16 Why read literature? The cognitive function of form Wolfgang Huemer In Aristophanes’ play Frogs Dionysus looks for a talented poet and despairs – for there are no talented poets around any longer. He therefore travels to the underworld to bring back Euripides, who had recently died. When he arrives there, he realizes that there is some rivalry between Euripides and Aeschylus: the latter holds the chair of tragedy in the underworld; Euripides challenges his position. It comes to a contest between the two, in which they also discuss their poetic programs. Both agree that the poet’s task is to educate the audience. Euripides mentions in his favor: Then I taught these people [he is indicating the spectators] to talk . . . and how to apply subtle rules and square off their words, to think, to see, to understand, to be quick on their feet, to scheme, to see the bad in others, to think of all aspects of everything.1 In this statement Euripides (the character of the play) exposes a program according to which literature does have cognitive value: it teaches the audience not only to talk, but also to get a firmer grip of the world (to think, to see, to understand; to think of all aspects of everything) to form an understanding of moral values (to see the bad in others) as well as to engage in social practices. In short, the poet should be admired for ‘‘Skill and good council, and because we make people better members of their community.’’2 In what follows I am going to sketch a picture of language that shows that by improving our linguistic abilities and enhancing our conceptual apparatus, literature can not only teach us new ways of perceiving the world, but also enhance our social practices. More precisely, I will sketch a picture of language that shows that by teaching people to talk, literature can be cognitively valuable. Though this picture is not new – it draws substantially on Wittgenstein’s philosophy – it radically differs from the view of literature common among most twentieth century analytic philosophers. The main advantage of this picture is that it allows us to address the question of why people read literary texts. Literature plays a central part in our everyday life, and it is my contention that every account of literature (or fiction) should address this question.3 234 Wolfgang Huemer Literature, truth, and knowledge Of all forms of art, the question of truth has been raised most often in the context of literature. The reason seems obvious: literary texts are texts. They contain propositions, and we have all learned in our first logic classes that propositions have a truth value; they are true or false. The problem, now, is that propositions in literary texts are typically false – readers of Kafka’s Trial, for example, are well aware that no one really ‘‘has been telling lies about Josef K.’’ and that he was not really ‘‘arrested one fine morning.’’4 We read literature for many reasons – for aesthetic appreciation, for entertainment, or just to relax, etc. – and in all these stances the fact that the propositions of the text are false seems irrelevant. When it comes to the cognitive value of literature, however, this aspect seems to matter, for the question of how we can learn from the poets’ lies5 arises.6 When analytic philosophers first came to emphasize the importance of the analysis of language at the beginning of the twentieth century, they mainly focused on one function of language: the communication of information. In consequence, they analyzed only assertive statements; their accounts of language were based on the notions of truth and reference. This strategy mirrors their ultimate goal: the analysis of the language of science (where scientific theories are understood as sets of true propositions). This approach is notoriously unapt, however, to account for the language of literature: names in literary texts (typically) do not refer to anything in the world, their propositions are (typically) false. It therefore does not come as a surprise that early analytic philosophers had difficulties with the language of literature. Bertrand Russell, for example, said about Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘‘the propositions in the play are false because there was no such man.’’7 Others have argued that they do not have a truth value at all, and Rudolf Carnap equated the meaningless statements of metaphysics with statements formulated by lyrical poets, which at best express a certain Lebensgefühl, an ‘‘attitude of a person towards life.’’8 Once we accept this picture, we are easily drawn to the conclusion that in literary texts language is not used properly. Unlike science, it does not attempt to justify its statements and, thus, seems to function in some aberrant way. In this picture, literature turns into a niche phenomenon. It becomes unclear why people read literary texts in the first place, given that they could spend their time more rewardingly with reading scientific treatises, from which they could actually learn something. It seems obvious that something must be wrong with this picture. In our pretheoretic understanding we all know that literature can offer insights about reality, and many authors have written with the aim to reflect critically on the state of our society, to change our ways of seeing things, to give us a richer picture of the world, or to contribute to our moral understanding, in short, to enrich our knowledge. The question, therefore, is how we can learn from literature even though most of the propositions stated in literary texts are false. The early analytic perspective (which I have attributed to Russell and Carnap; we do Why read literature? 