Hugo Moreno, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor

Lewis & Clark College

Is Borges’ Fiction a Kind of Philosophy?

Four Theoretical Frameworks
Few contemporary writers have been more studied and celebrated by philosophically-

minded scholars than Jorge Luis Borges. Over the past four decades or so, philosophers,

theorists, and critics from all over the Western hemisphere and from all tendencies and camps

have acknowledged that Borges’ fiction, and in particular the first part of Ficciones, titled El

jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, grapples with some of the most perplexing metaphysical and

theoretical questions. Although there is no consensus as to the specific character and significance

of Borges’ fiction as philosophy, there is no doubt that Ficciones is the most influential Latin

American text in the history of modern Western thought.

Given the frequent references to Borges’ fiction in contemporary—especially

postmodern—philosophy and theory, numerous scholars have posed the question of whether

Borges’ fiction is philosophy. This question has generated a sizable bibliography that continues

to grow. However, judging by the fact that Borges’ fiction is rarely featured in anthologies,

surveys, or histories of Latin American, Hispanic, or Western philosophy, it is clear that Borges’

Ficciones continues to be regarded by the vast majority of scholars as philosophical literature at

best. It is decidedly not understood as literary philosophy, let alone as philosophy proper.

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 Why is Ficciones not considered a part of the canon of Hispanic or Latin American

philosophy, or for that matter, of Western philosophy? A frequent enough answer is that Borges’

writings are literature. While this is obviously the case, literature is a broad concept that

encompasses some philosophical texts. However, most critics who emphasize the literary

character of Borges’ fiction assume that literature and philosophy are essentially different and

mutually exclusive domains. They also take for granted the canonical definition of philosophy

which identifies philosophy with European and Anglo American academic philosophy, and

which excludes anything that does not resemble it. Few critics consider the fact that some

philosophy is literary in character, and that in the Hispanic world philosophy and literature have

been historically intertwined. Since most of the critics who claim that Borges’ fiction is not

philosophy take as a given that only Western-style academic philosophy is authentic philosophy,

and do not take into account the history and character of Argentine, Latin American, and/or

Hispanic philosophy, the question of whether or not Borges’ fiction is philosophy remains wide

open.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss some of the most salient arguments against and

in favor of the idea that Borges’ fiction is philosophy. To facilitate this discussion, I have divided

the chapter into sections that focus on a particular way of conceiving the character of Borges’

philosophical position and contributions. I will show that each of these characterizations entails

an implicit way of understanding philosophy and literature and their relationship and differences.

My analysis relies largely, but not exclusively, on the model provided by Alain Badiou in

Handbook of Inaesthetics (2005), where he outlines the main characteristics of the three

“schemas” or theoretical frameworks that have been most commonly used in contemporary

thought to portray the character of art and philosophy and their relationship, namely, the

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“classical,” the “didactic,” and the “romantic” frameworks (Badiou 2005, 2-5). First, I will give

an overview of what each of these theoretical frameworks proposes regarding the nature of

philosophy and literature and their relation. Subsequently, I will discuss the work of some critics

who have implicitly relied on one of these three theoretical frameworks to address the question

whether Borges’ fiction is indeed a kind of philosophy or not. In the last part of this chapter, I

will introduce a framework that Badiou does not take into account in his theory, which I call the

“analogical” framework. After giving a brief historical overview of this framework and a

summary of its main characteristics, I discuss the work of some critics who in my view have

developed their own analogical way of interpreting Borges’ fiction as a kind of philosophy.

Since the available literature on the subject is vast, I will focus most of my review on

those studies that examine one or more stories from the first half of Ficciones, which bears the

subtitle El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths), and which was first

published separately in 1941. This collection of short stories contains a significant portion of the

fiction that critics have regarded as the most philosophically significant in Borges’ works.

Examining the broad range of assessments that scholars have given to these and other short

stories allows us to better understand why Borges’ fiction continues to be regarded as literature,

but not philosophy.

My review of the critical literature is not meant to be exhaustive, for there is a plethora of

readings on the philosophical aspects of Borges’ fiction. Rather than offering a comprehensive

review of the critical literature, and rather than providing a detailed analysis of selected articles

or books, I will concentrate my discussion on the basic set of assumptions and the most salient

arguments that scholars have made on the question of Borges’ fiction as philosophy.

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The Classical Framework

The philosophy and literature interphase has been discussed and redefined extensively

over the last century. The “classical” framework regards philosophy and literature as essentially

different and autonomous domains, each having its own distinctive set of characteristics and

purposes (Badiou 2005, 4-5). For scholars who conceive of philosophy and literature the

classical way, philosophy seeks truth and deals with concepts and universals, whereas literature

occupies itself with images and particulars and does not qualify as a form of inquiry; they

conceive of philosophy as reasoning and argumentation, and of literature as story-telling,

poetizing, artistic expression, or metaphorical discourse. In their view, while philosophy needs to

be logical and methodical, literature ought to be linguistically rich and aesthetically compelling.

In sum, for them philosophy is an academic discipline that is closer to science than to art. In the

words of Karl Jaspers, “[a] philosopher’s books are not essentially works of art or literature,

whose creator turns out many of them in the course of his life. They are a single search for truth

in thought which is guided by a unity” (1962, 4).

Benedetto Croce (1922) headed the procession of theorists that proposed this “classical”

vision in the twentieth-century. In the field of English literary studies, he was accompanied by

the Practical Critics and the New Critics (for example, I.A. Richard, William Empson, and

Cleanth Brooks) (Weitz 1963, 8; Russo 1991). In Hispanic literary studies, its main defenders

were Leo Spitzer, Dámaso Alonso, and other theorists and practitioners of “stylistics” (la

estilística) (Aguiar e Silva 1972, 434-59). In Formas de hablar sublimes: Poesía y filosofía

(1990), Eduardo Nicol defines philosophical discourse and its relation to, and differences with,

poetic discourse in “classical” terms. Alfonso Reyes (1980) did the same to define literary art,

and to distinguish it from other kinds of writing and forms of knowledge, including philosophy.

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The epigraph in Reyes’ El Deslinde, taken from the second preface of Kant’s first critique, nicely

encapsulates his point of view: “We do not enlarge but disfigure sciences, if we allow them to

trespass upon one another’s territory” (Kant 1965, 18).

A Playful Aesthete

Within this “classical” context, the question of whether Borges’ fiction is a kind of

philosophy is rarely taken with enough seriousness. As Bruno Bosteels recalls in his article

“Borges as Antiphilosopher”:

whenever I presented parts of my ongoing work on Jorge Luis Borges and philosophy to

the wider public in the form of lectures or seminars, somebody … would almost always

stand up afterward and … remark that the Argentine should not be taken seriously, since,

after all, he is not a philosopher but a literary writer, that is, someone who merely toys

with philosophical ideas for the sake of entertainment and aesthetic pleasure, without

implying any systematic philosophy of his own. (2006, par. 1)

The trope of the playful aesthete who toys with philosophical ideas illustrates a

widespread conception of the relationship between writers of fiction and philosophy. Among the

scholars who view the relationship between philosophy and literature in “classical” terms, only a

few, for example, Jorge Gracia and Willian Irwin, address in earnest the possibility that Borges’

fiction might actually be philosophy in a literary form. By altogether different paths, though

nonetheless staying within the classical framework, Gracia and Irwin reach the same conclusion,

namely, that Borges’ fiction is not philosophy. I will first examine Gracia’s article, “Borges’

‘Pierre Menard’: Philosophy or Literature?” (2002).

In his analysis of Borges’ famous short story, Gracia argues that “Pierre Menard: Author

of El Quijote” is literature rather than philosophy “because its text is part of its identity

5
conditions, with the result that it cannot be translated” (2002, 99). To substantiate the

counterclaim that philosophy texts are translatable, Gracia gives the example of Kant’s Critique

of Pure Reason. According to him, “it should not really matter whether I read Kant’s [text] in

German or English (in fact, many believe it is better to read it in English). What should matter is

that I get the ideas” (91). Of course, not all philosophers agree with his claim that the language in

which one reads Kant’s first critique does not matter or that it might be better to read it in

English than in German. However, those who believe that words and ideas are inextricably

united, and who therefore insist that Kant’s text should only be read in German, seem to

constitute a minority in the English-speaking world.

Like many philosophers, Gracia embraces what Berel Lang calls the “neutralist model”

of conceiving philosophical texts (1990, 12). Those who favor this model of reading consider

that the specific language, diction, tropes, rhythm, voice, viewpoint, writing style, rhetoric,

literary format, and structure of a given philosophical text are of secondary importance. In their

opinion, what really matters are the ideas that a philosopher conveys in his or her text, regardless

of the particular words, tropes, styles, or even language. As Lang observes, the “neutralist

model” is based on the principle that all languages are translatable and that “there is a single and

common ground of philosophical discourse,” as well as “a common set of problems,” that can be

expressed in a “philosophically neutral medium of discourse,” and that can be placed “on a

continuous and fairly even line in the history of philosophy” (13).

The possibility of placing Borges’ fiction in this single common ground is nonexistent.

Though one could say that his fiction addresses the common sets of problems with occupy

philosophers –i.e., time, the nature of reality, the meaning of existence– Borges’ texts actually

question the very existence of that continuous and fairly even line of history. As to his discourse,

6
even though it has been widely translated, it could not be further away from a standard neutral

code—so much so that, in Spanish, it has become a trope on its own: un lenguaje borgiano, a

Borgesian language.

What neutralists in general, and Gracia in this article, fail to acknowledge is that some

philosophical texts are just as untranslatable as the most hermetic literary texts. For example, the

writings of those philosophers who belong to what Gracia calls elsewhere “the poetic tradition”

(1992, 6–9), such as Plotinus, Pseudo Dionysus, Meister Eckhart, Giordano Bruno and Martin

Heidegger, are arguably just as difficult to translate as philosophical poets such as Lucretius,

Dante, Ibn Arabi, Petrarch, Hölderlin, and Fernando Pessoa. Unlike other philosophical texts

whose language is “overwhelmingly technical” (Gracia 2002, 94), the discourse of “poetic”

philosophers is “full of metaphor, and suggestive and mysterious connotations abound in it”

(Gracia 1992, 7). As Gracia also notes, the discourse of “poetic” philosophers is primarily

“expressive and directive,” and “contain[s] little or no argumentation” (7). Therefore, the

rhetorical devices, the diction, the syntax, the rhythm, the performative utterances, as well as the

cultural symbols that, Gracia argues, are crucially important for literary texts (2002, 94–95) are

just as important for the texts of some philosophers. In sum, there are numerous texts, among

which Borges could well be included, that are not fully translatable; these need to be read in the

original in order to more fully understand them and appreciate them as both philosophy and

literature.

Given the enormous variations in philosophical and literary texts written across the ages,

and across diverse linguistic, cultural, and geopolitical settings, showing that philosophy and

literature are intrinsically different can easily become an impossible task. For this reason,

William Irwin (2002) and--other philosophers who insist on keeping them separate--resort to

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arguments that are not based on the linguistic, discursive, or rhetorical content or alleged purpose

of the texts themselves.

Irwin argues for examining on a case-by-case basis whether a particular text is a work of

philosophy or literature by taking into consideration the author’s intention and his/her readers’

expectations. His theory also takes into account the formal, linguistic, discursive, and thematic

features that are commonly associated with literary or philosophical texts. He analyzes these

features through the lens of what he calls “necessary-condition family resemblance,” which, as

the name implies, revises Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance. He applies his theory to

Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” and, like Gracia, concludes that Borges’ text is

not philosophy.

Irwin’s approach aims at avoiding the pitfalls of trying to come up with universally

applicable definitions of philosophy and literature. However, his use of the notion of family

resemblance creates other problems. To begin, Irwin’s claim that we need to know whether an

author intended his or her text to be philosophy seems difficult to substantiate. Unless the author

intended his or her text to be philosophy, he argues, it cannot be philosophy since this intention

is a necessary condition for its being a work of philosophy. In the specific case of Borges, giving

this deciding vote to the author certainly becomes problematic.

In an interview with Jean de Milleret, Borges declared: “They want to make me a

philosopher, but it is true that I repudiate all systematic thought, because it always tends to

deceive one” (Milleret 1970, 148). Although this statement shows that Borges certainly did not

regard himself as a philosopher, it also indicates that for him philosophy is equivalent to

systematic philosophy. Of course, not all philosophy is systematic. In fact, in contemporary

philosophy, systems are more often the exception than the rule. However, in this particular

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respect, I take Borges to be in agreement with philosophers like Mario Bunge for whom the only

philosophy that is worth the trouble is systematic philosophy (1974, v). This is partly because, as

Bunge says, “no idea can become fully clear unless it is embedded in some system or other, and

[also] because sawdust philosophy is rather boring” (vi).

Borges probably would have agreed with his renowned compatriot on these two points.

