Abstract

OLIVEIRA, Wesley Felipe de. The relation between imagination, morality, politics and literature: an analysis from Adam Smith and Martha Nussbaum. Educação e Filosofia [online]. 2021, vol.35, n.73, pp.161-198.  Epub Jan 11, 2024. ISSN 1982-596X.  https://doi.org/10.14393/revedfil.v35n73a2021-54851.

This article analyzes the relation between imagination, morality and politics through literature. We start with a reflection on the role of imagination in sociability and moral sympathy, as understood by Adam Smith. For the author, the ability to understand and feel what happens to another requires an imaginative exercise. Smith considers that moral sympathy is inseparable from the imagination. This question is amplified from the concept of literary imagination or narrative developed by Martha Nussbaum. For the author, the capacity for imagination can be cultivated through literature, as it allows the experience of emotion and understand other people´s situations. This promotes and broadens a moral imagination, capable of providing a broader understanding of human relationships. Thus, this article maintains that the humanities and, especially, literary reading, provides a kind of moral experience and an ethical-political reflection. This gives literature an educational value, as it is capable of promote the qualities of a citizenship consistent with the pluralist and cosmopolitan democratic society. The proposal developed here offers elements for thinking about ethics, politics and education in today's society, valuing and rescuing the humanities and literary culture.

Keywords : Imagination; Ethics; Politics; Sympathy; Literature.

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