Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Helen Bradley, and Paul Noordhof, eds., Art and Belief (Oxford, UL: Oxford University Press, 2017)
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Ema Sullivan‑Bissett, Helen Bradley, and Paul Noordhof, eds., Art and Belief (Oxford, UL: Oxford University Press, 2017). (Hardcover, $59.54, ISBN‑13: 978‑0198805403, 272 pp. Kindle, $68.40, ASIN: B076KP2TS2, 266 pp.) Iskra Fileva1
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When I was growing up, I learned a good deal about the world from novels. Much of my knowledge about adults’ behavior and psychology and most of my knowledge about the past came from fiction. For instance, when I was 12 or so, I read Denis Diderot’s book The Nun (La Religieuse). In it, a young woman, Suzanne, is sent to a convent against her will. At one point, the reader learns that Suzanne is an illegitimate child, and that her mother wants to commit Suzanne to monastic life as a way of making up for her own past sins: Suzanne is her mother’s sacrificial offering to God. In the convent, Suzanne suffers at the hands of a Mother Superior who is both mentally and physically abusive (at one point, Suzanne has to walk on broken glass). She succeeds in getting transferred to another convent, where the Mother Superior is much kinder. However, this gentler Mother Superior, attracted to Suzanne’s youth and beauty, attempts to seduce Suzanne. As a 12-year old, I was impressed by all these events, but more to the point, I learned a lot from Diderot’s book. It had never occurred to me, before reading his novel, that there was a time when parents had the power to compel a young daughter to go to a convent; that some people may believe they can earn God’s forgiveness by sacrificing another person (I found this quite puzzling); that a Mother Superior may be interested in sex; and that it is not only men but women too who may attempt to seduce the object of their attraction. I learned something about myself also: I was not going to join a convent when I grew up, and I wasn’t going to allow anyone to touch me against my will. It is probably fair to say that as an adult, I no longer learn much about the world from reading fiction. However, I still derive great cognitive benefits from it, just different ones. It is not so much that I acquire knowledge I didn’t have before as that thoughtful fiction authors share ideas that, true or false, are worth thinking about; or else ideas I have not made explicit to myself before. For instance, * Iskra Fileva [email protected] 1
UCB 232, Philosophy Department, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309‑0232, USA
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Book Review
George Eliot drew my attention to the fact that we may have wishful beliefs not about ourselves, our traits, skills, and so on, but about other people’s duties. We may think others have some duty because it would suit us if they did. In Daniel Deronda, Eliot describes a case in which a mother attempts to persuade her daughter that it is the daughter’s duty to give up her love interest since the man is of a lower social status. Eliot writes: “A woman in your position has serious duties. Where duty and inclination clash, she must follow duty.” “I don’t deny that,” said Catherine
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