Gregory Currie, Does great literature make us better ?Article paru le 6 février 2013 dans le version papier du New York Times , puis le 1er juin sur le site du journal. Courrier International en propose des extraits sur son site Internet depuis le 1er août 2013 (ensemble de l'article lisible sur abonnement).Début de la version anglaise et complète : You agree with me, I expect, that exposure to challenging works of literary fiction is good for us. That’s one reason we deplore the dumbing-down of the school curriculum and the rise of the Internet and its hyperlink culture. Perhaps we don’t all read very much that we would count as great literature, but we’re apt to feel guilty about not doing so, seeing it as one of the ways we fall short of excellence. Wouldn’t reading about Anna Karenina, the good folk of Middlemarch and Marcel and his friends expand our imaginations and refine our moral and social sensibilities?If someone now asks you for evidence for this view, I expect you will have one or both of the following reactions. First, why would anyone need evidence for something so obviously right? Second, what kind of evidence would he want? Answering the first question is easy: if there’s no evidence – even indirect evidence – for the civilizing value of literary fiction, we ought not to assume that it does civilize. Perhaps you think there are questions we can sensibly settle in ways other than by appeal to evidence: by faith, for instance. But even if there are such questions, surely no one thinks this is one of them.What sort of evidence could we present? Well, we can point to specific examples of our fellows who have become more caring, wiser people through encounters with literature. Indeed, we are such people ourselves, aren’t we? (...)Lire l'article en intégralité : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/does-great-literature-make-us-better/?_r=0Gregory Currie enseigne la philosophie à l'Université de Nottingham.
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