Literature, Imagination, and Human Rights

Abstract

The article argues that literary works have the potential of breaking through the barriers of our encapsulated world. This may create a higher ethical awareness in the reader, and social and political progress in the public sphere. It is argued that imaginative tools (literature being one) are needed to make such progress possible. Dicken's Hard Times is used as an illustration of how such mechanisms produce their effects. Hegel's "Cunning of Reason" is invoked as an explanation.

Cite this document ^(BETA)