Literature and Ethics

This thesis comprises a study of the ethical thought of Iris Murdoch with special emphasis, as evidenced by the title, on how morality is intimately connected to self-improvement aiming at perfection and how the study of fiction has an important role to play in our strive towards bettering ourselves within the framework set by Murdoch’s moral philosophy.

This essay considers the relation between Don Quixote's hunger and the disenchantment (Entzauberung) that Max Weber understood as paradigmatic of the modern condition. Whereas hunger functions within a Hegelian dialectic of desire in Cervantes' novel, literary representations of hunger from later periods (in Kafka and post-Holocaust Polish poetry) acknowledge the cosmic insignificance of human need by substituting the desire for recognition with a desire for self-abdication. While Don Quixote's hunger drives him to seek recognition for his dream world, modern literature's (...) hungry heroes respond to hunger by changing their metaphysical identities. Like desire, hunger functions in the literatures of modernity as an index of psychic wholeness or of its lack, both enabling and resisting the hero's assimilation with the world outside the self. (shrink)

Der slowakische Autor Martin Kukučín (1860-1928) reflektiert in seinem Werk das zeitgenässische Leben des slowakischen und kroatischen Dorfes sowie die Lebensumstände in Prag und Súdamerika am Ende des 19. und in den ersten drei Jahrzehnten des 20. Jahrhunderts. Vor dem ersten We1tkrieg strebt er noch nach einer Symbiose aus Schänheit, Wahrheit und Gúte, die er im Dorfleben verwirklicht sieht. In seinen im slowakischen ländlichen Raum angesiedelten Werken idealisiert er in dieser Zeit das Dorf und das Leben der Dorfbevälkerung mit warmherzigem (...) Humor. Es erscheint ihm als eine Form von Proto-Kommunitarismus. Nach 1918 rúcken dagegen Fragen der slowakischen Nation und Arbeiterschaft in der neugegrundeten Tschechoslowakischen Republik in den Mittelpunkt seines CEuvres. Damit avanciert Martin Kukučín in seinem literarischen Werk zum praktischen Philosophen, der ethische Grundfragen nach dem guten Leben aufwirft. (shrink)

This paper argues that a naive reader's moral response to a short story should be considered part of the story's meaning.

In this chapter, I examine the writings of Mark Twain on lying, especially his essays "On the decay of the Art of Lying" and "My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It." I show that Twain held that there were two kinds of lies: the spoken lie and the silent lie. The silent lie is the lie of not saying what one is thinking, and is far more common than the spoken lie. The greatest silent lies, according to (...) Twain, were the national silent lies that there was nothing wrong with slavery (the U.S.), that there was nothing wrong with the prosecution of Alfred Dreyfus (France), and that there was nothing wrong with imperialism (UK). According to Twain, lying is unavoidable. Since lying is unavoidable, one must simply avoid injurious lies, and tell beneficial lies. (shrink)

The tragic death in Tolstoy's writings has helped both Max Weber and György Lukács in characterizing the modern pathos as a tragic contemplation of the emptiness of life. Through Tolstoy's readings, Weber and Lukács found an interesting source of denying arts and modern sciences autonomy, considering, from the aesthetics sphere, the meaningless of this new immanent reality. Both has assumed Tolstoy main theme from the same perspective, contrasting ancient and modern worldviews. Max Weber presented this theme in his disenchantment of (...) world theory and Lukács, in a very similar way, following the paradox of religious needing as a mainline. -/- O tema da morte trágica, presente nos escritos de Liev Tolstói, auxiliou tanto a Max Weber como a György Lukács a caracterizarem o pathos moderno de pressentimento da morte como uma contemplação do vazio. Weber e Lukács encontraram, através das leituras de Tolstói, uma interessante maneira de questionar a autonomia da arte e da ciência moderna, considerando pela esfera estética, como se mostra sem sentido a recente realidade imanente. Ambos assumiram o tema central das obras de Tolstói segundo uma mesma imagem, derivada do contraste entre o mundo antigo e o moderno. Max Weber adequou esse tema a sua teoria do desencantamento do mundo e Lukács, de modo muito semelhante, seguindo seu conceito do paradoxo da necessidade religiosa. (shrink)

