ABSTRACT
What does the literature of Hemingway mean for liberal politics? There are critics who would challenge the legitimacy of this question because they deny that art and literature are, or ever should be, relevant to political life.1 Nevertheless, there is a venerable tradition in Western political philosophy, stretching from Plato to Richard Rorty, which insists that art and literature are intrinsically political and vital to politics. Art and literature are infl uential vehicles of cultural meaning. As such, they refl ect, represent, interpret, teach, challenge, and transform society’s values, values that lie at the foundations of moral and political life. Thus, on the Platonic-Rortian view, art and literature inform and infl uence the ethical and political ideas, identities, and behaviors of citizens, sometimes directly and obviously, and other times much more subtly, perhaps even subconsciously.
