Reading Borges Ethically

Abstract:Although critics and lay readers have understood Jorge Luis Borges as an asocial and abstract thinker, their position has produced a reductive conception of Borges that obscures his most original aesthetic and philosophical ideas. Reconsidering Borges through three of his most famous stories—“The Garden of Forking Paths,” “A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain,” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”—reveals a philosophy of reading that, in classic Borges fashion, doubles as a philosophy of ethics. Understanding these philosophies as one and the same makes possible a fresh view of Borges’s aesthetic games and his interest in human interaction.