Gabriel Gottfried

“The Cognitive Value and Ethical Relevance of Fictional Literature.”

(An excerpt)

The two main theses of this paper are the following: first, that the specific cognitive value of
literature lies in its capacity to make things present (Vergegenwärtigungsleistung); and second,
that this re-presentation contributes important aspects to an adequate moral discourse. Thus, it is
the capacity to make things present that qualifies literature as ethically relevant. This does not
mean that all literature has such relevance. I only want to maintain that there is some literature
that has ethical relevance. My statement is not a general but an existential (particular) one.
Furthermore, to make things present is not a privilege of literature. It can also be achieved by the
visual arts or philosophy, which will, however, not be discussed here. […]

In contrast to postmodern panfictionalism, which attempts to annihilate the distinction between

fact and fiction, I want to sustain the opposition between aesthetical illusion and extra-aesthetical
existence. The confusion of fiction and reality, or rather, the blurring of the boundary between
fact and fiction, has itself often been made the topic of fictional literature (as in Cervantes’ Don
Quijote or Wieland’s Don Sylvio). The playful manipulation of this boundary is known as
“fictional irony,” and “life is a dream” may be regarded as a literary topos (e.g., with Calderón,
Hofmannsthal, Lewis Carroll). But we must keep in mind that the works of these authors are to
be taken as literary representations of the confusions and their implications for life, and not as
the claim or assertion that there is no difference between fact and fiction. […]

So far, we have seen that the cognitive value of literature can be described in terms of non-
propositional re-presentation. Based on this result, I now will come to the second part of my
considerations which analyses the ethical relevance of the cognitive value of literature, this value
being a much discussed topic in the field of “ethical narratology” (Müller 2008, Müller 2015).

The aesthetic success of literary re-presentation may be measured in terms of the aesthetic
concept of pregnancy in the sense of a complex, i.e., detailed and nuanced re-presentation.
Because of their pregnancy, non-propositional re-presentations may aid propositional discussions
when it comes to moral philosophy. The cognitive value of such re-presentations lies in their
function to cultivate our moral judgment; they raise our awareness of moral questions by means
of an adequate re-presentation of the general through the particular without which a
differentiated moral discourse is impossible. When the situations of others (including literary
figures) are made present to us, we are able to broaden the horizon of our understanding. It
allows us to partake, in our imagination, in a wide range of different situations, motives,
emotions, attitudes, perspectives, and sentiments, most of which we would never have come
across in real life. What we have here is therefore not an immediate, actual acquaintance; it is not
a direct epistemic contact with things. Imaginary representation does not aim at the production of
presence in a real sense.

The idea that in our imagination we partake in the lives of literary figures in the sense of
cognitive empathy is supported by a rehabilitation of emotions in current epistemology and

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moral philosophy.1 Robert Musil already emphasized that intellect and emotions are not enemies.
(Musil 1978, p. 494). To grant emotions a function in ethics is not incompatible with cognitivism
as long as their activation is not regarded as the basis of moral judgments (as is the case in
emotivism). Emotions can have a preparatory or heuristic function in raising our awareness of
moral questions.2 Two functions of emotive language have to be distinguished: its function to
appeal to and its function to make things present. It is therefore not yet aesthetical emotivism if
we ascribe to literature a vital role for raising our moral awareness. The emotivist view of
literature (and, more generally, of arts) holds that the function of literature is to convey emotions
by evoking or awakening them. This causal way of putting things implies that it is vital to
actually feel the emotions conveyed. But this is an undue restriction. The re-presentation of
feelings of alienation in Kafka’s works does not primarily intend to evoke this feeling but rather
to make it comprehensible. It aims first and foremost at making emotions present to the
imagination. As already indicated, imagination is not concerned with real presence but rather
with fictional re-presentation. Since we neither can nor want to live through all morally relevant
situations, literary re-presentation enables us to imaginatively – and this is cognitively – put
ourselves into these situations or emotional states instead.3