But the main reason why Bunge embraces systematic philosophy is that, in his view, “the world

itself is systemic” (vi), and thus only systematic philosophy can conceivably apprehend the

nature of such a world. By contrast, for Borges, “there is no classification of the universe that is

not arbitrary and speculative. The reason is quite simple: we do not know what the universe is”

(1999, 231). Therefore, in Borges’ view, systematic philosophy deceives because it claims to

“penetrate the divine schema of the universe” when in fact, according to him, “all human

schemas … are provisional” (231).

Another reason why Borges distrusts systematic philosophy is that he considered

reasoning more fallible than narration and description. As he said in his essay, “El Primer Wells”

(the Early H.G. Wells): “As long as an author limits himself to recounting events or to drawing

up the meanderings of a consciousness, we may confound him with the universe or with God;

but as soon as he deigns to reason we deem him fallible” (1997, 138). This implies that Borges

considered rational thinking an ineffective means for obtaining knowledge of ultimate reality. It

also suggests that in his view truth cannot be arrived at through inference and argumentation, but

only through narrative and poetic discourse –that is, if it can be reached at all.

Borges’ own statements on philosophy, as much as his writings, project him as a subtle

and profound thinker, a characterization altogether distant from the playful fiction writer who

toys with ideas. While he repudiates systematic philosophical thinking, it does not follow that his

9
thinking is not philosophical because it is neither systematic nor argumentative. While he

manifests his distrust against rational argumentation, he does so ironically in his fiction through

the rigorous logic of the fantastic, which puts precisely in evidence how far from “truth” logic

and rational discourse can take us. Even though he refuses to be a philosopher in the classical

sense, his writings engage in different and, indeed, many kinds of philosophical thinking.

Louis Vax (1978), David Hall (1982), Juan Nuño (1986), C. Ulises Moulines (1999), and

James Van Cleve (2002), among others, have shown that in essays such as “A New Refutation of

Time” and “The Doctrine of Cycles” Borges resorted to argumentation to defend a novel

philosophical thesis. While Vax, Hall, and Moulines find Borges’ argument compelling, Nuño

and Van Cleve find it unpersuasive. While these particular examples neither prove nor refute that

Borges is a philosopher, they illustrate the fact that some of his writings do bear a family

resemblance with some texts of philosophy, and show that Borges was not unaware of the

philosophical content and claims of some of his writings.

According to Irwin’s theory, a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for a text to be

a work of philosophy is that its author intended it to be a work of philosophy. If we apply this

theory to “A New Refutation of Time,” we would have to conclude that it is not philosophy

given that he explicitly said that he never intended to do philosophy. While in this essay he

approaches the problem of time in his characteristic, i.e., ironic, fashion, he does so both

thoughtfully and insightfully, and far from superficially or just playfully. “A New Refutation of

Time” shows that authorial intention is not a valid criterion to determine whether Borges’

writings are philosophy or “just” literature.

Irwin also claims that “there can be (and are) texts that approach, but fall short of, or to

the side of, being philosophy (texts that are ‘philosophy-like’) and other texts that can be read as

10
philosophy, although they are not philosophy” (2002, 37). He proposes that the latter texts “can

aptly be called philosophical” (37), thus conceding that there is a resemblance between

philosophical literature and works of philosophy. Although Irwin acknowledges that philosophy

is a heterogeneous set of texts with no underlying essence or universal set of characteristics, and

further admits that some literature may indeed be philosophy as well (38), his theory does not

satisfactorily explain how “philosophical literature” is to be distinguished from “literary

philosophy.” In the last analysis, Irwin’s theory rests upon the essentialist distinction between

philosophical texts and texts of philosophy.

This distinction recalls Risieri Frondizi’s distinction between “philosophical thought” and

“philosophy” (1988), and Susana Nuccetelli’s critique of it (2002). I will quote Nuccetelli’s

refutation of Frondizi’s argument at length because her statement applies equally well to Irwin’s

distinction:

It does not really matter whether Sor Juana’s proclamation of women’s right to

knowledge, Acosta’s rebellion against Aristotelian science, Mariátegui’s “indigenous

question,” and so on are classified as either philosophy or philosophical thought, since it

is difficult to see how anything of importance hinges on that distinction. In fact, many of

the major figures [of Latin American thought] are not by any stretch of the imagination

philosophers, as these are conceived of today. But it is clear that they had ideas that are

philosophically interesting and were often quite astute in their insight related to these

ideas even when they did not argue rigorously, as philosophers are expected to do now.

(2002, 252)

In this passage Nuccetelli implies that the fact that Sor Juana, de Acosta, and Mariátegui

are not philosophers in the conventional sense makes no difference. What matters to her is that

11
their ideas are thought-provoking, and that their writings ask questions and raise issues that

philosophers should be addressing. By contrast, for Irwin, while “philosophical literature” asks

“real” philosophical questions, it does not give “real” philosophical answers to these problems.

The difference between Nuccetelli’s perspective and Irwin’s is of course philosophical.

Irwin’s argument calls to mind the genre of philosophical historiography that Rorty calls

“rational and historical reconstruction” (1984, 49–56), which conceives of philosophical

questions “descriptively” (1984, 59). As Rorty explains, a descriptive question is one that “is

currently being debated by some ‘contemporary school,’ or … by all or many of those historical

figures customarily catalogued as ‘philosophers’” (58). By contrast, Nuccetelli’s viewpoint is

associated with the genre of philosophical historiography that Rorty calls Geistesgeschichte

(1984, 56–61), which “works at the level of problematics, rather than of solutions of problems”

(1984, 57). For those who conceive of philosophy this way what is most relevant in philosophy is

the act of asking certain important questions rather than giving specific answers that are

philosophically “rigorous.”

Borges is certainly not an academic philosopher. He clearly does not do philosophy as

this term has traditionally been understood in the Western world. But, as Nuccetelli’s passage

suggests, Borges is not the only one who has done this in the Hispanic world. There is a long line

of poets, narrators, playwrights, and humanists who have been doing philosophy in literature in

the Hispanic world—and not just in the Hispanic world—and this needs to be accounted for in

the histories of philosophy, thought, and ideas, both Hispanic and Western. To use Irwin’s

metaphor, both literary philosophy and philosophical literature are integral members of the

family of Hispanic philosophy, and arguably of the family of Western philosophy as well.

Philosophy is a much more diverse and heterogeneous family than histories of philosophy have

12
portrayed it to be. But since the discipline of philosophy has been dominated by scholars of

Continental and Anglo American philosophy, and especially by those who conceive of

philosophy in “classical” terms, the contributions of many poets, narrators, and dramatists to

Hispanic and Western philosophy have not been recognized thus far.

The Didactic Framework

Not all philosophers and critics conceive of philosophy, literature, and their distinction in

classical terms. In the field of comparative literature, the “romantic” framework (Badiou 2005, 4)

is most often used to study the relation of literature and philosophy; in the fields of cultural

studies and Latin American philosophy, scholars tend to view the relationship between

philosophy and literature in “didactic” terms (Badiou 2005, 2).

The Latin Americans who do this see the history of Latin American thought as potentially

leading to the realization of a truly original—and many would add liberating—Latin American

philosophy. Those who espouse liberation philosophy, for example, believe that it not only

“supersedes” traditional Western and Latin American philosophy, but can also potentially

culminate in the “overcoming [of] the world-system itself” (Dussel 2003, 19).

Those who adopt the didactic framework conceive of philosophy and literature as

antagonists. According to Badiou, the main “thesis” of the didactic framework is “that art is

incapable of truth, or that all truth is external to art” (2005, 2). On this point, those who adopt the

didactic framework agree with those who side with the classical one. The difference between

them is that, according to the classical framework, art does not make any truth claims. By

contrast, according to the didactic framework, art makes false or deceitful truth claims (2). As a

result, didacticism considers that “art must be either condemned or treated in a purely

13
instrumental fashion” (2). This implies that some critics who adopt the didactic framework are

highly critical of literature’s truth or knowledge claims, whereas others regard literature as a

useful rhetorical and heuristic device. Some of them even consider certain literary text effective

propaedeutics to genuine philosophical thinking.

For those who adopt the didactic framework, as for those who use the classical

framework, only philosophy knows what art thinks. The following statement by Theodor Adorno

expresses the didactic viewpoint concisely: “All artworks—and art altogether—are enigmas”

(1997, 120); the “enigma” of the work of art, “which points to its truth-content,” “can only be

achieved by philosophical reflection” (128). This suggests that art sometimes tells the truth.

However, since art allegedly does not know what it thinks, it needs philosophy to tell it what it

thinks. Moreover, since for didacticism art often lies and deceives, it must be kept “under strict

surveillance” (Badiou 2005, 2).

In The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, Arthur C. Danto explains in greater

detail what the didactic framework entails. According to him, the “Platonic schema” typically

consists of “two stages” (1986, 4). In the first stage, philosophy typically keeps art in a “logical

quarantine” (166), which suggests that philosophy examines the alleged truth content of art by

resorting to logical analysis. In the second stage, philosophy places art under political and moral

or ethical “surveillance.” Not coincidentally, as Badiou points out, the foremost defenders of the

didactic framework in the contemporary era are Marxists (2005, 5).

The second “stage” of the “Platonic attack” against art consists of what Danto calls “the

Hegelian strategy” (1986, 7). Here, says Danto, philosophy “allow[s] a degree of validity to art

by treating it as doing what philosophy itself does, only uncouthly” (7). In other words, those

philosophers and literary and art critics who resort to the Hegelian strategy conceive of art as a

14
kind of truth procedure, and as a form of thought. However, in their view, the truth and the

thought that art expresses is presented either in an unphilosophical or in a philosophically

unsophisticated manner. Therefore, in their view, art needs philosophy in order to make its truth

content and its thinking more readily apparent and, above all, more rationally acceptable.

Didacticism comes in two varieties, each with its distinctive strategy. One strategy

condemns art for its problematic epistemological, political, or ethical implications; the other

considers art to be “pre-philosophical,” and thus philosophically naïve, unsophisticated, and

outmoded (though still useful to philosophical thinking). Using Danto’s terminology, I will refer

to the former as “the Platonic strategy,” and the latter as “the Hegelian strategy.” I will first

briefly discuss Platonic didacticism.

One of the best-known theorists and defenders of the Platonic approach in the twentieth

century was Georg Lukács (1963). Although, as noted above, the Marxists are the foremost

defenders of the didactic framework, not all Marxists employ the Platonic approach. For

example, Theodor Adorno (1997) and Raymond Williams (1990) resorted to the Hegelian

approach to give art validity as a truth procedure. In fact, not all Marxists endorse the didactic

framework. Galvano della Volpe (1991), for example, is a Marxist who, in my view, embraces

what I call the analogical framework.

Within the contemporary humanities, other theoretical tendencies that adopt the didactic

framework, and who follow the Platonic approach, are postcolonialism, some forms of

feminism—such as Marxist feminism and postcolonial feminism—and what Elaine Showalter

calls “feminist critique” (1979, 25). Critics of Borges’ writings and thinking who adopt a

“socialist” viewpoint (los “socializantes”) (Massuh 1980, 20) essentially follow the Platonic

15
strategy. In this group are A. Prieto (1954), Viñas (1971), Matamoro (1971), Fernández Retamar

(1989), and others.

As often happens with defenders of the classical framework, few of those who adopt the

Platonic strategy to critique Borges’ writings have read them as philosophy. However, this is

undoubtedly because Platonic didacticism does not make a categorical distinction between

literature and philosophy. Moreover, since Platonic didacticism conceives of literature,

philosophy, and theory as expressions of ideology—by which I mean the values and beliefs of a

society’s dominant class, gender, culture, or social collective—it does not make a sharp

distinction between writers and thinkers, nor between the realms of aesthetics and politics. For

Platonic didacticism, every form of cultural expression is by definition ideological, and as such,

suspect.

A Bourgeois Thinker

The main problem with Platonic didacticism is that it makes sweeping generalizations

about literature. As an example of this type of critique, I will mention Roberto Fernández

Retamar’s brief commentary on Borges in his well-known essay “Caliban.” According to

Fernández Retamar, Borges is “a typical colonial writer, [a] representative among us of a now-

powerless class [i.e., the bourgeoisie]” (1989, 28). In Fernández Retamar’s view, Borges’ fiction

is “the painful testimony of a class with no way out, reduced to saying in the voice of one man,

‘The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges’” (1989, 29). As Martin Stabb

points out in his critique of this passage, “[Fernández] Retamar’s citation of the last line of

Borges’ well-known essay [“A New Refutation of Time”] demonstrates … how a highly personal

bit of poetic prose can be taken out of context and interpreted—or misinterpreted—as the

testimony of an entire class” (1994, 63). A similar criticism can be made of the fact that

16
Fernández Retamar treats all of Borges’ texts as saying essentially the same thing. For example,

in the above statement, Fernández Retamar’s broad generalization does not just apply to the

stories of El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, or even to Borges’ fiction as a whole; he means

it to apply to both Borges’ fiction and his non-fiction. For him, all of Borges’ texts are the

expression of the “bourgeois” ideology.i

From Fernández Retamar’s point of view, only a few progressive intellectuals—such as

José Martí, José Carlos Mariátegui, and Ezequiel Martínez Estrada—are not ideologically

problematic. Granted, Fernández Retamar’s essay should be read in the context of the infamous

“Padilla Case,” which divided Latin American intellectuals into two camps: those who chose to

remain loyal to the Cuban Revolution regardless of its repressive policies and practices, and

those who criticized these policies and practices. But even if we take this into consideration,

Fernández Retamar’s criticism of “bourgeois” writers remains simplistic and reductionist.

