Why wander into fiction? Analytic philosophy and the case study of Henry James

Many analytic philosophers who make use of literature share a common assumption, namely, that a work of literature is philosophically significant only insofar as it can be understood to contribute to the task of expressing or justifying a philosophical view. My dissertation criticizes this assumption and identifies within the analytic tradition a different kind of philosophical work to which a literary text might contribute: the work that Frege calls "liberating the human spirit" from confusion. I draw on the novels and tales of Henry James to provide a case study of literary works which serve to elucidate philosophical forms of confusion. I develop a comparison between Frege's logically perspicuous manner of representing thought, which he uses to clarify confusions that interfere with the activity of thinking, and the literary modes of representing human life that James develops. I argue that what is philosophically most significant about James's work is that his literary forms inherit a time-honored aspiration of philosophical writing--that of seeking to represent a reader's life to the reader herself in such a way as to allow her to overcome confusions that interfere with her living.