On the (un)suitability of literature for moral education

Abstract

In this article, I defend moral aesthetic cognitivism, the view that literature is a valuable source of insights related to morally relevant aspects of our world and that it can significantly contribute to our moral education. I am in particular concerned with counterarguments to this view voiced by Greg Currie, who trashes epistemological foundations of literature and emphasizes the lack of empirical corroboration of cognitivism, and by Peter Lamarque, who dismisses educative potential of literature on the account of readers' incapacity to extract morally relevant judgements about the world from literary works. I rely on examples from literary tradition to rebuild the epistemological framework underlying cognitivism and on contemporary insights from moral psychology to show that our engagements with literature are permeated with moral reflections that are valuable for our moral education.