Voltaire has presented in his Letters on the English different themes, from religious ethics, literacy, politics, to dramas and science. The letters present us a comparison between England and France. In this parallel we shall present how Voltaire was concerned in evaluate a high standard of taste and refinements. This paper will review some of the last letters of those, which testify about this criterion of taste as a modern point of view. We shall present in Voltaire the eminence of (...) modernity in taste, refinements and on liberty of enjoying the ecstasies of a cosmopolitan life fulfilled with entertainments and luxury. We shall present how Voltaire fought against barbarism in benefit of civilization and some how against religiosity in benefit of an ethic hedonism. (shrink)

Selected, expanded, refereed papers from the first international RLA Conference, University of Sydney/ACU, 1994.

In Augustine's Confessions we can find two arguments against drama. One is entirely Platonic, echoing the problems raised in Republic 2 and 3 that representations of evil encourage moral turpitude. The other, an echo of Republic 10, is much more visible in Confessions, and Augustine is more perspicuous than Plato in laying out the difficulty; it has to do with the immoral effect of suffering grief at staged sufferings, where we are moved neither to escape the suffering nor to aid (...) the sufferer, but to enjoy the suffering. This paper will briefly reiterate Augustine's arguments against theater, show that those arguments apply to every verbal art and therefore to Confessions itself, and conclude the case against reading such books. I will then outline three possible ways to escape from the trap. (shrink)

From Martha Nussbaum to Terence Cave, contemporary literary criticism and philosophy question the moral and cognitive value of literature. Founding their anthropological and moral investigation on a cognitive and pragmatic usage of fictional and non-fictional literature, Montaigne’s Essais offers a striking example of the productive and close relations between literature, philosophy and life.

Recent moral philosophy emphasizes both the particularity of ethical contexts and the complexity of human character, but the usual abstract examples make it difficult to communicate to students the importance of this particularity and complexity. Extended study of a literary text in ethics classes can help overcome this obstacle and enrich our students’ understanding and practice of mature ethical reflection. Jane Austen’s Persuasion is an ideal text for this kind of effort. Persuasion augments the resources for ethical reflection that students (...) bring to our courses, provides a multitude of fecund examples to inspire discussion, and introduces philosophical points of its own. I explain specific ways to integrate this novel into courses and why some approaches work better than others, and I highlight themes for three different levels of study: reflection on particular virtues and vices, illustration of broader ethical issues, and discussion of virtues that the philosophical literature neglects. In each case, I discuss a particular example in detail: the question of whether or not pride can be a virtue, the varieties of friendship and their relation to virtue, and the virtue of proper persuadability. These examples suggest ways in which ethics teachers might explore the resources of other literary works towards similar ends. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Mansfield Park readers and critics have debated how to understand the novel and particularly its heroine Fanny Price. Some have disliked Fanny, have thought of her as prudish and priggish, and perhaps have preferred Mary Crawford and wished for a different ending to the story. Others have defended Fanny’s virtue, her judgment, and her mind, regarding them as quite superior to the virtue, judgment, and minds of all of the other women in the novel, and (...) all the men too, excepting (perhaps) Edmund. The debate, quite clearly, is about what Jane Austen was up to in a novel with a heroine so different from those in her other novels. The question is unclear in part because the narrator’s voice in Mansfield Park is so much like Mary Crawford’s voice. In her article “Searching for Jane Austen in Mary Crawford,” Emily Auerbach offers us quotations from Mary Crawford and from Jane Austen’s own letters and challenges us to figure out which are which—and it is very difficult. Mary Crawford, like Jane Austen, is frequently sparkling and edgy while Fanny is not, yet Fanny is the star. (shrink)

Explores ontological humility in the history of philosophy, from Descartes to contemporary gender and race theory.

