NP but we've been here before

[Markekohut]

My attempt at a refutation might go like this: with mirror neutrons, we learn to feel " with" others...what others feel. 
There is no such thing as a " private language" ---see Wittgenstein--so the language we learn
Is shared, is " a formThe  of life" and with it we learn our " feelings", our desires, the societal prohibitions---what is judged right, wrong and the concept of " moral".
Literature is written in language, he says tautologically, but this means we encounter the words
As part of our " form of life". 
If literature presents ethical dilemmas and thematic, symbolic ways of thinking of them, that is
Congruent with how we learn meanings in a shared language. 
therefore, meaningful literature enters our shared language. 
" So, you're the lady who started this war?" --as Lincoln said to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Does this count?

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On Jun 2, 2013, at 5:03 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

> AAGGH!
> 
> A philosopher with a column, bad start. Good for popular press but...   gawd, whar to start?
> 
> This is an example of philosphy biting at what it can't chew; did you notice how many times he mentioned psychology? You see he starts badly by giving us an argument without even talking about how it came to be. 
> 
> Perhaps it would be best to respond by saying that if life cannot instill in us "moral expertise" (a ridiculous term) than why should we expect literature to achieve this?
> 
> And as if the water were not muddied enough he takes us to aesthetics: "I have never been persuaded by arguments purporting to show that literature is an arbitrary category that functions merely as a badge of membership in an elite. There is such a thing as aesthetic merit, or more likely, aesthetic merits, complicated as they may be to articulate or impute to any given work."  Of course it is not arbitrary but that doesn't make his argument for aesthetic merit any more true.
> 
> This fellow might get some answers if he started to think of what people (who) "want to insist that the effort makes them more morally enlightened as well" and why. 
> 
> Perhaps this media-philosopher should read some sociologists like Pierre Bourdie who have contributed greatly to discussions of literary value, but that would require recognizing the value of sociology which is oddly left out of the article.
> 
> It might be interesting to see what people write in the comment section.
> 
> ciao
> mc
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
> Sent: Sunday, June 2, 2013 1:30 AM
> Subject: NP but we've been here before
> 
> 
> 
> Refute this guy,,,I start with a recent plister's (Monte, I think) mention of "mirror neutrons". 
> 
> opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/does-great-literature-make-us-better?smid=tw-nytopinion&seid=auto 
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