Fordítsd le a cikket magyarra! How reading fiction can make you a better person Works of fiction have historically been associated with important social changes. Modern research suggests that reading fiction helps you relate to other people’s experiences. It also correlates with improved social interactions and the ability to read the room. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln met with Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel detailing the horrors of slavery. He supposedly greeted her with, “So, you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war,” an acknowledgment of the novel’s role in adding fuel to the abolitionist movement and helping spark the Civil War. Novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin have long been credited with ushering along large-scale social changes. But such credit implicitly suggests that reading fiction can change people on an individual level. And a possible avenue for this change is an ability to cultivate empathy in readers. The capacity for empathy – to first identify and then understand and share in someone else’s feeling – is largely held as a virtue these days. Yet, philosophically speaking, there is a bit of a problem that makes being naturally empathetic a […]
