Borges and Plato: A Game with Shifting Mirrors

Borges and Plato: A Game with Shifting Mirrors, 2012

**Abstract** This chapter examines the convergence and divergence between Plato's criticism of written texts in the *Phaedrus* and Jorge Luis Borges's celebration of books as sacred objects. While initially appearing antithetical—Plato viewing books as "lifeless pictures" inferior to oral dialogue, and Borges embracing a modern "cult of books"—the analysis reveals unexpected philosophical affinities between these thinkers. The investigation begins with Havelock's historical framework of the transition from oral to written culture in ancient Greece, contextualizing Plato's critique within the broader cultural conflict between ear and eye, spoken and written word. Through close reading of the *Phaedrus*, the chapter demonstrates that Plato's position, while harsh, allows for writing as legitimate philosophical activity when approached as "serious play" (*paidia*) that stimulates autonomous thinking in the receiver. Borges's approach is examined through his theoretical essays and lectures, revealing his distinction between "classical" books (following Greek tradition of writing as substitute for speech) and "holy" books (reflecting Kabbalistic doctrine of letters as fundamental creative forces). Despite this apparent preference for the Eastern model, Borges synthesizes both traditions in his conception of the "aesthetic event"—the dynamic encounter between reader and text that transforms static words into living experience. The chapter's central insight concerns the shared emphasis on temporal development and organic growth. Both thinkers value the capacity for meaning to evolve through time: Plato through the "seed planted in the soul" during oral dialectic, Borges through the "living labyrinth" of reading that continuously reinvents the text. This temporal dynamism serves as their common criterion for evaluating textual engagement, though applied to different linguistic modes. The analysis concludes that while Plato and Borges occupy seemingly opposite positions regarding books, they converge on fundamental principles: the necessity of active intellectual participation by the receiver, the ideal of ongoing interpretive development, and the conception of genuine engagement as a form of philosophical wonder (*thaumatos*). Both invite readers into what Plato terms "ongoing shared search" (*suzêtêsis*) and Borges calls "constant amazement," revealing that the apparent conflict between philosophical dialectic and literary hermeneutics dissolves at the deeper level of shared epistemological commitment to dynamic, participatory meaning-creation.

Jorge Luis Borges and Ancient Philosophy, 2025

This paper explores the profound resonances between Jorge Luis Borges' literary and philosophical project and the Socratic tradition as depicted by Plato. Through a detailed analysis of Borges' writings, interviews, and symbolic motifs, it unveils striking parallels with the Socratic conception of philosophy as an ongoing pursuit of truth (suzetesis) and the employment of philosophical irony (eirôneia) as a means of fostering self-discovery. Borges' embrace of perpetual wonderment, his skepticism towards systematic metaphysical certainties, and his shift towards an allusive representational strategy are demonstrated to be akin to Socratic modes of inquiry and philosophical teaching. Furthermore, the paper delves into Borges' symbolic universe, interpreting the Aleph, the Library of Babel, and most significantly, the labyrinth, as embodiments of the Socratic quest for elusive, synoptic knowledge. Ultimately, Borges emerges as a modern inheritor of the Socratic mantle, his mythological writings constituting a labyrinthine tapestry of aporetic wonder. Submitted to: Gabriel Martino and Giannis Stamatellos (Eds.), "Jorge Luis Borges and Ancient Philosophy" (forthcoming, Brill)

Fictional Worlds and Philosophical Reflection, 2022

Are philosophy and literature allies or enemies in Jorge Luis Borges's fictions? In this paper, I argue that Borges can satisfy membership in the allies camp because his fictions provide the imaginative scenarios the allies believe are so necessary to this coalition; however, because his stories question philosophy's hold on reality, they can also seem to fall into the enemies camp by countervailing any claim philosophy has on reality and truth; although, ultimately, the manner in which Borges forges an alliance between philosophy and literature will be for reasons not traditionally accepted by those in either the allies or enemies camps.

