Aristotle’s views on the choiceworthiness of friends might seem both internally inconsistent and objectionably instrumentalizing. On the one hand, Aristotle maintains that perfect friends or virtue friends are choiceworthy and lovable for their own sake, and not merely for the sake of further ends. On the other hand, in Nicomachean Ethics IX.9, Aristotle appears somehow to account for the choiceworthiness of such friends by reference to their utility as sources of a virtuous agent’s robust self-awareness. I examine Aristotle’s views on (...) the utility and choiceworthiness of friends, and offer a novel reading of Nicomachean Ethics IX.9. On this reading, Aristotle accepts a version of instrumental conditionalism about final value, that is, the thesis that goods (including friends) can be choiceworthy for their own sake (i.e., possess final or end value) at least partly on account of their instrumental properties. In articulating what sort of instrumental conditionalism it is reasonable to attribute to Aristotle, I argue that Aristotle appeals to the utility of perfect friends as part of a broadly material causal account of why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. On this reading, perfect friends are not choiceworthy for the sake of their utility in eliciting self-awareness; rather, their choiceworthiness for their own sake is (at least partly) realized in, or constituted by, their conduciveness to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness. This reading, I argue, frees Aristotle from the charge of inconsistency: Aristotle can appeal to the conduciveness of perfect friends to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness as a way of explaining why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. (shrink)

In introducing the works included in this special issue, this essay identifies some general ways that these and other narratives can function in ethical explorations in the field of education. The essay not only articulates ways that narratives can be useful to education scholars, but it also provides pedagogical reasons to connect stories with ethics in classrooms. It concludes with a brief nod to the dangers that Plato, contemporary scholars and teachers have about combining narratives with ethical inquiry, and touches (...) upon some ways to temper them. (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.

A brain death case is presented and reinterpreted using the narrative approach. In the case, two Japanese parents face a dilemma about whether to respect their daughter’s desire to donate organs even though, for them, it would mean literally killing their daughter. We argue that the ethical dilemma occurred because the parents were confronted with two conflicting narratives to which they felt a “narrative responsibility,” namely, the responsibility that drives us to tell, retell, and coauthor the (often unfinished) narratives of (...) loved ones. We suggest that moral dilemmas arise not only from conflicts between moral justifications but also from conflicts between narratives and human relationships. (shrink)

Titian's Rape of Europa is highly praised for its luminous colors and sensual textures. But the painting has an overlooked dark side, namely that it eroticizes rape. I argue that this is an ethical defect that diminishes the painting aesthetically. This argument-that an artwork can be worse off qua work of art precisely because it is somehow ethically problematic-demonstrates that feminist concerns about art can play a legitimate role in art criticism and aesthetic appreciation.

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is yes (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork's overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden, aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., "the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically prurient perspective on its female lead.'' Such a "non-summative" judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like "it's a 6/10" or "it's a pretty good movie!" I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people's character. (shrink)

Applied ethicists’ interest in narratives and narratives ethics has grown steadily. Some thinkers position narratives as supplements to ethics, while others see narratives as new form of ethics comparable to virtue or deontological ethics. In this paper, I analyze some of the main ethical claims being made on behalf of business and literary narratives from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that, while narratives can significantly contribute to the development of our character, to a better grasp of virtues (...) and vices, and to a clarification of a virtue ethics framework, this contribution is highly nuanced. In particular, Aristotelian virtue ethics enable us to sensibly and helpfully distinguish the ethical value of _narratives within business ethics_ from _narrative business ethics _per se. This paper has three parts. Part One offers a provisional definition of narrative and sketches some of the large claims that literary critics, philosophers, theologians, and others have made for narratives’ relevance to and value for ethics. In Part Two, using narratives drawn from business and literature, I take up each of these claims in turn and examine whether the claim makes sense and is compelling from an Aristotelian virtue ethics perspective. Part Three gathers together the threads of the arguments in Part Two to specify the modest, but nonetheless significant, legitimate roles narratives might play within Aristotle’s virtue ethics. I also point to some limitations inherent in an Aristotelian critique of narrative ethics and suggest some questions for future research. (shrink)

On reading “Algorithms for Ethical Decision-Making in the Clinical: A Proof of Concept,” I imagined that for some the fundamental problem with the authors' approach is the very...

