Human existence, no matter how painful, can still be enjoyable if transmitted through an appropriate medium – literature, the ultimate lexical expression of man’s emotions.
While some forms of literature provide “arenas” where human existence can be played out, it can by no means completely provide moral education.
The proliferation of various expressions of human existence encompasses a diverse range of activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music and literature. Their aesthetic quality, meanwhile, varies from person to person. For instance, as children grow up in a world abound with various inputs and schema, the sociocultural role of stories and narratives may vary from culture to culture, thereby influencing the kinds of stories children learn to tell. Still, for some, the most common forms of narratives in families are accounts, stories, and frequent retellings from oral narratives from travels, family history, or community as their stories tend to focus more on descriptive information related to family and personal relationships, and may often include reactions to and evaluations of events. As they mature, moreover, children are expected to develop certain moral skills to be accepted in a society where benevolent social behavior is a prerequisite.
While Martha Nussbaum (1998) does not specifically recommend a particular novel or narrative, she concerns herself with the prescription of “certain carefully selected works of narrative literature that can cultivate and reinforce valuable moral abilities.” Nussbaum, in this case, suggests that there are certain “morally relevant aspects of our inner lives that can only be represented accurately thought artistic representation.” This suggestion, meanwhile, echoes a previous discussion on the irreducibility of philosophy into literary genres, which states that philosophy need only to be aesthetically symbolized in literary texts in order for human existence to become meaningful.
On the other hand, Richard Possner presents a very compelling argument on the viability of moral education within literary works of art. While Nussbaum vehemently defends her contention that “certain novels are irreplaceable works of moral philosophy,” Possner objects to the idea that literature could be an extension of philosophy.
Indeed, this writer believes, there are certain literary expressions of art that seem to echo only the writer’s own experience.
Poetry, for instance, takes all life as its province. Its primary concern is not with beauty, not with persuasion, but with experience—specifically, the experience of the author. There are no clear, direct lines that distinguish poetry from other imaginative literature, but some readers recognize their beauty through the arrangement of lines or by their rime and meters. Most important, readers can only appreciate the beauty of poetry if the readers themselves have acquired the sensitivity needed to comprehend poetry (Perrine & Arp, 1992).
Thus, when poets put their thoughts into a poem, the authors present their own observations of their own experience. Consciously or unconsciously, the poet attempts to persuade the reader to enjoy the meaning of the poem through its rhythmic cadence. This enjoyment, however, demands a mental effort from an insensitive reader. Effort, which seem to corrupt the reader into believing that what the poem is actually saying is essential to the understanding of human existence.
Finally, the moral education that literary works claim to posses incompletely legitimizes morality because almost all works contain notional or arbitrary content and their aesthetic qualities seem to overshadow ethics.
Reference:
Lang, Berel. ____. The Plots and Acts of Philosophical Genre. The Anatomy of Philosophical Style: Literary Philosophy and the Philosophy of Literature, ___.
Peek, Ella. 2006. Ethical Criticism of Art. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Perrine, Laurence and Arp, Thomas. 1992. Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, 1992.
Art. from Wikipedia.com
Philosophy and Literature from Wikipedia.com
No comments:
Post a Comment