What is fiction for? Bernard Harrison’s answers to the question are the traditional ones long taken for granted by almost all those who care about plays, short stories, and novels. Literature, if it is any good, is one of the chief engines of self-understanding. At the same time, literature has the power to immerse us in an unfamiliar situation and society and, moreover, to immerse us in it as participants rather than as impersonal observers. Literature reveals aspects of the human condition .  .  . in such a way as to bring them before the bar of critical scrutiny and self-examination. Furthermore, as readers of the classics of East and West have always known, the audience for the great literature of any age of any culture is not limited to the people of that culture or age, but extends .  .  . to all mankind. This long book provides an innovative, rigorous philosophical defense for merely what every common reader has always taken to be involved in ‘talking about books.’  The common reader is right, Harrison argues, to believe that literature offers valuable insights into human life that cannot be replaced or duplicated by psychology, sociology, or any of the social sciences. Belief in literature’s ability to offer insights into individuals, societies, and the human condition itself has long been the basis for claiming academic literary studies as a cornerstone of the humanities.

Source: Know Thyselves | The Weekly Standard