Literary notes about possibility (AI summary)
In literature, "possibility" is employed as a multifaceted concept that conveys potentiality, uncertainty, and both the expansiveness and limitations of human experience. Authors use it to evoke images of boundless futures—as in Du Bois’s portrayal of the child representing “infinite possibility” [1]—while philosophers like Kant rigorously analyze it as a necessary condition for thought and experience [2, 3, 4]. In narrative works, possibility often highlights the tension between hope and restriction: Chekhov’s willingness to embrace every chance life offers [5] contrasts with Brontë’s stark depiction of a day when possibility for even a walk is absent [6]. Across genres—from Dostoyevsky’s examinations of human agency amidst dire circumstances [7, 8] to Shakespeare’s lyrical calls for speaking "with possibility" [9]—the term operates as a critical tool for exploring what might be, framing both the promise and the peril inherent in the unknown.
- All words and all thinking lead to the child,—to that vast immortality and the wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child represents.
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. Du Bois - If this thing is annihilated in thought, the internal possibility of the thing is also annihilated, which is self-contradictory.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - For on what ground can reason base such synthetical propositions, which do not relate to the objects of experience and their internal possibility?
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - The possibility of such an infinite derivation, without any initial member from which all the others result, is certainly quite incomprehensible.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - I was ready to embrace and include in my short life every possibility open to man.
— from The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - CHAPTER I There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - One professor there, a scientific man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such treatment.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Moreover, in the “officer's” first letter which had been shown to Mitya, the possibility of his new rival's visit was very vaguely suggested.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - O brother, speak with possibility, And do not break into these deep extremes.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
