How Literature Delivers Knowledge and Understanding, Illustrated by Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wharton's Summer

Rik Peels*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalReview articleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Some philosophers, like Alex Rosenberg, claim that natural science delivers epistemic values such as knowledge and understanding, whereas, say, literature and, according to some, literary studies, merely have aesthetic value. Many of those working in the field of literary studies oppose this idea. But it is not clear exactly how works of literary art embody knowledge and understanding and how literary studies can bring these to the light. After all, literary works of art are pieces of fiction, which suggests that they are not meant to represent the actual world. How then can they deliver knowledge and understanding? I argue that literature and literary studies confer knowledge and understanding in at least five ways: They give us insight into the work and the world of the work of art in question, they shape our intellectual virtues, they invite us to apply various hypotheses, they deliver moral propositional knowledge, and they increase or bring about full understanding with respect to meaning, virtue, and significance. In the course of my argument, I refer at several junctures to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Edith Wharton's Summer, in order to illustrate each of these claims.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)199-222
Number of pages24
JournalBritish Journal of Aesthetics
Volume60
Issue number2
Early online date25 Dec 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2020

Funding

62 For their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, I would like to thank Valentin Arts, Jason Baehr, Wout Bisschop, Leo Cheung, Christina Chuang, Lieven Decock, Jeroen de Ridder, Chienkuo Mi, Roderick Nieuwenhuis, Herman Philipse, Emanuel Rutten, Shane Ryan, Winnie Sung, and René van Woudenberg, as well as audiences at the 2018 European Epistemology Network in Amsterdam, the 2017 Summer Seminar of the Abraham Kuyper Center for Science and the Big Questions in Amsterdam, and the 4th East-West Philosophy Forum in Amsterdam, 2018. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

FundersFunder number
Templeton World Charity Foundation

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