Although it is not the only form of literary re-presentation, narrative representation plays an
especially prominent role because it links emotions primarily to crucial moments of decision-
making and thus sharpens our moral judgment. The function of moral judgment is to mediate
adequately between a general norm and a particular case. In this context, Kant distinguishes
between subsumptive judgment, which descends from the general to the particular, and reflective
judgment, which ascends from the particular to the general. Felicitous literary re-presentation
activates the fancy of reflective moral judgment, making it receptive for the complexity of real
life. Moral judgment itself, in turn, is thereby prevented from unjustifiably subsuming the
particular under the general. We should not be misled to suspect moral judgment in general of
exerting “ethical force” (Butler 2003). As Hannah Arendt, following Kant, made clear in her
analyses of judgment, we cannot abstain from judging. 4 It is judgment that places objects within
the reach of human signification (Arendt 1985, p. 128). 5 Understanding is regarded as serving
judgment. But this presupposes the free exertion of imagination in order to imagine., i.e., to
make present how things look from a position which we cannot take in real life (Ibid., p. 128f.).
Arendt thus agrees with the demand for a sharpening of moral judgment through imagining
alternative situations, which prevents too simple and therefore “forced” subsumptions.6

[…] It seems to be easier to come to an agreement concerning very general moral norms than to
agree on the question whether a specific situation is of such a kind that it can be regarded as a
particular case of a certain general norm. To sharpen the kind of judgment vital to answer this
1
Cf. Nussbaum 2001. The title Upheavals of Thought is a quotation from M. Proust. For the role of emotions, cf. for example
Döring/Mayer (2002); further the exemplary study Döring (1999), especially chapter 3.3. on “the cognitive function of
emotions.”
2
In this context, Teichert (1996, p. 211) speaks of “emotional participation” as the specific “form of cognition of tragedy.” Cf.
also Demmerling (2004, p. 31).
3
For an exemplary analysis of the “existential significance of emotions” on the basis of Joyce’s short story “The Dead,” cf. Pocai
(2000).
4
In the end, even Butler (2003, p. 60) has to admit this: “Judgments are necessary in political as well as in personal life.”
5
The editor Beiner’s summary of Arendt’s fragmentary considerations.
6
Arendt is mainly concerned with non-fictional re-presentation, with “relating great deeds in a story.” (Arendt 1985, p. 128f.)

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question, fictional narrations supply us with exemplary expeditions through the realm of good
and evil (Ricoeur 1996, p. 201).7 The well-known abstract standardized descriptions of ethical
dilemmas cannot reach the level of complexity provided by literary re-presentation. […]

The preceding analyses should have made clear why fictional literature can have a cognitive
value despite (or rather by virtue of) its fictionality. […] Its cognitive achievement is to
exemplarily make present the situation of men and women in the world. 8 Thus, while fictional
literature may be concerned with the same reality as science, it is not interested in mere facts but
rather in viewing reality from a human perspective. For example, a historical account of the role
of the educated middle-class in the Third Reich is something completely different from the
literary representation of the perspective of this class through the narrator figure of Serenus
Zeitblom in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus.

To summarize, we must distinguish between two different but equally important and insofar
complementary forms of cognition: (1) the propositional, scientific-apophantic descriptions of
real facts, (2) the non-propositional, fictional-literary re-presentation of real life. 9 Thus, fictional
literature has a cognitive value that is not to be identified with propositional truth. 10 This result is
in conflict with the logical tradition that reduces cognition to propositional knowledge, i.e.,
cognition expressible in the form of true statements. In contrast to this view, I intended to argue
that cognition of things and situations cannot only be conveyed through propositional
descriptions but also through making present real and imaginary situations, allowing us to
become indirectly acquainted with them. Accordingly, we have to distinguish between the
propositional cognition that something is the case and the non-propositional cognition how it is
or would be to find oneself in a certain situation (cf. Reicher 2007). Of course, re-presentations
may also contain predications – however, the illocutionary function of these predications is not
to propositionally describe a situation as existing but rather to imaginatively put subjects into
possible situations in order to make them familiar with these situations.11

The successful literary re-presentation of attitudes or ways of life has a cognitive value
independent of whether we approve of these attitudes or ways of life or abominate them. It
presents us in an exemplary way with the conditio humana and, if needed, also its corruptions or
perversions, i. e., its dark sides. This, too, can constitute the ethical relevance of literature, a
relevance that does not depend on our ethical evaluation.

7
Judgment cannot, as Kant emphasized, be expressed in rules.
8
The use of the term conditio humana is not intended to imply the existence of anthropological absolutes in the sense of the
“universally human.” Although the choice of examples is biased towards poetic realism, the impact of my considerations is not
limited to this tradition.
9
This is, of course, no exhaustive list of all possible forms of cognition.
10
Martin Seel argues in a similar vein that “aesthetic re-presentation,” as other forms of re-presentation, “intrinsically cannot be
articulated propositionally.” (Seel 1985, p. 159)
11
For a justification of the recognition of non-propositional cognition from the perspective of perception theory, cf. Schildknecht
2002, pp. 199–215.