Abstract:
This thesis sets out to show that the basic metaphysical themes of Jorge Luis Borges in his mature prose writings lead to one basic conclusion: that the individual being does not indeed exist, that the individual is ultimately everything at once, or nothing at all. Throughout, the essays of Borges collected in Otras Inquisiciones and the fiction stories found in Ficciones and El Aleph are cited to support the thesis. Chapter one seeks to present a discussion of the metaphysical position of Borges, touching on four basic ideas: 1. the compression of ideas and images, 2. the problem of time, 3. the use of cycles and circular images, and 4. the
negation of an external and objective reality. The major sources for Borges' philosophical position are the essays. Once the central philosophical question is
presented, the subsequent chapters attempt to show the manifestation of such a philosophy in the fiction stories of Borges. Chapter two illustrates the theme of Nothing and Everything. The individual "I"· is a collective "I" which destroys the existence of the individual. At the same time, and characteristic of the paradoxical
position of Borges, the "I" also becomes nonexistent in the very nature of its collectivism. Chapter two also suggests the elimination not only of individual characters but also of the individual identities of both the writer and the reader as participants in the literature of Borges. In Chapter three the theme of the dream and the dreamer is explored as another path to the inexistence of singular identity. This theme is illustrated. by the series of concentric circles. The dreamer is dreaming another while at the same time being dreamed. Or, structurally, the story will be a story within another. The infinite circles all point again to the final conclusion. The individual as a singular 'being cannot, in the vision of Borges, exist.
Chapter four illustrates Borges' use of the image of the mirror, the duplication of the being, again destroying the concept of the individual. At times, the mirror reflects
the double as he is; at times, as he could become. Death is the focus of Chapter
five. Be it death real or dreamed (which for Borges is as real as any other reality), duplication or multiplication of the being occurs to preclude the possibility of a singular identity. Again, it is a theme which leads to the final conclusion that individuality is only illusion. The thesis concludes that the pantheistic notion of Borges is not another theme in his literature, but that the inexistence of the individual is the common denominator of so many other themes, and of our understanding of his mature metaphysical prose.
