Philosophy as Fiction

Is it possible (or desirable) to live without illusions? Can artistry assist in the project of forging a unified self? What does our use of metaphor have to do with who we are? In this groundbreaking study, Joshua Landy explores Proust's original and sophisticated answers to these and related questions. At the same time, he asks why Proust chose to embed his theories within a work of fiction-one, indeed, in which the narrator's claims cannot always betrusted-rather than a straightforward treatise. What we stand to gain, it turns out, from reading Proust's philosophical narrative is something far more than a new way of thinking: it is also, and more importantly, a new way of living. Provocative and illuminating, Philosophy as Fiction will transform the waywe think about the relationship between philosophy, literature, and life.

"Landy's book delivers what has gone long and scandalously missing: a philosophical analysis of Proust's incomparable book that is muscular, concise, philosophically informed and sophisticated. . . . The book should for a long time be inescapable for anyone writing philosophically about Proust, and perhaps for anyone writing philosophically about imaginative literature, full stop. It is that good."-Philosophy and Literature, "Landy's persuasive thesis is that the Recherche converges unwittingly with the philosophy of Nietzsche, whose prescription, 'In order to act we require the veil of illusion: such is Hamlet's doctrine,' Landy cross-refers to Proust with telling results."-Times Literary Supplement

Joshua Landy is Associate Professor of French and co-director of the Literature and Philosophy Initiative at Stanford, home to new major tracks in philosophical and literary thought.