235 find similar views among many other philosophers before and after the beginning of the twentieth century) fails, I think, because it works with a too narrow notion of learning as accumulation of true propositions. The problem only arises because philosophers who hold this view take for granted that we can learn from texts only if they provide true propositions that we can directly (and one by one) incorporate into our system of knowledge. This leads to a very narrow picture of cognitive progress. Catherine Elgin has recently characterized the epistemological background of this picture eloquently: Human beings seem to gather information in the way that squirrels gather nuts. Bit by bit, we amass data and store it away against future needs. Many epistemologists and laymen take cognitive progress to consist in data gathering.9 Elgin develops a powerful argument that shows that art is cognitively relevant not for adding to the list of propositions we know. In many cases, she argues, art forces us to reflect on our conceptual schemes. We learn not only by passively taking in new information. ‘‘Cognitive process often consists in reconfiguration – in recognizing a domain so that hitherto overlooked or underemphasized features, patterns, and resources come to light.’’10 Art, as she states, ‘‘does not, and does not purport to, deliver literal, descriptive truths. It seeks, rather, to challenge, to disorient, to disrupt, to explore, and thereby to reveal what more regimented approaches lack the resources to attempt.’’11 In this way Elgin can show that art is cognitively relevant without having to argue that we can directly draw propositional knowledge from works of art (including literary texts). Other philosophers have taken a similar line, arguing that there are forms of knowledge that were not considered in the old propositionalist approach (as we might, for the sake of simplicity, label the picture I have outlined above). Art can be of cognitive value, they argue, by providing not propositional, but forms of non-propositional knowledge. In a recent article Christiane Schildknecht even states that the knowledge we gain from literary texts is one of the prototypes of nonpropositional knowledge.12 I agree with Elgin and Schildknecht that we should reject the old propositionalist approach. I do fear, however, that both go one step too far and recoil into another extreme. They raise interesting points, but ultimately cut the picture too short, for they deny, or at least overlook, that in an important sense we do gain relevant propositional knowledge from literary texts (in a way not contemplated in the old propositionalist approach, though). I think that this aspect is crucial if we try to get a more comprehensive understanding of the cognitive value of literature, and I will try to develop an argument that shows how this can be achieved. But let us first take a closer look at Elgin’s argument. Elgin is definitely right when she points out that works of art can motivate us to reorganize our patterns of perception. It is crucial to note, however, that this happens relatively rarely. Our conceptual schemes, our ‘‘standard ways of seeing, representing, and understanding phenomena’’13 are relatively stable. It is 236 Wolfgang Huemer an important feature of conceptual schemes that we can reorganize them if we think it necessary – indeed, the great breakthroughs of scientific development consist in such reorganization, as Thomas Kuhn has brought to our attention. However, neither scientific revolutions, nor more local reorganizations of, say, patterns of perception, can take place every day. Conceptual schemes and patterns of perception are tools that allow us to grasp the world; if we would continuously put them into question we would lose these tools and soon be paralyzed. Moreover, it seems obvious that we do not always reorganize our ways of seeing things when we read a novel, see a painting, or watch a movie. Works of art do not always aim to challenge, to disorient or to disrupt, and they can be of cognitive value even if they don’t. Literature can be cognitively relevant by teaching us practices, including language, the most complex and subtle of our social practices; it thus allows us to make moves in the language game we could not have made before.14 Language, social practice, and literature It was the (later) Wittgenstein’s great merit to show that the picture of language prevalent among early analytic philosophers is too narrow. He resisted the tendency to reduce language to assertive statements and to see the communication of information as the only function of language. Instead, he drew our attention to the richness and variety of linguistic phenomena. Let me (very) briefly outline his position: in his Philosophical Investigations he