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In this article I look at the issues surrounding what has traditionally marked the boundaries between the two disciplines and the problematics associated with defining these boundaries and what has sometimes led to the view that there can be and that there has often been a collapsing of these very boundaries. I also make the argument that it may be possible for these two fields of intellectual pursuit to retain their territories despite their coming together.

The debates that surrond the difference between literature and philosophy go far back in time. Virtually all medieval philosophers of any repute were theologians. In the fourteenth century, Petrarch began to establish certain forms of knowledge or studia humanitatis that constituted history, philosophy and letters (poetry and prose) that in the present day is understood as the humanities. Petrarch’s division produced several issues. Humanities implies a distinction between humanities and the natural sciences. Humanism emerged as a reaction against Catholic church dogma and the the logicalistic, and deductive thinking that became closely associated with it. The humanist insistence was on a arts basis for education. Such a tension was apparent at the time in the universities of Paris and Bologna. In the present day the tension between the humanist way of thinking and education as opposed to the logicalistic and deductive way of thinking is manifested in the difference between faculties. Immediately this brings to attention questions of truth and fact. Petrarch inaugurated this divide by separating humanities from theology and it is within this tradition that the humanities in understood even today. For Heidegger the past, heritage and tradition often determines the possibilities of the future. Philosophy and literature were working within a specific tradition. The goal of philosophy was to find answers. Literature was a web of metaphors where answers constantly escaped from one’s grasp. Literature and poetry had a specific role that philosophy, as it had been delimited according to a past tradition could not fulfill. Does such an understanding of literature and philosophy against a historical background further problematise the distinction between literature and philosophy?

My approach throughout this article follows a phenomenological methodology. The term “phenomenology” is used to refer to both a twentieth-century philosophical tradition as well as a method of investigation (2002). As a philosophical tradition, phenomenology is generally understood to have begun with Edmund Husserl who developed a method of investigation that involved focussing purely on the phenomena at hand. In this sense, phenomenology studies things as they appear to the consciousness perceiving them. There is thus an element of accessibility or originary givenness that is imperative in phenomenology. This means that everything that is talked about must be potentially accessible as the intentionally given object whether this be inuited, imagined or experienced bodily. There is immediately a correlation that exists between objectivity and the subjective experience of that very objectivity.

The concern lies not so much in whether or not the phenomena at hand exist in an objective sense but rather in the manner by which the phenomena diclose. Phenomenology would thus treat phantasy and imagination with as much validity as it would treat an act of perceiving an object that lies before the individual. By doing so the aim of the phenomenological analysis is to arrive at an understanding of the structures of consciousness through which knowledge can be gained. Structures of consciousness refer to acts of perception, recollection, experience, aspiration, reflection and so on. It is supposed that in these acts of consciousness, objects in the world, the self and the world as a whole, show themselves as they really are. Immediately, a correlation is struck up between the perceiving subject and the perceived object. This does not imply that the object is as what it appears for every individual. In finally comprehending the essence that defines a particular intentional act or a specific object, the activity of consciousness does not depend on a particular case of an intentional act but rather on the correlation of this particular case of intending and its eidos. Eidos or essence is that element or feature which is always necessary for an act/object X to be an X. Thus there is a movement from the contingent and particular case to the universal. This movement is termed the Eidetic Reduction and is worked out by a strategy of “systematic variation in imagination”.

The object that appears in its givenness always transcends the manner in which it is given. For instance, in my observation of a pair of scissors lying on a table, what is given to me is the frontal view. I am unable to see the underside of the pair of scissors. Even if I lift it up and hold it in front of me there is always some part of the scissors that reamin hidden from any one particular angle of vision. Yet, this does not in anyway convince me that there is no underside to the scissors. The object as scissors is always understood by me as having a front and a rear and is thus complete. However, in my observation of the scissors, the very act of observing itself is given to me entirely. The intentional state, unlike the object of intentionality itself, is not given to us in its limitations but always as a whole. Thus in reflecting on an intentional state we are able to understand it as completely given not simply as given in only one aspect.

Firstly, I am focussing my attention on a very specific area within the wide field of philosophy and literature and thereby isolating the “thing in question”. Once the thing in question has been identified, it is focused upon with careful and rigorous attention and is subjected to a process of bracketing out, a holding in temporary suspension of all other data and assumptions regarding the object at hand which, within this context, will consist of assumptions and judgements related to what is understood as imaginitive fiction and philosophical entrprise. It will also consist in holding in temporary suspension judgements related to the authors own intention in relation to his or her work, and to previous critical conclusions regarding these works. Phenomenology begins with what is referred to as the “natural attitude” and concerns the sum total of all the assumptions and ordinary everyday beliefs we have about the world: what exists and what can be known about everything in the world: objects, time, the self, space, meanings and concepts and so on. The first step in phenomenological analysis is what is called epoché and bracketing and comprises phenomenological reduction (1969). Phenomenological reduction is the process whereby one can describe the essence of the phenomena under investigation. It refers to the method of proceeding from that which is contingent and particular to the fundamental structures of consciousness and of the objects in the world.

Bracketing involves setting aside assumptions that we oridnairly rely upon in our everyday experience of the world and ourselves and calls attention to pure consciousness and pure phenomena. Bracketing literally involves placing in brackets empirical data or the natural attitude. By bracketting all such assumptions one is purely focussing on the manner in which objects reveal themselves in an act of intentional directedness.

Epoché which is a Greek term and a concept that Husserl borrowed from ancient skepticism literally means “to stop”. It involves assuming a neutral position toward the world and the act of holding in suspension any judgements concerning the world as a whole, thus making possible a transition from phenomenology as the study of essence to a phenomenology as a philosophy. Because Epoché is not limited to merely one aspect of existence but to the world as a whole it allows for phenomenology to become philosophy. In order to understand this, it is imperative to understand that, like Aristotle, Husserl believed that philosophy must not study merely the being of one type of category in the world (the being of objects or the being of intentional states of consciousness) but rather, existence as a whole. And in order to study existence as a whole, one must begin by isolating that which is common to everything that exists in the world. That common denominator is Being.

What Husserl calls eidetic reduction involves the process of imagining variations on aspects of the object or phenomenon that has been taken into consideration, that is, variations of the thing at hand that is being analysed. To put it another way, eidetic reduction involves introducing variations and noting the limits beyond which these variations might result in a change in the essence of the phenomenon toward which intentionality is directed. I offer a very straightforward and simple example. I might stare at my pair of black scissors and imagine it to be in a different colour. Does the change in colour affect how they work then as a pair of scissors? In doing such an exercise I am subjecting the pair of scissors to eidetic reduction. The aim of eidetic reduction is to arrive at the essential features of that which is in question. Through such a process, would it be possible to arrive at the essence of works of literary fiction and philosophical enterprise? If Heidegger’s ontological categories of Being are given expression in the literary texts, can this expression be seen as an imaginative exploration of the ontic? Further, if that is the case, then, is there ground to suggest that philosophy and literature work in radically different ways as far as issues of being, consciousness and the world work? Could this then provide an essential understanding of philosophical enterprise and imaginative literature?

