The Moral "Meaning" of Literature: Or Of Oil and Water

The New York Times has a review of this unusual book by philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, in which the argument seems to be made (I have not read the book entirely, only in fragments) that reading some of the great works of Western literature can help us "find meaning" in a post-monotheistic age.

Naturally, and as the review points up, that will mean that it will have little to say for those who haven't made this important advancement.  And the review is also useful in describing what is a truly strange reading of Homer.  The Greeks were "less reflective" than we are and so, without thinking deeply, they celebrated the "excellence" of war in exactly the same manner as they celebrated a really good tragedy.  Odysseus "is a prototype of modern ambivalence" because just like modern man, apparently, he cheats on his wife but wants the home life too.  If this is really the authors' interpretation of the Odyssey, one which the reviewer calls "incandescent," then I wonder how Dante, who gets tossed in there somewhere too, gets treated.  Perhaps an analogy can be made to some sort of contemporary redemption story.  Dante is just like Michael Downey, Jr.  Dante is truly the forerunner of Ben Roethlisberger (from the review: the authors "repeatedly turn to mass sports events, which they see as providing a primary sense of community and meaning in contemporary America"). 

But the real problem with this sort of book may be neither the secular presumptions nor the crudely tendentious readings, but something much, much worse -- the idea that literature can be read as a unitary, one-thread story, and that it can be used to achieve or "recapture" some sort of mystical pomo ethic -- the call of the gods experienced as a rushing "whoosh" (the authors think that's what we feel when President Obama speaks) -- in our "nihilistic" world.  Mon Dieu!  "Moral" readings of literature are nothing new, and some philosophers are well known for the suggestion that literature can improve one's moral hygiene.  I find those views deeply unpersuasive, but this seems to be a further step in the evolution of this view of literature.  It's the view that literature has a unitary moral message to impart -- that the "meaning of it all" can be discerned from this reduction -- and that it can be used strategically to fill whatever void "secular" man needs filling.

As I said, I haven't read the book in its entirety, so perhaps these remarks are too strong.  But, and setting aside the important and interesting field of aesthetics (philosophers, is it still going strong?), perhaps philosophy and literature would do better by mindfully keeping their mutual distance. 

ADDENDUM: Since there was a bit of talk in the review about the authors' view that reading literature can be a way to overcome contemporary "alienation," this quote from a piece by Mark Lilla some time back is worth reproducing: "[T]he aim of any liberal education worthy of the name is to transport students out of the world they live in, making them less certain about what is valuable in life. It does not seek to overcome alienation, it tries to induce it."