Art lovers and philosophers alike tend to think there is an educational benefit to consuming quality fiction. The claim seems to be that fiction has the ability to morally educate us: to make us more understanding, more empathetic. But while fiction can give us knowledge of all sorts, there is no evidence that it can give us moral knowledge, that it can make us better humans, argues Greg Currie.

Overwhelmingly, people who have a serious interest in fiction—and I mean film, drama and television as well as literature— seem to think that fiction has an important educative role. It is certainly a widespread view in my own community of academic philosophy, Martha Nussbaum being perhaps its best known advocate. They don’t, of course, mean that all fictions provide something educative for everyone who comes into contact with them; we all agree there are fictions with no such capacity, as well as fictions which are apt to spread ignorance and error. But they think that there is a good deal of fiction around from which we can and do learn. The knowledge in question is moral knowledge: the idea is that fiction makes us better, more empathetic human beings. I don’t know whether this is true or not but I do believe there is not much evidence to support it.