Phenomenology is not so much concerned with causal relations and objective reality as much as with how things appear to the conscious mind. It is, therefore, involved in understanding how meaning is disclosed. A phenomenological analysis of the texts will thus undertake to illustrate the manner in which the world and the self in imaginative literature disclose themselves. The disclosure and construction of meaning has much to do with the ways in which individuals experience the world and the ways in which Being shows itself. This world, in which the individual finds himself, is one shared by other individuals and things. It is a shared, inter-subjective world. The conflict between the particular and contingent intentional act in the attempt to understand the world and the self on the one hand, and the importance of objectivity in order to facilitate inter-personal relations and communication on the other, is of paramount importance in phenomenology. In philosophical enterprise, particularly in phenomenology, there is a movement from the particular to the universal, but what happens in the case of imaginative literature? In the answer to this question does there emerge yet another ground upon which it might be proposed that the two fields may be understood as distinct from each other or, rather, do their boundaries blur?

Plato’s dialogues, Rousseau’s Confessions, and Augustine’s discourses are read as literary texts as well as philosophy. Employing the dialogue and the confessional form to elucidate questions of metaphysics and ontology, they are at the same time attentive to matters of style, character, wit and other such literary devices. On the other hand, works by authors such as Dostoevsky, Proust, Beckett and Borges, to name just a few, immerse themselves in philosophical issues, using literature as a medium of expression. Through the word, one explores and interprets the meaning of Being. Yet the method of exploration and the interpretation of the meaning of Being are as varied as the number of literary writers and philosophers. This article focusses on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, which was translated from the German, Sein und Zeit, (1927) and is also a twentieth century work. The work itself was left uncompleted by Heidegger and the available text stands as one third of what Heidegger had initially intended. The second part of the treatise was abandoned. Heideggerean scholars usually differentiate between the early Heidegger and the later Heidegger. Being and Time represents the early Heidegger. I do not discuss Heidegger’s writing in terms of this distinction but instead focus primarily on the question of Being as treated in Being and Time. It is however worth mentioning that in his later philosophy Heidegger increased his attention on issues related to language. Poetry attained a higher place than all other arts and the German poet Hölderlin remained for him a source of admiration and interest. Language he famously declared was the “house of Being” (Heidegger 1946: 217).

The period between 1930 to 1940 is identified as a Kehre or Turn in the thought of Heidegger. Being and Time was seen as a path or a road leading to a clear understanding of fundamental ontology. The question of Being according to later Heidegger was one without an answer. The important stress lay on the manner in whih the question was asked. One could go on at length about Heidegger’s intentions and views on the issue of Being as dealt with in the early works and the later ones. But this is not the place for such an analysis. My emphasis is on how Being is dealt with in his Being and Time.

The term “Philosophy” poses several problems. Firstly, there exists several different traditions of philosophy. There is within western philosophy the analytic tradition and the continental tradition both of which approach the idea of philosophy in very different ways. There are different types of philosophy such as Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Philosophy or Metaphilosophy, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind and so on. Understandably it is not my intention to speak on behalf of this entire terrain. I am not attempting a historical study of philosophy, neither a detailed analysis of the various traditions of philosophy nor the differences inherent between them. Broadly speaking, I refer to the western tradition of philosophy but even within the western tradition there is a need to define what is exactly being analysed. My intention then is to focus on a particular area which is the question of Being as it is treated in Heidegger’s Being and Time with references to Husserlian phenomenology from which Heidegger took much of his inspiration.

There are perhaps even greater problems associated with the term ‘Literature’. Literature may refer to any document which might be a record or a description. Literature comprises different forms of writing and so might include popular fiction, science fiction, detective fiction, autobiography, essays and letters, journalistic writing and innumerable other kinds of writing. Further, the question of what literature is, is one that is understood differently in different historical periods and has always been a subject of debate by scholars in the field, irrespective of whether they live in the same historical context or not. Literature can be classified according to movements such as Romanticism, Literature of the Modern Period, Middle Ages Literature and 15^th Century Literature to give a few examples. Finally, literature spans geographical settings.

Although I do use the term ‘Literature’ as a blanket term, my use of the term is nevertheless restricted by both historical treatment as well as examples. When I use the word literature, I mean specifically post 1900 imaginative literary fiction and largely fiction written before the 1950’s. In my argument the word Literature refers specifically to literature of the western tradition. Within the western tradition my concentration is on works of literature written in the English language. Modernist fiction emphasises the particular because meaning, perception and understanding is located within the individual as the experiencing subject. In that sense it is mimetic because fiction during the modern period was a means of representing reality but reality as it was experienced by the conscious, perceiving subject. It is significant to note that most modernist literature celebrated open-endings to suggest that truth and reality were not to be objectively found. However, there is in modernist fiction an attempt to move beyond the particular and toward the search for that which is fundamental and essential in experience and being. Modernist literature is often seen to function in the same way as philosophy. Like philosophy it conceptually examines notions of time, reality, being and experience.

The expression of the self in literary novels as opposed to philosophical texts follows different paradigms. The philosophical text is intended to be a universal statement or analysis on the subject that is under study. It often seeks to find an ultimate objective truth or to arrive at a knowledge that is free from subjectivism and hence at that which is lasting, though this need not always be the case. However, it is concerned with that which is universally applicable to all mankind. Philosophy has always aimed to sever itself from all kinds of prejudices. It is in this vein that Plato asserted that opinion or doxa must be replaced by unadulterated knowledge or epistēmē. Philosophy typically undertakes to answer a problem that has been posed by way of critically examining certain claims. The concepts used by philosophers are basic and broad and deal with issues such as God, Truth, Knowledge and Beauty. These issues are scrutinised as they apply to the whole of existence. They are rigorously analysed, certain assumptions are made, and a systematised map of an argument is drawn: the question to be undertaken, the concepts to be defined, the distinctions that need to be drawn, the way the question has been tackled in the tradition and how the present treatise wishes to address the question that has been posed. All this is done by way of proceeding in a logical manner based on reasoning and argumentation or through the developing of a specific system to arrive at a universal understanding of human beings and the world in which they live. The problem to be studied is identified, all known facts are laid down, arguments for the solution are proposed, and counter-arguments are tested in the light of previous work in the same area.

There are however important and interesting counter arguments against the notion of universality. It might be said that Continental Philosophy for instance, and as a specific example Existentialism as a philosophical tradition, particularises and rejects the notion of a universal truth. It focuses on the individual. Whilst there is validity to such an argument, my own use of the term universal is not merely restricted to truth claims. The term universal as used in my argument does not necessarily point to a universal truth claim. It might imply either a universal truth claim or it could refer to an understanding of existence and Being as a whole without focussing on any one aspect, for instance, the psychological or the physical. Even when one aspect, say the psychological, is focussed upon it is done in such a way as to demonstrate its applicability to the whole of existence. Finally universal may refer to certain terms developed by philosophers, which are universally applicable, more simply, the vocabulary used by the philosopher or the philosophical tradition in reference to what is being analysed.

