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The Ethics of Non-Realist Fiction: Morality’s Catch-22

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Abstract

The topic of this essay is how non-realistic novels challenge our philosophical understanding of the moral significance of literature. I consider just one case: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. I argue that standard philosophical views, based as they are on realistic models of literature, fail to capture the moral significance of this work. I show that Catch-22 succeeds morally because of the ways it resists using standard realistic techniques, and suggest that philosophical discussion of ethics and literature must be pluralistic if it is to include all morally salient literature, and not just novels in the “Great Tradition” and their ilk.

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Notes

  1. See Leavis, F. R. (1948). The great tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad. (London: Chatto & Windus)

  2. I have in mind, for example, the work of Martha Nussbaum. See Nussbaum, M. (1990). Love’s knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature. (New York: Oxford University Press)

  3. Lamarque, P. & Olsen, S. H. (1994). Truth, fiction, and literature: A philosophical perspective, 311. (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

  4. All references are to the Laurel paperback edition. Heller, J. (1961). Catch-22. (New York: Dell Publishing)

  5. Ruas interview with Joseph Heller, quoted in Craig, D. (1997). Tilting at mortality: Narrative strategies in Joseph Heller’s fiction, 46. (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press)

  6. See Noël Carroll’s discussion in Carroll, N. (2000). Art and ethical criticism: An overview of recent directions of research. Ethics, 110, 350–387.

  7. Putnam, H. (1978). Literature, science, and reflection. (In his Meaning and the moral sciences (pp. 87–90). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.); Nussbaum, N. (op. cit.)

  8. Hume, D. (1993). Of the standard of taste. (In A. E. Copley (Ed.), Selected essays (p. 152). Oxford: Oxford University Press.)

  9. Moran, R. (1994). The expression of feeling in imagination. The Philosophical Review, 103, 95.

  10. Tamar Gendler takes the view that we can (with difficulty) imagine conceptual impossibilities; Kathleen Stock takes the opposing view. See Gendler, T. (2000). The puzzle of imaginative resistance. Journal of Philosophy, 97, 55–81. See also Stock, K. (2003). The tower of goldbach and other impossible tales. (In M. Kieran & D. M. Lopes (Eds.), Imagination, philosophy, and the arts (pp. 107–124). New York: Routledge.)

  11. Hume, D. (op. cit.)

  12. I owe this point an anonymous referee.

  13. Wollheim, R. (1984). The thread of life. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

  14. Currie, G. (1995). The moral psychology of fiction. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 73, 250–259.

  15. For example, see Smith, M. (1995). Engaging characters: Fiction, emotion, and the cinema. (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

  16. Currie, G. (1995). Imagination and simulation: Aesthetics meets cognitive science. (In M. Davies & T. Stone (Eds.), Mental simulation (pp. 151–169). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.); Feagin, S. (1996). Reading with feeling. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press)

  17. Gurrie, G. (1995). Imagination, the general theory. (In Currie, G., Image and mind: Film, philosophy, and cognitive science (p. 155). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)

  18. I am not challenging Currie’s or Feagin’s claims here about the importance of central imagining, or more specifically, of simulation, for appreciation of and engagement with realistic works of literature. I am rather emphasizing the limits of these theories. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.) However, other philosophers have been more critical of the approach that puts a great deal of emphasis on central imagining, and especially on simulation.. For example, see Carroll, N. (1998). A philosophy of mass art, especially Chapter 4. (Oxford: Oxford University Press); and Kieran, M. (2003). In Search of a narrative. (In M. Kieran & D. M. Lopes (Eds.), op. cit. (pp. 69–87).)

  19. See Gaut, B. (1998). The ethical criticism of art. (In J. Levinson (Ed.), Aesthetics and ethics: Essays at the intersection (pp. 182–203). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). For a critique of Gaut’s moral criteria, see Harold, J. (2006). On judging the moral value of narrative artworks. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64, 259–270.

  20. Gaut (op. cit.), p. 193.

  21. Gaut (ibid.), p. 194.

  22. Another episode which raises some of the same issues is the scene in which Yossarian impersonates Guiseppe (who has died) so that his family will be able to believe that they got to see him before he passed away.

  23. Joshua Shaw has argued that there are some topics that it is simply inappropriate to joke about. Shaw, J. (2005, May). Are there things we should not joke about? (Paper presented at the Aesthetics Anarchy Conference at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN)

  24. For a detailed discussion of aesthetic cognitivism, see Gaut, B. (2003). Art and knowledge. (In J. Levinson (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of aesthetics. (pp. 436–450). Oxford, Oxford University Press)

  25. See Carroll, N. (2002). The wheel of virtue: Art, literature, and moral knowledge. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60, 3–26.

  26. Nussbaum, M. (1990). Introduction: Form and content, philosophy and literature. (In Nussbaum, op. cit., (pp. 47–48).)

  27. See Robinson, J. (1995). L’Education Sentimentale. (In S. Davies (Ed.), Art and its messages: Meaning, morality, and society (pp. 34–48). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.); and Robinson, J. (2005). Deeper than reason: Emotion and its role in literature, music, and art, especially Chapter 6. (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Robinson does not make the same moral claims about the value of this knowledge that Nussbaum does.

  28. See Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of criticism: Four essays, pp. 223–242. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)

  29. Frye (ibid.), p. 224.

  30. While much of Carroll’s work is focused on the role of morality in evaluating aesthetic merit, he also advances a theory about the moral value of knowledge gained from art, including literature. He calls this theory ‘clarificationism.’ Carroll, N. (1998). A philosophy of mass art, pp. 319–341. (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

  31. Carroll (ibid.), p. 327.

  32. See Forster, E. M. (1927). Aspects of the novel, pp. 67–78. (New York: Harcourt, Inc.)

  33. Forster (ibid.), p. 78.

  34. Forster (ibid.), p. 73.

  35. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA, 01075, USA

    James Harold

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Harold, J. The Ethics of Non-Realist Fiction: Morality’s Catch-22. Philosophia 35, 145–159 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9065-9

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