develops, as is well known, an alternative picture of language, according to which ‘‘the meaning of a word is its use in the language.’’15 Wittgenstein no longer considers the notions of truth and reference as basic, but replaces them with his notion of a social practice. Our acting comes to take a central place.16 In his rejection of the Augustinian picture of language he points out that children learn language not by establishing connections (of meaning) between single words and single objects, but rather by being trained [abgerichtet] to act in certain ways. Like all other words, the terms ‘‘truth’’ and ‘‘reference’’ get their meaning only within a language game.17 Wittgenstein famously draws an analogy between language and games, regarding linguistic utterances as positions in this game. We move to these positions from other positions, and each position (utterance) licenses further moves. In oral discussion a question, for example, requires the addressed person to give an answer (or reject the question), and there are (implicit) rules that determine what counts as an answer. Similarly, a proposition allows for certain inferences the speaker can (but does not have to) draw. We can now recast Wittgenstein’s theory of meaning in slightly more formal terms: the meaning of an utterance is determined by the moves it allows in the language game. The meaning of a question is determined by the possible answers (or, more generally, the possible reactions) to it; the meaning of a proposition is determined by its inferential relations to other propositions. Robert Brandom has based his inferentialist theory of language on this insight. (The label ‘‘inferentialism’’ is somewhat unhappy for my purposes, however, for we Why read literature? 237 need a very wide notion of ‘‘inference’’ to cast Wittgenstein’s insight in this term: every move in the language game would count as an inference.) The Wittgensteinian picture of language just outlined allows us to get a very different understanding of literary language. Rather than focusing on the truth value of the propositions uttered and the referential relations of the names used, we can draw our attention to the fact that literary texts portray and display social practices. As readers, we are no longer disappointed by the falsehood of literary texts (and, thus, unmoved by the critique raised by Plato, Hume, and Russell). Rather we become interested in the fact that they contain detailed descriptions of practices in which specific persons (though fictional as they are) engage. The main line of the argument I want to develop should be clear by now: we learn from literature by drawing on the social practices that are portrayed in, or emerge from, the text. In this way literature, we could say as a first approximation, can enrich our actual abilities to engage in social practices or make us reflect upon the practices we already take part in. According to this picture we do not, as Aristotle suggested, learn from literature because ‘‘it tends to give general truths,’’18 but rather because it provides concrete examples of social practices – we do not have to make the inductive step of generalizing them. In a way we could say, with Oscar Wilde: ‘‘Paradox though it may seem . . . it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life.’’19 In what follows I will elaborate this position in more detail. Let me first remark that there are many ways in which we can draw on practices that are portrayed in or emerge from literature. In narrative texts, for example, we observe protagonists who do engage in practices. Kafka’s Trial, to stick with my earlier example, describes how Josef K. reacts to the accusations raised by an anonymous jurisdiction. We see in detail how this individual reacts to the mechanism of a dark and opaque system – but also note that the system gains its power only from Josef K.’s playing along. Who is not reminded of the workings of overly bureaucratic administrations? Too often we experience them as opaque systems that are in danger of losing their grip on the obvious and sometimes even seem to deny the citizen’s individuality by treating persons like numbers. To be sure, when reading the Trial, we would not wish to imitate Josef K.’s behavior; rather the narrative makes us reflect on our own situation in this society. It is equally true, however, that very often readers have a less critical stance, taking up practices from literature by imitating them. It is well known that Goethe’s Werther caused a series of suicides among its young readers, and a lawyer friend of mine tells me that more and more often in Austrian courts people address the judge with Euer Ehren (your honor) even though this is normally not done; sometimes they even raise Einspruch (objections), even though the rules of procedure of Austrian courts do not allow for objections. It seems obvious to me that they do so because they have seen too many American court movies. Similarly, Halloween has become increasingly popular in central Europe – it was largely unknown when I was a child. It is my contention that most people know about Halloween from American TV-series like The Simpsons, 238 Wolfgang Huemer and the fact that we see many dressed-up children on October 