Amie Thomasson’s and Miguel de Unamuno’s Artifactual Abstractionism: A Comparative Study

In the paper, a question of the ontological status of fictional characters is presented from the point of view of artifactual abstractionism. Artifactual abstractionism is Amie Thomasson’s view that claims that fictional characters are abstract beings created by an author, which makes them a part of our reality. Characters are temporal and can cease to exist, so they need real-world support to keep on existing. This outlook is contrasted with Miguel de Unamuno’s view on fictional characters that are consistent with the mentioned position, meaning Unamuno’s artifactual abstractionism. Miguel de Unamuno’s philosophical thought is to be found both in his fictional writings and non-fictional texts. So, the paper's methodology is to extract Unamuno’s metaphysical positions from the spectrum of his texts and contrast them with Thomasson’s Artifactual Abstractionism. The paper has two aims: (1) to show that fictional texts can be a viable source of an author’s metaphysical insights and (2) to present those insights in contrast with philosophical texts. The conclusion is that Miguel de Unamuno presents similar ontological theories of fictional characters to the ones of Amie Thomasson’s view. Additionally, it is to be proved that analytical theories are not far from literature. Both sources can be compared and make the understanding of ontological problems regarding fiction more complete.