Tok Essay

“…we will always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology”. (Noam Chomsky). To what extend would you agree?

Human beings feel. That is the only thing one can be certain about. Whether they are explained as chemical reactions or ways we react to a certain stimulus, emotions are definitely an intrinsic part of human nature. I consider thatall areas of knowledge can affect human emotions in different levels, even if emotion itself is not their ultimate way of knowing. However, some of them are particularly effective at moving human sensibilities because their main way of knowing is emotion. Such is the case with arts, especially, literature. I agree with Noam Chomsky’s quote, I believe that as human beings, we can know more about ourown nature and personality from literature, because this art is based in the use of emotion, perception and language to trigger feelings, and “to feel” is the only truth within human nature. Consequently, to support this thesis, this essay will show that literature is more effective than sciences and other art as a way to approach and learn about human life and personality

From the four mainways of knowing considered in the Theory of Knowledge course- Emotion, Perception, Language and Reason-, literature directly uses emotion, perception and language, which have true and direct effects in emotions and feelings: the essence of human nature. It is possible to use as example the collection of short stories The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien. In this book, the writer presentsthe reality of the Vietnam War from a less conventional perspective; he drowns the reader in a sea of feelings, frustrations and weaknesses. Furthermore, he represents the “truth” of the Vietnam War from a psychological point of view, giving more importance to emotions and characters than to historical facts. By his exceptional use of language, O’Brien appeals to the reader’s emotions and makeshim/her feel empathetic towards characters that do not even exist in “real life”. After reading The Things They Carried, one feels that one knows and one can predict how each character is going to react and feel, because we have identify ourselves we the story behind the character itself. The emotional perception and perspective that characterizes the author’s style in this piece is what makes itparticularly effective in transmitting information about human life and human personality.

The aspect that makes literature, especially novels and stories, most valuable in providing knowledge about human nature is the essence of the knowledge issue. As it has been mentioned before, the nature of human life and personality is emotional. Therefore the areas of knowledge that use the ways ofknowing that produce direct effects in emotions, are the areas that ought to be the most successful in reaching an understanding of the specific knowledge issue. At the same time, the main objective of literature is to convey a message related to human emotions or to a definite aspect of human life and/or personality- such as moral values, social protest, intrapersonal conflicts, interpersonalrelations, etc. In order to achieve this purpose, literature uses experiences, characters and stories that “could” be real, have a deep emotional connotation or even both.

From what was stated above, the following question could be raised: due to the fact that all arts have an emotionally based way to approach knowledge, Aren’t the rest of the arts as successful as literature as ways of learning abouthuman nature? I think that the first answer to this question would be yes. However, after a thoughtful reflection on this query, and based upon the fact that arts offer different messages, some of them very wide and others very narrow, it can be concluded that, in effect, the other arts – painting, cinema, theatre, music, etc. - are good ways of learning about human life and personality, but...