The book is about three things. First, how Ancient thinkers perceived humans as like or unlike other animals; second about the justification for taking a humane attitude towards natural things; and third about how moral claims count as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle was right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance. As we can either focus on continuity or (...) on discontinuities, how should natural science draw the boundaries? Moral agents act and react in a world that they see under a certain description, and there is no value free science that can settle what is the correct description. This book asks us to think about where moral justification could come from, and suggests that the supposed ‘moral status’ of the object cannot provide the answer. For the moral status of the object is a product of our own imagination, and once we see that, we also see that there remains the question where we ought to have the will to see it. Furthermore, since the perception of moral truth involves the development of imagination and will, the means to attain it will be better served by engagement with poetry and literature than with enquiries that seek to exclude the engagement of the imagination, or any appeal to the beauty of nature or the love of one's fellow creatures. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Ridley Scott's first feature film, The Duelists, which is an adaptation of a Joseph Conrad novella, contains his deepest meditation on honor in his entire career. The film may be said to answer the following question about honor: is being bound to do something by honor, when it is contrary to one's self-interest, a good thing, or a bad thing? It may be said to give the answer that it may be either good or (...) bad. It is bad that D'Hubert is bound by honor to duel with Feraud; it is good that, in the end, Feraud is bound by honor to cease dueling with D'Hubert. In this way, Kant was correct that "the inclination to honor" may light "upon that which is in fact in the common interest and in conformity with duty," or it may light upon what is contrary to duty. (shrink)

For both Rush Rhees and Stanley Cavell, Wittgenstein’s late investigations into language and language games are caught up with a profound underlying concern about the possibility of discourse itself. Rhees and Cavell isolate two such conditions, which are closely related.The first, emphasized by Cavell, is what he calls “acknowledgment.” In his seminal essay “Knowing and Acknowledging”, Cavell engages traditional skeptical arguments against the possibility of knowing other minds. Unlike most philosophers, however, Cavell does not attempt to repudiate the skeptic’s concerns (...) by devising a proof of the existence of other minds or a method for knowing them with certainty. Any such proof, he argues, would merely.. (shrink)

Zumhagen-Yekplé reads Wittgenstein’s Tractatus resolutely, alongside the “Ithaca” chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses, arguing that looking at Wittgenstein in this way offers new dimensions for understanding Wittgenstein’s relationship to modernism that are otherwise unavailable through more traditional readings of the Tractatus. Zumhagen-Yekplé traces the shared aspects of Wittgenstein’s and Joyce’s counter-epiphanic aesthetic practices, concentrating on the explorations they conduct in their respective modernist puzzle texts of the issues of difficulty, question, quest and yearning for transformation (which she argues are a (...) central secular-spiritual concern of European high modernism) while also attending to important differences between their respective projects. In propositions that attest to Tolstoy’s influence on his thinking, Wittgenstein writes of a worldview he calls “happy,” an outlook of acceptance deeply connected to his notion of “seeing the world in the right way” and his enigmatic statement that the solution to the problem of life is to be seen in its vanishing. Zumhagen-Yekplé explores the ways in which Bloom, Joyce’s own long-doubting, questioning and questing modern “Everyman or Noman” becomes an unexpected literary exemplar of a person who looks upon the world and its problems with this “happy” attitude. She argues that the differences in Joyce’s and Wittgenstein’s divergent treatments of what Wittgenstein describes in the Tractatus as “seeing the world aright” not only shed light on the continuity of Wittgenstein’s “early” and “late” philosophy, they also give us new purchase on the evolution of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations. (shrink)

