Our Engagement with Literature: On Literature as a Way of Being - Ons engagement met literatuur: Over literatuur als een wijze van Zijn

Abstract

An ethics of literature is generally related to the subject matter, style or genre of specific literary works, more specifically to the fact that a literary work deals with a certain subject or deals with it in a certain way. Instead, this article explores an ontological approach to the ethics of literature. This ontological approach suggests that literature’s ethical dimension lies primarily in a specific mode of being that we call 'literary' and in our engagement with this mode of being, i.e. in the interrelation of the way literature exists for us and the way it lets us exist.