The Ontological Character of Fictional Narrative: An Approximation from Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricœur

Abstract

This paper is located in an interdisciplinary horizon between literature and philosophy and it seeks to justify that narrative fiction has an ontological status by which it is possible to ask and “to answer” the question about the sense of Being because, by thinking of the narrative fiction from Ontology, this one constitutes a model of rationality to face some of the most important philosophical problematics in the Western philosophical thought. The approach is that the “triple mimesis” model, developed by Paul Ricœur in one of his most important philosophical works, Time and Narrative, constitutes the axis on which the ontological character is based due to the prefigure, configure and refigure human actions. This means that the narrative fiction is always a seek for saying to Being and, in this way, for saying to all of ourselves too. Nevertheless, there is in Martin Hedegger’s reflections about language, art and poetry a first ontological anchorage to the extent that Heidegger knows about the revelation of the truth of the Being in these three categories. This fact is also observed by Ricœur and he extends these heideggerian proposals to narrative fiction. The ontological character provides to fictional narrative new perspectives from which it is possible to open unprecedented discussions about the tie between literature and philosophy.