The Hegelian Strategy

The position of those who adopt Hegelian didacticism is much more subtle and

intellectually engaging. Two of the leading theorists of the Hegelian strategy in the twentieth

century were Theodor Adorno (1997) and Pierre Macherey (1995). One of the basic tenets of this

strategy is that art embodies, dramatizes, or illustrates philosophical ideas. Yet, according to

Hegelian didacticism, art presents these ideas in an unphilosophical language and format.

Furthermore, many of those who follow the Hegelian strategy of didacticism also tend to adopt

the “neutralist model” of reading texts. But, unlike the neutralists who embrace the classical

framework, the neutralists who endorse Hegelian didacticism argue that some literary texts

figuratively embody, and sometimes literally express, philosophical ideas. In other words, for

some of them literature not only illustrates ideas but also makes philosophical arguments.

17
 As pointed out above, neutralists focus on the philosophical content of a particular work

and pay little attention to literary style and genres of discourse. They read works of fiction,

poetry, or drama as if they were mere outlines or academic treatises. Subscribers to this model of

reading endeavor to separate the philosophical ideas from the literary form in order to identify

the specific character, and trace the genealogy, of the ideas that a particular work allegedly

contains and defends.

Critics who endorse Hegelian didacticism, and who adopt the neutralist model of reading,

typically set out to identify the main “axis” of Borges’ philosophy (Nuño 1986, 18; Arana 1994,

172); or they endeavor to pick out the true philosophical “content” that lies behind the veil of

literature (Mateos 1998, 24); or they attempt to extract the “organic and unitarian [philosophical]

conception” from the multiplicity of voices and worldviews which Borges’ fiction offers (Rest

1976, 18).

The main question that readers use the Hegelian strategy set out to answer is: Does

Borges have a philosophy? Not all of them answer this question the same way. Nuño, for

example, says no. Since it was not Borges’ intention to do philosophy in the first place, says

Nuño, to argue that it is philosophy would be “betraying” Borges’ “deliberate candor,” his “not

always feigned modesty,” as well as his literary art, which has “its own validity and its own

direct original force,” and which therefore does not need to be “transvased to another,

metaphysical, skeletal, rigid” container (1986, 137).

I strongly agree with Nuño that transferring the philosophical content of Borges’ fiction

to a sketchy and inflexible framework does a great injustice to Borges’ literary art. However, I

disagree with him not only because he assumes that, in order to interpret Borges’ texts

adequately, it is both possible and necessary to know Borges’ intentions (137), but especially

18
because he implies that philosophy is all about “content,” and that form in philosophy is

necessarily “skeletal and rigid.”

The main problem with neutralist readings of Borges’ fiction is precisely that they

conceive of philosophy as a fluid that is sometimes found in a mixed, impure state in literary

texts, and that the act of reading them as philosophy involves distilling this content and

transferring it over to another, less beautiful and more utilitarian vessel. What is most

problematic about these readings is not simply that they “betray” Borges’ literary art, as Nuño

suggests, but that they imply that Borges is a mere “illustrator” of other philosophers’ ideas, and

a recycler of philosophical platitudes (Nuño 1986, 15). Ricardo Piglia takes this position to an

extreme when he describes Borges as a “reader of philosophy manuals” who merely reads them

in an “eccentric way” (1986, 88).

A related problem with Hegelian readings of Borges’ fiction is that they assume that

Borges must necessarily defend a specific set or system of ideas for his fiction to qualify as

actual philosophy. For this reason, they devote most of their efforts to identifying the source of

the images, symbols, allusions, theses, quotations, characters, etc., that are found in Borges’ short

stories, as well as in trying to determine which of them Borges actually espouses, critiques, or

rejects. Unsurprisingly, there is major disagreement on the specific character of Borges’

philosophy. In Nuño’s opinion, Borges is a “Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian Platonist” (1986,

104), who ultimately “inverts Plato” (115). Zulma Mateos, agrees that Berkeley and

Schopenhauer are two of Borges’ models, but disagrees that he is a Platonist (1998, 18). Like

Jaime Rest (1976, 18), she argues that Borges is a nominalist (Mateos 1998, 18).

The main problem with this sort of interpretations of Borges’ fiction as philosophy is that

they assume that it must follow the path of thinking opened up by a canonical philosophical

19
author or work for it to be regarded as genuine philosophy. But judging Borges’ philosophy

according to canonical and conventional standards often leads critics to overlook its radical

singularity and originality.

A Dialectical Thinker

Not all the scholars who use the “Hegelian strategy” believe that philosophical content

and literary form are separable. Some adopt the “interactionist model” of reading (Lang 1990,

18). Those who follow this model realize that, in Ole M. Skilleås’ words, “by choosing a style or

form … [philosophers] also choose content. Rather than content being like a fluid the

philosopher can pour into any of a series of forms, as on the neutralist model, the content

according to the interactionist model is at least in part shaped by the form chosen” (2001, 108).

The “interactionist model” to which he refers (Lang, 1990, 18) treats effectively content and

form as intricately related and mutually constituting elements. It forces readers to take into

account the singularity and specificity of texts, rather than conceiving them as mere conveyors of

ideas.

One of the main challenges that this model poses is that many readers wrongly assume

that philosophical texts necessarily either “refute previous suggestions to the age-old problems of

philosophy or … offer new solutions” (Skilleås 2001, 108). As a result, in their effort to show

that a particular literary work is also a work of philosophy, some scholars read works of fiction

as if they were philosophical dialogues or treatises. While their interpretations might be less

reductive than those of neutralist critics, they often end up overlooking the intrinsic

characteristics of the literary texts that they are examining.

In You Might Be Able to Get There from Here (2004) Mark Frisch interprets Borges’

short story “El Aleph” as if it were a Platonic dialogue between “Borges” (the first-person

20
narrator) and another character in the story, Carlos Argentino Daneri. This way of reading recalls

Stanley Rosen’s “dramatic” approach to reading Plato’s dialogues which, as Skilleås observes, is

similar to the interactionist approach (2001, 111). As Rosen explains, this method of reading

“[regards] the dialogue as a unit, and more specifically, as a work of art in which the natures of

the speakers, as well as the circumstances under which they converse, all play a part in the

doctrine or philosophical significance of the text” (quoted in Skilleås 111). To treat Borges’ “El

Aleph” as a unit and as a work of art is, of course, standard practice in literary studies. But to

interpret it as a sort of Platonic dialogue in which the two main characters defend and represent

opposing philosophical positions, and where all the elements of the story are taken into

consideration, is a much less common way of reading Borges.

This reading strategy may offer advantages over approaching “El Aleph” it as if it were

an outline or a treatise. However, Borges’ short story is not a Platonic dialogue. Moreover,

Frisch takes for granted that “Borges” (the narrator) is the spokesperson of Borges’ philosophical

point of view, and that Daneri represents a philosophical position that Borges (the author)

opposes and wishes to critique, dispute, or undermine. While this may seem a reasonably valid

assumption, Frisch himself suggests that “there is a sense in which Borges and Daneri are linked,

as Daneri is said to work at a small library on the edge of Buenos Aires, just as the author did”

(2004, 23). The possibility that, also in a sense, they may be one and the same highlights the

problematic question of the self for Borges, which is undoubtedly one of the most slippery

aspects of trying to define Borges’ philosophy and philosophical position.

Another problem with Frisch’s interpretation is that he uses his conclusions about “El

Aleph” to generalize about Borges’ philosophical position as a whole. The problem with this

approach is that, as David Hall observes, “[a] most peculiar characteristic of Borgesian prose is

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that it does not form a corpus. Borges’ writings are mutually inconsistent and, taken as a whole,

self-contradictory” (1982, 228). This not only means that it is illegitimate to make inferences

about Borges’ philosophical position by examining only one text, but also that even a

comprehensive reading of Borges’ most representative philosophical texts might still not yield a

well-defined and logically consistent philosophical position. Frisch, however, uses his

conclusions about “El Aleph” to generalize about Borges’ philosophical position as a whole. In

his dialectical approach to this position, he argues that “[Borges’] skeptical, agnostic intellectual

position challenges totalities and argues for multiple perspectives, but at the same time suggests

that a delicate balance exists between monism and pluralism” (2004, 17). Though I concur that

the Argentinian embraces both skepticism and agnosticism, the remaining part of Frisch’s

statement is at least questionable.

To begin, Frisch claims that Borges wrote “El Aleph” to argue against certain

metaphysical categories (i.e., totality and monism), and to make a philosophical proposition (that

“there is a delicate balance between monism and pluralism”). Clearly, though, if Borges would

have wanted to make an argument or advance a metaphysical proposition, he would have written

an expository piece—as he did in “A New Refutation of Time”—not a short story. Frisch also

implies that, in the dialogue between Daneri and “Borges” in “El Aleph,” Borges (the author) not

only “plays off the monist and the pluralist,” and “the modernist and the postmodernist visions”

(17), but also that their discussion yields a dialectical synthesis that surpasses their antithetical

positions in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung. As Frisch says, “Borges emphasizes the

interdependence of monism and pluralism, and, thus ascribes certain limits to … pluralism” (17).

In other words, the pluralism that Borges (the author) defends, according to Frisch, neither

entirely negates nor completely dismisses Daneri’s “monistic,” “modernist” position, nor does it

22
entirely accept the narrator’s “pluralistic,” “postmodern” vision. Frisch thus implicitly suggests

that Borges (the author) is a dialectical thinker, and that he uses the short story as a means to put

forward certain arguments and to resolve them in a dialectical fashion.

As I will show in the next chapter, in El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan, there are at

least two entirely different images of the universe, one that portrays it as an infinite totality and

another than portrays it as an centerless multiverse. Given Borges’ epistemological scepticism,

his avowed agnosticism, and his inveterate ironism, it would be senseless to try to determine

whether Borges embraces the cyclical or the modal point of view. It would be even more

senseless to try to find a middle ground between these two completely opposed worldviews.

Furthermore, Borges’ incorporation of the Democritean notion of being into his metaphysics

emphasizes, in my view, the ironist character of his philosophy, since it recalls Montaigne’s case.

As Steven J. Dick points out, the French essayist also adopted Lucretius’ atomist cosmology not

out of scientific or philosophical conviction but simply because it “served the purposes of

supporting his sceptical opinion that man can have no true and absolute knowledge” (1982, 47).

It would be equally arbitrary to try to determine whether the librarian, or Ts’ui Pên, or

any other character from Borges’ fiction, or from the history of philosophy is either the hero or

the villain in Borges’ metaphysics. A number of critics have interpreted Borges’ fiction as

philosophers have traditionally approached Plato’s Dialogues. But there is clearly no Socrates in

Borges’ fiction, and Borges’ metaphysics is not a system. To engage in the task of arguing that a

particular story by Borges is a refutation, a defence, or a corroboration of a certain worldview or

philosophical position is to force a particular way of reading and conceiving philosophical texts

that does not at all suit the non-logocentric and multifarious character of Borges’ fiction and

metaphysics. As Rorty points out, what sets apart the narratives of more conventional

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metaphysicians and ironist theorists from that of ironist poets is that the narratives of ironist

poets are a “network” of “contingencies” (1989, 100).

It is worth clarifying and emphasizing that a great contribution and value of Borges as a

literary philosopher is that he does not necessarily establish a dialogue with philosophical texts

or doctrines in order to endorse or critique them, or to prove them right or wrong, but to exploit

their untapped narrative and poetic potentiality. As he comments in an interview with Jean de

Milleret,

I especially took into consideration the literary possibilities that idealist philosophy

offers … rather than its validity. The fact that I have explored its literary possibilities

does not necessarily mean that I believe in the philosophy of Berkeley or

Schopenhauer, or that I practice, give my trust, or my conviction [to idealist

philosophy]. (1970, 73)

All claims to the effect that Borges’ fiction critiques specific philosophical doctrines

should be taken with a grain of salt: not because these claims are always wrong, but because they

assume that Borges’ fiction either makes or debunks arguments or theories. If this were the case,

it would be indeed appropriate to analyze his texts as if they were treatises and to identify their

logical contradictions and fallacies, as Juan Nuño has done in the more neutralist pages of his

otherwise insightful book on Borges.

Perhaps, one of its greatest contributions to the understanding of philosophy in art and

literature is the Hegelian notion that artworks not only express, but also and above all,

metaphorically embody philosophical ideas. This notion is expressed in Hegel’s own philosophy,

where art is not regarded as a mere illustrator of the ideas that systematic philosophical

speculation has already proposed, but as a producer of original philosophical constructs and

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narratives. Nevertheless, even in the best of cases, art’s theoretical innovations are regarded as

“pre-philosophical” by Hegelian scholars, who identify philosophy with causal, systematic,

argumentative thinking. Furthermore, these scholars often share the Platonic prejudice that artists

are like divinely inspired individuals who have no self-awareness or actual knowledge of what

they express and create.

