Literature and Moral Theory

Nora Hämäläinen

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781501305375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

Literature and Moral Theory investigates how literature, in the past 30 years, has been used as a means for transforming the Anglo-American moral philosophical landscape, which until recently was dominated by certain ways of "doing theory". It illuminates the unity of the overall agenda of the ethics/literature discussion in Anglo-American moral philosophy today, the affinities and differences between the separate strands discernible in the discussion, and the relationship of the ethics/literature discussion to other (complexly overlapping) trends in late-20th century Anglo-American moral philosophy: neo-Aristotelianism, post-Wittgensteinian ethics, particularism and anti-theory. It shows why contemporary philosophers have felt the need for literature, how they have come to use it for their own (philosophically radical) purposes of understanding and argument, and thus how this turn toward literature can be used for the benefit of a moral philosophy which is alive to the varieties of lived morality.

1

A Literary Turn in a Neo-Aristotelian Framework

In this chapter I give an outline of the discussion on the role of literature in analytic moral philosophy from around 1980 to the present, and situate the discussion in a framework of recent developments within the field. In 1.1 I give an outline of the literary turn in Anglo-American ethics. In 1.2 I present a taxonomy of features which are typical of contemporary moral philosophical use of literature within the Anglo-American tradition. In 1.3 I discuss the neo-Aristotelian aspect of this taxonomy of features.

1.1 The literary turn in moral philosophy

One notable feature of the contemporary philosophical discussion on ethics and literature is the great agreement—among philosophers in the discussion—concerning two things. First, there is an agreement concerning the way literature is relevant for moral philosophy and second, an agreement, by and large, concerning the general features of moral philosophy which make literature a welcome companion. I will treat the first point of agreement in this section and the second point more at length in 1.2.

Beginning with the first, literature is currently viewed as something other and more than a provider of extended philosophical examples, or something to be mined for illustrations of philosophical argument. It is seen as containing philosophical perspectives and developments of thought in its own right, in ways which are relevant for the philosopher but not necessarily fully translatable into an argumentative, academic philosophical form. Some literary works are seen as different but self-standing and equally important contributions to a common quest for moral understanding (and/or moral philosophical understanding), giving insights which are not directly available through theoretical discourse. As Martha Nussbaum claims, for some ethically relevant views on human life “… a literary narrative of a certain sort is the only type of text that can state them fully and fittingly, without contradiction” (Nussbaum 1990: 7).

This attitude towards literature marks a difference in relation to a more stereotypical, theory-bound style of analytic philosophy, which clearly privileges theoretical texts as vehicles of philosophical thought. The difference is central for the overarching argument of this book.

A serious consideration (on a larger scale) of the independent ethical significance of the contents and form of narrative literature seems, in the context of contemporary analytic moral philosophy, to go no further back in time than to the early 1980s. R. W. Beardsmore (1984: 59) states that “It is by no means unusual in works of philosophy for writers to make use of examples from literature or (like e.g. Peter Winch and Eugene Kamenka) to bemoan the lack of literary examples in the work of other philosophers.” But, he claims, “what is extremely unusual is any direct discussion of the philosophical issues involved, that is to say any discussion of what philosophers are doing when they appeal in their writings to works of literature” (ibid.).

The statement is telling as it reveals the extent to which this situation has changed since he wrote. On the one hand, there is no longer a lack of such “direct discussion,” as an extensive number of books and articles during the past thirty years have treated precisely this. Further, the view which, at the time, he considers most commonly held on this matter, that literary examples work just like non-literary examples, is rather rare among those who have a serious interest in the role of literature in moral philosophy today. Typically, philosophers employ examples customized to the theoretical discussion to serve a theoretical purpose, while literary examples have an identity and integrity of their own, resonating in the interpretive space of the literary work.¹ On the other hand, his talk of literary examples as the primary mode of using literature in ethics, or the interpretation of such use as “giving examples” seems slightly outdated, as many of the writers on ethics and literature since his day consider the literary pieces which are used as definitely something more, or something else, than examples.

Daniel Brudney approximates a description of what I would call mere examples in the following way: “An example of this kind tends to function as a pro- or counterexample for some fairly general principle and it can be reworded as the requirements of the argument dictate. One is not stuck with any particular formulation. The point is simply to make sure that it is an instance of the principle one wishes to illustrate” (1998: 275). This is the way non-literary examples are most frequently used, as parts of the argument for (or criticism of) a general principle or a theory, and literary works are often invoked to provide material for such examples. As Brudney (1990: 417) notes, to be of use as a philosophical example of this kind a literary narrative needs to be given a sufficiently unambiguous interpretation to serve the purpose envisaged for it in a philosophical argument. But “to take a literary text as an extended philosophical example has thus generally meant bypassing what makes the text a text: not a summary of the situation but a specific set of words” (ibid.: 418).

