[dawg-]

Ah! You quoted me but you put a very convenient [...] in place of learning about "yourself". I think the reason you did that is because your criticism is only coherent if you zero in on learning about "the world" and leave out that messy other business of self-discovery. But learning about yourself is pretty important for personal growth, too, in my opinion so important that I even listed it first when writing that sentence ;)

[nescioquid]

I think his argument still holds when you also include "about yourself": in the 18th century people recognized the novel as having a power to help us exercise "moral imagination". I fail to see why reading cannot help one understand oneself. EDIT: and I see that you were not arguing against that, in any case.

[ravitation]

And you very conveniently don't address anything I actually said, because after "yourself" you also wrote "and the world."

This isn't some "gotcha." I addressed the parts of your comment that I disagreed with, and didn't address the other parts...