The thesis contends that education and literary studies can make a valuable contribution to ethics and ethical development of persons, their relations with others and with the world. It promotes an approach to ethics education through dialogic enquiry based on theories and practices associated with comparative literature and philosophical enquiry. These involve students sharing experiences and meanings as they participate in interpretive communities and communities of philosophical enquiry. There are two main components to the research: ethically focused studies of literary (...) texts and the design, implementation and evaluation of a module in Ethics Education using literature and film as stimuli for Dialogic Enquiry. The literary analyses are influenced by reader-response theory. While recognizing the importance of the author or the contexts of production and receptions of texts, reader-response theory focuses on the experience of the reader as she/he responds to literary texts, and on her/his role in actively co-authoring the meaning of texts. Readers may form or join interpretive communities that share an ethos of practice. The literary narrative fictions studied include fairy tale, contemporary European cinema and neo-Western crime drama, each of which offers a valuable way of thinking about education. The module in ethics education, designed for Transition Year students, is based on movements in Philosophy with Children. Students formulate and explore ethical questions raised in response to themes or issues of literary texts. Dialogic communities of ethical inquiry may emerge from this. Students, participating in these dialogic communities of ethical inquiry, get to test out and develop their moral sense, understood in terms of reason, feeling, memory and imagination. The literary analyses demonstrate the ethically educative promise of literary texts, and the responses of students to this course and the growth of their ethical engagement suggest that this is a promising approach to ethics education. Such an educational experience may be ethical in matter, theory and practice and continue to find expression as praxis beyond the covers of books and walls of classrooms. (shrink)

The ethical tension over whether countries have differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation evokes the tale of a master and a man. The one who thinks she is the master is analogous to the wealthier, industrialized nations and their market actors, and the human is the rest of humanity, particularly those citizens of less developed countries. Since 1992, there has been formal, stated agreement that there should be differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation between developed and developing nations, but differentiation (...) remained a sticking point in negotiations over implementation at Copenhagen in 2009. Putting the parties in the climate change differentiation debate in analogy with the characters of Tolstoy’s story, “Master and Man,” this paper seeks to advance the common appreciation for the moral foundations of differentiation. (shrink)

Marianne Dashwood was well able to imagine circumstances both favourable and unfavourable to her. But for all her romantic sensibility she was not able to imagine these things from anything other than her own point of view. ‘She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself.’ Unlike her sister, she could not see how the ill-crafted attentions of Mrs. Jennings could derive (...) from a good nature. And when Elinor had to explain her troubles with Edward Ferrars, she knew that Marianne would feel it as a reminder of her own relations to Willoughby, judging Edward's behaviour as equivalent to that of Willoughby himself. Without the capacity to shift her point of view, Marianne can get no ironic distance from herself; she cannot see the unrealism of her later determination ‘to live solely for my family’. (shrink)

Utopian rationalism names the belief that science has made utopia a practical possibility. Its characteristics include determinism, collectivism, distrust of individual initiative and belief in the superiority of collective planning in securing human happiness. The first section traces the utopian and dystopian tradition into modern science fiction. The ideas collected here are systematized in the next section, which on all points dismisses the tenets and claims of utopian rationalism as false, and in a final section, which discusses utopian thinking and (...) its dangers in general. Utopian thinking is traced to three traits of human nature, namely, the quests for happiness, perfection, and submergence. (shrink)

Researchers and activists are increasingly drawing on the practice of collecting, archiving, and sharing stories to advance social justice, especially given the low cost and accessibility of digital technologies. These practices differ in their aims and scope yet they share a common conviction: that digital storytelling is empowering especially when curating and disseminating life stories of marginalized groups. In this paper, I question this conviction and ask: is it possible that such practices take away from what is found to be (...) meaningful and worthwhile in practices of storytelling and listening, and, if so, how? To answer this question, I argue for a renewed attentiveness to story scenes, highlighting the inherently relational nature of storytelling and listening. I examine this relational nature through a fictional account that exemplifies storied encounters and demonstrates the ethical issues they entail through three themes—reciprocity, responsiveness, and communion—borne out of the plurality of philosophical positions on what it means to relate to another. I explain each of these themes as a starting point for thinking through how digital storytelling may be just, with implications for participatory methods in science and technology studies, design studies, and human-computer interaction inclusive of participatory design, co-design, ethnographic research, and participatory action research. (shrink)

Scientists of the Human Genome Project tend to rely on three metaphors to describe their work, each of which implicitly tells much the same story. Whether they claim to interpret the ultimate "book," to fix a flawed "machine," or to map a mysterious "wilderness," they invariably cast the researcher as one who dominates and exploits the Other. This essay, which explores the ways such a story conflicts with feminist values, proposes an alternative.

