I've said this before - and I mean it strongly - an abstract concept or a moral issue has to be connected to feeling. If we don't believe it somehow viscerally, we don't really take it in.
There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.
I really believe we read differently when we know even the most banal facts of an author's life.