The Political Impact of the Novel

Abstract

This essay approaches the topic of the political impact of the novel from an unconventional angle. It argues that this impact, recently discussed by philosophers like Richard Rorty and Martha Nussbaum, should be considered the result of a special feature of this genre, namely that the novel is read solitarily and in silence. Reading a novel unplugs the reader from ordinary life and transports him to a world of the self, an individual world. From this position, which will be compared with the position of the subject in transcendental philosophy, the reader is able to see the world around him in a new, individualist and subjective perspective. This perspective may be regarded as at least one of the conditions of modern democratic citizenship.