Within this understanding of the universal, existentialist philosophy seeks to understand the concept of Being under the universal dictum that “existence precedes and rules essence”. Further, it examines this dictum within the framework of certain concepts like Angst, Anguish, Being-in-itself, Being-for-itself and many more. The question of what it means “to be” seeks an answer by recourse to these categories which are used by existentialist philosophers in one form or the other. Hence, even within Continental Philosophy there is an attempt to make articulate a system with reference to which the thing in question might be understood. Thus we can talk of a Hegelian system which would refer to the Hegelian dialectic, or the Nietzschean concept of the “will to power” which he proposed as being the primary force of nature. What is being asserted then is that the difference between philosophy and literary fiction is not one that can be identified merely on the basis of stylistic and formalistic diversities. Just because a certain literary text incorporates philosophical questions or just because a philosophical work uses literary devices or examples does not mean that they have successfully liquidated their distinctness. Continental Philosophy still retains universalism not in terms of finding some objective truth but in the sense that it still relies on certain conceptual terms (Angst, Will to Power) propositions (existence precedes essence), methodology (Eidectic reduction, époche) and sometimes elaborate systems (Hegelian Dialectic) which are understood as universally applicable in the search for the meaning of Being or the meaning of existence. Further, as a whole it can be generally argued that Continental Philosophy in its anti-transcendent view argues that thought cannot be understood as detached from material or natural preconditions and so in Marxism the history of society can be understood only with recourse to the history of class struggle, for Nietzsche the fundamental essence of man is his “will to power”, and Sartre had his own idea of fundamental freedom.

Literature, on the other hand, is not primarily concerned with the exposition of universal claims. The literary fiction writer is engaged in an act of creation. The writer creates a world unlike the philosopher who discovers the world. Notions of truth since the time of the Greeks serves to further animate the debates on philosophy and literature. Truth as concerns what is true (adequatio) is to be sharply distinguished from truth as a mode of showing (as in Phenomenology). According to Heidegger truth is disclosed and the disclosure of truth from non-concelament is what is termed alethia. The difference in operation of the notion of truth has much to do with the difference between literature and philosophy. Can both literature and philosophy be understood as “truth” in the sense of an unconcealement rather than truth as a kind of sameness? The literary writer grapples with the dilemmas of existence and Being and strives to convey the fundamental and the essential in experience and the world, but he or she does so in a radically different way from philosophy. Literary writers strive to express the fundamental understanding of existence as occurrences of the writer’s or character’s own insight. This is not to say that statements that point to an understanding of the more essential and fundamental meaning of Being and Existence in literature are strictly restricted to the writer’s or character’s personal views or opinions. The writer of fiction for instance penetrates through his own personal experience to convey the more fundamental. Yet, despite this, there is always the awareness that in literary fiction, the imagined protagonist who is situated in a fictitious world is engaged in the lived experience from which emerges a more all-encompasing understanding of issues such as Being and Existence. There is however a fundamental difference. Imaginative literary fiction is not concerned with arriving at unbiased knoweldege. The distinction between epistēmē and doxa that Plato articulated, and which he stated should be the distingushing mark of philosophy, can now be applied to imaginative literature. Imaginative literature is very often doxa or opinion. That does not necesarily imply that knowledge remains beyond its clasp. Rather imaginattive literature lies between pure doxa and pure epistēmē. Unlike in philosophy, the universal is not first and foremost subjected to analysis and evaluated as conceptual terms. Peter Widdowson in his book Literature links the specific and the creative in his account of the meaning of Literature (1997:17).

Widdowson makes an important point when he asserts that Literature, when it alludes to reality, does so within a fictitious constructed world. The philosopher is concerned first and foremost with discovery whilst the literary fiction writer is involved in an act of creation. However, neither the philosophical text nor the literary work are exclusively restricted to either of these. Discovering is the uncovering of meaning, a gradual unearthing of various propositions that are existent but that might remain hidden. Discovering them involves rescuing them from concealedness and bringing them to revelation. This does not imply that in the act of creating a fictive imagined world, the literary writer remains in any way disconnected from the world or from “reality”. Rather, what is meant is that the writer of imaginitive literature is concerned with the construction of imaginative variations of the world.

Let it not be assumed that my argument denies the view that there are similarities between literature and philosophy. There most certainly are. This article traverses both the similarities that are displayed between the two and the differences, but it goes beyond such an analysis. It finds within the differences and similarities a ground to establish that literary fiction operates as a distinct field from philosophical enquiry but in such a way that both can be brought together in more ways that one.

It must be remembered that both literature and philosophy are intellectual pursuits by human beings and what concerns human beings are certain basic questions: Why are we here? What meaning can there be in Being? How do we know what we know? The difference lies in how these questions are raised and the manner in which they are addressed. However this is not the same as saying that imaginative literature and philosophy both do the same things in radically different ways. They do not. Both function differently. Literature may and most often does deal with issues of common human concern, questions of how we understand ourselves, the world we live in and such themes. However, the way it does this is through the creation of a fictive world. Style, narrative, rhetoric, form and content come together to express varied themes. Whilst it can often start off with an aim of discussing and analysing these philosophical concerns, the ultimate goal is not to provide an unbiased system of knowledge concerning these issues. Philosophy does. The main intention in philosophy is discursive and it engages in an analysis of certain themes which relate to or are meant directly to correspond to reality. The question of reality itself is under scrutiny and often the idea of the existence of an objective reality itself is rejected. It has been endlessly suggested that philosophy is an intellectual activity whilst literature is emotive. However, both are intellectual activites but of different kinds. Literature aesthetisizes intellectual activity and therein lies one of the differences.

Philosophy is often regarded as literature as is evident from Plato’s Phaedo (1975) or his Symposium (1980) or Rousseau’s Confessions (2000). The dialogues of Plato have a dramatic quality. They are written in the form of a play that can be performed. They contain episodes like acts or scenes and often include the listeners in the form of a chorus. Rousseau’s Confessions is in the form of a confessional biography and is read as a literary text as much as a philosophical one. The plays and novels of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus traverse the ground of both philosophy and literature as do the works of Samuel Beckett (1979, 1984). So where in fact are the boundaries between the two drawn if in fact they do exist?

Plato’s dialogues themselves are testimony to the fact that there are certain texts that are neither clearly literature nor philosophy. One might argue against such a view by saying that Plato’s dialogues are works of philosophy. The way the work is structured illustrates without doubt, that the intention of these works is to proceed through logical argumentation toward universal claims. Whilst character and situations might be incorporated in the dialogues, the works themselves are primarily concerned with an intellectual search for fundamental truth claims.

There are several issues at stake when considering the question of whether in fact Plato writes philosophy or literature. I will enumerate some of the issues in question. To begin with, Plato’s dialogues are structured such that a statement is posed to which counter arguments are made and responses to those counter arguments are put forth. Thus there is no truth claim being asserted by Plato. Socrates does dismantle what seems at first to be a statement or observation of common sense meaning by one of the characters but somehow truth claims are never put forth. There is the sense that characters must arrive at an understanding of that which is under examination via logical argumentation. The dialogues are Plato’s method of illustrating how to argue logically to convey a certain point; what it does not imply is that one can arrive at fundamental truth claims. The dialogue form is hence most suitable.
Such a reading of Plato would come in direct conflict to the view that philosophical texts have as their intention the exposition of fundamental and universal truth statements. Yet because these texts by Plato do not expound truth claims does not automatically negate them as texts of philosophy. I argue that these texts are first and foremost works of philosophy. Further because they employ literary features does not provide sufficient reason to argue that they are literary texts.