This paper examines the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the light of the early Confucian thinker Mencius, arguing in essence that Mencian theories of moral development and self-cultivation can help us to recover the moral significance of Twain's novel. Although 'ethical criticisms' of Huckleberry Finn share a long history, I argue that most interpretations have failed to appreciate the moral significance of Jim, either by focusing on the moral arc of Huck in isolation or by casting Jim in one-dimensional terms (...) simply as a symbol or example of human dignity. By invoking the Mencian ideas of 'moral power' ( de ), human goodness, and the virtues of sympathy and humaneness, this study attempts to bring into relief the many ways that Jim, particularly in his role as an exemplar, functions as an active force in the moral life of Huck. It is hoped that this revised Mencian reading of Huckleberry Finn can restore the moral center of the novel and contribute to the growing discussion on the virtues in moral education. (shrink)

Not a day passes but we find ourselves indignant about something or other. When is our indignation justified, and when does it count as moral indignation rather than a legitimate but non-moral gripe? You might think that we should turn to moral theories – to the varieties of utilitarian, Kantian, virtue theories, etc – to answer this question. I shall try to convince you that this is a mistake, that moral theory – as it is ordinarily presently conceived and studied (...) – does not have a specific subject matter, a specific aim, scope or boundaries. You might think that the difference between echt moral indignation and other forms of disapproval is their relative strength or the importance of their target; but moral indignation can be quite faint, directed to a relatively minor transgression and a strongly felt gripe may be directed to a serious but presumptively non-moral infraction. I shall try to persuade you that morality does not constitute an important and distinctive domain with a distinctive set of over-riding norms or a privileged mode of reasoning: morality is everywhere or nowhere in particular. Radical as this claim may sound, I am not a complete Luddite about the matter. Traditional moral theories nevertheless have important functions. But rather than being competing ‘winner takes all’ explanatory and normative theories, OldSpeak moral systems function heuristically. They offer a heterogeneous set of reminders, questions, advice, ideals, warnings, considerations for deliberation. While we try to integrate and systematize them, there is no single overarching organizational plan. (shrink)

Market metaphors have come to dominate discourse on medical practice. In this essay, we revisit Peter Berger and colleagues’ analysis of modernization in their book The Homeless Mind and place that analysis in conversation with Max Weber’s 1917 lecture “Science as a Vocation” to argue that the rise of market metaphors betokens the carry-over to medical practice of various features from the institutions of technological production and bureaucratic administration. We refer to this carry-over as the product presumption. The product presumption (...) foregrounds accidental features of medicine while hiding its essential features. It thereby confounds the public understanding of medicine and impedes the professional achievement of the excellences most central to medical practice. In demonstrating this pattern, we focus on a recent article, “Physicians, Not Conscripts—Conscientious Objection in Health Care,” in which Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emanuel decry conscientious refusals by medical practitioners. We demonstrate that Stahl and Emanuel’s argument depends on the product presumption, ignoring and undermining central features of good medicine. We conclude by encouraging conscientious resistance to the product presumption and the language it engenders. (shrink)

Many Guatemalan women suffered extreme sexual violence during the latter half of the twentieth century. Learning of this violence can evoke hatred in persons who love and respect women—hatred for the men who perpetrated the violence and also for other men around the world who victimize women in this way. Hatred is a common response to a perceived evil, and it might in some cases be a fitting response, but it is important to subject one's emotions to critical moral reflection. (...) A key task of ethics is to encourage persons to cultivate good habits of being moved. This essay analyzes the way in which two different texts manage, through the skillful presentation of experiential narratives, to help readers acknowledge the hatred they might feel, but also to think twice about the hatred to which they consent. (shrink)

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is “yes” (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork’s overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., “the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically purient perspective on its female lead.” Such a “non-summative” judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like “it’s a 6/10” or “it’s a pretty good movie!” I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people’s character. (shrink)

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 50, Issue 1, Page 123-145, March 2022.

