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It is worth at least a moment to note and praise Alan Goldman's methodological stance in Philosophy and the novel.1 Goldman reflects appreciatively on the achievements of specific novels in order to arrive at philosophically interesting results about interpretation and moral understanding. In his appreciative reflections, Goldman is aware of, but by no means bound by, recent work in experimental moral psychology (for example, arguments against the existence of character) and metaethics (for example, standard realism/antirealism debates). The result is a powerful demonstration not only of the human, cognitive, and ethical interest of the novel but also of the ability of the novel to inform and transform our thinking about psychology and ethics.
Part 1, titled "Philosophy of novels," argues for claims about interpretation. Two main theses are prominent:
1) "Interpreting novels aims at appreciating their value" (p. 21).
2) A work distinctively possesses aesthetic value when, and only when, it invites and sustains "the full and interactive exercise of our . . . perceptual, imaginative, emotional, and cognitive . . . capacities" (p. 3).
In developing this second thesis, Goldman draws on his earlier account of aesthetic value in his 1995 book, aesthetic value. Goldman's general view about value is broadly Aristotelian: distinctive values attach to distinctive kinds of activity that we enjoy. In reading novels in particular, or at least clearly successful ones, we engage with and enjoy their "perfect union[s] of form and content, grasped through imagination, feeling, and thought operating together" (p. 6). As these mentions of form, content, imagination, feeling, and thought indicate, Kant, dewey, and Beardsley are also among this book's pantheon of heroes in considering literary art.
Interpreting novels, then, is not simply a matter of semantic decoding. nor is interpretation directed exclusively or primarily either to authorial intention "behind" the work or to formal properties detached from expressive or semantic significance. Any "thematic theses" must, if a work is "to be of literary value, . . . be embodied or woven into [its] narrative, characterization, and even setting, formal structure, and prose style" (p. 7). Both authors and readers know this, and their manners of production and reception are attuned to this requirement, at least in cases of successful writing and reading.
The interpretation of novels as...