Casuistry and the realist novel …

… The tyranny of theory by Gary Saul Morson — The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

For Wittgenstein, logic and science are indeed powerless to address questions of life’s meaning. “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all,” Wittgenstein explains. But that does not mean these problems do not matter. It means that they must be addressed otherwise—for example, by literature.