허구에 의해 환기되는 감정의 합리성 문제

Abstract

We usually think that the appreciation of fiction causes a paradox, because the object of fictional character and that of fictional event do not exist, contrary to our ordinary emotion which usually has its object as existent. This paradox results from three claims which cannot hold together. These claims are as follows: 1. We believe that fictional entities do not really exist. 2. We respond emotionally only to the entities which we do believe to exist. 3. We respond emotionally to fictional characters and events. There are several theories of fiction which try to avoid this paradox. But Radford proposes a theory which denies the claim 2 and, thus, asserts that our emotional response to fictional entities is irrational. In this paper I examine the theories of fiction to see how each provides the way to avoid the paradox, i. e., illusionism, the thought theory, and the make-believe theory. To see how emotion is explained I examine narrow cognitivism, broad cognitivism, and non-cognitivism of emotion. The issue of cognitive theory of emotion is whether the only cognitive component of emotion is belief or not. Against the cognitive theories of emotion, non-cognitivism holds that there is no need for emotion to have cognitive component. I defend Walton's theory of quasi-emotion, because his theory of make-believe is the best candidate to explain our emotional response to fiction. Since the non-cognitivistic reflex-like emotion is arational, it is irrelevant to the discussion of the rationality of emotion. And the narrow cognitivism provides a better explanation than the broad cognitivism for the object of emotion, the existence of which is secured in the fictional world, and the way it is secured in a fictional world fits to our intuition of fictional entities.