In this essay, I read Woolf’s To the Lighthouse together with philosopher Cora Diamond’s writing on literature and moral life, writing marked by her inheritance from Wittgenstein. I first attend to Woolf’s commitment (one she shares with Wittgenstein) to grappling with what I take to be signature issues of modernism: question, quest, and a longing for vision or revised understanding as a way of confronting the difficulty of reality. I then probe Woolf’s engagement with these issues by reading her novel (...) in light of Diamond’s essay “The Difficulty of Philosophy and the Difficulty of Reality.” Diamond’s insights about literature’s capacity for ethical instruction, and her discussion in that essay of the experience of an ordinary sublime so painful or astonishing that it resists our understanding and categories of thought, illuminate a new philosophical context in which to understand more clearly and profoundly the stakes and aims of Woolf’s novel. Reading Woolf alongside Diamond also prompts us to recognize important ways in which matters that lie at the heart of To the Lighthouseintersect with the Wittgensteinian preoccupations that inform Diamond’s own thinking—concerns about the ethics of difficulty; skepticism about what other people think and feel; the search for communicative and existential clarity; the capacity of literature and fairy tale to convey a sense of beauty or of the “terrible” in the world; the status of expressions of our ethical experience as necessarily nonsensical; a longing for the sense of wholeness, transformative understanding, wonder, safety, and peace to stave off illusion or despair. One important subsidiary effect of looking at Woolf and Diamond together is that doing so also allows us to make significant oblique connections between Woolf’s thinking and Wittgenstein’s, connections that continue to bring into focus the philosophical sympathies that attest to the mutual relevance of their peculiar brands of modernism. (shrink)

Life can be awful. For this to be the stuff of tragedy and not farce, we require a capacity to be more than we presently are. Tony Webster, the narrator of Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, poses a challenge to this commitment of ethics in his commentary on the instability of memory. But Barnes leads us past this difficulty by showing us that Tony’s real problem is his inability to make sense of himself—a failure of self-knowledge. Tony’s past (...) is tangled up with others he can scarcely see as people. Let us hope we can do better. (shrink)

Despite the initial strangeness of grouping Iris Murdoch (a Platonist), Martha Nussbaum (an Aristotelian), and Richard Rorty (a pragmatist) together, this paper will argue that these thinkers share a strong commitment to the moral purport of literature. I will also show that their shared idea of moral engagement through literature interlocks the individual’s sense of self and the world of others. After considering their accounts, I will conclude by raising the question of literature’s moral limits.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, the issue of collaboration with the Third Reich became particularly problematic for deconstructive criticism. The distinction between collaboration and cooperation is often far from clear, however, and in borderline cases the opacity of the motives behind the alleged collaboration may be such that retrospective historical judgements run the risk of appearing arbitrary. In contrast, the decision to remain silent about alleged collaboration can – and should – invite negative moral judgement. On the one (...) hand silence offers evidence of deceit; on the other, silence speaks of an absence of regret or remorse; and in the case with which this paper is primarily concerned, silence is indicative of both deceit and remorselessness. (shrink)

Philosophie de la vivification et de la fragilité, l’œuvre de Paul Ricœur est fertile pour qui veut penser la création littéraire. Cette pratique d’écriture, Ricœur l’envisage comme un procès complexe où l’écrivain s’individualise et s’altère d’un seul geste. Nous le verrons, l’écriture est à ses yeux distanciation, geste d’appropriation médiatisé. Cet écartèlement entre le propre et l’impropre fait la spécificité de l’écriture littéraire, où s’entrelacent la rationalité et l’irrationalité, le savoir et le non-savoir. Après avoir exposé ces vues, je les (...) mettrai en rapport avec celles de certains écrivains sur leur propre pratique : Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Valéry, Pierre Bertrand, Nancy Huston et Catherine Mavrikakis seront tour à tour convoqués à ce dialogue sur le devenir qu’implique l’écriture littéraire. Je procéderai comme Ricœur : animée par un désir de réconciliation entre les alternatives, je ferai dialoguer des voix uniques et essaierai de déceler des parentés entre elles. (shrink)

The Value of Literature provides an original and compelling argument for the historical and contemporary significance of literature to humanity.

