Todd, Sharon
(2008)
The Belated Time of Reading, or Inconsolable Ethics.
Philosophy of Education Yearbook.
pp. 51-53.
ISSN 8756-6575
Abstract
As both an ardent reader all my life and a long-time student of Emmanuel
Levinas’s work, I found a deep resonance with Ann Chinnery’s approach to
reformulating the relation between moral education and literature. Drawn by the
eloquent and quiet tone of the essay, I was especially thankful for her skill at tugging
literature away from the sentimental grip of certain thinkers who seem to believe that
what we have to learn from fiction can be reduced to rather trite formulations of
identification, empathy, and compassion. It is not that such powerful emotions do
not take place when we read, but to educate on the basis that they ought to happen
because they lead us to a better engagement with the world suggests that we seem
to know beforehand what kind of response is appropriate to any given text. The risk
is not only that we lose a sense of the texture and diversity of possible responses, but
that we turn literature into a mere purveyor of universal claims about the world, into
a treatise rather than a work of art. As Thomas Hardy once wrote, “a novel is an
impression not an argument.”
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Belated Time; Reading; Inconsolable Ethics; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Education |
| Item ID: |
8551 |
| Depositing User: |
Prof. Sharon Todd
|
| Date Deposited: |
02 Aug 2017 08:35 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Philosophy of Education Yearbook |
| Publisher: |
Philosophy of Education Society |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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