An Existentialist

A few decades ago, a number of critics proposed that Borges’ philosophy shared a

number of key aspects with existentialism (e.g., Barrenechea, Rest, and Ferrer). Although today

few critics believe that Borges is an existentialist, it is important to revisit this issue briefly, given

that the only philosophy anthology that to my knowledge includes a text by Borges is the second

edition of Robert C. Solomon’s Existentialism (2006, 370-71).

One of the first critics to have found existentialist elements in Borges’ fiction is Ana

María Barrenechea. According to her, “[f]aced with the infinite varieties of the universe, Borges

oscillates between two opposite poles—he either delights in imagining the possession of its

vastness, which would make Man equal to the gods, or else displays the frustration brought on by

the impossibility of possession” (1965, 77). In my view, Barrenechea’s claim is accurate to the

extent that it captures the tension that exists between mysticism and ironism in Borges’ writings.

I will return to this tension below when I examine Borges’ mysticism. However, Barrenechea’s

characterization is misleading to the extent that it suggests that Borges sways between mysticism

and existentialism.

I strongly disagree that Borges manifests in his writings either a feeling of “frustration,”

or “anxiety” (Barrenechea 43), “anguish” (56), or any other type of feeling or attitude typically

25
associated with “the existentialist vocabulary,” e.g., despair, dread, guilt, rebelliousness, and so

forth (Wahl 1969, 90). In my view, it is perfectly valid to use certain texts by Borges to illustrate

a particular existentialist notion (such as the concept of otherness, as Solomon’s choice of

“Borges and I” in the previously mentioned anthology implies). Furthermore, it is undeniable

that most if not all of the texts of El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan feature main characters

who manifest in one way or another the desire for transcendence that is characteristic of

philosophies of existence (i.e., the desire to ascend toward a higher plane of knowledge and

existence in this life). Moreover, these characters typically convey the existentialist’s

quintessential dilemma that transcendence is painfully impossible. However, it is one thing to

find some existentialist traits in Borges’ characters and another to imply that Borges’ characters

either fit or resemble the prototype of the “existentialist hero” (or anti-hero) (Murdoch 1997,

108–15).ii More crucially, even if some of Borges’ characters have certain existentialist traits,

Borges himself is definitely not an existentialist because he neither identifies himself with the

existentialist hero (as defined by Murdoch) nor does he portray himself as one in his nonfiction

or in his many public appearances. Last but not least, unlike Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, de

Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus, Unamuno, or Ernesto Sábato, Borges cannot possibly be characterized

as a writer who attempts to both explain and redeem “the human condition” (Wahl 1969, 90).

The Romantic Framework

This framework is diametrically opposed to the classical one, and quarrels with the

didactic framework about the role of art in the quest for truth and for the best human life.

According to Badiou, the main “thesis” of the “romantic” framework “is that art alone is capable

of truth” (2005, 3; his emphasis). This framework therefore challenges the traditional role of

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philosophy as the seeker and finder of truth. Although the Romantics continue to embrace the

traditional notion that the task of philosophy is to find truth, because they believe that only art

discloses it, they introduce the notion that “poetry and philosophy should be made one”

(Schlegel 1991, 14).

According to Badiou, Heidegger’s philosophical hermeneutics has become the

paradigmatic model of the romantic framework in our time (Badiou 2005, 5). In contrast to the

philosophers who embrace the classical framework, and for whom the philosopher is a kind of

scientist, as Richard Rorty has pointed out, “Heidegger turns away from the scientist to the poet”

(1991, 9). For Heidegger and the Romantics, “the philosophical thinker is the only figure who is

on the same level as the poet” (9). However, for the romantic framework, as Heidegger conceives

it, the thinker and the poet are not one and the same. Thinking and poetry, says Heidegger, “are

held apart by a delicate yet luminous difference” (1971, 90). Therefore, even though in many

respects the romantic framework is diametrically opposed to the classical framework, both

frameworks agree that philosophical thinking and poetry are essentially distinct.

A fundamental difference between the two frameworks is that classicists embrace what

Heidegger calls “the doctrine of the Logos,” which holds that the essential element of thinking is

the proposition (1968, 155). This implies that classicists cannot consider poetry a kind of

thinking, because poetry does not (or should not) make arguments. By contrast, those who adopt

the romantic framework espouse the doctrine of mythos, which maintains that the basic element

of thinking is the word (Heidegger 10). This means that for those who conceive of the

philosophy and literature relationship in romantic terms believe that “the aim of philosophical

thought is to free us from the language we presently use by reminding us that this language is not

that of ‘human reason’ but is the creation of the thinkers of our historical past” (Rorty 1991, 16).

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Those who follow the Romantic framework, therefore, have an entirely different conception of

thinking than do the ones who adhere to the classical framework. For Heidegger, for example,

philosophy is not thinking per se because philosophy does not address what is most thought-

provoking, namely, the question of Being, and more specifically, the difference between Being

and beings (Heidegger 1968, 3–12, 229–244). By contrast, according to him, in a poem such as

Stefan George’s “The Word,” “thinking is going on, and indeed thinking without science, without

philosophy” (Heidegger 1971, 61). As Heidegger says, both poetry and thinking are intimately

related because they “move within the element of saying [Sagens]” (84). In fact, according to

him, ultimately it is very difficult to tell “whether poetry is really a kind of thinking, or thinking

really a kind of poetry” (84). Regardless, says Heidegger, since “thinking is a telling and

speaking of language, it must stay close to poesy” (1968, 135).

Another key difference between the classical and the Romantic frameworks is in the way

they conceive literature and poetry. For the former, poetry is a kind of literature; for Heidegger, it

is not. According to the German philosopher, the poems of Homer, Sappho, Pindar, and

Sophocles “are not literature” (1968, 134). By “literature” Heidegger understands “what has been

literally written down, and copied, with the intent that it be available to a reading public” (134).

By ‘poetry’, however, he means “the elementary emergence into words, the becoming-

uncovered, of existence as being-in-the-world” (Heidegger 1982, 171-72).

Although not every philosopher, theorist, and literary critic who embraces the Romantic

framework necessarily shares Heidegger’s unique concepts of poetry and thinking, he has

nonetheless exerted an extraordinary influence in defining poetic thinking in our time. For

example, Rorty uses the terms “poetic” and “Heideggerian” philosophy interchangeably (1991,

9). Also, by “Romantic schema,” Badiou basically means Heideggerian hermeneutics (2005, 5).

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Moreover, Heidegger’s canon and conception of both poetic thinking (Dichten) and

philosophical poetry has also shaped the way that other theorists who do not embrace the

Romantic framework define this kind of thinking and poetry. For example, when Badiou claims

elsewhere that “the poem is, at the very locus where philosophy falters, a locus of language

wherein a proposition about being and about time is enacted” (1999, 69), he is undoubtedly

taking into account Heidegger’s claim that philosophy does not think Being. In addition,

Heidegger’s clearly informs Badiou’s canon of philosophical poets, which includes Hölderlin,

Trakl, and Celan (71).

In North America, the romantic framework is most influential in the field of comparative

literature, and to a lesser extent in the various departments of American and European national

literatures, including Hispanic studies. It is also a hegemonic framework in Continental

philosophy, both in Europe and across North and South America. In addition to Heidegger, other

influential theorists who utilize the romantic framework are Maurice Blanchot (1982), Hans-

Georg Gadamer (1995), Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy (1988), Richard Rorty

(1989), and Gianni Vattimo (1991).

A Mystical Thinker

Some of the best readings of Borges’ fiction as philosophy are by scholars who embrace

the romantic framework, including Ramón Xirau’s discerning and compact rendition of Borges’

philosophical position in “Borges o el Elogio de la Sensibilidad” (2001). In this and other essays,

Xirau offers an interpretation that is characteristic of certain Romantic readings of Borges. I’m

referring to their tendency to overemphasize the mystical dimension of Borges’ metaphysics at

the expense of its ironist dimension.

29
 Xirau argues that in his fiction Borges makes the following propositions: (a) the

phenomenal realm is an illusion; (b) reality is cyclical; (c) “the world is a metaphor”; (d) “the

world is a unity”; and (e) “time does not exist” (2001, 435-36). In addition, Xirau says, this set of

propositions is “unified” by the doctrine of eternal recurrence (436). He also suggests that in

Borges’ poetry we come to know “the other Borges” that his fiction and his essays do not allow

us to see (437), namely, someone who “believes in human innocence and the goodness of the

earth . . . [a man who] has always struggled between the temptation of doubt and the sentimental

certainty of truth,” and for whom “intelligence has been a check against the possible excesses of

the heart” (440-41).

Interestingly, Xirau’s characterization of Borges’ metaphysical views recalls Bertrand

Russell’s description of “logical mysticism” (Russell 1994, 20-48). According to Russell, the

four basic doctrines of the latter are: (a) only insight can apprehend the nature of ultimate reality;

(b) reality is one; (c) time does not exist; and (d) evil is an illusion (26-28). Although Xirau does

not explicitly characterize Borges’ thought as mystical, his interpretation of his essays, fiction

and poetry complies with all four doctrines outlined by Russell. Xirau’s proposition “e” matches

exactly Russell’s proposition “c,” which states that mystical philosophers believe that “time does

not exist.” Likewise, according to him, Borges adheres to the propositions that reality is cyclical

and that “all is one” (Xirau 2001, 436). Borges’ writings, he states, undoubtedly display a lack of

outrage toward moral and political unrighteousness in the world. But, even more relevantly,

according to Xirau, Borges “believes in human innocence and the goodness of the earth” (440).

Finally, Xirau claims that in his poetry, Borges’ thinking is “una inteligencia-

sentimiento” (an intelligence-feeling) (439). In another essay, he also notes that Borges holds the

view that “any intellectual exercise is ultimately useless” (465). Both statements imply that

30
Borges embraces the notion that only feeling may provide insight into the nature of ultimate

reality, which the poet attains via poetry, casting him effectively as a mystical metaphysician.

(467, 469).

The main problem with Xirau’s characterization of Borges’ metaphysics is that he makes

an arbitrary distinction between Borges’ metaphysics, as expressed in his fiction and essays, and

Borges’ metaphysics, as expressed in his poetry. Perhaps more problematically, he suggests that,

in his fiction, Borges not only makes a set of “propositions” (436), but also “refutes” certain

concepts, such as the nature of time (439). As in most neutralist readings, Borges the narrator is

portrayed here as an argumentative, problem-solving philosopher who, in Xirau’s words, “refutes

time” by resorting to “precise logical-fantastical analysis” (mediante precisos análisis lógico-

fantásticos) (439).

While Xirau’s interpretation of Borges’ poetry is insightful, it seems difficult to justify

the claim that Borges’ poetry captures his philosophical position more faithfully than his fiction

and nonfiction. Like Frisch, Xirau is well aware that there are at least two Borges; but in contrast

to Frisch and most other critics, he implies that the “real” Borges is the monist rather than the

pluralist. Xirau makes a trenchant distinction between metaphysics and poetry, describing the

former as “destructive and fallacious” and the latter as “creative and truthful” (Xirau 2001, 440).

Significantly, Xirau characterizes Borges’ poetry as “poetry of the open space” (438) and as

poetry of “presence” (439). These descriptions recall Heidegger’s characterization of Being as

“the free space of the opening” (1977, 386), and as “the presence of what is present” (1975, 123).

This suggests that, in Xirau’s view, Borges, like Hölderlin in Heidegger’s view, “utters the holy”

(94).

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 However, Xirau’s description of Borges the poet as someone “who lives simply, between

innocence and grace in the wide open land where he was born” (2001, 440) does not fit easily

into the actual life or the actual poetry of the Argentinian. One may be reminded that his poetry

encompasses and traverses a broad range of scenarios and motifs and, in volumes like El otro, el

mismo, advances a conscientious rediscovery of universal human knowledge, in a tone often

dominated by disenchantment and skepticism. In this light, Xirau’s portrayal of Borges as a

mystical poet suggests more a reflection of Xirau’s own Heideggerian perspective than of

Borges’ actual philosophical position.

Heideggerian readings of Borges’ writings usually characterize his writings as confirming

Heidegger’s theory on the disclosure of truth (aletheia) through art. For example, Nataly

Tcherepashenets-Druker proposes that Borges’ short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” enacts

the Heideggerian concept of truth, as only art may do (1997, 36). Similarly, for Judith F.

Grosgold, in “El espejo y la máscara,” “the poet fulfills the mission [of disclosing being by

means of the word], almost without knowing, between concealment and unconcealment, between

lighting and occluding” (Grosgold 2003, 114; my emphasis). Following Heideggers paradigm,

these interpretations often portray Borges as an inspired poet who was not necessarily aware of

the “truth” that his own writings made manifest. Consequently, they imply that Borges is not a

thinker in the strict sense, since either he does not necessarily know what his poetry reveals, or

he merely confirms or illustrates what other philosophers have already theorized in a more

rational and philosophically rigorous manner, such as the “didactic” critics would have it.

