Rafael Rocha

How can we, perspicuously, explain the relation between a literary text and its interpretation by a reader in a way that supports the hypothesis that literature matters for moral reflection? In this article, based on a critical examination of some anglophone authors, who are more or less engaged in investigations related to the analytic philosophy of language, and who address the relation between philosophy and literature, we propose a distinction between two types of relations: the relation between the literary work and its reception by a reader, and the empirical relation between the reception of the literary work and changes in the reader. For advances in moral reflection, this relation may not be an empirical one. Therefore, we propose a form of explanation for the relation between literary work and its reception by a reader, involving the writer and their literary work, the reader and their interpretative role, and the shared background between writer and reader.

In this article, we will present the contrast between the epistemic aspects of an approach that we will conveniently call - and not from a rigorous historical pretension – “Aristotelian”, such as that of Alasdair MacIntyre, and epistemic aspects of an approach that we will also conveniently call “Kantian”, such as that of Onora O'Neill. Our hypothesis is that the presentation of these different perspectives, in terms of practical rationality for the formulation of poverty mitigation policies, would allow us to verify that the Aristotelian approach is contextually efficient, while the Kantian approach is universally demanding. However, if we take into account that a certain international political and economic conjuncture makes poverty mitigation difficult, the addressing of this problem would need to occur in a globally efficient and universally demanding manner. In this sense a Kantian theory of obligation seems to provide epistemic requirements necessary for the formulation of efficient policies.