Literature and Moral Theory

Description

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. This work investigates the role of narrative literature in late twentieth century and contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy. It aims to show the trend of reading narrative literature for purposes of moral philosophy as a part of a larger movement in Anglo-American moral philosophy, and to present a view of its significance for moral philosophy overall. Chapter 1 provides an outline of how narrative literature is considered in contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophy and relates this use to the broad trend of neo-Aristotelian ethics in this context. In Chapter 2 the contemporary use of literature in ethics is connected to the idea of the non-generalizability of moral perception and judgment, which is central to the neo-Aristotelian trend, as well as to a range of moral particularisms and anti-theoretical positions of late twentieth century and contemporary ethics. The following two Chapters, 3 and 4, move on to a broader understanding of the intellectual potential of narrative literature. It is argued that narrative literature has its own forms of generalization which are enriching for our understanding of the workings of ethical generalizations in philosophy. Chapter 4 is dedicated to Iris Murdoch's and Martha Nussbaum's respective ways of combining ethical generality and particularity in a philosophical framework where both systematic moral theory and narrative literature are taken seriously. The concluding Chapter 5 returns to the controversy between contemporary anti-theoretical conceptions of ethics and Nussbaum's refutation of these, and presents a suggestion for how the significance of the ethics/literature discussion for moral philosophy can be understood if one wants to overcome the limitations of both Nussbaum's theory-centered, equilibrium-seeking perspective, and the anti-theorists repudiation of theory. This position is called “the inclusive approach.” Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction I The beginning II Among revivals of ethical reading III Analytic ethics and the continental tradition IV The structure of the book V Where is this heading? 1. A Literary Turn in a Neo-Aristotelian Framework 1.1 The literary turn in moral philosophy 1.2 Features of the discussion 1.2.1 Moral perception 1.2.2 Moral imagination 1.2.3 Particularity 1.2.4 Practical judgment 1.2.5 Morality as growth 1.2.6 The role of the emotions 1.2.7 The incommensurability of good things 1.2.8 The broad conception of moral philosophy 1.2.9 The reality of the moral realm 1.3 The literary turn and the Aristotelian revival 2. Literature, Moral Particularism, and Anti-Theory 2.1 The moral particularisms and narrative literature 2.1.1 Meta-ethical particularism 2.1.2 Post-Wittgensteinian particularism 2.1.3 Neo-Aristotelian particularism 2.1.4 Particularity and narrative 2.2 Ethical anti-theory and narrative 2.3 What is moral theory? 3. Generality in Literature 3.1 Ethical generality in literature 3.2 A thick medium of ethical insight (the how?) 3.3 Ideas and perspectives (the how?) 3.4 In dialogue with the implied author (the who?) 3.5 Moral types: Type characters (the what?) 3.6 Moral genres (the what?) 3.6.1 The parable 3.6.2 The formation story 4. Between Literature and Theory: Nussbaum and Murdoch 4.1 The interdependence of the general and the particular 4.2 Nussbaum—literature, Aristotle, and social justice 4.2.1 Nussbaum and the nature of moral philosophy (Nussbaum and Baier) 4.2.2 Literature, theory, and an Aristotelian style 4.3 Murdoch—an ethics of the substantial self 4.3.1 A metaphysics of imagery 4.3.2 Philosophy and literature in Murdoch’s perspective 4.4 Nussbaum, Murdoch, and the nature of moral theory 5. Literature as Critique of Moral Theory 5.1 A range of reconsiderations 5.2 Two approaches to ethics in alliance with literature 5.2.1 Nussbaum and the post-Wittgensteinian vertigo 5.2.2 Measuring the two approaches as enabling positions 5.3 The third way—enabling more 5.3.1 The inclusive approach to moral philosophy 5.3.2 Commitments of the inclusive approach 5.4 Preserving the absolute 5.4.1 The absolute in the immediacy of moral response (Winch) 5.4.2 The absolute respect for persons (Eldridge) 5.4.3 The absolute good—Murdoch’s Platonic ascendance Notes References Index