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A Platonic or an Anti-Platonic Thinker

This brings me to the question whether Borges is a Platonist or an anti-Platonist, which a

number of critics have raised. In his outstanding Borges et la Metaphysique Serge Champeau has

not only elucidated better than anyone else the mystical vein of Borges’ metaphysics, but also

argues that the latter not only offers a critique of Platonism, but indeed “marks the end of

Platonism” (1990, 91).

Champeau argues that Borges’ metaphysics is driven by what he calls “metaphysical

desire” (1990, 56). This desire consists in the quest of a discourse that surpasses the intrinsic

limitations of representation and that allows the subject of enunciation or speaker to know the

universe in a privileged and absolute way (63–72). In his interpretation, Champeau explains that

metaphors such as the labyrinth symbolize, on the one hand, what is impossible to represent and,

on the other hand, what makes representation possible. One such metaphor is what Heidegger

calls “the clearing” (Lichtung), which he defines as “the open region for everything that becomes

present and absent” (Heidegger 1977, 384).

The way that Champeau interprets Borges’ metaphysics does not seem to be a critique of

Platonism, but in fact suggests that it is yet another variation of Platonic metaphysics. For

example, in Champeau’s view, the labyrinth in Borges’ writings is a metaphor of what he calls

“metaphysical desire” which is basically the attempt to express what is ineffable.iii Accordingly,

Borges’ metaphysical metaphors, such as the labyrinth, allude to the desire “to see the light,” “to

see oneself truly,” “to exit the labyrinth,” “to see it from outside” (1990, 21), “to abandon

representation” (24), “to reach the elsewhere [ailleurs]” (32), to see “the other side” (42), to

suggest “the beyond of language” (56), and so forth. All of these metaphors clearly suggest that

Borges—like the late Heidegger and the early Wittgenstein—aspires to become “a spectator of

33
time and chance, and to see the world “from above” as “a limited whole” (Rorty 1991, 51). This

would of course mean that Borges’ metaphysics is in fact Platonic (rather than anti-Platonic), as

well as mystical in character.

The fundamental difference between mystical and ironist metaphysics resides in the

importance that the drive toward unity (eros) acquires in a text vis-à-vis the role that the critical

impulse (irony) plays in it. As Hall explains, while “the mystical poet [is] empowered by that

eros which lures toward completeness of understanding” (1982, xv), he or she is also moved by

the sense of “irony” which drives the idea that absolute knowledge is impossible. The difference

between mystical and ironist metaphysics, therefore, is more a matter of tone and emphasis than

a matter of substantive incompatibility between the two. In other words, rather than being

mutually exclusive forces, eros and irony constitute what Wilmon Sheldon calls a “productive

duality” (quoted in Rescher 1996, 24). This basically means that the tension that exists between

eros and irony in metaphysical texts can produce a wide variety of metaphysical viewpoints

within a particular range of possibilities, namely, anywhere between dogmatic mysticism and

satirical ironism.

In Champeau’s interpretation, Borges’ metaphysics is situated closer to the pole of

mystical metaphysics than to that of ironist metaphysics. But one problem with Champeau’s

interpretation is that, even though he recognizes the major role that irony plays in Borges’

metaphysics, he puts a much greater emphasis on metaphysical desire (i.e. eros). In other words,

Champeau does not pay sufficient attention to the fact that Borges’ metaphysical desire is both

constantly and relentlessly relativized and subverted by the dissolving power of his ironism.

Another problem with Champeau’s interpretation is that, in his view, the metaphor of the

labyrinth in Borges’ metaphysics typically alludes to the “metaphysical desire” to “exit the

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labyrinth” (1990, 21). I agree that pieces like “The Library of Babel” are a variation on the

Platonic theme of trying to see the world as a “rounded whole,” but this is not necessarily the

case for all of Borges’ stories in which the metaphor of the labyrinth plays a central role. The

most obvious example is “The Garden of Forking Paths,” which, as we shall see in the next

chapter, embodies the plurality of parallel worldviews whose roots can be traced back to

Democritus’s atomism, and which in contemporary philosophy is associated with David Lewis’s

modal realism.

In short, in Borges’ texts, ontological metaphors like the labyrinth are equivocal. Some of

them embody the idea of totality whereas others embody the idea of infinity. In fact, as I will

show in the next chapter, a text like “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim” encapsulates an entirely

different idea of infinity than “The Garden of Forking Paths.”

In my view, the best way to approach the question of Platonism and Anti-Platonism in

Borges’ fiction is after the manner in which Alain Badiou has interpreted the poetry of Fernando

Pessoa. According to him, “[Pessoa’s] thought-poem inaugurates a path that manages to be

neither Platonic nor anti-Platonic” (Badiou 2005, 8; the italics appear in the original). I believe

that Borges’ fiction in general, and El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan in particular, invents a

new form of philosophical thinking and writing, not unlike Pessoa’s poetry. Although Borges

does not explicitly resort to the device of heternonyms, he has also “laid out an entire literature, a

literary configuration wherein all the oppositions and intellectual problems of the century come

to inscribe themselves” (Badiou 2005, 44).

No one has seen this more clearly than JeanWahl when he made the following remark:

“one must know all of literature and philosophy in order to decipher Borges’ work” (quoted in

Nuño 1986, 11; my translation). In La Filosofía de Borges, Juan Nuño has done a remarkable job

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of elucidating the wide variety of philosophical sources and narratives that inform Borges’ best-

known fiction and nonfiction. His account allows us to see the extent to which Wahl’s statement

is more than just a mere hyperbolic gesture to highlight the undeniable complexity and

encyclopedic dimension of Borges’ literature and philosophy. Nuño’s book elucidates—perhaps

better than any other essay on Borges’ philosophy—how certain characters invented by Borges

(such as Al-Mu’tasim, the librarian, Pierre Menard, Ts’ui Pên, and Funes, among others)

emblematize what Badiou calls “a complete artistic configuration” (2005, 38). Unfortunately,

Nuño’s interpretation of Borges’ literature dwells too much on the logical fallacies that he

attributes to Borges’ narratives, and claims that Borges is nothing more than an outstanding

“illustrator” of philosophical platitudes (15).

Moreover, Nuño approaches Borges’ writings as if they were Platonic dialogues in which

there are heroes and villains which represent either Borges’ own philosophical viewpoint or that

of his alleged opponents. For example, in Nuño’s interpretation, two of the heroes of Borges’

philosophy are Al-Mu’tasim and the librarian, whereas “Funes is the perfect Borgian anti-hero”

(2005, 101). According to Nuño, “Funes the Memorious” is “an overwhelming and terrible claim

against radical empiricism, against all anti-platonic theses, and against all those who end up

being enslaved to immediate sensorial data in order to avoid general ideas, [or] universals” (99).

But Nuño’s account of Borges’ “Platonism” is not free of contradictions. For example,

according to him, “The Garden of Forking Paths” is a “pretext” to defend the modal notion of

time embraced by those who support the plurality of worlds view (2005, 62). Although Nuño is

certainly aware that this particular notion of time is not Platonic in either character or origin, he

does not use it as evidence to call into question his thesis that Borges is a Platonist. Instead, he

claims that it actually confirms Borges’ Platonism, since this particular notion of time supposedly

36
“privileges genera and species over singulars and individuals” (72). He also points out that in

some of his essays, Borges refutes the cyclical notion of time (120). However, he does not call

into question his thesis that the librarian is one of the heroes of Borges’ philosophy in light of the

fact that this character actually endorses the cyclical concept of time. No wonder that Nuño’s

failed attempt to square the circle of Borges’ alleged Platonism leads him to conclude that

Borges’ is un platonismo a medias (a half-baked Platonism) (138).

Badiou’s reading of Pessoa offers a much more appropriate model by which to examine

Borges’ writings in their own terms rather than in the terms that are appropriate for

argumentative problem-solving philosophical texts. To be sure, there are certain remnants of the

latter approach in Badiou’s interpretation when he argues that in Pessoa’s poetry, all of the major

“problems” of contemporary philosophy are addressed (2005, 44). In my view, both Borges’ and

Rorty’s emphasis on metaphors rather than on problems is a more adequate way to approach a

poet’s engagements with the philosophical tradition. Badiou also attributes a certain dialectical

structure to Pessoa’s works which I find problematic, since it suggests that his approach has not

entirely broken with the neutralist approach that I critiqued in the previous chapter. For instance,

according to him, since Caeiro represents “the figure of the Same,” he adds that “we immediately

see that Campos is required as the figure of the Other” (43). Nonetheless, Badiou does not fall

into the trap of trying to sort out which of Pessoa’s heteronyms is the actual spokesperson of the

Portuguese author. Likewise, Badiou recognizes that Pessoa himself is but another heteronym

who is no more representative of the author’s “real” self than the other heteronyms. Furthermore,

unlike most critics, Badiou does not assume that if some of Pessoa’s heteronyms defend views

that are characteristically Platonic then it means that Pessoa is necessarily a Platonist, or else that

Pessoa is either an amateur or a sham.

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 Badiou calls into question the very relevance of the Platonism/Anti-Platonism duality,

and proposes that this is one of the main lessons that Pessoa’s thought poems teach contemporary

philosophy and literary theory. I agree with him that this is not the best way to proceed with

writers such as Pessoa and Borges, for whom “the real universe is at once multiple, contingent,

and untotalizable,” and whose works “compose a universe” (2005, 44). In fact, in the specific

case of Borges’ works, they compose not just one but several possible universes which are not

necessarily compatible with one another. In addition, Borges’ philosophy is not meant to

persuade the reader to embrace this or that worldview or idea of the universe, but, above all, to

induce metaphysical perplexity. Another crucial aspect of Pessoa’s heteronyms and Borges’

characters is, as stated above, that each of them emblematizes a “complete artistic

configuration.”

For all the above reasons, I concur with Badiou that a more sensible way to approach the

poetry of writers like Pessoa and Borges is to first identify the different “artistic configurations”

that inform their writings, and subsequently to determine which texts belong to each particular

configuration. An “artistic configuration” is basically a series of works that instantiate a specific

“artistic truth” (Badiou 2005, 12–13). For example, according to Badiou, the poems of Pessoa’s

Alberto Caeiro belong to the configuration that was initiated by Parmenides’ poem whose

“artistic truth” basically consists in the identification of thought and being, (2005, 40–41). To this

configuration belong all the metaphysical or meditative poems that express figuratively and/or

analogically the Parmenidean identification of thought with Being. In Rorty’s terms, this

configuration consists of those philosophers who are poetic world-disclosers rather than

scientistic or political problem solvers (1991, 9–26). The “initiating event” (13) of the

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metaphysical or meditative poem is Parmenides’s poem (Russell 1959, 26), and its protagonist is

“the figure of the Same” (Badiou 2005, 43).

A Post-Structuralist Thinker Avant la Lettre

The ongoing discussion of the romantic framework would be incomplete if it did not take

into consideration deconstructionist theory and criticism. Although the latter is an offshoot of

Heideggerian hermeneutics (Rorty 2005, 166), it is clearly different from it. For example,

deconstructionist theory maintains that neither philosophy nor art nor science nor religion nor

any other human endeavor can possibly disclose the truth. Moreover, it proposes that philosophy

and literature are mutually determining, and intricately entwined, categories.

In principle, deconstruction favors the idea that literature is a form of thinking. In

practice, however, most deconstructionists allow that philosophy is a kind of literature, but are

not as willing to concede that literature is a kind of philosophy. This is particularly true of non-

European literatures. For instance, like most theorists and critics who embrace the romantic

framework, most deconstructionists typically have had little to say about non-European literature

as a kind of poetic thinking.

A hallmark of deconstructionist readings of Borges is the notion that his texts are a

propaedeutic to philosophy, but are not themselves philosophy. In other words, Borges’ writings

are conceived as playing an educational role, much in the same way that Plutarch proposed that

reading Homer is helpful to awaken interest in philosophy (Eden 1997, 35–40). In his article

“Borges/Derrida and Writing,” Fernando de Toro alludes to this practice when he reminds us

how French theorists in particular (for example, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard) began some of

their most famous texts with a prefatory remark about a novel idea that Borges’ writings

suggested to them (1999, 116). Typically, in these readings, such as in the preface of Foucault’s

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Les mots et les choses, Borges’ texts serve to illustrate a particularly quaint idea that challenges

conventional thinking. However, these theorists do not engage Borges’ fiction as thinking per se,

but use it as a heuristic device that prepares the reader, as well as the theorist himself, to envision

a new way of philosophizing. This is also how Deleuze reads Borges in the preface of Difference

and Repetition (1994).

