Reality and fiction in the ontology of Evaldo Coutinho

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the problem of the relationship between fiction and reality in Evaldo Coutinho's ontology. The analysis is motivated by several passages in which the author emphasizes that the real and the fictional can remain indistinct and that they are also, in a way, leveled in the worldview presented in the five-volume series entitled A Ordem Fisionômica (The Physiognomic Order). At first glance, the proposal appears to contradict a fundamental assumption of everyday life, science, and philosophy, namely that the difference between reality and fiction can never be suspended. The purpose of this article is to clarify that indistinctness and leveling do not imply the rejection of the difference between the real and the fictional, but rather a reformulation of the relationship in terms of aesthetic idealism. The article is divided into three sections, in which the problem is examined from three perspectives: 1) Delimitation of philosophy in the domain of art, 2) Determination of the function of fiction in philosophical art, and, finally, 3) The Shadow Character of existence.