The Normativity of Fiction in the Making: Ethics and Aesthetics in the Work of Caveh Zahedi

Philosophical discussion of fiction has often focused on the ontological status of fictional entities and the metaphysics of the reality/fiction-distinction. But not only does the nature of fiction change with respect to different historical contexts, technologies, and media. Depicting reality and shaping fiction crucially involves normative questions: what are we allowed to show? to what privacy do we have a right? is there a justice to narrating events?

The conference is conceived as a workshop discussion with New York-based film maker Caveh Zahedi (www.cavehzahedi.com), whose work tests the ethical and aesthetic limits of fiction. It features contributions from both film makers and scholars in philosophy and other humanities.