In the wake of this propaedeutic use of Borges’ thinking by leading French theorists, a

number of critics have traced the similarities between Borges’ “avant la lettre deconstruction”

and Derrida’s deconstruction. One example of this way of reading Borges is Sergio Missana’s La

máquina de pensar de Borges (“Borges’ Thinking Machine”) (2003). In his view, Borges not

only anticipates Derridean deconstruction, but is also a deconstructionist thinker himself. The

main difference between Borgesian and Derridean deconstruction would be formal, but in terms

of their propositional content they would be close to one another.

Like Fernando de Toro (1999) and Alfonso de Toro (1999), Missana describes Borges as

a deconstructionist thinker, a “complex interlocutor,” who establishes an “asymmetrical

dialogue” with canonical Western thinkers and writers (2003, 9). By “asymmetrical dialogue,”

Missana implies the “strategic marginality” that, according to González Echevarría (1983), Sarlo

(1993), and others, Borges adopts in his writings (Missana 212). Missana argues that this

position of marginality actually gives Borges an advantage and that, with it, he “disarticulates

arrangements, canons, and hierarchies” (9). In other words, Missana suggests that Borges

manages to subvert hegemonic structures and doctrines via fiction. At one point, he even

suggests that Borges “surpasses” his interlocutors (40).

Missana’s claim takes for granted that Borges’ fiction participates in all sorts of language

games, including the wide variety of language games that different philosophers play. In this

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sense, his reading of Borges recalls the readings of Derrida that Richard Rorty criticized for

implying that the French philosopher is an “argumentative problem-solver” (1991, 121). As

Rorty says, “argumentation requires that the same vocabulary be used in premises and

conclusions—that both be part of the same language game” (125). However, the vocabulary of

“argumentative problem-solvers” is different from that of “poetic world-disclosers” (123–24).

While Missana’s suggestion that Borges is an ironic thinker in Rorty’s sense is insightful

(Missana 2003, 10), his claim that Borges’ “thinking machine” “dissolves [the] arrangements,

relationships, and hierarchies” of a wide variety of discourses is unpersuasive (12). While it is

undeniable that Borges bends the rules of both fiction and nonfiction in his writings, and that in

doing so he has arguably created a new discourse that is both literature and philosophy, the idea

that his fiction “dissolves” all sorts of conceptions, orders, relations, and so forth seems far-

fetched.

In his article, “Borges and Postmodernity” (1999) Alfonso de Toro states that “Borges is

not only a predecessor of postmodernity, but also … a postmodern author in the most genuine

sense of the term” (117; my emphasis). This statement implies that Borges is not a postmodern

philosopher, but a postmodern composer of literary texts. In his view, “Borgesian discourse

establishes a new form of aesthetics” (91), and “Borges created a new paradigm in twentieth-

century literature” (92). By “a new form of aesthetics,” he does not mean a novel aesthetic

theory, nor an original genre of aesthetic thinking, but a revolutionary narrative technique he

calls “defictionalization” in which “the story is always revealed to be an invention and no

attempt is made to ‘make it concrete’” (91).

A. de Toro’s claim that “Borges created a new paradigm” reinforces his point that

Borges’ short stories belong in the “autonomous” domain of fiction. According to him, this

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innovative “paradigm” establishes that “[l]iterature is no longer considered a ‘mimesis of

reality,’ but a ‘mimesis of literature’” (1999, 92). Borges’ fiction, in this sense, inaugurates a

revolutionary way of reading literary texts in which fiction no longer sets out to reproduce the

phenomenal world, but to reconfigure the fictional world in such a way that the domain of fiction

becomes a fully separate, non-mimetic, autonomous realm.

A. de Toro agrees with Arturo Echavarría conceives of Borges’ fiction “as verbal

creations endowed with autonomy” (Echavarría 1983, 20). However, unlike Echavarría, A. de

Toro claims that Borges’ is a literary theorist avant la lettre (1999, 112). He claims that Borges

is a literary author who “creates a new form of deconstruction in which the literary referent, and

even its motivating origin, disappear” (1999, 112). As the “literary referent” and the “motivating

origin” of literary texts allegedly disappear, the connection between the world of fiction and the

phenomenal world also vanishes. Borges’ contribution to the field of theory would thus take

place solely inside literature, and it would only affect the realm of fiction. The ultimate

implication is that, while anticipating postmodern theory, Borges does not really do theory, or

philosophy.

The Analogical Framework

The analogical framework puts philosophy and literature on the same epistemological

level; it views philosophy and literature as similar yet different ways of seeking and conveying

knowledge. In contrast to the romantic framework, which posits that “art alone is capable of

truth” (Badiou 2005, 3; the italics are his), the analogical framework maintains that both

philosophy and art, including literature, are capable of truth, and that the truths that philosophy

and art produce are distinct but correlated. The analogical framework neither conflates literature

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and philosophy, nor completely separates them, but considers their likeness without forgetting or

minimizing their many important differences and variances, and without assigning them a

hierarchy in the Platonic or the Eurocentric scale of knowledge.

Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to give a detailed historical account of the

analogical framework, it is important to note that this framework is Pythagorean in origin, and

that it was widely used in the Hellenistic Era and the Middle Ages (Lamberton 1986). The first

known philosopher to have applied the analogical framework to correlate philosophic and poetic

knowledge is the Athenian Neoplatonist Proclus (410/2-485) (Hardison 1974, 311). Following

the example of his teacher, Syrianus, Proclus endeavored to reconcile Homer and Plato in his

collection of essays titled Commentary on Plato’s “Republic.” First, like Syrianus, Proclus

interprets Homer’s poems as allegories of Neoplatonist metaphysics, and draws parallels

between poetry, philosophy, and ancient mystery religions (Sheppard 1980, 78, 153). Secondly,

drawing on “prisca theologia” and the rhetorical tradition of the first three centuries of the

Christian era, Proclus argues that Plato emulates Homer in both style and subject matter

(Sheppard 124-34). Just as crucially, Proclus shows that Homer and Plato agree that mystical

experience is the highest kind of cognition, and that “this kind of cognition can be attained and

expressed by means of myths” (Sheppard 149). Last but not least—and this is perhaps Proclus’

most lasting and innovative contribution to Western literary theory—he proposes that there are

three types of poetry (mimetic, didactic, and inspired), and claims that the last “conveys truths

about the divine world in allegorical form” (163). Although he agrees with Plato that inspired

poetry “can be dangerous if not properly understood,” Proclus introduces the notion that “to

those who understand it, it is instructive in the highest possible way” (Sheppard 163). According

to O. B. Hardison, Jr., the “hallmark” of Proclus’ theory is:

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 the idea that poetry is a more profound philosophy, a form of theology, a kind of vision.

Its corollaries include: (1) the idea that poetry is necessarily allegorical (its vision is

untranslatable; or it begins with images but ascends to truth; or its profound revelations

must be concealed by the veil of fable from the profane rabble); (2) the notion of the poet

as seer; (3) the positing of a faculty (imagination) higher than reason; (4) the idea that this

faculty seems irrational to the uninspired, so that poets often are compared by the

uninitiated to madmen and drunkards; (5) rejection of the classical theory of imitation

(that poetry is an image of nature, a mirror of life); (6) qualification of the nearly

universal idea that the chief benefit of poetry is that it teaches good morals (that poets

must profit as well as delight); and (7) the idea that the experience of art is not an

entertaining diversion but something akin to religious experience. (311)

Although Proclus is rarely mentioned in contemporary literary theory and hermeneutics,

his analogical framework, his (and his teacher’s) theory of metaphysical allegory, and his theory

of poetry have had a lasting influence in the Western world. For example, Proclus’ texts in

general are centrally important for the transmission of the Platonic tradition in the Arabic,

Byzantine, and Latin Middle Ages (Klibansky 1939, 15, 19, 25-29). Proclus’ Elements of

Theology and his Commentaries on Plato’s “Parmenides,” in particular, played a crucial role in

the continuation of the Neoplatonic tradition in the Western world from the fourteenth to the

nineteenth century in philosophy, and up to the twentieth century in poetry and hermeticism

(Hunt 1976; Sheppard 1980; Siorvanes 1996; Bregman 2009). Additionally, thanks to the

influence of Pseudo-Dionysius, whose works are “based chiefly on Proclus” (Klibansky 25;

Kraye 326), the analogical metaphysics of Proclus has had an indirect but still very important

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role in the Christian mystical tradition of the via negativa, which includes the Spanish mystical

tradition (e.g., Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Miguel de Molinos, and María Zambrano).

Although Romantic hermeneutics and historicism seriously undermined the Neoplatonist

analogical paradigm (Tigerstedt 1974), the analogical framework has nonetheless survived in

various forms in the modern era. For example, in the Hispanic world, the Dominicans Domingo

Báñez and Juan Poinsot (i.e., John of St. Thomas) developed an “analogical hermeneutics” that

exerted significant influence in the development of the Baroque paradigm during the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries, both in the Iberian peninsula and in Latin America (Beuchot 2003, 108-

15). As Mauricio Beuchot points out, during the Baroque era the analogical framework

flourished not only in philosophy, literature, and the arts, but in all spheres of life, including

religion and the culinary arts (116). In fact, according to Beuchot, there is an “analogical” or

“analogist” tradition in Latin America, which a number of philosophers, poets, artists, and

scholars have continued and reshaped in the contemporary era, including Octavio Paz, Bruno

Puntel, Enrique Dussel, Juan Carlos Scannone, Germán Marquínez Argote, and Beuchot himself

(130).

While today it is often assumed that the vindication of poetry in philosophy began in the

twentieth century with Heidegger, in fact some of the first efforts to vindicate poetry as a kind of

thinking in the twentieth century were undertaken two decades earlier by philosophers who

embraced the analogical framework. Two of them were Spaniards: George Santayana in the

English-speaking world, and Miguel de Unamuno in the Spanish-speaking world.

Given that Santayana expounds this framework in significant detail in Three

Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe (1935), it is helpful to discuss his theory, if

only briefly. Perhaps the most straightforward way to characterize Santayana’s analogical

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framework is to contrast it with the “Hegelian strategy” (Danto 1986, 7). The similarities

between Santayana’s way of approaching the philosophy and literature interface and Hegel’s are

considerable. However, Santayana’s way of understanding the philosophy and poetry relation is

significantly different.

In Three Philosophical Poets (1935), Santayana suggests that poetry is both a truth

procedure and a form of thought. He uses the examples of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, Dante’s

Divine Comedy, and Goethe’s Faust to argue that a poem can effectively embody a “complete

system of philosophy” that is “typical of an [entire] age” (1935, 4–5). According to him,

Lucretius’ poem embodies “naturalism” (which is typical of the classical era) (5), Dante’s poem

incarnates “supernaturalism” (which is exemplary of the Middle Ages) (7), and Goethe’s

represents “romanticism” (which is characteristic of the modern era) (8). This means that each of

these philosophical poems reveals via metaphor what philosophical treatises expound via

argumentation. In Santayana’s interpretation, both poetry and philosophy at their best “terminate

in insight,” which he describes as “a steady contemplation of all things in their order and worth”

(11). In Santayana’s view, “[a] philosopher who attains [insight] is, for the moment, a poet; and a

poet who turns his practice and passionate imagination on the order of all things, or on anything

in the light of the whole, is for that moment a philosopher” (11).

If we compare Santayana’s theory with the Hegelian strategy, we find some important

similarities. For example, Santayana’s theory can be characterized as Hegelian in that it claims

that some poetry is capable of expressing metaphysical knowledge (Wicks 1993, 349).iv

Moreover, Santayana’s claim that poetry embodies in an artistic form the rationality of a whole

era, and that both the artistic form and the philosophical content of art must be conceived in

historical terms are both characteristically Hegelian propositions (Wicks 357, 369). In fact,

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Santayana himself recognizes that his theory is informed by Hegel’s philosophy when he claims

that, “the diversity of these three poets [i.e., Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe] passes, if I may use

the Hegelian dialect, into a unity of a higher kind. Each is typical of an age. Taken together they

sum up all European philosophy” (Santayana 1935, 4). In this passage Santayana literally

acknowledges his debt to Hegel by using his terminology. Additionally, similar to Hegel’s

aesthetics (Wicks 361), Santayana’s philosophy also “revitalizes the famous Platonic triad of

truth, goodness, and beauty.” All of these elements in Santayana’s theory suggest that the latter is

a variation of what Arthur Danto calls the “Hegelian strategy” (1986, 7).

However, there are also several important differences between Santayana’s conception of

poetry as a form of thought and Hegel’s. For instance, as Robert Wicks observes, in Hegel’s

aesthetics “poetry … strives to become philosophy, but it remains bonded to its literary form of

expression” (Wicks 1993, 359). This is because Hegel, unlike Santayana, privileges the

conceptual over the metaphorical. As a result, even though Hegel “ranks [poetry] as the most

profound art” (359), he nonetheless claims that poetry is inferior to philosophy. This is because,

in his view, poetry discloses truth metaphorically whereas philosophy discloses it conceptually,

and thus, rationally. As Danto says, the Hegelian strategy basically consists in “allow[ing] a

degree of validity to art by treating it as doing what philosophy itself does, only uncouthly”

(1986, 7).

