| Reading and reflecting on literature contributes significantly to an agent's moral development by increasing her moral knowledge and modifying her understanding of moral concepts. This project critically examines philosophers who have held similar views and develops an account of the reader of literature, with particular emphasis on the sort of imagining involved in engaging with fictional works.; The project begins by examining Martha Nussbaum's writings on literature, for her interests are outwardly similar to mine. But what emerges from her work is an account of readers that cannot be detached from the “moral achievements” of novelists and the form and content of their creations. I believe we need a more robust account of the reader of literature than her approach allows. In developing this account, I distinguish between two ways of imagining a fictional scenario. Nussbaum and others characterize acts of imagining narrowly, as if all imagining involved occupying another's position. I argue that a reader can achieve a privileged perspective on another's life, or on a fictional scenario, without imagining herself occupying this other's position. A significant moral issue depends on this distinction between egocentric and non-egocentric acts of imagining, which I develop in chapter three. It is important for morality that one sometimes responds to another qua unique individual and not as an extension of oneself. I appeal to Iris Murdoch's notion of moral attention to establish this point.; In the final two chapters, I develop a notion of literary reflection, arguing that an agent's reflections are directed at concrete particulars and moral concepts. I connect this notion to the matter of moral knowledge, arguing that literature contributes to an agent's practical knowledge, developing the skills and values that an agent needs to live successfully with others. Reading and reflecting on literature improves an agent's ability to appreciate others' outlooks, whether or not she accepts them for herself; and it gives her a vocabulary for describing and evaluating these differences. Reflection on moral concepts is integral to an agent's moral growth, I suggest, for our concepts help to shape the moral world we inhabit. |
