Madness and Heroism: In Search of Truth and Identity

ABSTRACT Borges’s life-long commitment to idealism, displayed in the current story, has implications for literary theory by stressing the reader’s role through what he calls ‘Berkeley’s aesthetics,’ i.e., subjecting literary texts to the esse est percipi principle. Keeping in mind the type of dialectics adopted in ‘Nueva refutación del tiempo’, and considering the pivotal role of irony in ‘Pierre Menard’, I take Borges’s scepticism and idealism as major guidelines for my reflections in this essay. How does ‘Pierre Menard’ portray identity in relation to Borges’s adherence to idealism? The epistemological implications regarding truth, time and identity are revealed when brought under the spotlight of Berkeley, Hume and Schopenhauer. Taking epistemology as a starting point and with reference to those philosophers, this article calls into question assumptions regarding the possibility of definitive readings of both a given text or reality.