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On Being Moved by Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Don Mannison
Don Mannison
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Extract

What are we moved to when we are moved by something? Sometimes to tears; other times to action; and, on other occasions, to quiet contemplation. When a member of the Sierra Club is moved by something, he or she may be moved to tears or to political activism; but ‘being moved by’ in such circumstances just might consist in feelings of awe. ‘Moved by’ carries an obvious suggestion of causality on its semantic face. What I am moved by is what brings it about that I feel or act the way I do. To be ‘unmoved’ is to be unresponsive; or, at times, to lack compassion. To be moved by something or someone often involves having care or concern for that which is found moving. A variety of this sort of concern just could be an essential ingredient in the stance of the environmental preservationist.

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Type
Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 60 , Issue 231 , January 1985, pp. 71 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985

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References

1 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.421.

2 Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, Cyril Barrett (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1966), 8.Google Scholar

3 Roger, Scruton, Art and Imagination (London: Methuen, 1974), 131.Google Scholar

4 ‘How can we be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement Volume 49, (1975), 67-93.

5 See Kendall Walton's ‘Fearing Fictions’, Journal of Philosophy LXXV (1978), 5-27.

6 See David Lewis's ‘Truth in Fiction’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (January 1978), 37-46.

7 In Wittgenstein: Lectures and Conversations, 28.

8 See L., J. Cohen, ‘The Semantics of Metaphor’, in Metaphor and Thought, A. Ortony (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

9 ‘Tears and Fiction’, Philosophy (1977).

10 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 49, 81-93.

11 The Claim of Reason (Oxford University Press, 1979), Pt 4; The World Viewed (New York: Viking Press, 1971), Ch. 19; ‘Knowing and Acknowledging’ and ‘The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of Lear’, both in Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge University Press,? 1969).Google Scholar

12 A detailed treatment of these sorts of considerations is to be found in Ch. 1 of Alan White's Modal Thinking (Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975).

13 Ibid. 15.

14 Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1953), sec. 90.Google Scholar

15 That this is the sort of difference I was perceiving between Love Story and Anna Karenina became clearer to me in discussions with my colleague Michael Carey.

16 The World Viewed, op. cit. 157.

17 Art and Imagination, op. cit. 59.

18 The World Viewed, op. cit. 154.

19 I am indebted to Colin Radford for the stimulating discussions which produced my interest in the topics of this paper. I am grateful to Lloyd Reinhardt, of Sydney University, and to Chris Mortensen, of Adelaide University, for valuable and generous criticisms of earlier drafts.