ABSTRACT This article explores how literary study engages readers’ moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of moral perception and imagination in literary study. Reading with others, the article contends, can involve an ethic focused on the good of knowing one’s ways of seeing make a difference (...) to others. The article defends social practices of reading by arguing they can broaden and complicate students’ moral perception and imagination by making students accountable to texts, one another, and the wider world. (shrink)

How can stories contribute to ethical education, when they reach people who have already been shaped by many stories, including ethically problematic ones? This question is pursued here by considering Plato’s allegory of the cave, focusing on a reading of it offered by Jonathan Lear. Lear claims that the cave allegory aims to undermine its audience’s inheritance of stories. I question the possibility and desirability of that project, especially in relation to ethical education. Some works of contemporary fiction by Jenny (...) Erpenbeck and J. M. Coetzee are discussed as stories that use more complex strategies for ethically constructive engagement with story-saturated audiences. (shrink)

This paper proposes an understanding of literary narrative as a form of social cognition and situates the study of such narratives in relation to the new comprehensive approach to human cognition, enaction. The particular form of enactive cognition that narrative understanding is proposed to depend on is that of participatory sense-making, as developed in the work of Di Paolo and De Jaegher. Currently there is no consensus as to what makes a good literary narrative, how it is understood, and why (...) it plays such an irreplaceable role in human experience. The proposal thus identifies a gap in the existing research on narrative by describing narrative as a form of intersubjective process of sense-making between two agents, a teller and a reader. It argues that making sense of narrative literature is an interactional process of co-constructing a story-world with a narrator. Such an understanding of narrative makes a decisive break with both text-centered approaches that have dominated both structuralist and early cognitivist study of narrative, as well as pragmatic communicative ones that view narrative as a form of linguistic implicature. The interactive experience that narrative affords and necessitates at the same time, I argue, serves to highlight the active yet cooperative and communal nature of human sociality, expressed in the many forms than human beings interact in, including literary ones. (shrink)

Can literature make it possible to represent histories that are otherwise ineffable? Making use of the Deleuzian concept of “the powers of the false,” Doro Wiese offers readings of three novels that deal with the Shoah, with colonialism, and with racialized identities. She argues that Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish, and Richard Powers’s The Time of Our Singing are novels in which a space for unvoiced, silent, or silenced difference is created. Seen through (...) the lens of Deleuze and his collaborators’ philosophy, literature is a means for mediating knowledge and affects about historical events. Going beyond any simple dichotomy between true and untrue accounts of what “really” happened in the past, literature’s powers of the false incite readers to long for a narrative space in which painful or shameful stories can be included. (shrink)

Expectations are growing that literature may contribute to clinical skills. Narrative medicine is a quickly expanding area of research. However, many people remain sceptical to the idea of literature having a capacity to save the life of medicine . It is therefore urgent to scrutinize both the arguments in favour of and those against the potential of literature for increasing medical understanding. This article attempts to do this. It does in fact support the assertion that literature is important, but it (...) stresses precisely its character of potential. There is no simple connection between acquaintance with literary texts and understanding of the different aspects of medical work. Much more need to be known about the conditions which allow the experiences residing in texts to be transformed into lived personal knowledge. (shrink)

This article explores the intersection of literature and philosophy in order to present a reworked textual ethics for the twenty-first century. Tracing over the last thirty years a remarkable philosophical engagement with the ethical imperative of literary criticism, the “turn to ethics” it is argued has largely settled into two competing critical camps: a neo-Aristotelian, narrative ethics on the one hand, and an other-oriented, deconstructive ethics on the other. But by bringing into productive tension for the first time the major (...) works of two of the most significant ethical philosophers, Martha Nussbaum and Emmanuel Levinas, this study reveals in their mutual engagement of the textual encounter “language as a way of touching a human being,” and thereby proposes an ethical criticism open to new forms of community and social possibility. (shrink)

Once upon a time, medicine dismissed narrative as unimportant and uninteresting. Then, in the late 1980s, physicians and scholars became interested in how the study of narrative could enhance our understanding of illness and health care, and the field that came to be known as “narrative medicine” developed. Some of this scholarly activity focused on the idea of narrative ethics.After a flurry of activity around the turn of the twenty‐first century, narrative ethics seemed to stall. The general interest in narrative (...) in medicine continued but with few new ideas on how one might use narrative toward ethical ends. In the last few years, however, forward momentum has returned. The timing seems appropriate, therefore, for a “state of the field” report of sorts. (shrink)

