ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows that literature can be of considerable value in addressing important philosophical and educational questions. It suggests that making teaching and learning too certain, too predictable, can hinder the educational process. Philosophy of education is a complex, multidisciplinary, diverse field of inquiry, drawing on a very wide range of different thinkers and traditions. The educational relationship between author and reader is particularly evident in the Bildungsroman. Fyodor Dostoevsky sees his readers as 'collaborators'. Readers are 'by design drawn into the cast of characters in real existential dramas structured by the twin abysses of experience – the underground of nature and the divine ground of being – as apprehended through all the modalities of thought and passion'. Through reading Lolita or similar works of deceit, readers can become more adept, often intuitively rather than self-consciously, at detecting breaches of deceit elsewhere.