31 in our streets just shows that it has become fashionable to imitate this practice. These (somewhat superficial) examples point in a direction that has been explored by Stanley Cavell and, drawing on Cavell’s distinction between knowing and acknowledging, by John Gibson. While scientific treatises (can) add to our knowledge of the world, literature is cognitively relevant by adding to our abilities to reply to the claims that concepts make on us, they add at the level of acknowledgment.20 Gibson explicitly ties this level to practices described in narrative texts: . . . acknowledgment requires precisely what literature is in a position to give it: narrative, a story of human activity, for it is through this that Othello can provide the knowledge we bring to the text with the completeness of understanding that marks a mind that is in full possession of its knowledge. . . . in him we see ‘the word made flesh’. His is only fictional flesh, to be sure. . . . in bringing it into view, Othello does not merely reflect our world back to us in the same form in which it presupposes that we are familiar with it. Othello returns to us this knowledge as embodied, as placed on the concrete stage of cultural practice and human comportment.21 The level of acknowledgment, as Gibson states, comes through the narrative of the text, the story of human activity, not through its literary form. The argument, thus, focuses on the content, not on the form of a literary text. The text of Kafka’s book can, in this respect, have the same effect as Orson Welles’ film; and Hollywood comedies from the forties will have a stronger impact at this level than onomatopoeic poems by Ernst Jandl.22 I think this position elaborated by Gibson is very powerful and enlightening when it comes to the question concerning the cognitive value of fiction, but not of literature qua literature. It, thus, gives in to a tendency we can observe far too often in philosophy of literature: a focus on narrative (fictional) texts, on novels, plays, and short stories. Poeticity, language, and inferences If we ask for the cognitive value of literary texts qua literary texts, another level comes to the fore, which seems – at least to me – to be more comprehensive. Literary texts have in common that they do not only focus on what is said, but also on how it is said. This aspect of poeticity has been characterized in an interesting way by Lubomı́r Doležel. Relying on the philosophical notion of intensionality, he states: In its semantics, literature (poetry) aims in the direction opposite to science: it is a communicative system for activating and putting to maximal use the resources of intensionality in language.23 When Doležel takes up this notion, he is not using it in the traditional way we know from formal semantics – according to the traditional definition we cannot Why read literature? 239 substitute in intensional contexts salva veritate. This should not cause any problems, for the question of truth is not relevant in literary texts, anyway. Doležel rather argues that in literary texts we cannot substitute any parts of the text by synonymous expressions without changing the meaning of the text, which is ‘‘necessarily linked to texture, to the form (structuring) of its expression; it is constituted by those meanings, which the verbal sign acquires through and in texture.’’24 Through poeticity literature draws our attention towards the most subtle and complex of our social practices: language. Literary texts enhance our linguistic abilities in relevant ways, poets teach us, as Euripides says in Aristophanes’ play, to talk. By doing so, literature reveals important aspects of reality: our language must not be understood as an empty system of signs that is completely detached from reality. If we take Wittgenstein’s approach seriously, we understand that it is wrong to assume that there is a wide gap between language and reality that can be bridged, in some mysterious way, only by meaning or intentionality. There is rather an intimate relation between language and world,25 and a better understanding of the workings of language can, therefore, also give us a richer picture of the world. In focusing our attention on language, literature reinforces or refines our abilities to express ourselves. It can perform this function in many different ways. Narrative texts, for example, do so by showing us what moves can be made in situations hitherto unknown to us. They can, as David Schalkwyk has formulated it, ‘‘make telling revelations: not by producing empirical discoveries, but by bringing into relief the surface connections – the conceptual relations of ‘grammar’ – that are always already ‘there’ in our practices.’’26 In so doing, narrative texts can enhance the reach of our language game, as it were. They enable us to talk – and think – about aspects of reality from which we were cut off before. (In order to do so, narrative texts typically take up patterns familiar to us and put them in new contexts. We need to find something familiar, a basis from which we can expand.) Moreover, independently of their theme, narrative texts are cognitively relevant also by their very structure: all details described serve to build up to an end, the