Beyond Nussbaum’s Ethics of Reading: Camus, Arendt, and the Political Significance of Narrative Imagination

Abstract

The article contributes to current theoretical debates about the political significance of narrative imagination by drawing on Albert Camus's and Hannah Arendt's existentially-grounded aesthetic judging sensibility. It seeks to displace the prevalent tendency to probe literature for its moral-philosophical insights, and instead delves into the experiential reality of our engagement with literary works. It starts from Martha Nussbaum's recognition of the literary ability to account for the fragility of human affairs, yet finds her reduction of narrative imagination to the role of furthering moral lessons wanting politically. Against this background, the article reclaims Camus's and Arendt's dialogical-representative judging orientation and its insight into the narrative ability to respond to the intersubjective character of political action. As such, their aesthetic sensibility reveals the potential political significance of literary imagination in its capacity to open a public space where the contradictions of our situated existence can be confronted through politics between plural equals.

Do You Not See the Reason for Yourself? Political Withdrawal and the Experience of Epistemic Friction

“…But to look at the story primarily as a moral lesson on how to cultivate epistemic virtues and eradicate epistemic vices would also be to miss its world-disclosing power (Mrovlje, 2019). When interpreted with an aesthetic sensibility, the story rather enables a reflexivity on the part of the reader about the limits and possibilities of the political responsiveness that withdrawal might provoke.…”