Swift upheld the belief shared by most of the ancients that, properly guided, the lying muses have the power to lead us to the truth. Satire is one very particular form of this lying — ancient in origin but especially prominent in the modern age. More than other literary forms, satire uses carefully crafted lies to convey truths that would be harder to accept or even recognize if presented simply as “fact.” Gulliver’s name may itself reflect this idea: Dr. Johnson’s dictionary tells us that a “gull” is someone who is easily tricked or deceived, yet the “ver” suggests veritas, the Latin word for truth. Gulliver’s journey then, as ours, is one of being deceived into the truth. At its best, satire — like philosophy — is able to make the familiar strange, revealing to us what has been in front of us all along.

In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift challenges the idea — advanced by his Enlightenment contemporaries — that truth, including the truth about human nature, is best understood as a matter of simple factual claims. Swift’s view, as we shall see, was that dedication to this rising scientific view of truth as synonymous with fact precisely misses the very essence of human nature. But Swift’s recognition of the subtle relationship between our capacity for lying and the essential truth about human nature also sets him apart from another modern opponent of the Enlightenment, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche picked up as a kind of motto a mistranslated line from the Second Pythian Ode, a work by the Ancient Greek poet Pindar: “Become what you are.”

The New Atlantis » The Truth About Human Nature Lee Perlman on truth, satire, and Gulliver’s Travels

The essential nature of experiences of this kind, and their personal meanings, would not necessarily be discovered in psychoanalytic therapy because, in such therapy, although aspects of previous relationships may be recognized in one’s relationship the therapist, the theme-like structure of event-leading-to-event, and the way in which such events resonate with selfhood, may not easily become visible. So here is the thought. Might it be that if one is a reader one could take, say, a dozen novels or short stories, or movies, that have especially affected one, and discern in them a common theme (or perhaps several recurring themes)? From these one might not only recognize something deep about oneself, but be able to choose what books to read, what plays to see, what films to watch, to explore these formative issues further?

Resonance Keith Oatley on resonance at OnFiction