story has a plot structure. By drawing our attention to this formal aspect, we learn to constitute a new level of meaning. We understand various events in the world no longer as undetached, singular events, but rather as being part of a longer story: Caesar’s war against the Germanic tribes; the biography of Napoleon; or the prosecution of Josef K., etc. One also learns to think about singular events in one’s own life as building up to one’s biography. Only now can the question of the meaning of life be raised and the question of how to live a fulfilled life (as opposed to a series of fulfilled moments) becomes relevant. Literature is more than story-telling, though, and it can be cognitively relevant also when it isn’t. We find the focus on language in its purest form in poetry. Rather than narrating long stories rich in ‘‘unnecessary detail,’’27 it provides concise showcases of the workings of language. Moreover, metaphors (that we find in poems more often than in other uses of language) explore the meaning of words by transferring them from their ordinary use into new contexts. In some 240 Wolfgang Huemer cases, metaphors even entice shifts in one’s patterns of perception – as Catherine Elgin has emphasized in the article quoted above. This shows that poetry is a most powerful means to explore the workings of our language. More than other forms of literature it allows us to reflect on our everyday linguistic practice; it even allows us to explore the limits of language by (sometimes) transgressing them. Let us turn to an example to illustrate this position. Longer narrative texts sometimes invite us to give in to the tendency to reduce the text to a thematic statement (like Kafka’s showing the workings of an opaque administration) or to focus on a practice described that adds at the level of acknowledgment (like Othello’s jealousy). This, however, would hide the level of cognitive gain that I want to emphasize, which comes in more modest doses – a text sometimes only slightly expands one’s language game, and how it does so also depends on the linguistic abilities the reader brings to the text. I will therefore focus on Handke’s poem The lineup of 1. FC Nuremberg on January 28, 1968:28 The poem shows nothing but the lineup of a soccer team in a format we know from our daily newspaper. When printed in a newspaper, it conveys information. The readers of Handke’s collection of poems, however, right away shift the focus from content to form: they do not care who was goalkeeper that day or at what time the match actually started – or else they would consult a book on the history of the German soccer league. In this very context the reader, amused or angry, might question her definition of poetry. She might reflect whether it is the task of poetry to strive for beauty, to use language in a sophisticated way, to elevate one’s feeling, to be sublime. If so, the poem will cause the reaction described by Catherine Elgin: it will change (or, at least, challenge) her way of thinking about poetry. But aren’t we already familiar with this line of reasoning from other experimental poems or Duchamp’s urinal? The poem was published Why read literature? 241 in 1969. I guess that at this time most readers who got a hold of this collection of experimental poems from a (then) young author were not disturbed by it, but (like me) rather amused; their views about poetry were enforced rather than challenged. When we look at the context (the collection also contains poems like The Japanese Hit Parade from May 28, 1968 and Interrupting in the Middle of a Sentence) and at the dusk jacket description of the book a different reading emerges: The texts of this book have generally in common that they use a grammatical model, which they realize with sentences formulated according to the model. The respective sentences are examples, Satzbeispiele. Since every sentence is an example of the model, every text generally results as an arrangement of syntactically similar sentences, which are, taken individually, descriptions, but, through their order (Reihung), make explicit and so both describe and show description as example of a preconceived linguistic structure, as sentence – every sentence has a history: the result is that the sentenceby-sentence description of the outer world turns out to be at the same time description of the inner world, the consciousness of the author, and vice versa and again vice versa.29 This suggests that Handke’s texts are about our practice of linguistic representation. By drawing our attention to how soccer teams are linguistically represented in newspapers we come to reflect the role soccer plays in our society (we see these charts in German newspapers nearly every day, which shows that soccer is important in Germany). Moreover, we can see the limitations of linguistic representation: the chart reduces a complex reality to one aspect. There is more to soccer than the lineup that is important (even if we only focus on this match): the trainer’s strategy, the role of the substitute players, the working conditions of the players,30 etc. The chart reduces all this to a list of names. The same point can be made with respect to the poem The Japanese Hit Parade from May 28, 