Why is literature meaningful? Is there more than philosophical/sociological/psycological content to literature...

By meaningful I mean if it adds something to human knowledge, if it addresses and gives a contribution to the themes it involves that cannot be achieved by the "scientific" studies of the respective disciplines. That is if it can be really deep in the sense of improving our understanding of reality.

I really enjoy the artistic perspective and the feelings it provides, but when I think about it I get the impression that fictional literature, no matter how important the themes it treats, just adds engagement and subtracts clarity to the fundamental themes belonging to philosophy, religion and so on. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, just that it does not have powers of enquiry comparable to the "pure" disciplines.

>just that it does not have powers of enquiry comparable to the "pure" disciplines.
What kind of epic moron would claim that it does? Sounds like you're shadowboxing here.

Because for two reasons.

Literature can and especially in great works often does presuppose insights of these disciplines long before someone manages to create formalized frameworks to account for them.

Secondly the very act of creating frameworks always leads to things being simplified and truth being lost by the very nature of the act, Literature can capture the real in an authentic manner in which theory can not as its purpose is evoking experience rather than trying to explain it.

This is why Autistic analytics have the least use for Literature, they presuppose total understanding within formal frameworks whereas their inadequacy always emerges in the incapturable nature of reality that only Literature can come close to describing.

I call bullshit.

Well you would, wouldn't you

spooked much?

Can you cite a specific example?

Sure, if you look at a play like Hamlet for instance it presupposed a great deal of psychological and existentialist insights long long before they became inscribed as part of formal intellectual discourse

I'm curious, do you have other examples in mind?

Any great work will be an example of this in many aspects, another one I would mark is going all the way back to Homer's Odyssey which presupposed the legacy of European exploration and as such the stage for Western dominance, or you can view Kafka's The Trial as having an insight into the alienated barbaric absurdism behind German beurocratic power that would be fulfilled with the Holocaust.

But these are only interpretative acts which is the problem with providing examples, it presupposes a framework, we build frameworks and understanding from experience, great Literature provides profound experiences which open the way to understanding that we don't often get both in mundane daily life and also in the rigid hallways of systemic knowledge

These are all examples relating to human affairs. That was never in question. What they do not do is explore the 'nature of reality' since only philosophy and (non-social) science can do that.

You should read "Why Read the Classics" by Italo Calvino

It's really really good, but also partially answers your question pretty satisfactorily I think

>german
It was Austrian and it was one of the best a country could have at the time. It was slow, but fair.

Well of course but who said this was in question, things relating to the "nature of reality" refers to things of an ontological or physical nature, things that are only learned after being abstracted from actual experience and as such only exist in frameworks.
Althought even then I can point to some examples, for instance the Indian Upanishads (though we not easily categorizing them as either literature or philsophy) were were not formal texts did presuppose a conception of reality very much in line with modern theoretical physics String Theory.

Literature can provide this inspiration for these "gut feelings" that Karl Popper spoke of as being incredibly important in scientific progress

I know I know, I speak of German in a cultural-ideological sense

Germany and Austria were quite different culturally. State worship is not an Austrian thing, or at least wasn't then.

>but who said this was in question
I was replying to this remark of yours:

>their inadequacy always emerges in the incapturable nature of reality that only Literature can come close to describing

On the contrary, literature cannot capture anything about "the nature of reality" that cannot be better captured by philosophy and/or physical science. What literature can do is induce novel *feelings* about certain aspects of human affairs.

Ah but this is the very point itself, the nature of reality is in feelings, that is perception and responses to life, the basis from which philosophic and scientific abstract frameworks, my point is that formal understanding acts to make clean systems of order out of the very messy reality of experience, its the simple fact that science is derivative of experienced life not vice versa.

That's subjective idealism of an extreme sort. Understanding the world certainly requires observation, but the world is not itself made up of observations. Mankind could vanish tomorrow and the solar system would go on happily without us.

Maybe the other subjects are the derivative forms of what is ostensibly the first and primary vehicle of documented human expression.

Literature's principle value is it's ability to facilitate communication. Functionally, it can serve to shape perceptions & guide society. It is unique in the arts as it allows a vast spectrum of implicit human experience to be brought into explicit existence, easily disseminated, and it always demands some form of intellectual communion between the reader and the work. Anyone can sit back, empty their head and enjoy a song or a painting or a play. But the ability to read or write something profound?

I don't disagree at all, you don't see my point. Do you not see that if all humans died these scientific frameworks would also no longer exist. What I am speaking of phenomenology not idealism