Let us take another example. In his novel Nausea (1965) which was written in 1938 Jean Paul Sartre, explores imaginatively most of the premises that formed the content of Being and Nothingness which followed in 1943 (1992) which he wrote five years later. Both Being and Nothingness and Nausea cover for the most part a similar terrain. Yet why is it that whilst one text is read as philosophy the other is read as literature or a philosophical novel? Albert Camus who wrote a review of Sartre’s Nausea is known to have commented on the novel by claiming that “A novel is nothing but philosophy expressed in images (Aaronson 2004).”[1] The comment by Camus immediately draws the reader’s attention to a similarity that lies between literature and philosophy. But if read with more careful attention, it calls into question an important difference as well. That difference is one of methodology that is employed by the two fields of intellectual pursuit. Where literature uses images to convey universal claims, philosophy engages in argumentation, description and analysis.

There can be little doubt that Sartre’s Nausea engages in existentialist philosophy but it does so within the fictionalised world of the protagonist Roquetin. Further, it begins as a case of the particular. It is the particular struggle of Roquetin who is also the narrator-writer who struggles to understand the meaning of Being. Universal claims do emerge from the individual quest but the quest for meaning is worked out in such a way that it is somehow bound to the individual, at least initially. The reader or scholar might extract a universal thesis yet the universal thesis is never proposed as the universal. In that sense, as an existentialist novel, Nausea is a brilliant exploration of existentialist philosophy which posits that existence precedes essence: not only because the protagonist is continually aware of the fact that existence comes before essence but also because Sartre uses the particular (the novel in this case) as the means by which we (the reader) arrive at the more fundamental and the essential. Often, literature demonstrates what philosophy then examines theoretically.

Philosophy seeks, at its best, to rigorously scrutinise ideas and propose methods while literature immerses itself in the expression of ideas rather than a thorough analysis of them. Literature is therefore, the endeavour to express an idea in language and writing, aesthetically, while philosophy is the endeavour to investigate. The investigation itself may be expressed in an aesthetic manner but this is not of prime importance to the philosophical text. Literary fiction portrays and demonstrates life-experiences or disorients the reader by deliberately making absurd our experience in the world. Philosophy does not concern itself with demonstration in the literary sense. It does not create fictive life-like experiences rather it states abstractly what is under consideration. It might use examples of a literary kind, either fictive or demonstrative from real life situations as a way of explaining what it has stated abstractly, yet to do so does not mean that the philosophical text can be appropriated as imaginative literature.

I am not arguing against the view that literature does not amount to a rigorous intellectual activity and questioning. It certainly does and this is most evident in the works of writers of the ranks of Shakespeare, Beckett, Woolf, Euripedes, Sophocles and many others.

A familiar and frequent way of making a distinction between literature and philosophy is the universal-particular framework of argument that has been debated by a number of scholars in both fields. In “Philosophy as/and/of Literature” (Danto in Cascardi 1987: 1–23), Arthur C. Danto makes the case of the particular instance of the literary text under study and the universal instance of the philosophical work under analysis. Among other things, he argues that philosophy’s main concern is the establishment of universal claims whereas literature’s main preoccupation lies in expression. Without going into the details of Danto’s argument I will explain how literature and philosophy function along the lines of the universal and the particular. However this analysis carries with it certain problems.

Literature is a case of the particular. With words, the writer weaves a world of characters, situations, places; they come together to tell an account of a day, a year, a month, a minute or a lifetime in the life of any one of the characters. Within the scope of such an imagined world, literature grapples with questions of being, reality, death, truth, life, knowledge and other such concerns.

Philosophy is universal in scope or at least it aims to be. It aims to solve problems or to analyse them: the problem of how we know or what we know, the problem of what it means to be, and so on. It is hence, in a sense, practical in scope. While the philosopher universalises, the novelist particularizes. But they do this in a curiously paradoxical way. The philosopher delineates a particular area: a certain question to be studied and examined, extracts from a sea of problems one for which he will seek an answer which might be a sort of principle that seeks to be applicable to all of existence. The concern often lies in that which is common to everything in existence. The literary fiction writer pushes the margins, draws into his text various concerns by focussing on certain specific factors all of which are fictional and imagined. The main concern is not to find answers and solutions but to express. Expression and the method of expression is of primary significance to literature as opposed to philosophical texts. Literary texts use universal concepts towards specifics: specifics of character, situation, time and place.

Literary texts present an imagined world. The presentation of an imagined world is what perhaps serves as one of the distinguishing features that separate literary texts from philosophical ones. Philosophy does not create a fictionalised space in which situations unfold. Philosophical statements are laid down as fundamental and universally applicable; literary ones are fictional and in that sense are never expounded as universal claims. It was partly based on this aspect of literature that Plato evicted poets from The Republic (2003). He argues that literary art and poetry could never be philosophical because the statements written by literary artists would never be a source of true knowledge. Secondly, he argues that it (literature) could never be ethical for art aroused in the receiver unwanted passion. Ever since then literature and philosophy have been engaged in an unending battle. Those philosophical writers attempting to infuse their writings with a literary flavour are often regarded as committing violence to philosophy. Literary writers writing with philosophical issues in the foreground are often read as writers with philosophical interests but as somehow being a step below serious philosophy.

One might argue against the notion of literature and philosophy as functioning differently by saying that it resorts to a way of thinking in terms of binaries. It may be argued that I am establishing rigid boundaries that define the limits of the fields. I would disagree with such arguments. Equating a work of literature to philosophy, and vice versa, does not necessarily imply a breaking down of boundaries. It instead implies an incorporation of literary features in philosophical works and philosophical issues in works of literature. The boundaries still exist for if they did not there would be no notion of incorporating aspects from the other into either of the two fields. Before we make too much of a virtue of deconstructing binaries, we may instead allow for the possibility that thinking of literature and philosophy as different human pursuits may actually have more to offer us than we are ready to acknowledge. This is different from stating that the boundaries that exist between literary works and philosophical texts are unbendingly established. The boundaries can never be rigidly placed, for each time that philosophy and literature come together the boundaries are always shifted and drawn anew. Finally, the term binary implies a system with two parts, often such that both are mutually dependent on the other. Philosophy and literature do not exhibit such a mutually dependent relationship. It is one thing to assert that much might be gained from such a co-existence between them but that does not in any way signify dependence between them. Literature does not derive its status as literature in opposition to the status of philosophy. The very fact that there is a difference in the methodology that is employed by philosophical texts and literary ones points to something deeper. Literary art should not aspire to be philosophy; neither should philosophy be declared literature. To say this does not imply that literature cannot be philosophical. And admittedly, like the literary artist, the philosopher too must make certain decisions about narrative style, content and form.

In a certain sense, philosophy stands apart from itself. It approaches the question of Being, trying to understand it from a distance. Literature, it may be argued, incorporates in the act of creation the very meaning of Being. Writing the literary work is as much an exploration of the self and the world, as reading it is. The literary act of creation is already an instance of Being.

So what in fact accounts for the great divide between these two discplines of intellectual endeavour? Philosophy functions on a paradigm of argumentation. The assumption of the philosopher is that the reader can partake in his views simply because man is capable of reasoning, analysis and intellectual understanding. Literature functions on the supposition that the reader is able to share the world of the novel based on past experiences, memories, the past and the present. Thus, there is a coming together of conceptual modes of understanding coupled with perceptive modes. Literary fiction elicits feelings and emotions in a way that a philosophical treatise does not. This is a very fundamental difference, certainly not the only one, between the two systems of thought.

Within a fictionalised space created in the pages that fill a novel, the notion of time is often treated with special attention. The novel might be rooted in a specific time period. There is also the additional time-frame in the lives of the characters involved. This might be a concentration on a particular phase in the character’s life (adulthood, youth) or the time-line might follow a certain character from youth until death. Alternatively, time might concentrate on a day, a month or a year. Philosophy, deliberately extracts particulars of time. The philosophical treatise does not involve a time-line. Between the first page of the treatise and the last page, time has neither advanced nor stood still. Instead the very concept of time is often under scrutiny, a concept to be thoroughly analysed. Temporal awareness is one of the basic pillars of conscious experience. It can be generally assumed that at the time of living through an experience, we are not able to categorize or interpret it. It is only after having lived through them that we are able to grasp them, interpret them, understand in an act of recollection how they relate to previous experiences, make conclusions about our responses to them and how they might have affected us. This is also our own unique perspective on them, what is commonly known as a first person perspective. Literary texts are involved in the expression of such a temporal awareness precisely through the creation of characters rooted in specifics of time, situation, motives, character traits, habits and such other features. Philosophical texts by abstracting these various factors try to grasp conscious experience and its basic structures as intellectual concepts.

To state that literature is primarily concerned with aesthetic expression would be highly incorrect. The point in this argument is not to outline what the differences between literary texts and philosophical texts are but rather how certain notions are common to both disciplines yet are dealt with in radically different ways. The difference in the treatment of questions related to the self is what in this study will ultimately differentiate literature from philosophy. Martha Nussbaum writes about precisely this difference in an essay from Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (1990). She says:

Our actual relation to the books we love is already messy, complex, erotic. We do ‘read for life’, bringing to the literary texts we love (as to texts admittedly philosophical) our pressing questions and perplexities, searching for images of what we might do and be, and holding these up against the images we derive from our knowledge of other conceptions, literary, philosophical, and religious … The very qualities that make the novel so unlike dogmatic abstract treatises are, for us, the source of their philosophical interest. (1990: 12)

“Dogmatic” or not, Nussbaum highlights the practical side to literature as opposed to the theoretical aspect of a philosophical treatise. Nussbaum’s main concern is in the area of moral philosophy and the contribution that literature can make to questions of moral philosophy. Toward this, she asserts that certain novels are and should be read as works of philosophy.

While literature, for the most part, allows us to actively explore and relate to certain common experiences; philosophy allows us to understand experience or consciousness against a theoretical plane. Herein lies one of the problems with assertions such as literature can be philosophy or vice versa. To say something to this effect would effectively amount to a diminution of either one of those fields of thought. Stemming from the argument that I proposed earlier about aesthetic expression being one of the central concerns of literature, I turn to what follows most logically as one of the most significant differences between literature and philosophy. Each literary text holds a unique perspective on reality, consciousness, being and such issues. It is understood that every particular text is only one many perspectives. Literature understands the many ways of seeing as inexhaustable. Philosophical texts, on the other hand, function differently. Every philosophical text is an assertion. The texts are not one of the varied ways of seeing, rather each treatise would argue that this, and only this, is the way of seeing or understanding. That is how philosophical texts aim at providing a universal applicability.

Does universal applicability indicate universal truth claims? Or are they to be understood in different ways? The notion of truth is a problematic one. The history of western philosophy has been preoccupied with the search for a fundamental, objective and universal truth. However, philosophers themselves have never been able to agree on the notion of truth. Postmodern philosophers argue that the concept of a universal and objective truth is an illusion and that there is no one single truth but many truths based on tradition, belief and faith. But in this very assertion which states that there is no ultimate truth, lies latent a universal statement.

Let us take an example. The philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche immediately comes to mind. Nietzsche rejects the very idea that there are universal truths. Nietzsche asks:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. (1979: 84)

According to Nietzsche, the notion of truth is likened to a process of cultural sedimentation. It is a concept that is continually and actively constructed, dismantled and reinstated. What the philosopher engages in, is then not the exposition of truth claims but of universals. There is a difference between that which is “universal” and that which we call “truth”. The universal seeks to understand human life as an entirety that is applicable to all of mankind. Even when it has been asserted that there is no one objective truth, as in postmodern philosophy, the very assertion itself is proposed as a universal law. In the dictum that every individual constructs his own truth, there is the conviction that the construction itself is a universally applicable. Objective truth would imply that the meaning constructed is the same for every individual. This is not the only manner in which the term universal will be used in this article.

One might argue against the universality of philosophy by stating that it is historical and cultural. There is no arguing against the claim that philosophy is situated within a historical period and within a cultural specificity. However, I distinguish between philosophical production and philosophical applicability. Whilst the text might have been written by a French thinker during the first world war, the text itself and the analysis that it engages in, seeks to transcend limitations of culture, the period during which it was written and other specifics. The aim is to transcend the specific and achieve a universal applicability. Whether or not it always does so is an entirely different matter.

My intention is not to postulate a single distinct characteristic that could be identified as the marker that separates literature from philosophy. So for instance, just because a certain text uses the literary devices of setting, wit or irony, does not mean that it is a literary text. On the other hand, a text that analyses questions of existence and Being, truth and reality does not automatically imply that the text is a philosophical work. Many modernist works of fiction for instance are largely conceptual. That however does not transform them into works of philosophy. They might be read as philosophical novels, yet that is different from saying that they are works of philosophy.

The aim is not to discover the method by which an essentialising of literature and philosophy can be succesfully possible. On the contrary, what is being said is that several attributes must be explored within the text, several features must work together and only then might we arrive at the notion of whether we are reading fiction or philosophy.

Conscious experience is uniquely first person in nature. The “I” lives through them. However, he or she does not merely live through them, but must be conscious of living through them. Whilst there are instances when we might be conscious of performing or living through an experience, there are in the Heideggerean sense, those habitual acts that we engage in without being conscious of them, like a repetitive or habitual or mundane act that we might engage in, for instance, brushing your teeth every morning. What happens in literary texts that specifically look at the effort of categorizing experience, either by recounting it through memory or by documenting it? This might involve the process of trying to understand and interpret an experience after it has happened. What are the implications of such an understanding of ontical issues for what it means to be oneself?

Heidegger fractured the traditional western way of thinking that was set into motion by Descartes. Cartesianism severed the mind/consciousness from the body. Cartesian philosophy elevated the cogito to a privileged position. The mind was the only certainty and one from which knowledge about all else proceeded. The outer world and its objects are deceptive and not to be believed. The subject that engages in an active denial and doubting of all things external proves his own existence. The knowing subject (internal) doubts all known objects (external). If objectivity is understood as knowledge of the objects and things in the outer world, in Cartesian thought, the passage from an internal sphere (that of the subject) to an external one (that of the object) does not occur. Any movement by the subject goes back into the subject. In this way a distinction between subject-object is established by Descartes. Heidegger challenged this distinction. Heidegger argues for an analytic of Dasein, a term that literally means, “Being there”. Heidegger uses the term to mean the Being of persons and in his mammoth work he undertakes an analysis of what is meant by Dasein. Heidegger employs the word Dasein toward certain specific ends. He explains that there is a concurrence between essence and existence. This means that in the very act of being, man understands what it means to be. This notion of understanding is not an act that is performed by man but is rather what man is. The understanding that Dasein does, is the very mode of being of Dasein. This mode of being is such that it involves an understanding of what it means to be and what it means to be is discovered in the very act of being itself. Hence there is no pre-determined substance to Dasein. Thus to say that Dasein or man attempts to understand what it means to be, in a contemplative-reflective way, would essentially entail the generation of a subject-object divide between being and knowledge. And this is precisely what Heidegger argues against. Understanding what it means to be, according to Heidegger, does not come as an after thought, as a sort of cumulative adding up to reach a sum total. It is not the kind of knowledge to be digested, contemplated and then added to an already existing reservoir of character traits.

The opposition between subject and object is erased when Dasein as subject does not attempt to comprehend itself in an act of contemplative understanding as the Object of knowledge. This can only happen when existence and essence concur perfectly, in the Heideggerean sense, which amounts to saying that understanding is Dasein’s mode of being and hence coincides with the meaning of Dasein.

Early in Being and Time, Heidegger makes a distinction between the terms existential and existentiell. Existentiell refers to the act of existing and of the understanding of oneself that each Dasein derives either by grasping or ignoring its possibilities. Existential analysis refers to an inquiry into the Being of Dasein. There is also an important distinction drawn up between ontic and ontological such that existential and ontological form a working pair as against existentiell and ontical. The ontical is concerned with the being of specific entities and the facts about these entities. Ontical inquiry seeks to understand what distinguishes specific types of entities from others. Ontological inquiry is about Being and the meaning of Being. Dasein is unique because it is the only type of Being for whom Being is an issue. It is hence both ontic and ontological or ontico-ontological. For Dasein to exist means that Dasein must ontologise. That is what distinguishes Dasein from all other entities in the world. Dasein’s ontical specificity is that it is ontological; it inquires into the truth of the meaning of Being. Does imaginative literature explore the manifestness of the ontical: the manner in which Dasein asks questions about Being in order to understand the meaning of Being rather than the ontological?[2] Immediately a problem arises: Heidegger would also argue for literature and philosophy as different “modes of showing”. The “truth” about Being is disclosed through different ways of Being and existing. Phenomenology is concerned with the ways in which objects show themselves. The manner in which objects show themselves are the “modes of showing”. Does the difference between literature and philosophy rest in their different “modes of showing” themselves? If so, does the ontic distinction between literature and philosophy hold? Philosophy is ontical and the ontical distinctiveness of philosophy lies in the manner in which philosophy operates as philosophy.

Ontical existentiell understanding refers to the different ways of being for different Daseins. It is concerned with lived experience and the question of existence. It is individual. Existential ontological analysis, on the other hand, refers to the structures of being. It is hence an inquiry into what is meant by the Being of Dasein and is not the actual living experience of the individual. Existential ontological understanding cannot be different for different human beings. It is the framework within which Being must be understood. For the purposes of my argument, this distinction becomes extremely important. Existential understanding, in a sense, depends on the existentiell way of Being. Dasein understands itself by being, that is by existing, and hence has a pre-theoretical understanding of itself. Existentiell attestation is how the disclosure of Being takes place or how Being shows itself. It follows then, that the existentiell presupposes that such a disclosure will and can occur and hence the ontic presupposes the ontological simultaneously as the ontological is revealed in the ontic. Let me explain with the help of a simple example. Imagine that an individual X is required to go to a certain place, Y, for an appointment. He could either take the bus, drive in his car or walk. However he cannot do all three at the same time. He must choose either one from the alternatives that he has and thereby limit the possibilities of how he might get to the required place. However, as a human being he is already in a situation with limitations. So, for instance, he cannot fly, since as a human being this is not possible. The knowledge that he cannot fly is pre-theoretical in the sense that he always- already knew that human beings are unable to fly. He is “thrown” into a world of limitations. The decision that he makes of whether he will ride in a bus, drive or walk to the place Y, is an example of an existentiell kind. When we say existential, we might analyse why it is impossible for a human being to fly, for instance. This might help us to arrive at a notion of what it means to be human. Through this example what is also illustrated is that Dasein already has a pre-ontological understanding if itself. This is a vague and dim understanding of Being that Dasein already has and strives to clarify through ontological inquiry. To put it all very simply, Heidegger is essentially reducing the gap between a theoretical framework and the practical and concrete working out of it. According to him both overlap one another. Therefore, the act of existing allows for the disclosure of Being which is an understanding of Dasein that is pre-theoretical. This pre-theoretical understanding rests on the condition that a disclosure of Dasein will necessarily occur. It also relies on the fact that this disclosure will finally lead to an understanding of Being not just of myself but of the structure of Being for all Daseins.

Existential ontological analysis seeks to examine the more formal structural basis of existence. Existentiell ontical understanding refers to the particular individual’s understanding of existence and Being through the very act of existing itself. It concretises in specific instances what the formal structures analyse theoretically. Therefore, how human beings interpret their own consciousness and Being is of an ontico-existentiell nature. Thus the Being of Dasein is of two types: Ontic and ontological. Dasein is on the existential ontological level. It is not peculiar to any one individual. This is a more fundamental understanding of what it means to be, which does not differ from the Being of one Dasein to the Being of the other. This is what is of ontological nature. However, how Dasein interprets its being-there, how consciousness is interpreted and disclosed by Dasein, by Being-in-the-world, is of an existentiell ontic nature. This differs from individual to individual because it functions on a more subjective plane. It would be a mistake to distinguish the existential ontological from the existentiell ontical by an individual-general divide. Such an understanding is superficial and to be strictly avoided. Dasein, says Heidegger, enacts existence within the lived experience of the everyday.

I argue that the ontical manifests itself as the individual struggle to understand the Being of oneself and through that Being as a whole. How one does this differs from individual to individual and it is that difference which results in ontical differences. It is not the cultural codes or the roles we play which are ontical differences; rather it is the unique struggle of every individual irrespective of whether they come from the same cultural background or a different one, which amounts to ontic existentiell differences.

Practical and theoretical are meant to work with each other, the practical being the basis for the theoretical. Are not literary novels practical variations of the theoretical issues that are examined in philosophy? To create real life-like scenarios, is it not necessary to create circumstances and situations, characters with motivations, experiences and qualities that in some way correspond to the average everydayness of reality? If philosophy must undertake a rigorous analysis of Being and Existence must not the initial step be to identify what is to be analysed and what problems one might encounter. And if any such issues are to be identified, then as Heidegger asserts, they must first be disclosed in the very act of existing. In an essay titled “Literary Attestation in Philosophy: Heidegger's Footnote on Tolstoy's “The death of Ivan Ilyich'”, Robert Bernasconi asks, “Literary texts have a certain autonomy, but what happens to them when they are submitted to philosophically inspired readings?” (Bernasconi in Wood 1990: 24). My contention is that literary texts need not be submitted to philosophically inspired readings. Bernasconi makes an error by using the word “submitted”.

Bernasconi argues, that if it can be said that the existential reading dominates Heidegger’s text in such a way that a work of literature might be able to provide the existentiell dimension, it undermines the autonomy of the philosophical text. Bernasconi through an analysis of Heidegger’s reference (1962: 495,n.xii) to a footnote on Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illyich,[3] tries to show how literary works cannot serve as imaginative explorations of philosophical concepts and that using literary examples only serves as a violence upon philosophy.

Whilst it might not directly support the functioning of the philosophical text itself, works of literature most definitely facilitate a more enriched reading of the concepts and terms analysed by philosophy. Philosophy prides itself in being insular. Heidegger’s attempt at distinguishing between the concepts of the existential and the existentiell, such that neither can be employed without the functioning of the other, might go a long way to establish the autonomous working of a philosophical treatise. However, what cannot be denied is that the existentiell still retains the theoretical element. One way in which the existentiell can be practically explored is by turning to literature. There is a difference between insularity and autonomy, which can be and is often easily overlooked. The entire body of philosophy is seen to function independently amidst its very own conceptual terms and linguistic devices whether this be an effort to reject and subvert the existing system of knowledge (as an example, Kierkegaard rejected Hegelian rationalism and universality) or to supplement it (Existentialist philosophers were inspired by Kierkegaard’s ideas on the subject of Being). This is autonomy in a larger sense. The individual text functions within its own system (The Hegelian Dialectic, for instance) and in relation to this larger system and this is autonomy of a particular work. This sort of autonomy is desirable and I think quite necessary to maintain the distinct discipline, which in this case is philosophy. Insularity is something completely different. It forces one to look at something with blinkers and often provides a constricted approach to that which can be potentially explorative. It is against such an insular approach that the argument proposed in this article takes issue, and not against autonomy. It has always appeared as if philosophical writing occupies a specific terrain and there is a vigorous effort to mark out and maintain the boundaries of it by scholars in the field. It has always been something of a virtue to keep literature away from philosophy. In that, thinkers of philosophy often find it demeaning to draw the literary into the philosophical or to use literary texts to elucidate arguments of a philosophical nature. The same obviously cannot be said with literature for literature does most often deal with issues of philosophical concern. However when one speaks of a literary work as being philosophical it is said with pride and often as something that is admirable. To even suggest a reading of philosophical works via literature however, is sacrilegious and definitely not rigorous philosophy, at least to scholars of philosophy.

It cannot be disputed that literature and philosophy are two very different disciplines and that it is desirable to maintain the boundaries of each with the recognition that the boundaries themselves are constantly shifting and being interpreted in innovative ways. The question that is to be raised is whether philosophical texts and more specifically whether Heidegger’s Being and Time is capable of providing existentiell grounding for the existential analysis of Being. I am not by any means saying philosophy should indulge in merely existential analysis. Existential analysis must be supported by concrete example through existentiell analysis. If by existentiell, Heidegger meant the understanding that arises by “existing” for every Dasein, then existentiell understanding differs for everyone. The question is whether, in fact, there is an understanding of Being that might be universal, a sort of fundamental understanding of Being that Dasein is able to arrive at and this Heidegger calls the existential mode. Ontically what distinguishes Dasein is that it is ontological. Yet, the manifestness of the ontical differs from individual to individual. Existentiell ontical understanding differs for every Dasein. It is a case of the particular. However from it arises an existential ontological understanding, which is fundamental ontology. Thus, fundamental ontology is possible only once an existentiell ontical understanding has been attempted. Fundamental ontology can develop only once an existentiell pre-ontological understanding has occurred. The entire movement is a circular one. Dasein begins with a pre-ontological understanding of Being-there. However this pre-ontological understanding is not to be equated with fundamental ontology. It is a vague understanding of Being and must be made obvious in an existentiell way that is by the very act of existing in what Heidegger terms everydayness. This leads to an ontic understanding of Being and is subjective.

Literature provides an exploratory field for such an existentiell understanding to occur. The possibilities of variation that imaginative fiction allows for may in many cases allow us to understand the more theoretical analyses in philosophical texts. Literary fiction is able to make real, the problems and issues that philosophy is embedded in. Without these problems and the questions we have about them there would be no philosophy. However these problems must first be identified. It is through literature that these problems are identified. Literature, by focussing on particular characters, in the specific circumstances that they find themselves in, battling with questions related to their lives and to existence in general, provides the existentiell ontic understanding that is so very imperative if we are to arrive at any sort of fundamental ontology.

In Being and Time, Heidegger draws up the ontological structure of Being with the help of three classifications. Dasein in being-in-the-world relates to the world in three ways: Ready-to-hand, Present-at-hand and Being–with-others. These are what can be identified as ontological structures of Being. What does it mean to say this? According to Heidegger, these structures of Being are applicable to every Dasein and every individual’s way of existing unfolds within these broad categories. Thus every individual deals with things in a ready-to-hand way or in a practical way, for instance, using a kettle to boil water. The same example can be used to illustrate a present-at-hand way or theoretical way, for instance the knowledge that a kettle can be used to boil water and understanding the theory of boiling. Further every individual does not exist in isolation but with and amidst others. How each individual subjectively arrives at a conscious awareness and understanding of their own Being that unfolds within the above three categories is what differs from individual to individual.

Heidegger’s Being and Time is a rigorous analysis of the structures of Being. His study undertakes an ontology of Being and he is hence concerned with the frameworks within which this ontology is to be studied. The focus here is a universal framework under which the meaning of Being can emerge. The question that I raise is whether, in fact, a philosophical treatise can isolate a specific instance or whether by its very nature it is more adept at studying the universal.

While it might be true to say that the way of being of Dasein is not to be found by analysing the culture, motivations, roles and other such variations, what can be asserted without doubt is that in these one does find the struggle of the individual trying to grasp the meaning of Being and consciousness. This is an ontic struggle and is expressed existentielly. It operates as a specific not a universal statement about Being. And because it operates as a specific it is best expressed in narratives of imagination or literature. The structure of the meaning of Being does not retain much if it cannot be concretised into specific instances. At best, without such tangible expressions rooted in specifics, the meaning of being would remain inaccessible. Most works of literature are expressions of the ontic-existentiell understanding of Being. In their expression of the ontic it is not necessary for them to have recourse to the ontological which is what makes them works of fiction in the first place. However because philosophical texts (in this case Heidegger’s Being and Time) are concerned with the ontological existential analysis of Being, one method of manifesting the existential ontological claims within particular instances would be through a reading of literary texts. Once again, this is in no way synonymous to the claim that philosophical texts are unable to function by themselves, only that more might be gained by reading the two together.