1968,31 which appeared in the same collection and presents but the top 20 of the Japanese charts of that day (set in Roman letters, including title and band name). The fact that it is the Japanese charts that are presented to German readers might raise some interest in the content, for they might wonder what kind of music was popular in Japan in that period. Given that the information is dated, however, they will quickly draw their attention from content to the form of the poem. In so doing they will recognize a very familiar pattern: charts also appear regularly in German newspapers. The readers so come to reflect on the workings of this kind of linguistic representation. They will notice that they face a sort of text that is essentially about music, but completely abstracts from what is essential to music: its sensual or aesthetic qualities. Music is not reviewed, but rather reduced to sales numbers. Some readers will recognize this as alluding to Adorno’s critique of the mainstream attitude towards music32 and might be prompted to reflect on their own attitude of listening. Moreover, the fact that German readers are confronted with the Japanese charts, which 242 Wolfgang Huemer include not only Japanese, but also Western titles (by The Beatles, Monkees, Bee Gees, etc.) underlines that commercial music serves a global market. Handke’s poems, thus, portray the preconceived habits of linguistic representation (‘‘every sentence has a history’’), thus giving evidence for how the structure of this presentation is shaped by our interests and habits and in turn shapes our way of thinking about things. Moreover, it shows that language focuses on some aspects of reality and neglects others – it reduces a complex world to aspects we deem relevant; we get to see that it not only describes our (life-)world, but also structures our ways of thinking about it. The charts describe the world, but also mirror our interests – and what we are interested in is in turn determined by the charts. This shows that Handke’s poem is cognitively relevant: it invites the reader to reflect not only on soccer or music and the role they play in our society, but also on the workings of language, which can alter or enhance her ability to make moves in the language game. Whether, how, and to what extent that happens largely depends on the reader. But that should not worry us: the cognitive value of literature depends not only on the text, but also on the receptive reader. We must not see the reader as an empty sheet of paper on which the author inscribes truths, but as a rational agent who weighs the author’s opinion against hers, who reads critically, and who has the freedom to accept or dismiss insights from literary texts; and even if she dismisses the insights, she is invited to form an informed judgment on a new topic. This result is indeed welcome: too many philosophers who have written about literature (especially in the early analytic tradition) have focused on whether the statements were true and could communicate information. It is important to note, however, that literature can offer insight, but does not force it on the reader.33 In this respect literary texts differ from scientific ones. The latter contain (logically valid) arguments that (given you accept the premises) force you also to accept the conclusion.34 Literature, on the other hand, negotiates with the reader, as it were. By doing so it enriches our reflective abilities. Narrative texts focus our thoughts on a topic; they enrich our understanding by inviting acknowledgment, and urge us to arrive at an informed judgment about topics we might otherwise have neglected.35 The formal aspects of literary texts (most prominent in poetry), on the other hand, enrich our linguistic abilities and so give us a firmer grip on the world. Practices and propositions In the picture I have tried to sketch a conclusion emerges that the cognitive value of literature lies in its ability to teach us to do things: it enables us to make more moves in the language game. The question, now, is: in what way are these abilities cognitively relevant? By teaching us how to do things with words, one could argue, literature teaches us a special form of knowledge: it does not add to the list of propositions we know, but rather offers us a form of non-propositional knowledge. Why read literature? 243 I do think that if we take Wittgenstein’s account seriously, however, we see that literature does (also) add to our propositional knowledge: it allows us to enlarge the ‘‘logical space’’ in which we can move. The practices we gain from literary texts enable us to draw new inferences and thus to move to positions in the ‘‘space of reasons’’ that were out of reach before. The mistake of the old propositionalist view was to assume that we can learn from texts only if they communicate propositions we can directly add to our system of knowledge. If we put the problem this way, the question of truth arises, with all the devastating consequences that have haunted analytic philosophy of literature over the last century. The problem disappears if we distinguish between communicating propositional knowledge and gaining propositional knowledge. Literature does not communicate information