Aesop's fables are used to gather HR fables and these fables are told mainly in the words of the protagonists of these moral stories, HR practitioners. Leaving the moral meaning of the fables for the reader to interpret so the reader can ethically connect with the morality of HR work, the personal narratives of practitioners and their humanity, the fables conclude with a critical commentary by the author, the promotion of a human virtue and HR moral maxim. The article, itself, (...) then ends with an explanation of the research methodology adopted to compile the HR fables. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article addresses the question‘What is the justification of higher education in modern society?’ It takes issue with writers such as Alasdair Macintyre and Allan Bloom, who argue that the fragmentation of value characteristic of modernity has undermined the possibility of providing a coherent justification of higher education. Against MacIntyre and Bloom, I argue that we should understand education as a means of developing reflective consciousness in students, and that that will require fragmentation and the immanent conflict of traditions (...) rather than a background of agreed values. (shrink)

This paper raises three objections to the argument presented by Ostritsch in The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation, in which the amoralist’s mantra “it’s just a game” is viewed as an illegitimate rebuttal of all moral objections to video games. The first objection focuses on Ostritsch’s ‘strong sense’ of player enjoyment, which I argue is too crude, given the moral work it is meant to be doing. Next, I question the legitimacy of Ostritsch’s claim that certain (...) video games are immoral. I examine what is involved in making this claim and what would be required for a normative position to be established: none of which is addressed by Ostritsch. Finally, I challenge the legitimacy of his claim that players are obliged not to play certain video games in certain ways. I distinguish between immoral and suberogatory actions, arguing that the latter is in fact more applicable to cases Ostritsch has in mind, and that one is not obliged not to engage in these actions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article contributes to current theoretical debates about the political significance of narrative imagination by drawing on Camus’s and Arendt’s existential aesthetic judging sensibility. It seeks to displace the prevalent tendency to probe literature for its moral-philosophical insights, and instead delves into the experiential reality of our engagement with literary works. It starts from Martha Nussbaum’s recognition of the literary ability to account for the fragility of human affairs, yet finds her reduction of narrative imagination to the role of furthering (...) moral lessons wanting politically. Against this background, the article reclaims Camus’s and Arendt’s dialogical-representative judging orientation and its insight into the narrative ability to respond to the intersubjective character of politics. As such, their aesthetic sensibility reveals the potential political significance of literary imagination in its capacity to open a public space where the contradictions of our situated existence can be confronted through politics between plural equals. (shrink)

The article describes the way in which law-related events are represented in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Based on a narrative analysis, the paper will posit that In Cold Blood played a particular role in originating and shaping an innovative mode of representing law-related events, a mode that was widely employed since, in various artistic mediums and in popular culture. As the paper further elaborates, Capote’s work paved new ways for challenging the conventional boundaries between “reality” and “fiction” with regard (...) to the representation of law-related events. The paper will also maintain that in addition to its contribution to the law and literature discourse, In Cold Blood can be also seen as an early prototype to the digital legal spectacles that are now common. Revisiting In Cold Blood reveals not only its standing as originating model of many present-day cultural representations of the legal system in action, but also the essential difference between the almost unrestrainedly produced digital law-related content, to a artistic enterprise, characterized by poetic distinctiveness. (shrink)

This dissertation explores the relationship between liberal/secular and religious educations. I begin by tracing what I believe to be the source of tension between liberal/secular and religious educations to two highly influential liberal theories that have affected civic education in particular. I begin with an analysis of John Dewey's naturalistic approach to metaphysics and religion, arguing that Dewey's attitude to religious traditions, when used as a basis for civic education, is insufficient. Specifically, I argue that in Dewey's conception, religious doctrines, (...) principles, ideals, beliefs, and ultimately religious traditions as a whole, are important only instrumentally. Furthermore, I conclude that the only possible outcome once one accepts a prior commitment to Dewey's metaphysics is that reflection and deliberation on the 'religious' will denude it of its distinctively religious character. My major conclusion is that such a view of religion and the religious is egregiously deficient when evaluated in light of the liberal principle of respect for religion and religious diversity. I then move to a critical examination of the second highly influential liberal theory, political liberalism. The conclusion that I highlight in my critique of Rawlsian political liberalism is that a civic education based on the political ideals of political liberalism can pretty much ignore religious conceptions without detriment to the development of young citizens' deliberative capacities. I strongly challenge this conclusion, because I see engagement with religious conceptions as valuable – even necessary – for good citizenship, and for enabling citizens of diverse societies to do justice to/for each other. In the second half of the dissertation, I propose a theoretical framework for this supplemental dimension which is based on virtue epistemology. I focus specifically on the recent work of James Montmarquet, particularly his notion of subjective justification, which I incorporate as an ideal basis for engagement which focuses on reason-giving and validates the role that religious traditions can play in moral and civic deliberation. (shrink)