Abstract

Identifying cognition in general with propositional knowledge exposes the cognitive value of literature to abiding skepticism. This chapter argues that German romanticism has generated two competing views of the relation between literature and the overtly truth-seeking disciplines. One is a legacy of skepticism and antirealism that is powerless to give a positive account of literary value. The other is a complementarist legacy emphasizing literature’s cognitive priority to and its role as the cognitive fulfillment of discursive knowledge. This tradition offers important resources to aesthetic cognitivism for articulating and defending the value of literature and the institutions that support it.