Mind, 1970

THE CASE OF BORGES I. Borges the Artist and Borges the Thinker A LEADING historian confessed to me once that while he had been acting editor of the journal devoted to his sub-specialism he had one constant nightmare: he feared he might accept for publication a fabricated paper with fabricated documentation, so vast even a historical sub-specialism is. The nightmare represents not merely an expression of anxiety due to ignorance of certain areas-it expresses the terrible idea that the Cartesian demon can fake any symptom of reality and pass for real by any touchstone. Jorge Luis Borges is working for decades now on the execution of the nightmare. Perhaps his most celebrated instance is " Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius ". It would take much work to sift the fabricated references in Borges' works from the ones deliberately misread from the over-emphasis on an author's casual remark, etc. 288 CRITICAL NOTICES: This, of course, is part of the game, for Borges wishes to shake in his reader the commonsensical confidence that one knows the difference between dream and reality-be this confidence based on any intuition or on any criterion to demarcate the two. Consequently, it is very hard to demarcate Borges' stories from Borges' essays. If we read the story ' Funes the Memorious ' we may view it as a short story or as a thought experiment about a Lockian mind with total recall. Now that A. R. Luria has published an empirical study of such a mind, one need not vindicate Borges, but may draw attention to additional treasures buried in his stories and essays. Normally one separates stories and essays functionally. The artist's task is to explore the emotional-experiential dimension. When a writer explores a new vision of the world in order to open up a new feeling, a new attitude, he is writing as an artist. As an artist he can also take a platitude and enhance it so as to make you feel its full significance. As an essayist he would rather draw from the platitude conclusions unexpected and unplatitudinous, or he would take an unnoticed fact or an outlandish thesis and show its merit and significance. This demarcation is not clear-cut. In particular, there is the area of overlap. Butler's Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited include essays thoughtful in their defence or mock-defence of outlandish theses, but also pregnant with a quaint atmosphere peculiar to these novels. So are most of Borges' writings. Like Butler, Shaw, and others, he uses a literary medium to advocate an unpopular philosophy. Like them he is in danger of being valued as a writer of note but as an advocate of a shallow philosophy. The philosophy he advocates is a variant of Schopenhauer's, and much akin to that of Erwin Schrodinger, well-known as a physicist but hardly as the accomplished writer and the intriguing philosopher that he was. It is the Schopenhauerian principle in Borges which makes him wonder what is real and what is illusory in our common experience. And it is this which makes him deliberately blur the borderline between his fiction and his essays: as if in order to imitate nature he blurs the boundary between reality and dream. The result may easily be that his essays be deemed a new form of fiction: besides the reportage novel we may see the non-fiction novel. The English translation of Borges' essays, Other Inquisitions, includes a prefatory essay of over seven pages, by James E. Irby of Princeton. His thesis is that all Borges' essays are works of fiction, in the sense in which Borges' beliefs are ' clearly not ' the ones seemingly advocated in the essays. This, I am tempted to say, is 'clearly' an indication of Irby's reluctance to accept Borges' challenge. In particular he apparently comforts himself by reference to the fact that Borges himself is dominated by skepticism. This would not be the first time that the challenger's skepticism is used as an excuse to maintain one's dogmatism. But, frankly, I do not think Irby's dismissal of Borges the thinker is rooted in dogmatism; more likely it is rooted in

Latin American Literary Review

The following essay explores the issues of idealism, ontology, and the fantastical in the work of Jorge Luis Borges. Borges' fascination with philosophical idealism began when he was introduced to philosophy as a child by his father, the thinker within this school who most influenced him being, as he admits, George Berkeley. Examining Borges' attitude towards Berkeley's radical idealism, the discussion focuses on its ontological dimension, demonstrating how Berkeley engages in a reductivist move in which ontology-in its Greek, Parmenidean sense-is replaced by epistemological processes in light of the dictum esse est percipi ("to be is to be perceived"). Within this framework, the question of the ontological status of the fantastical object in the Borgesian text is investigated, idealistic and fantastical objects being analyzed and compared in his short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." In a more general sense this comparison demonstrates that, considered from an ontological perspective, literary fantastical objects are not in fact idealistic objects but more closely resemble the paradoxical objects in Meinong's theory, thus constituting what Todorov calls the "hesitation experienced by a person [reader] who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event."