of literature--there's literature outside the sphere of fiction, but fiction is the central case. And philosophy, although it may involve the use of fiction (in the Platonic dialogues or in the development of complicated thought experiments), is not centrally a matter of making fictions. Finally, even though cognitive value is important in both philosophy and literature, it seems much more important in philosophy.

I disagre with Professor Fosl's suggestion that philosophy is a sub-category of literature. The two categories overlap; that is, some works of philosophy are also works of literature. ( I think Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a good case of this.) But there is a great deal of philosophy that is clearly not literature (e.g., most--perhaps all--philosophy articles in contemporary 'analytic' journals of philosophy). So I think it's not quite right to call philosophy a type of literature. There may be vague and overlapping borders between the categories, but there are clear cases on either side.

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