When I was in college, one of my classes — it was Father Gannon's metaphysics class — had as one of its textbooks, William Luipen's Existential Phenomenology. If memory seves, one of the points made in that book is that one distinctly human characteristics has to do with uselessness. In other words, one of the things that makes us human is our ability to ditch the utilitarian for a while. Ornament an object for no other reason than that it makes it look nicer, not be cause it makes it perform a task better. Does reading require any justification beyond itself? I don't think so.
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