Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix.
Samuel Lebens is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa. He works on a wide variety of philosophical topics, including metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of literature, and the philosophy of religion. Recent books include The Principles of Judaism (Oxford UP, 2020) and Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (Routledge, 2022).
Tatjana von Solodkoff is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin in Ireland. Tatjana thinks and writes about fiction, ontology, the methods of metaphysics, and death.
Introduction 1. What Is Fiction? 2. What Is a Work of Fiction? 3. What Are Fictional Characters? 4. Do Fictional Character Really Exist? 5. Imagination and Fiction 6. Interpreting Fiction 7. Does Every Story Have a Fictional Narrator? 8. Why Are You Crying? 9. The Paradox of Tragedy 10. The Puzzle of Imaginative Struggles 11. What Can We Learn from Fiction? 12. Are you Fictional?