Do Good Novels Make Good People?

Rabbi Joshua Gutoff, one of the most thoughtful and regularly heretical people I know, is now blogging at Frost and Clouds. I recommend his heretical thoughts about the role of literature in moral education, especially because they poke holes in my cherished assumptions:

So I’m reading Martha Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge… Her argument, briefly, is that (certain kinds of) novels have a unique role to play in moral education, in that their portrayal of finely-drawn characters in nuanced situations helps the reader develop that kind of vision necessary to a high moral imagination…

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