Nussbaum contends that literature is the best medium for the conveyance of moral truths. Shelby Giaccarini successfully defended a commonwealth thesis in which she maintained that literature might be an essential tool in disseminating the impulse to help fight anthropogenic climate change. These are all axiologic areas of interest. Is this where the utility of literature stops? My instinct is to deny this.
Literature can be and ought to be the medium of dissemination for more than just moral truths. The ability to engage and retain interest, the ability to stir emotion, these are tools useful to the forays of many different categories of thought. Describing and capturing a dynamic and elusive aspect of human nature may not be within the purview of philosophical discourse, though I suspect it can accomplish this as well. Literature, while not unique in any of its virtues, is an ideal candidate for the dissemination of many non moral claims.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Catharsis
I realize that though I have been treating Monday night as the end of the week-end, due to the holiday, that it does not follow that the grading week should also be extended. Luckily, I caught myself in time.
Though not to the purpose of pleasing Aristotle, or Stacey for that matter, while we are discussing the value of literature, I thought I might once again throw in with those who contend a major value, though not the sole, of literature is its potential use as a cathartic medium. There is obviously, I think, a degree to which the strength and magnitude of an emotional release is lessened when it is the product of reading literature, even, I contend, non-fiction. Despite this, emotional releases of any degree of severity are essential to our mental well-being. The number of mechanisms by which we achieve this is quite large but one common medium, and effective, is that of literature.
Though not to the purpose of pleasing Aristotle, or Stacey for that matter, while we are discussing the value of literature, I thought I might once again throw in with those who contend a major value, though not the sole, of literature is its potential use as a cathartic medium. There is obviously, I think, a degree to which the strength and magnitude of an emotional release is lessened when it is the product of reading literature, even, I contend, non-fiction. Despite this, emotional releases of any degree of severity are essential to our mental well-being. The number of mechanisms by which we achieve this is quite large but one common medium, and effective, is that of literature.
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