Among many other books, I'd say that The Divine Comedy presents us with a paradigm case.
Dante includes many real people and true events in his narrative. But all of them are embedded in a fictional matrix which interprets them and gives them a meaning which is larger than just "this is stuff that happened."
When you've read the whole thing, then you're left with a detailed and profound examination of how one ought to live. It gives us a wonderful set of interpretive tools to think about one's own life, and what we should devote ourselves to. The book shows how passionate love and the beauty of life can pull us toward what is good.
As a book about ethics, aesthetics, and human meaning, it isn't true in the way that science is true. It can't be. But that's not what it was meant to be.
As Socrates pointed out a long time ago, what's the good of knowing facts if we're still bad people?
Dante includes many real people and true events in his narrative. But all of them are embedded in a fictional matrix which interprets them and gives them a meaning which is larger than just "this is stuff that happened."
When you've read the whole thing, then you're left with a detailed and profound examination of how one ought to live. It gives us a wonderful set of interpretive tools to think about one's own life, and what we should devote ourselves to. The book shows how passionate love and the beauty of life can pull us toward what is good.
As a book about ethics, aesthetics, and human meaning, it isn't true in the way that science is true. It can't be. But that's not what it was meant to be.
As Socrates pointed out a long time ago, what's the good of knowing facts if we're still bad people?
