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Peter
Singer and Renata Singer (eds)
THE MORAL OF THE STORY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF
ETHICS THROUGH LITERATURE
Blackwell, $49.95 pb, 621 pp, 1 4051 0584
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LITERATURE
IS RICH in ethical implication, but
do we incur ethical responsibilities
when we write about it? Arguably we
do. Literary authors seek to convey
something to others, and to convey it
in literary form. Perhaps, then, our
accounts of literature should respect
its literary qualities, not least when
we bring literature into interdisciplinary
contact with other discourses. Otherwise
we risk the ethical trespass of reductionism,
where literature is simply seen in the
other discourse’s terms. Further,
it seems to be in a community’s
interest — seems to help us find
our moral bearings in an often bewildering
world — to be able to discriminate
between the ‘truth claims’
that accompany various discursive forms:
say fiction, memoir, philosophy.
F.R. Leavis, the best-known recent exponent
of ethically oriented literary criticism,
rejected what he saw as reductive applications
of philosophical ethics to literature.
Literature, he thought, could do its
own characteristically literary thinking.
Leavis could be petulantly proprietorial
about literature, but on literature
and ethics he had a point. There are
many varieties of literature and many
sorts of philosophy, but literary explorations
of ethics tend to work through patterns
of emotional identification that seldom
occur in philosophy. (Plato is a notable
example.) Philosophy generally seeks
conceptual clarification, the elimination
of ambiguity and contradiction; major
works of literature, by contrast, often
perceive and dramatise ambiguity and
contradiction as irreducible aspects
of the world. Despite Leavis’s
influential objections, and challenges
from contemporary literary theory, a
good deal of sophisticated ethically
oriented literary criticism has appeared
in recent decades, some of it by analytic
philosophers who have participated in
philosophy’s ‘narrative turn’:
Martha Nussbaum, Stanley Cavell, Iris
Murdoch and others. But humanist literary
critics have also played an important
part. America’s finest exemplar
was perhaps Lionel Trilling; in Australia,
where excellent work has been done in
the field, the doyen was S.L. Goldberg.
Even for those who remain committed
to humanist approaches to relations
between literature and ethics, postmodern
literary theory has compelled some serious
rethinking. Theory has shown that ‘Literature’
is a more provisional and shifting designation
than many had thought; that genre distinctions
can be problematic and prone to ideological
motivation. While often committed to
moral projects — gender, race,
class and other emancipatory movements
— postmodern theory has attacked
some of the foundational assumptions
of ethical literary humanism: the existence
of a discerning and highly individuated
self-as-moral-agent; language’s
capacity faithfully to communicate significant
aspects of reality, including complex
ethical situations and discourses; and
the image of the author as, potentially
at least, a creative moral agent whose
texts bespeak that agency. Debates continue.
Some proponents of contemporary theory
find in Jacques Derrida’s work,
for instance, new and more responsible
ways of treating relations between ethics
and literature; others worry that the
politicisation of literature in some
recent criticism and theory recommits
old reductionist mistakes.
Interdisciplinary treatments of philosophy
and literature need to take concerted
account of these debates. Renata and
Peter Singer’s The Moral of the
Story is addressed to ‘students
taking courses both in ethics and in
literature’ and ‘readers,
whether or not they are students in
the formal sense, like reading good
literature and have an interest in the
issues with which this book deals’.
This seems to flag an even-handed interdisciplinary
project in which the two constituent
discourses — literature and ethics
— will enter into a conversation
between equals. But the book’s
title does not bode well: The Moral
of the Story seems to repeat the oldest
of the reductionist errors: the mining
of literature for paraphrasable moral
lessons. Nor does the subtitle —
An Anthology of Ethics through Literature
— seem reassuring. What is the
force of ‘through’?
The authors begin by noting that ‘philosophical
examples in ethics usually lack depth’.
By contrast, ‘discussions of ethical
views in fiction tend to be concrete,
rather than abstract, and to give a
rich context for the distinctive moral
views or choices that are portrayed’.
