The philosopher Richard T Rorty posited that novels "let us know how people quite unlike ourselves think of themselves, how they contrive to put actions that appal us in a good light, how they give their lives meaning".
Reading novels, he thought, could be an exercise in spiritual development: an analogue to Bonaventure and Thomas à Kempis.
He explains: "The problem of how to live our own lives then becomes a problem of how to balance our needs against theirs, and their self-descriptions against ours."
