Dipendenza ontologica e personaggi fittizi

In Fiction and Metaphysics Amie Thomasson proposes a theory of fiction and a system of ontological categories. In the former, I shall maintain, an important role is played by a thesis that can be labelled “principle of the referentiality of characters”: If in a work of fiction references are made to a certain pre-existing entity, this entity is a character of the work (e.g., Napoleon – in flesh and blood – is a character of War and Peace). On the other hand, the category system is based on the notion of an ontological dependence, a transitive relation that subsists between, say, two entities a and b only if the existence of a implies, by necessity, the existence of b (e.g., a man depends ontologically on his parents). Here I shall claim that there is a deep tension between this category system and the principle of the referentiality of characters. Such a tension, I shall conclude, forces to a severe revision of either the theory of fiction or the ontological categorization put forward by Amie Thomasson.