about reality, it rather puts us in a position that allows us to gain propositional knowledge by drawing inferences we could or would not have drawn otherwise. A literary text might invite us to draw certain inferences, but which inferences we actually make results from our critical reflection on the text. The position outlined shows, as I hope, that literature does matter. It is not a mere niche phenomenon, nor an unnecessary, but entertaining ornament. It is rather a practice central to our language game, without which we would not even be able to master a language as complex as ours in the first place. Literature is a very rich and diverse phenomenon; we read, as I have said above, for many reasons: aesthetic appreciation, entertainment, or just to relax, etc. When it comes to the cognitive value of literature, however, we can now see that reading literary texts enriches our ways of expressing ourselves, expands the ‘‘space of reasons’’ in which we can move, and enhances our critical and reflective awareness; borrowing an expression from Richard Eldridge, we can say that it gives and improves our expressive freedom.36 Notes 1 Aristophanes, Frogs. Assemblywomen. Wealth. Jeffrey Henderson (ed. and trans.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, lines 953ff. 2 Aristophanes, Frogs, op. cit., line 1009. 3 This contention is expressed also in Frank Farrell’s recent book Why Does Literature Matter? Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004, p. 1: ‘‘To read widely in academic literary criticism of recent decades,’’ Farrell writes in the first sentence of his book, ‘‘is to wonder why literature matters at all.’’ We might say the same about the accounts of literature proposed by a large number of analytic philosophers in the twentieth century. 4 Franz Kafka, The Trial. Willa and Edwin Muir (trans.), New York: Schocken Books, 1995, p. 1. 5 I am, of course, here alluding to Hume’s famous quote ‘‘Poets themselves, tho’ liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.’’ David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 121. 6 We can directly gain irrelevant propositional knowledge from the text that might be best characterized as meta-knowledge. We learn, for example, that the protagonist of Kafka’s text is called Josef K., that according to the text he was arrested one fine morning, etc. Though this kind of knowledge might be useful in literary circles and 244 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Wolfgang Huemer students of literature fail their exams if they cannot show that they know these propositions, it has hardly any relevance for our everyday life. Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. London: Allen and Unwin, 1962, p. 277. Rudolf Carnap, ‘‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language,’’ A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism. Glencoe: Free Press, 1959, 60–81, p. 78. Catherine Elgin, ‘‘Art and the Advancement of our Understanding,’’ American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (2002), 1–12, p. 1. Ibid. Ibid., 12. Cf. Christiane Schildknecht, ‘‘Anschauungen ohne Begriffe? Zur Nichtbegrifflichkeitsthese von Erfahrung,’’ Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 51 (2003), 459–75, p. 460. Elgin, ‘‘Art and the Advancement of our Understanding,’’ op. cit., p. 11. Part of my worries concerning Schildknecht’s position stem from the fact that I can hardly imagine there being forms of non-propositional knowledge. This point is probably based on terminological issues – a point that also Schildknecht emphasizes at several points. It ultimately depends on how one defines ‘‘proposition’’ and ‘‘concept.’’ If there is non-propositional knowledge, art is definitely an interesting medium to communicate this kind of knowledge – I will come back to this point later. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1958, x43. Cf., for example, Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds), Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1969, x204: ‘‘it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game.’’ Cf. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, op. cit., x214. Aristotle, Poetics. W. Hamilton Fyfe (trans.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927, line 1451b. Oscar Wilde, ‘‘The Decay of Lying,’’ Intentions and The Soul of Man. Collected Works, vol. 8. London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1993, p. 33. Gibson emphasizes that knowledge and acknowledgment are not two separate spheres of understanding. He does not mean to distinguish propositional from nonpropositional knowledge, the two aspects are rather parts of one whole. ‘‘The concepts of knowledge and acknowledgment are two confederate notions. Together they function to record this completeness of understanding.’’ John Gibson, ‘‘Between Truth and Triviality,’’ British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2003), 224–37, p. 234. Ibid., p. 235f. Take, for example, Jandl’s famous poem schtzngrmm, which takes the consonants from the German word ‘‘Schützengraben’’ (‘‘trench’’). Jandl uses these consonants to represent the noises one can hear in a trench during the battle. The poem arguably contains a narrative, but it definitely does not portray a practice that could add at the level of acknowledgment, nor could it be summarized in a thematic statement. Lubomı́r Doležel, Heterocosmica. Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, p. 138. Ibid., p. 137f. I cannot expand this line of thought here. For a more detailed exploration of Wittgenstein’s argument, cf. my ‘‘The Transition from Causes to Norms: Wittgenstein on Training,’’ Grazer Philosophische Studien 71 (2006), 205–25. David Schalkwyk, ‘‘Fiction as ‘Grammatical’ Investigation: a Wittgensteinian Account,’’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995), 287–98, pp. 296f. I am here taking up Rorty’s line who argues that by providing stories rich in unnecessary detail novels can enrich our moral understanding, cf. Richard Rorty, ‘‘Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens,’’ Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 66–82. The poem appeared in Handke’s Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969, p. 59. It is the 17th poem in the collection, hence the number 17. Why read literature? 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 245 Handke’s poem is about the ‘‘DFB Pokal 1967/68’’ match between Bayer Leverkusen and the 1. FC Nürnberg, which actually took place that very day. Leupold was not actually playing (instead Hilpert was playing, Leupolt came in the game for Horst Blankenburg in the 76th minute). Source: www.fussballdaten.de/dfb/1968/runde1/ leverkusen-nuernberg/. Ibid., no page number. [My translation: ‘‘Die Texte dieses Bandes haben in der Regel gemeinsam, daß sie ein grammatisches Modell benutzen und dieses mit Sätzen, die nach dem Modell formuliert sind, verwirklichen. Die Sätze sind jeweils Beispiele, Satzbeispiele. Weil jeder Satz ein Beispiele für das Modell ist, ergibt sich jeder Text in der Regel als eine Anordnung von syntaktisch ähnlichen Sätzen, die zwar, einzeln genommen, Beschreibungen sind, durch die Reihung jedoch das Modell erkenntlich machen und auf diese Weise sowohl beschreiben als auch die Beschreibung als Beispiel einer vorgefaßten sprachlichen Struktur, als Satz zeigen: jeder Satz hat eine Geschichte: Ereignis ist, daß die satzweise Beschreibung der Außenwelt sich zugleich als Beschreibung der Innenwelt, des Bewußtseins des Autors erweist, und umgekehrt und wieder umgekehrt.’’] I am not a soccer expert, but it seems obvious to me that there is more to be told about soccer than the lineup – otherwise there would not be that many soccer magazines. Handke, Die Innenwelt, op. cit., pp. 78–80. Unlike The Lineup of 1. FC Nuremberg on January 28,1968, this poem was added to the English translation of the collection: The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld. Michael Roloff (trans.), New York: Seabury Press, 1974, pp. 95–9. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘‘On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,’’ Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds and trans.), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum, 1982, pp. 270–99. It can do so independently of the aesthetic quality of the text, which shows that the cognitive value of a text is to some degree independent of its aesthetic qualities. Good literature is more likely to catch the reader and to be taken seriously, though. Lamarque and Olsen raise this inability to judge the aesthetic quality of the text as a critique against the ‘‘Subjective Knowledge Theory’’ (which is in some respects similar to the position outlined in this paper, but differs substantially in others) (cf. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature. A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, p. 380). There are, as I have said above, many reasons why we read literature, and we should not expect a theory that accounts for its cognitive value to also make relevant statements about its aesthetic value. As long as a text works as a literary text, as long, that is, as it draws our attention towards language, it can be cognitively relevant in the sense outlined. Gottfried Gabriel raised this point in his ‘‘Zwischen Wissenschaft und Dichtung. Nicht-propositionale Vergegenwärtigungen in der Philosophie’’ Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 51 (2003), 415–25, arguing that philosophical texts often take literary forms rather than the form of logically valid arguments. He illustrates this point with the example of Descartes’ Meditations. Hence the importance of Holocaust fiction. This point also shows that the author has responsibilities in the choice of the topic: she should draw our attention to topics we would tend to repress. In the early forties, when people were already tired of the war, the Nazi film industry produced so-called ‘‘Durchhalte-Filme,’’ i.e., films that portrayed the happy life of average people, showed happy families or innocent love stories, so as to avoid drawing the attention of the audience to political topics. At that time life had become difficult in Germany, and had the films invited them to think about politics or the war, people might have drawn conclusions inconvenient for the regime. Cf., for example, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 7–12, 262 or his article in this volume.