Univerzita Pardubice Fakulta filozofická

Univerzita Pardubice

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English

Publikace detail

The Value of Bad Literature

Autoři: Kalášková Diana

Rok: 2022

Druh publikace: ostatní - konference, koncert

Strana od-do: nestránkováno

Tituly:

Jazyk	Název	Abstrakt	Klíčová slova
eng	The Value of Bad Literature	It is more or less accepted that our engagement with literature is valuable, be it for amplifying our knowledge, improving vocabulary etc. Yet, when it comes to the question whether literature can also be a valuable contribution to philosophy, the conclusion isn’t entirely clear. One of the biggest advocates for the place of literature within philosophy is Martha Nussbaum, yet in her account she emphasizes that literature benefits us morally because it cultivates our sensibility and awareness. While I do agree with her that literature can contribute to our moral understanding, I am suspicious about her claim that we learn from literature as it were by following examples of people acting morally well. My worry is that seeing literature this way requires having a prerequisite for what counts as morally good and therefore the possibility of moral contribution is limited to such works that fit the preestablished frame. In my talk I want to explore the value of also those works of literature where no model worth following is presented (that is what I mean by bad literature), thus I will offer a modified view of how literature can be valuable for philosophy. Since I believe that it is very hard to make universal claims about all literature, I will provide a close reading of Curzio Malaparte’s Kaputt (an intriguing novel dealing with the horrors of WWII) to hopefully prove that even in this piece of literature can be recognized as being of philosophical value.