Philosophy versus Literature? Against the Discontinuity Thesis

According to what I call the Discontinuity Thesis, literature can never count as genuine philosophizing: there is an impermeable barrier separating it from philosophy. While philosophy presents logically valid arguments in favor of or against precisely formulated statements, literature gives neither precisely formulated theses nor arguments in favor of or against them. Hence, philosophers do not lose out on anything if they do not read literature. There are two obvious ways of questioning the Discontinuity Thesis: first, arguing that literature can indeed do what philosophy is generally taken to do, and, second, arguing that philosophy is not, in fact, the presentation of logically valid arguments in favor of or against precisely formulated statements what it does is closer to what literature is generally taken to do. I use a combination of these two strategies to argue that philosophy is not as intellectually straightforward as it is advertised to be, and literature is not as intellectually impoverished as it is generally taken to be.

Discontinuity (linguistics) · Epistemology · Linguistics · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications

• «El maestro enseñaba [con] literatura». La dimensión literaria de la sabiduría en textos del confucionismo clásico

  Open Access•Daniel Ortiz Pereira•Miscelánea Comillas Revista de…•2023

  Add to list

• Identity Theft

  Open Access•David Menčik•Conatus•2020

  Add to list