This is not Santayana’s position. In his view, a philosophical poem is just as effective as a

philosophical treatise at eliciting insight or theoria (θεωρία). If anything, Santayana reverses the

Hegelian strategy, for not only does he put a poem and a treatise on the same epistemological

level, but since a philosophical treatise expresses in clumsy technical language what a

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philosophical poem expresses beautifully, from Santayana’s perspective the uncouth one is not

poetry but philosophy.

By the same token, according to Hegel, all art is not only an imperfect form of knowledge

and thought, but as a form of knowledge art is “dead” (Wicks 1993, 369). This is because,

according to him, philosophy is a much more effective way of disclosing truth than art. Unlike

art, whose truth and form in his view are historically bound, the truth that philosophy discloses is

both universally and permanently valid.

Again, this is not Santayana’s position. For him, poetry is no less historically bound than

philosophy since both are inextricably tied to the era in which they were produced. Just as

Dante’s poem and his supernaturalism are products of his age, Hegel’s writings and his absolute

idealism are products of his time. However, in Santayana’s view, while Dante’s supernaturalism

and Hegel’s idealism are equally mortal as systems of thought, Dante’s poem is less susceptible

to obsolescence than Hegel’s treatises due to the fact that the Divine Comedy is not only a work

of thought but, above all, a work of art.

There is yet another important reason why it is necessary to situate Santayana’s theory in

a different framework altogether. Unlike Hegel and Heidegger, who both do Geistesgeschichte,

Santayana practices what Rorty calls “intellectual history” (1984, 67–74). In other words,

Santayana does not make the history of philosophy lead up to his own philosophical system.

Although he also wishes to reconfigure the canon of philosophy, his goal is not to simultaneously

honor and depose “the great dead philosophers” nor to proclaim himself the ultimate theorist or

thinker after whom philosophy comes to an end. Rather, Santayana’s goal as intellectual historian

is, as Rorty would say, to blur “the distinctions between great and non-great dead philosophers,

between clear and borderline cases of ‘philosophy’, and between philosophy, literature, politics,

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religion and social science” (70). Therefore, Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets can be

described as an effort to add three names and three poems to the canon of Western philosophy, as

well as to show that the traditional philosophy-poetry distinction and hierarchy do not hold when

comparing the thought of “great dead poets” such as Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe to the thought

of “great dead philosophers” such as Epicurus, Aquinas, and Hegel.

To the extent that Santayana aims to reconfigure the canon of philosophy and redefine

philosophy by blurring the philosophy-poetry distinction and by using the term philosophy in the

“honorific” sense, he can be regarded as an “intellectual historian,” in Rorty’s sense. However, if

we also take into account the fact that he is not the kind of intellectual historian who is interested

in describing what his favorite intellectuals “were up to at a given time,” or in chronicling “their

interaction with the rest of society,” or in understanding “what it was like to be an intellectual in

[this or] that region” (Rorty 1984, 68), then it is necessary to put Santayana in a special category.

Unlike most other intellectual historians, Santayana conceives of philosophy in

transcendentalist terms. In other words, for him genuine philosophy is systematic in character.

This explains why in his view a truly great philosophical poem embodies what he calls a

“complete system of philosophy” (1935, 5). This also explains why he is one of the few system

builders of the twentieth century. Santayana’s transcendentalist conception of philosophy is at

odds with the immanentism that characterizes most contemporary thought.

Four critics who have developed their own analogical way of reading Borges’ fiction as a

kind of philosophy are, in my view, Humberto Piñera (1975), Alberto Moreiras (2001), Lois P.

Zamora (2002), and Bruno Bosteels (2006).

In Filosofía y literatura: Aproximaciones, Piñera uses a transcendentalist analogical

approach to explain what he calls “the specific difference” between philosophy and literature

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(1975, 16). Readers who interpret texts through the lens of the transcendentalist analogical

framework typically associate philosophy with systematic philosophy, and associate literature

with non-systematic thinking. For example, in order to justify his claim that Borges’s fiction is a

kind of philosophy, Piñera proposes that Borges’ “work suggests a kind of systematization of the

unsystematic” (1975, 92). Another claim that is characteristic of those who adopt the

transcendentalist analogical framework is that philosophers have always addressed certain

perennial questions, and that to be a philosopher essentially means to address this sort of

questions. Thus, Piñera notes that such issues as “‘eternity’, ‘knowledge’, ‘time’, ‘space’,

‘movement’, etc. appear constantly in [Borges’] writings and leave in the reader a vague, and

sometimes inexpressible, feeling of imprecision of what cannot be defined or expressed, in a

word, of [those questions that] the philosopher considers unavoidable” (92). This implies that, in

Piñera’s view, to be considered a genuine philosopher, a thinker need not answer these questions

in any particular way. What matters most is that he or she does address these questions in his or

her writings and invites readers to do the same. More specifically, according to this viewpoint, a

philosopher is someone who manifests wonderment and perplexity about certain unanswerable

questions, and who is capable of awakening the same sense of wonderment and perplexity about

these questions in others.

Readers who rely on the transcendentalist analogical framework, like those who use the

Hegelian strategy to interpret philosophical literature, tend to suggest that philosophical literature

embodies a particular philosophical system or set of philosophical ideas. However, rather than

implying that literature merely illustrates or dramatizes the system or ideas that other

philosophers have already developed in a more “rigorous” fashion—thus suggesting that literary

texts and authors simply give a novel form to the ideas and arguments of philosophical texts and

50
thinkers—those who utilize the transcendentalist analogical framework acknowledge that there is

a significant difference between works of philosophy and works of literature. They also propose

or assume that philosophy and literature are two different ways of attaining the same knowledge

or insight.

Piñera proposes that philosophy and literature are “two different ways of expressing …

the only reality to which man has access” (1975, 12). For example, he says, the novels of Miguel

de Unamuno express in narrative form what his essays convey in expository fashion (13). Notice

that Piñera does not suggest that Unamuno’ novels and essays illustrate or recycle the ideas that

other thinkers have proposed elsewhere in a more systematic or philosophically “rigorous” way.

Nor does he imply that Unamuno is an existentialist avant la lettre, as some interpreters have

suggested. In Piñera’s view, Unamuno is an original philosopher, who philosophizes in his essays

and in his novels and poems. Furthermore, Piñera argues, Unamuno’s essays and novels express

similar ideas in a different format. He emphasizes that a literary author need not have first

developed his or her ideas in an expository format in order to be able to produce genuine

philosophical literature. Quoting Unamuno, he endorses the idea, defended by both Unamuno

and Santayana, that in Goethe’s Faust, for instance, there is as much, if not more, philosophy as

in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (14).

According to Piñera, the “specific difference” between works of philosophy and works of

philosophical literature is perspectival (1975, 15). In other words, according to him, while the

philosopher focuses on the universal, the poet aims at the particular and the singular. The

philosopher, he says, typically inquires about “the essence of things,” and addresses general

questions such as “why is there pain?” (15). By contrast, he says, the poet explores a concrete

manifestation of a particular phenomenon—such as Hamlet’s suffering for the death of his

51
father—and uses it as the basic argument for his work (15–16). The fact that other philosophers

and poets have explored the theme of physical or emotional pain both before and after

Shakespeare’s drama in no way diminishes it as either philosophy or literature. As Piñera

suggests, the difference between a work of philosophy and a work of literature may very well be

purely “formal” from the thematic point of view. Nevertheless, that “specific difference” is what

makes them both unique and irreducible to the other. In short, he concludes, “philosophy and

literature are like the front side and the back side of the same reality” (18).

To deepen our understanding of Piñera’s transcendentalist analogical viewpoint, I will

compare his interpretation of Borges’ philosophical position with Ramón Xirau’s. As indicated in

the previous chapter, Xirau relies on the Romantic framework to elucidate the elements of

Borges’ metaphysics and implies that Borges’ metaphysics is mystical in character. To be sure,

Xirau acknowledges that Borges manifests in his essays and fiction a radical skepticism toward

all human claims that knowledge of reality and self-knowledge are ever possible. Nevertheless,

in his view, Borges’ poetry expresses Borges’ actual set of beliefs (Xirau 2001, 467–69).

Therefore, while Xirau is fully aware of the tensions between mysticism and skepticism in

Borges’ writings, he privileges the mystical poet over the skeptical essayist and ironic storyteller.

By contrast, Piñera recognizes that there is a tension, as well as a logical contradiction,

between mysticism and skepticism in Borges’ essays and short stories. However, unlike didactic

readers such as Juan Nuño, who dismisses the claim that Borges’ fiction is philosophy on the

grounds of its being logically inconsistent, or like Mark Frisch, who proposes that the

contradiction is only apparent, Piñera proposes that Borges embraces contradiction because he

holds the conviction that “there is nothing without its opposite” (1975, 111). Nor does Piñera

propose that the “real” Borges is either a mystical or a skeptical thinker, a monist or a pluralist,

52
as most interpreters tend to do; he thinks that Borges is both a mystic and a sceptic, a monist and

a pluralist.

In other words, Piñera implies that Borges assumes the “both-and” attitude of the

analogical framework rather than the either-or mindset of the classical and the romantic

frameworks. For example, instead of saying that intuition rather than reasoning produces

knowledge, Piñera proposes that Borges shows that “knowledge must be, at the same time,

intellection and intuition” (1975, 93; my emphasis). Similarly, rather than saying that Borges de

facto endorses the doctrine of eternal recurrence, Piñera illustrates how Borges both endorses

and refutes this doctrine. Last but not least, Piñera shows that, while in some of his texts (e.g.,

“El Aleph”) Borges agrees with Parmenides that all is one and with Zeno that movement is

impossible, in other texts (e.g., “The Doctrine of Cycles”) he concurs with Heraclitus and

Bergson that “everything flows.”

Piñera provides a more complete account of the various positions that Borges endorses in

his works than do most other studies on Borges. He also offers a persuasive argument on the

“specific difference” between philosophy and literature, and presents a strong case that Borges is

a nonsystematic philosopher who embraces incompatible doctrines. Additionally, in Filosofía y

literatura: Aproximaciones, Piñera examines the philosophy and poetry/literature relationship in

the work of various authors besides Borges: Aristotle, Heidegger, Sartre, Ortega y Gasset, René

Márquez, and Eduardo Mallea. Although Piñera does not explicitly draw the connections

between this heterogeneous ensemble of thinkers, the sole act of discussing their work in a single

volume suggests that he recognizes that the philosophy and literature interface is not bounded by

geography, history, or culture. At the same time, the fact that he discusses the work of three

contemporary European philosophers, and three contemporary Hispanic American writers who

53
clearly transgress the traditional boundaries of philosophy, and who explore the philosophy and

literature borderland, suggests not only that he applies the terms philosophy and philosopher in

“honorific” terms, but also that he realizes that using these terms in this way is crucial for a

better understanding of the Hispanic philosophical tradition.

Unfortunately, Piñera makes none of these connections explicit. He leaves it up to the

reader to infer what the philosophy and the writings of the authors that he includes in his study

have in common with one another, since he treats each of them as a separate case. Although he

acknowledges that, in the twentieth century, the interface of philosophy and literature was

especially important, he does not mention that it was also particularly significant for Hispanic

America, where systematic philosophy has not flourished. Although in his essay on Mallea he

points out that certain Argentine writers such as Borges, Macedonio Fernández, Ezequiel

Martínez Estrada, and Eduardo Mallea are eminent thinkers (141), in his essay on Márquez he

claims that very few Hispanic American authors are both creative writers and thinkers (118). He

also wrongly implies that the literature and philosophy connection is largely a phenomenon of

the existentialist movement (153).

Regardless of the drawbacks of Piñera’s interpretation of the philosophical content and

significance of texts written by Hispanic authors, his essay on Borges illustrates the implications

of reading fiction through the lens of the transcendentalist analogical framework.

Unlike Piñera and most other critics, in his article “Borges as Anti-philosopher” (2006)

Bosteels acknowledges that in the history of Western thought there are not only systematic but

also non-systematic philosophies. Bosteels calls the latter “antiphilosophy” and argues that

Borges’ writings belong in this category, along with those of “Saint Paul, Pascal, Rousseau,

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the early Wittgenstein” (2006, par. 2). At the same time, Bosteels is

54
fully aware that the complexity of Borges’ philosophy cannot be characterized in either univocal

or conventional terms. He recognizes that Borges oscillates between different philosophical

positions (for example, between mysticism and skepticism) not only from story to story, but

sometimes even within “the same story or essay” (par. 4). Rather than dismissing these facts as

evidence of Borges’ logical inconsistency, and rather than privileging one viewpoint over all of

the others, Bosteels identifies four basic positions that in his view all “antiphilosophers” adoTo

present his case, he uses as a model Badiou’s interpretation of the philosophy of the early

Wittgenstein.