If novels can be arguments, that fact should shape logic or argumentation studies as well as literary studies. Two senses the term ‘narrative argument’ might have are (a) a story that offers an argument, or (b) a distinctive argument form. I consider whether there is a principled way of extracting a novel’s argument in sense (a). Regarding the possibility of (b), Hunt’s view is evaluated that many fables and much fabulist literature inherently, and as wholes, have an analogical argument structure. (...) I argue that a better account is that some novels inherently exhibit a transcendental argument structure. (shrink)

The common view is that no novel IS an argument, though it might be reconstructed as one. This is curious, for we almost always feel the need to reconstruct arguments even when they are uncontroversially given as arguments, as in a philosophical text. We make the points as explicit, orderly, and (often) brief as possible, which is what we do in reconstructing a novel’s argument. The reverse is also true. Given a text that is uncontroversially an explicit, orderly, and brief (...) argument, in order to enhance plausibility, our first instinct is to flesh it out with illustrations and relationships to everyday life. If this process is fictive (e.g., with “thought experiments”) and orderly, it is story-telling. This paper investigates whether there is a principled way of determining a novel’s argument, which should contribute as much to understanding arguments as to understanding novels. (shrink)

“Ethical criticism” is an approach to literary studies that holds that reading certain carefully selected novels can make us ethically better people, e.g., by stimulating our sympathetic imagination (Nussbaum). I try to show that this nonargumentative approach cheapens the persuasive force of novels and that its inherent bias and censorship undercuts what is perhaps the principal value and defense of the novel—that reading novels can be critical to one’s learning how to think.

This paper challenges the accepted interpretation of Oedipus Rex, which takes Oedipus’ ignorance of the relevant facts to be an established matter. I argue that Oedipus’ epistemic state is ambiguous, and that this in turn generates a moral ambiguity with respect to his actions. Because ignorance serves as a moral excuse, my demonstration that Oedipus was not ignorant bears significantly on the moral meaning of the play. I next propose to anchor this ambiguity in the Freudian notion of the unconscious, (...) by presenting an interpretation that treats Oedipus’ knowledge as unconscious. I discuss the moral status of an agent acting from unconscious knowledge and find it to be genuinely indeterminate, thus supporting my claim that the play is epistemically and morally ambiguous. (shrink)

This chapter presents David Foster Wallace's opinion about the three positions regarding the good life—ironism, hedonism, and narrative theories. Ironism involves distancing oneself from everything one says or does, and putting on Wallace's so-called “mask of ennui.” Wallace said that the notion appeals to ironists because it insulates them from criticism. However, he reiterated that ironists can be criticized for failing to value anything. Hedonism states that a good life consists in pleasure. Wallace rejected such a notion, doubting that pleasure (...) could play a fundamental role in the good life. Lastly, narrative theories characterize the good life by fidelity to a unified narrative-a systematic story about one's life, composed of a set of ends or principles according to which one lives. Wallace believed that these theories turn people into spectators, rather than the participants in their own lives. (shrink)

Abstract Moral development research has previously demonstrated that more extended discourse is a vital element in effective moral education, although the difficulty of implementing this type of discourse into classroom practice has seldom been discussed. In this study, transcripts of lessons were examined of a teacher systematically assisted to develop a more conversational style. These lessons were taped over the course of the school year at different times, beginning in the fall of the year. In addition, writing samples from children (...) who participated in the lessons were subject to content analysis for themes relating to moral questions. Analysis of the lesson transcripts suggests that young students initiate discussion of values?implications of the texts they read if opportunities for connected discourse are increased. Evidence of the impact of more ?conversational? discussions was found in the essays written by students in the class of a teacher using a more conversational style but not in the essays of students who were taught using a conventional format. (shrink)

The problem of imaginative resistance holds interest for aestheticians, literary theorists, ethicists, philosophers of mind, and epistemologists. We present a somewhat opinionated overview of the philosophical discussion to date. We begin by introducing the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. We then review existing responses to the problem, giving special attention to recent research directions. Finally, we consider the philosophical significance that imaginative resistance has—or, at least, is alleged to have—for issues in moral psychology, theories of cognitive architecture, and modal epistemology.