Book Description

In May 2014, at Stanford University's McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, a panel of educators, composed of faculty from the university's business school, law school, and philosophy department, addressed a series of questions about teaching ethics: “Can something as personal as ethics be taught in a classroom?” “Can classes in ethics make students more virtuous individuals?” (Monin, Schapiro, and Fried 2014). An answer to these questions can be sought in the postcolonial critic Spivak's (2012) work where she argues for the social urgency of the humanities and expresses faith that “the literary can still do something.” Great writers from Mathew Arnold to Rabindranath Tagore aver that the study of great literary works in a modern-day classroom will train the students on anti-elitism and egalitarianism, prompting them toward what Spivak calls an “uncoercive rearrangement of desires.” Kant (1991) once said that it is through aesthetics that judgment is taught. The study of world literature and philosophy provides young readers with a subjective dimension while training them for participating in democracy. By stimulating a healthy discourse among the members of a community, it fosters among them an environment of trust. It encourages different cultures to start conversing with each other while endeavoring toward a cosmopolitan ideal of the world. It fosters a relationship of respect and affinity among the heterogeneous members of a community, to make them fellow citizens with a shared responsibility for the wellbeing of the society and the world.