Literature, then, brings its own dimensions
and nuances to ethical representation;
but the notion of ‘context’
here seems rather limited: it appears
to entail a more elaborate situational
backdrop for, and richer evocations
of, moral conduct than philosophical
ethicists generally provide. But does
it also encompass the specifically ‘literary’
ways in which literature can deepen
our understanding of moral situations
and ethical issues? Despite occasional
signals to the contrary, The Moral of
the Story does not supply this important
requirement. It simply reads literature
as a storehouse of examples for the
exploration, elucidation, sometimes
even pontification about topics in philosophical
ethics: issues pertaining to personal
identity; duties to kin; love, marriage
and sex; abortion, euthanasia and suicide;
work; conduct towards our country, compatriots
and strangers; racism and sexism; ethics
and politics; war; animals and the environment;
duties to god; new life forms; the nature
of ethics; rules, rights, duties and
the greater good; and ultimate values.
All of these are, of course, critically
important topics, and it is pleasing
to see a major philosophical ethicist
and an accomplished novelist reasserting
literature’s ethical powers. The
anthology is lovingly assembled and
contains many excerpts that demand inclusion,
along with some welcomely unexpected
ones. One can always quibble about matters
of selection and balance — this
anthology, for instance, arguably underrepresents
the sort of postmodern literary text
that submits the very notion of authoritative
ethical discernment to radically sceptical
scrutiny — but few who purchase
this volume will regret having such
a splendid gathering of ethically engaged
literature on their shelves.
Setting the book as a required text
for university literature and ethics
courses is another matter. Its expository
apparatus comprises introductory essays
to each thematic section, and text-specific
discussions that come after the anthologised
excerpts. It has to be said that these
seldom engage with literature qua literature.
The excerpts are pressed into the service
of often reductive ethical elucidation
and question-framing. One example: the
famous ‘requirements of their imagination’
scene in Henry James’s The Portrait
of a Lady is included under a thematic
section entitled ‘Ultimate Values’.
According to the introductory essay,
the excerpt — in which Ralph Touchett
urges his father to divert half of his
patrimonial bequest to Isabel Archer
— expresses ‘some sympathy
for the tastes and values of an élite,
rather than for relieving the suffering
and hardship of ordinary people’.
The subsequent gloss on the excerpt
asks questions such as: ‘Are Ralph’s
ultimate values’ — for instance
his inattention to the poor — ‘defensible’.
These are real ethical issues, but they
are not what James is on about, and
the discussion overlooks the ‘literary’
complexities of the passage: Ralph’s
disturbingly ambivalent tone, the sinister
resonances of key thematic nouns like
‘interest’ and ‘amusement’,
the shift from the apparent altruism
of ‘their imagination’ to
Ralph’s concluding ‘my imagination’.
‘Through’, then, does betoken
a reduction of literature to ethics.
In one respect, this does not undermine
the book’s apposite range and expertise
as a tool for ethical pedagogy; but
in another, it does: oughtn’t even
university students of philosophical
ethics be exposed to literature’s
special powers of heuristic moral enquiry?
Shouldn’t students in each discipline
— bearing in mind that many will
take subjects both in literature and
philosophy — be introduced to the
complexities of interdisciplinary inquiry?
Even the reading list at the book’s
end is heavily weighted towards philosophy.
Just occasionally, reference is made
to the impact of contemporary literary
theory, as in the following remark about
postmodern theory and cultural relativism:
‘the rise of postmodernist thinking,
with its critique of the universalist
ideas of the Enlightenment, has made
relativism more popular among students
of literary theory and culture, who
are often unaware of how uncongenial
and paradoxical the implications of
relativism really are.’ I for one
agree with the substance of this, but
the slightly superior tone of dismissal
gives little hint of how deep and complex
recent debates about cultural relativism
in literary and cultural studies have
been. Tone, indeed, is an issue in this
book: though admirably clear, its discussions
can seem ponderously self-evident (‘But
in politics strict adherence to this
principle [the ends not justifying the
means] can be a guarantee of ineffectiveness’)
and best suited to a VCE readership.
This well-intentioned book by lovers
of literature has the unfortunate effect
of simplifying literature and casting
it as something of a philosophical convenience.
A useful introduction to philosophical
ethics, it fails adequately to honour
the ‘requirements’ of the
‘imagination’.
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