Because literature is imaginative it does not as such need to support the claims it makes or to prove them in any way. The existentiell mode is the dominant one in literary texts; whereas in philosophy the concepts and the theory emerge from an observation of the practical. Both existentiell and existential modes are operative. However, can it be said that the existentiell mode finds a greater opportunity of expression in literary texts? If that were the case, is not ontic understanding more accessible by reading works of literature? Heidegger’s Being and Time offers no examples of what he means by existentiell ontic understanding. He does talk at length about a very tangible notion of what he means by Being-in-the-world and being fixed in everydayness. However what he does not do and I think what he never intended to do is to illustrate these notions with more concrete examples. It is evident that Heidegger’s intention in Being and Time is fundamental ontology, to arrive at what the meaning of Being is. To concentrate on particular instances would essentially mean that the work was not in any way generating a universal statement or framework of understanding Being. Is this because to concern oneself with the ontical would in many ways turn the philosophical discipline into something other than philosophy? Would it not necessarily involve a shift from the universal claim to a case of the particular?

The existentiell ontic struggle is often set into motion by the very fact that the protagonist in these works is actively struggling to understand what it means “to be” himself or herself. It is a personal struggle but there are moments when the scope of the struggle broadens to the deeper question of what it means “to be” in general. The struggle of the former kind, the more personal of the two, makes itself visible in the urge to differentiate. With the latter, however, there is an attempt to unify. When the ontological categories outlined by Heidegger are interpreted in specific ways by different individuals, they become identified on the ontical existentiell plane.

Literature allows for such an ontical imaginative exploration. It cannot provide an ontological understanding simply because that is not what it aims to do. There are instances of ontological expressions in literary texts as well. These ontological categories of Heidegger (Dreyfus:1992)are present in a literary work but not as ontological principles. The works do not lay down universal claims based on a systematic examination of experience but instead begin from the self of the author and strive to express the struggle and curiosity which marks the solidarity between the many selves that read the work. In that sense literary works are ontological. To identify these ontological structures does not amount to finding analogies of them in literature. To identify them means instead to set the existentiell in motion.

The notion of Being-in-the-world and Being-with-others are explored in fiction as the tangible world that the character finds himself or herself enmeshed in, amidst things and others, to be physically rooted within this world. I relate this notion to the “body” in the novels. It is a form of embodied subjectivity. Within the confines of my thesis, the articulated body is also to be understood as mind and thought. The body is articulated in and through language. Language leads to a sense of self-identity. Language allows for a disclosure of Being and one of the many ways in which Being is disclosed is through language. This self identity arrived at in and through the use of language is of two types. One type of identity is based on the articulation of sensations that are felt by the body. This helps for a differentiation between the other and me. For instance, the table I touch is recognised as being something outside myself, and hence other than me. There is, however, another type of identity, which erases boundaries between the other and me. In my memory of sensations and impressions, there are inevitably other people and places, which become part of my memory and hence part of me. My sense of who I am becomes compounded by other people, places and things. Any sensation that I experience is not merely a pure theoretical sensation but my response to various factors owing to which I am able to experience the resultant sensation or impression. What are the implications of being caught in the problematic of constructing identity based along these two lines? They manifest themselves as two distinct desires: A need for differentiating and a craving to find unity.

The Heideggerean notion of present-at-hand is expressed in the novels as conceptual thought. It is linked to the more theoretical modes of thought and discourse of characters who are conscious of the problematics involved in constructing meaning. Discourse on issues such as language, meaning of the self and death of the self, might be one way of expressing the present-at-hand in literature. Self identity makes one aware of the annihilating powers of death to undo that self identity. The ego that struggles to define itself whilst living cannot struggle to define itself once it no longer is. The ego recognises death as a cessation of every way of being. This recognition is of primary importance because, with the realisation of my own death, I am aware that the question “who am I” will not be of any concern to me subsequent to my death. The self is no longer concerned with this once it dies. It simply cannot be concerned with this once it no longer exists. Whilst it exists, it is always engaged in a dialectic process. The self as subject tries to understand itself as object. In order to understand itself as object, language is used. The self as subject trying to understand itself as object must articulate its sensations and affectations, which are experienced bodily in thought and words. One of the main questions that I will be asking is whether the sort of concurrence between subject and object that Heidegger writes about can occur in literary fiction. If it cannot occur, then there is always a part of the self that transcends objectivation. This is because there is always some part of the self that lies on the other side of the equation as the subject. What are the implications of this in the obsessive quest for a complete understanding of subjectivity and identity?

The present–at-hand category in fiction and more specifically the discourse on death in fiction does retain more of an existentiell rather than an existential aspect because the discourse manifests itself as the concerns and thought processes of one of the individual characters. Can the present-at-hand be expressed in literature? Or is it a purely philosophically expressed notion?

Finally, there is a difference in saying that the structures of Being expounded by Heidegger do find expression in works of literature and that a literary work or character is itself Heideggerean in nature. The latter is not what I am interested in. It is with the former assertion in mind that the present study of literature and philosophy concerns itself with: to find instances of expression of Heideggerean notions in the works without asserting that the works are Heideggerean. Further, to find instances of expression of these very Heideggerean notions is to capture the radical manner in which literary texts treat them. It is not in correspondence but in difference that these must be detected. Further, to say that a particular character or literary novel was Heideggerean would immediately undercut any remarks on the autonomy of the literary text and would point to the implication that these works of literature are merely an application of philosophical notions. It would also suggest that the work of literature could be read only with reference to Heidegger and no more, that all it contains has been said by Heidegger. But my intention is to illustrate the very opposite. The writer’s vision and the reader’s response come together in such a brilliant way so as to penetrate the mystery of human existence. That mystery which philosophy tries to solve, literature revels in as a question eternally posed, riddled with the unsolvable.

It is possible and more importantly enlightening to read texts from the two disciplines in conjunction with each other. Further, such a reading does not in any way threaten the boundaries of either of the two.

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[1] The citation referred to in this chapter is taken from an online excerpt of the book of the same title and is available at: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/027961.html

[2] The phrase “ontic struggle” and the “manifestness of the ontical” refer to the ways in which the ontical is expressed in the world that Dasein exists in. An ontical struggle immediately implies an ontological inquiry. Heidegger writes that “Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological” (1962: 32).

[3] Heidegger refers to Tolstoy in Being and Time (1962) in his analysis of death. Heidegger’s note xii, in division two, chapter one reads: “In his story ‘The Death of Ivan Illyitch’ Leo Tolstoi has presented the phenomenon of the disruption and breakdown of having ‘someone die’”. Heidegger’s reference centres around an analysis of the authentic and inauthentic modes by which Dasein confronts death and dying. Using Tolstoy’s work as an illustration, Heidegger argues that the experience of another person’s death is an insufficient and inauthentic manner of understanding one’s own death.