According to Bosteels, “an antiphilosophical approach to thinking” has the following four

characteristics:

First, the assumption that the limits of language coincide with the limits of the world;

second, the reduction of truth to being nothing more than a linguistic or rhetorical

effect, the outcome of historically and culturally specific language games; third, an

appeal to what lies just beyond language or at the upper limit of the sayable, as a

domain of meaning irreducible to truth, and, finally, in order to gain access to this

domain, the search for a radical act, such as the religious leap of faith or the

revolutionary break, the intense thrill of which would disqualify in advance any

systematic theoretical or conceptual elaboration. (2006, par. 3)

Bosteels’ helpful model identifies four basic positions that, in his view, all

“antiphilosophers” maintain, namely, (1) nominalism, (2) cultural and historical relativism, (3)

mysticism, and (4) radicalism (2006, par. 3). In the specific case of Borges’ “antiphilosophy,”

Bosteels points out that the fourth position manifests itself as a species of “artistic radicalism,” in

which the subject seeks transcendence via the aesthetic experience in general (par. 3).

55
 Bosteels’ model is an important contribution both to the literature on Borges’ philosophy

and to our understanding of literature as philosophy. It challenges the view of those who

maintain that Borges “should not be taken seriously since, after all, he is not a philosopher but a

literary writer” (2006, para. 1) by showing that there is indeed a family resemblance between

Borges’ thinking and that of other nonsystematic Western philosophers. In fact, his model also

helps us better understand some of the key similarities between Borges’ metaphysics and that of

other Hispanic analogical thinkers.

What Bosteels’ model does not address are the differences and tensions that exist between

distinct types of “antiphilosophy.” Unlike other scholars, Bosteels takes into account the fact that

Borges’ texts manifest a variety of positions, but he (judiciously, in my view) neither privileges

any one of them nor attempts to reconcile them into a more logically consistent “system.”

However, he leaves unresolved the tension between Borges’ mysticism and his radical

skepticism, which is crucial for characterizing Borges’ analogical metaphysics in a more specific

manner. This will be the focus of my interpretation of Borges’ Ficciones in the next chapter.

In his reading of “The Lottery of Babylon,” Alberto Moreiras (2001) also challenges the

conclusion of most classical, didactic, and romantic critics that Borges is not a theoretical

thinker. While Moreiras clearly embraces some aspects of the romantic framework and some

aspects of the didactic framework, he nonetheless abandons the Eurocentrism that plagues the

former, and the logocentrism that affects the latter. Moreover, unlike Zambrano’s synthesis of the

romantic and the didactic frameworks, which falls within the transcendentalist paradigm,

Moreiras’ theoretical paradigm is resolutely immanentist.

Like other deconstructionists, Moreiras recognizes “Borges’ central position in the

postmodern canon” (2001, 174), and describes him as a “precursor thinker” (175). However,

56
rather than heralding Derridean deconstruction, Moreiras proposes that Borges, in “The Lottery

of Babylon,” anticipates Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology (179), as well as Antonio Negri

and Michael Hardt’s notion of “the real subsumption of society under capital” (175). Moreiras

thus rejects the notion, defended by A. de Toro and others that Borges’ fiction says nothing about

the phenomenal world.

Moreiras does not simply affirm that Borges is a thinker; he argues that Borges is “a

theoretical thinker for whom historical knowledge is the ultimate goal” (174). Consequently,

beyond the purely academic gesture of asserting that Borges theorizes in his fiction, and far from

suggesting that Borges’ thought is politically irrelevant, or a mere epiphenomenon of ideology,

Moreiras proposes that Borges is a theoretician for our time. Specifically, he claims that “Borges

opens up the possibility of an alternative history: a history of the radical negation of ideological

universality, or of its revelation as false consciousness” (2001, 183). This thesis not only rejects

reductive Marxist interpretations of Borges’ thought, but also suggests that Borges’ fiction is an

eminent example of what he calls a “counterhegemonic articulation” (13). Moreiras’ thesis

implies that Borges’ fiction does not merely fulfill an overdetermined ideological role, but in fact

also subverts the very same mechanisms of domination that it purportedly serves and reproduces.

According to Moreiras, Borges’ “The Lottery of Babylon” subverts ideology “through the

denarrativization of life” (2001, 180–81). As Moreiras explains, when all human action is the

result of “an order issuing from above,” as happens in Borges’ short story, “life is thoroughly

denarrativized” because “every human event, every story is simply that story and no alternative

perspective can ever be developed” (181). While in Borges’ short story, “life is always already

heteronomous,” the story also “‘redirects’ … ‘our attention toward history itself and the variety

of alternative situations it offers,’” says Moreiras, quoting Fredric Jameson (181). By disclosing

57
the infinite array of possibilities that history withholds, “The Lottery of Babylon” thus keeps

alive the desire for freedom, renews history, and awakens “historical consciousness” (182). In so

doing, it also fulfills the historical mission of literature, which is, in Moreiras’ view, to subvert

both ideology and ontology (182–83).

While Moreiras recognizes that an “ontological reading” of Borges is indispensable, he

also shows that it is no less reductive to examine Borges’ writings solely through the lens of

ontology (2001, 174) than it is to view them through the lens of “pure fiction.” As he points out,

a “historical reading” is necessary in order to fully understand the theoretical dimension of

Borges’ fiction (174). This type of reading involves situating Borges’ fiction, not only in its

literary and philosophical context, but also in its social, political, economic, and historical ambit.

Consequently, Moreiras calls Borges “a thinker of situational consciousness” (2001, 174).

This implies that Borges theorized from his own position as an intellectual living in Buenos

Aires in the aftermath of the Black Thursday of 1929 (175), and that he translated his daily life

experiences, as Fredric Jameson would say, “with no distance and no embellishments” (quoted in

Moreiras, 182).

In sum, according to Moreiras, Borges’ fiction “open[s] up the possibility” of “a new way

of thinking history as such,” i.e., post-historically, post-aesthetically, and post-metaphysically

(2001, 183, 311). Therefore, while Moreiras evidently does not claim that Borges’s fiction is a

kind of philosophy, this is no doubt because, to his Heideggerian and Derridean ears,

“philosophy” is an inherently onto-theo-logocentric enterprise that needs to be deconstructed and

abandoned in favor of a post-historical, post-aesthetic, and post-metaphysical thinking.

Nevertheless, in Moreiras’ view, Borges’ fiction clears the path for this kind of thinking.

58
 Zamora’s article, “Borges’s Monsters: Unnatural Wholes and the Transformation of

Genre,” (2002) is another outstanding contribution to the understanding of Borges’ fiction as

philosophy. Unlike most scholars who have addressed the question of philosophy in Borges’

fiction, she does not treat philosophy as a timeless, universal category nor does she understand it

according to the way that the “great dead philosophers,” or the academically trained scholars of

the Continental and Anglo American traditions tend to do. Just as importantly, in her article she

takes into account the way philosophy has been conceived in the Hispanic world, both before and

during Borges’ time. Statements such as the following speak volumes about the cultural and

intellectual environment that nurtured Borges and determined his intellectual and literary

trajectory and output:

Genres and disciplines have never been as cleanly separated in Spain [or Argentina]

as elsewhere in Europe” (Zamora 2002, 51); “these were years of cultural crisis and

artistic response, and also years of personal exploration for the young cosmopolite

polyglot Borges” (49); “[b]oth the philosophical and the literary climate of Buenos

Aires in the 1920s and 1930s would have lent themselves to a young writer with a

metaphysical bent looking for appropriate narrative forms” (58).

Zamora shows that the act of translating his lived experience into “hybrid ficciones”

(2002, 53) was not an innocuous form of entertainment or escape for Borges. As she says,

“Borges was consciously engaged in dismantling the barriers separating genres and disciplines,

particularly those between literature and philosophy” (51). Zamora’s essay also acknowledges

that Borges is neither the first nor the last Argentine or Hispanic writer to have done philosophy

in literature, or to have written philosophical “ficciones” (53). Unlike most scholars who

interrogate the sources of his philosophy in Europe or North America, she documents the major

59
influence of Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, and Alfonso Reyes on Borges’ thinking and writing

(55).

Unfortunately, she does not discuss the crucial role that Macedonio Fernández’s

friendship, philosophy, and writings played in his life. Nor does she take into account Argentine

philosophy, but instead focuses mostly on Hispanic philosophy as a whole. To my knowledge, no

one has yet interpreted Borges’ writings in the context of Argentine philosophy. The only

exception is the ample work done on the relationship between Borges’ and Macedonio

Fernández’s literature and philosophy.v However, since Macedonio Fernández is rarely regarded

as a “true” philosopher, few of these studies emphasize the philosophical significance and

originality of both Macedonio Fernández and Borges; nor do they interpret their work in the

context of Argentine, Latin American, or Hispanic philosophy. A book on Borges’ philosophy

that interprets it in the context of Argentine thought, and through the lens of intellectual history

and the immanentist analogical framework, would be a major contribution to Borges studies, not

unlike Beatriz Sarlo’s ground-breaking Jorge Luis Borges: A Writer on the Edge (1993).

Zamora is, of course, author of the award-winning The Inordinate Eye: New World

Baroque and Latin American Fiction (2006). Although this book does not discuss the

relationship between philosophy and literature, but that between the arts and literature in Latin

America, she nonetheless uses an analogical framework to draw parallels between the verbal and

the visual arts and to show that they are interrelated and intertwined. In fact, Zamora’s analogical

framework explores not only the relationship between the visual arts and literature, but also the

intimate connections that exist between the arts, literature, architecture, politics, aesthetics, and

religion in Latin America.

60
 In The Inordinate Eye Zamora interprets, among other texts and artworks, Borges’

writings in the context of the visual and verbal culture of the Baroque tradition. In so doing, she

sheds new light on the multifarious works of the celebrated Argentine author. According to her,

Borges is not a postmodern but a Neobaroque writer whose “ironic intertextuality aspires to

revive occluded texts and traditions” (2006, xvi, 300). Says Zamora,”[i]t is Neobaroque in its

self-conscious engagement of Baroque structures of visual perception and spatial extension: the

mirror, the labyrinth, the dream, the trompe l’oeil, and the mise en abîme serve his greatest

theme; the illusory nature of all knowledge” (xviii). Thus, although she does not explicitly say it,

she suggests that Borges’ Neobaroque sensibility is a consequence of his radical epistemological

skepticism.

Zamora provides ample evidence that Borges’ writings can and should be considered a

part of the Hispanic Baroque tradition, and particularly its “cerebral, logical side,” along with the

works of Baltasar Gracián, Miguel de Cervantes, Luis de Góngora, and, above all, Francisco de

Quevedo (2006, 235). But she also recognizes that “Borges always includes the means to

deconstruct any single reading of his work…” (237). Therefore, like Piñera and Bosteels, she

realizes that the multidimensionality of Borges’ writings eschew any univocal interpretation of

them.

To conclude, the insightful readings of critics such as Humberto Piñera, Alberto

Moreiras, Bruno Bosteels, and Lois P. Zamora illustrate what it means to interpret Borges’ texts

analogically. It entails conceiving them as works of thought and as works of the imagination, and

engaging the specific language, form, and (sometimes) context in which Borges’ philosophical

ideas emerged, and are both embodied and expressed. It involves interrelating different modes of

thinking, imagining, and interpreting the world without privileging or subordinating any single

61
one of them; it also demands challenging the boundaries that separate and subverting the

hierarchies that divide divergent modes of thinking and writing. It also requires challenging

Eurocentric and logocentric definitions of philosophy, putting philosophy and literature on the

same epistemological plane, and viewing philosophy and literature as different but analogous

ways of seeking, producing, and conveying knowledge, and thus showing that philosophy and

literature are two different ways of addressing questions and attaining insight and knowledge.

62
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i
For a more detailed discussion of the Platonic tendency in the criticism of Borges’ works, see

Massuh 1980, 19–32, and Echavarría 1999, 18–19.

ii
For instance, Borges’ librarian is not the type of character who, like Françoise in Simone de

Beauvoir’s She Came to Stay, “discovers that rationality is not enough,” that “there is no safety

in rationality and frankness,” that “perfect love and understanding cannot be maintained,” and

who “act[s] and talk[s] with a simple directness and an absence of concern for or remarks about

traditional morality” (Murdoch 1997, 108–9). Nor do any of the characters from Ficciones

express “a feeling of responsibility for the condition of men, a conception of life as perpetual

warfare, and a willingness to engage his weapons as a thinker [and writer] in the battle,” which

according to Murdoch both existentialists and Marxists share (110). Nor is the typical Borges

character “oriented toward possibility … choice, freedom, project, uniqueness,” and so forth

(Wahl 1969, 89).

iii
Other metaphors that Champeau associates with “metaphysical desire” are light itself, the

mirror, the other side or the reverse side of an object, the face, the rose, the tiger, and the moon

(1990, 52–56).
iv
The view that art expresses metaphysical knowledge is not exclusively Hegel’s. For example,

as Robert Wicks observes, Schelling and Schopenhauer also hold this view (1993, 350).
v
For the singular importance that Macedonio occupied in Borges’ life, thinking, and writing, see

Barrenechea 1965, Borges 1961, Ferrer 1971, Ferrua 1976, Isaacson 2004, Monder 2005, J.

Prieto 2005, and Soberón 2008.

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