In contrast to such an approach, which reduces the literary piece to a paraphraseable, unambiguous summary of a situation, the contemporary proponents of literature in moral philosophy tend to insist that the very form of the text matters for its moral significance. Nussbaum emphasizes that the form itself can be seen as making certain evaluative claims (e.g. 1990: 3), while Brudney sees the specific contribution of a literary text in our way of treating the wording as significant, as having authority in its own right (1998: 276). The emphasis on the moral and philosophical significance of the exact wording goes hand in hand with the idea that literature is a form of moral thought in its own right, independent of the pursuits of moral philosophers. In this view literary works are not necessarily in need of a translation into the language of philosophy to count as contributions to moral philosophy, although elucidating philosophical discussions are welcomed.

Along this line of thought the exact moral contents or moral contribution of a literary work often cannot be adequately paraphrased, neither in theoretical text nor in a different rendering of the same storyline. Thus the literary text contains, in itself, as it stands, a moral content which can be interpreted and discussed in other forms, but not be replaced entirely without something of moral interest being lost. As Nussbaum expresses the case in relation to Shakespeare:

To make any contribution worth caring about, a philosopher’s study of Shakespeare should do three things. First and most centrally, it should really do philosophy, and not just allude to familiar philosophical ideas and positions. It should pursue tough questions and come up with something interesting and subtle—rather than just connecting Shakespeare to this or that idea from Philosophy 101. A philosopher reading Shakespeare should wonder, and ponder, in a genuinely philosophical way. Second, it should illuminate the world of the plays, attending closely enough to language and to texture that the interpretation changes the way we see the work, rather than just uses the work as grist for some argumentative mill. And finally, such a study should offer some account of why philosophical thinking needs to turn to Shakespeare’s plays, or to works like them. Why must the philosopher care about these plays? Do they supply to thought something that a straightforward piece of philosophical prose cannot supply, and if so, what?

Nussbaum 2008

The ideal is that a philosophical reading should actively do philosophy when confronting a literary text, rather than just connect the text to philosophy by, for example, detecting habitually philosophical positions in it. It should bring out what is distinctive to the literary text and attend to its particular interplay of form and content, rather than try to prove that the text is philosophical. It should turn to a literary work as an autonomous center of insight. It should further tell us something about why we should, as philosophers, turn to literature for illumination.

The question of whether the independent moral content in literary works is to be considered as philosophical thought is thus far left open. But the spirit of the contemporary discussion is that the question of whether or not some literary works are to be considered as “philosophy” in their own right is not crucial. The seminal discussion in New Literary History (1983) on the role of literature in moral philosophy—involving Nussbaum, Richard Wollheim, D. D. Raphael, Hilary Putnam, Patrick Gardiner, and Cora Diamond among others—turns on the question of whether literature can count as moral philosophy, but part of the importance of this discussion, as I see it, is how it points at the futility of trying to answer the question in this definitory manner. It shows how easily the question becomes one of how one ought to define moral philosophy, rather than a question of how literature can contribute to elucidating the kinds of questions that moral philosophers deal with. What is truly interesting is how this discussion opens up new ways of understanding the task of the moral philosopher, especially through the contributions of Nussbaum and Diamond. What is of importance is whether literature contains patterns of moral thought which may, or should, change or broaden the way philosophers, at least certain kinds of academic moral philosophers, think about morality.

The different ways of using literature—as mere examples or as self-standing vehicles of philosophical or moral thought—are not always easy to identify and keep separate. In some cases it remains unclear in which mode literature is used, but some guidelines can be given for detecting the relevant differences. When literature is considered by a philosopher as an independent vehicle of thought, it is frequently considered in the light of the pursuit of an author or an implied author to pin down a moral perspective or a perspective on human life (e.g. by Diamond 1991; Nussbaum 1990; Rooksby 2005; Rorty 1989). The philosopher attempts to be faithful to the spirit of the work he uses. As in literary criticism, there is room for many interpretations, but some interpretations can be ruled out as too far-fetched in relation to the work to be interesting. The philosophical reflection is allowed to resonate in the complexities of the literary work in a way which makes it natural to pick up the literary work for further guidance.

Although many writers have understood their task as a (in a broad sense) moral one, this need not be the case to make a literary work a self-standing vehicle of moral or moral philosophical thought. There are two major strategies in relation to authorial intent for the philosopher who considers the ethical contribution of a literary work. One is to discuss it as a more or less intentionally philosophical work, where the writer pursues an ethical subject and lays out an argument which is brought to life through the actions and thoughts of characters. In this case the literary work can be considered more or less as an explicitly philosophical contribution, as an intervention in a philosophical discussion, although the exact content of this contribution may need some interpretation and clarification. In this kind of case authorial introductions, or other critical or essayistic writings by the author, may be useful in explicating authorial intention.

