In _The Company We Keep_, Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners. Ethical criticism will risk talking about the quality of _this_ particular encounter with _this_ particular work. Yet it will (...) give up the old hope for definitive judgments of "good" work and "bad." Rather it will be a conversation about _many_ kinds of personal and social goods that fictions can serve or destroy. While not ignoring the consequences for conduct of engaging with powerful stories, it will attend to that more immediate topic, What happens to us _as we read_? Who am I, _during the hours of reading or listening_? What is the quality of the life I lead in the company of these would-be friends? Through a wide variety of periods and genres and scores of particular works, Booth pursues various metaphors for such engagements: "friendship with books," "the exchange of gifts," "the colonizing of worlds," "the constitution of commonwealths." He concludes with extended explorations of the ethical powers and potential dangers of works by Rabelais, D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martha Nussbaum and the Moral Life of MiddlemarchRohan MaitzenWe are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.George Eliot, MiddlemarchIAs is well known to readers of this journal, Martha Nussbaum emphasizes in her essays on fiction as moral philosophy that the philosophical significance of novels is found, not in whatever theories or principles they might overtly discuss or dramatize, (...) but in their literary form and their prose style. In particular, she finds in the late novels of Henry James an alternative to the reductive, pseudoscientific prose of contemporary analytic philosophy, which she argues inhibits the range of possible answers to the basic ethical question "How should one live?"1 James's prose shows "attention to particulars, a respect for the emotions, and a tentative and non-dogmatic attitude to the bewildering multiplicities of life" (LK, p. 27), and thus it exemplifies the Aristotelian ethical conception she advocates.In this essay I want to disentangle Nussbaum's theory of the ethical significance of fictional form—which I endorse—from her preoccupation [End Page 190] with James—which I do not. Far from being, as she believes, egalitarian, humane, and morally responsible, the Jamesian consciousness Nussbaum would have us emulate is elitist, exclusionary, and morally inert; further, in its commitment to indeterminacy, mystery, and obscurity, the Jamesian model is in fact profoundly anti-philosophical.2 I propose instead George Eliot's Middlemarch as exemplary of fiction's potential contribution to "the job of moral philosophy" (LK, p. 138). Nussbaum may admire the subtlety and density of The Golden Bowl, but I will argue that in its narrative strategies and its integration of novelistic perception and philosophic reflection, Middlemarch proves a better ethical guide and a better example of literature that is also philosophy.In making this argument, I will rely on the terms set by Nussbaum herself for the ethical evaluation of fiction. Unlike other philosophers who invoke literature only as a "rich source of examples awaiting illumination by philosophy," Nussbaum insists that analysis of a text's literary properties is the essential methodology of ethical criticism.3 Every aspect of form and style "expresses a sense of life and of value, a sense of what matters and what does not" (LK, p.5). We discover this "sense of life" through close reading; "our engaged experience line by line," as Wayne Booth says, reveals the character of the implied author, the would-be friend urging on us a particular "pattern of desires."4On Nussbaum's reading, James's prose is ethically exemplary because it is "the prose of Aristotelian perception":It depicts in its cadences the moral effort of straining to see correctly and to come up with the appropriate picture or description; its tensions, obliquities, and circumnavigations express the sheer difficulty of finding the right description or picture for what is there before one. If, as James says, to "put" is to "do," showing this is showing moral activity of a valuable kind.(LK, p. 88)But Nussbaum ends up at James because her alternative moral theory begins there, not because moral philosophy that is literary inevitably sounds like James or supports Aristotle.5 As Nussbaum's gestures towards a more general theory of the role of "the novel" in philosophy indicate, novels may share generic features which complement or correct conventional philosophical discourse, but investigating other novels in this way may also lead us to other, non-Aristotelian, non-Jamesian ethical conceptions. My commentary on Middlemarch presents one such alternative. First, however, I will consider our "engaged experience" of The [End Page 191] Golden Bowl, a key example for Nussbaum, to show more particularly why we ought to be cautious about accepting James's late style as exemplary for moral philosophy, despite Nussbaum's passionate advocacy. What kind of friend do we meet there, in that world full of indeterminacy, obliquity, and circumnavigation? What kind of guidance in practical reasoning do we get from this implied author—what "ought" emerges from the Jamesian "is"?Perhaps because, as Nussbaum admits, her work on fiction as moral philosophy emerged "out of a longstanding love" for The... (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum's Poetic Justice undertakes a defense of the novel by showing it to develop the sympathetic imagination. Three parts of her argument come in for criticism, with implications for other such political defenses. Nussbaum sometimes interprets the imagination practically, sometimes theoretically; the two forms have different effects on deliberation. Nussbaum credits the novelistic tradition with fostering the imagination; her example of Hard Times interferes with establishing this general point. Nussbaum suggests an aesthetic element in literature that produces its effect, (...) but does not succeed in identifying that element so as to preserve the consequences of art while avoiding reductionism. (shrink)

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy.

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy. The papers, many of them previously inaccessible to non-specialist readers, explore such fundamental issues as the relationship between style and content in the exploration of ethical issues; the nature of ethical attention and ethical knowledge and their relationship to written forms and styles; and the role of the emotions in deliberation and self-knowledge. Nussbaum investigates and defends a conception of ethical understanding which involves (...) emotional as well as intellectual activity, and which gives a certain type of priority to the perception of particular people and situations rather than to abstract rules. She argues that this ethical conception cannot be completely and appropriately stated without turning to forms of writing usually considered literary rather than philosophical. It is consequently necessary to broaden our conception of moral philosophy in order to include these forms. Featuring two new essays and revised versions of several previously published essays, this collection attempts to articulate the relationship, within such a broader ethical inquiry, between literary and more abstractly theoretical elements. (shrink)

Huckleberry Finn is not irrational in being unmotivated to follow his explicit judgments of rightness and wrongness. Philosophers have previously judged Huck to be irrational, subject to weakness of will, in being unable to act on his moral judgment. But their interpretation rests on incorrect analyses of weak will and of the emotions on which Huck does act. I also argue that such emotion based motivation is not of the kind that could be rationally required. The character of Huckleberry Finn (...) therefore implies that rational agents need not be morally motivated. (shrink)

What is the relationship between literary criticism and ethics? Does criticism have an ethical task? How can criticism be ethical after literary theory? Ethical Criticism seeks to answer these questions by examining the historical development of the ethics of criticism and the vigorous contemporary backlash against what is known as 'theory'. The book appraises current arguments about the ethics of criticism and, finding them wanting, turns to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Described as 'the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth (...) century', Levinas' thought has had a profound influence on a number of significant contemporary thinkers. By paying close attention to his major writings, Robert Eaglestone argues cogently and persuasively for a new understanding of the ethical task of criticism and theory. (shrink)

Comprehensive and accessible, Moral Reasoning introduces students to the historical foundations of moral theory and contemporary ethics. Beginning with Aristotle, the text offers a careful, in-depth introduction to the many schools of moral thought that have contributed to Western philosophy, exploring such topics as utilitarianism, deontology, liberalism, human rights, virtue, and religious ethics. With contemporary examples incorporated throughout, this innovative new book fosters critical reflection on topical moral issues, encouraging students to develop a personal moral compass that transcends peer pressure (...) and ideology. (shrink)

Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature.