Courses devoted to “Philosophy and Literature” assume two general strategies: The first is to study various literary texts for their philosophical content, for example, What is Mark Twain’s conception of social justice in Huckleberry Finn? The second is to examine literature itself as a philosophical problem. This latter approach is taken here, specifically such questions as, What is literature? and What is interpretation? will be considered to show how various responses to such inquiry reflect different philosophical conceptions of social or psychological reality, different understandings about the character of language, different conceptions of the relationship of author and reader, different criteria defining art, and different claims about what is meaningful and true. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, various ancient, medieval, modern, romantic, and 20th century literary theories will be reviewed to illustrate how literature and its criticism reflect the deepest commitments of authors and critics to these central issues of knowing and being.