The other strategy is to use a work as moral philosophical thought disregarding the presence or absence of moral or moral philosophical intentions. In this case the interest for moral philosophy may lie in the ethical nature and development of characters, a certain point of view on the world, the possible conflicts arising from human life, etc. Indeed, most narrative pieces do contain ethically relevant developments or viewpoints of these types, regardless of any explicit authorial intention.

This second strategy may seem to come close to a use of literature as a mere provider of examples, as we do not have here an explicit philosophical agency on the part of the author (or implied author). But there is reason to distinguish between a use of literature which illustrates a philosophical argument or provides a counterexample, and ethical points of view which are substantially developed in literature in a way which cannot be treated completely in the philosophical commentary. When treated as a mere example the literary work or piece is used to clarify or vivify the content which is already in the philosophical argument. When used as an independent medium of thought it can be seen as substantially informing and challenging the philosophical discussion.

In practice philosophers may—and do—opt for a mixed strategy where they rely both on the assumed, explicit or implicit, aim of the author and on their own reading which is disconnected from authorial intention, often using one of these strategies as the point of departure and the other as a means for strengthening the argument. This is Nussbaum’s strategy, for example, in her discussions of Henry James’ The Golden Bowl (1990), where she backs up her own reading with commentary from the author’s critical introductions to his own work (James 1960). Another case of a mixed strategy is Rorty’s discussion of Nabokov (1989) where his ethical reading of Nabokov’s novels is partly in agreement with and partly against the grain of his presentation of Nabokov’s intention. This creates an interesting triangle with the philosopher engaging with both the writer in the work and the writer as critic of his own work. I will return to these examples in Chapter 4. A similar double strategy is also discernible in most contemporary ethical readings of Iris Murdoch’s novels, building on the assumption that her novels are an integral part of her philosophical oeuvre.

Overall, there is in the current discussion of Anglo-American ethics a certain bias toward texts which are, on the one hand, classics of the Anglo-American or European canon and, on the other hand, purposively moral. Among these the works of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Charles Dickens have a natural place. The first bias seems to be motivated by the fact that many of the discussions presuppose, for full understanding of the argument, that the reader is acquainted with the literary work (or can get his hands on it if needed). Thus classics in English, or European classics like Dostoevsky or Proust, fulfill this function most suitably by still being read by many.

Concerning the second bias, one may suspect that philosophers are sometimes led to certain literary works by the presupposition that these do contain ethically significant material. But what at first draws the philosopher’s attention may not be what he ultimately needs or wants from literature. There is another bias in the contemporary moral philosopher’s interest in literature towards the very subtle and particular points which are often as much present in non-philosophical and (overtly) non-ethical narratives as in more overtly philosophical or ethical ones.

In some cases explicit or semi-explicit moral philosophical argument in a narrative work reveals, in the very way it is pursued, the more subtle or more particularistic points which are of special interest for contemporary moral philosophical discussion. Thus the virtue-ethical perspective of, say, Pride and Prejudice together with a persuasive development of characters reveals, in the contemporary reading, the nature of moral perceptiveness. It is also the case that interesting authors—from Dostoevsky to Margaret Atwood—who pursue ethical argument at the surface level of the narrative, such as through characters representing theoretical, symbolic, or stereotypical positions, are often sensitive moralists on the level of human detail and aware of the multiplicity of fine shades of human good and evil. Such works exhibit ethical interest and engagement in more than one way and are thus of use for many different ethical endeavors.

The presence of old-fashioned moral lessons in narratives does little to disturb, but is also in practice of relatively little interest for the current discussion. Our (or Tolstoy’s) assessment of Anna Karenina’s character is of less interest than the book’s ability to make vivid for us the characters and their social settings and let ourselves be engaged in their destinies. Too high a degree of moralism or theoretical argument, though, may spoil the ethical career of a book in the current context. Philosophers mainly look for what they consider high quality, aesthetically high standard and psychologically accurate works.

But there are exceptions to this tendency, especially in the case of related discussions on film narratives. We also find illuminating discussions on popular fiction, for example in the work of Wayne Booth (1988) and Stanley Cavell (2004). Drawing his material from the golden age of Hollywood films, Cavell shows with some success that a narrative work does not need a canonized status as intellectually advanced fiction to be interesting in terms of moral philosophy. The points of moral growth and perfectionism he makes in relation to these films are very much in line with the insights drawn by others from canonized written narratives. What is more, even these narratives receive in his treatment a position of independent moral thought rather than mere example, and his discussion of genres of films (e.g. “remarriage comedy”) indicates that a genre itself may be seen as a carrier of certain lines of moral th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 A Literary Turn in a Neo-Aristotelian Framework
• 2 Literature, Moral Particularism, and anti-theory
• 3 Generality in Literature
• 4 Between Literature and Theory: Nussbaum and Murdoch
• 5 Literature as Critique of Moral Theory
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright