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Ethics Through Literature - Krossie (Mail Me If You Want To Reference)
Ethics Through Literature - Krossie (Mail Me If You Want To Reference)
“My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written.
And it is precisely this second part that is the important one”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (quoted by Fann 1969 page xv)
In this essay I want to look at two arguments and a question put by Ole Martin
His first argument rests on a critique of Martha Nussbaum’s idea that many
literary texts especially novels actually do the work of ethical philosophy. She puts this
strongly in “Finely Aware and Richly Responsible” (2004) when she contends that: “…
the novel is itself a moral achievement, and the well-lived is a work of literary art.”
(p.329)
Nussbaum uses “the Golden Bowl” by Henry James to make her case. She picks
out a crucial scene in the book between Adam and his daughter Maggie where he must
allow her to move on and get married. However this summary cannot do justice to what’s
really happening. James through subtle deployment of image and metaphor represents
this situation in all its particulars; showing the depth of the relationship and the huge
sacrifice required of Adam. It is also clear that sacrifice must be made in a way that
neither will be demeaned by it and that both will still be loved and respected in the
other’s eyes. This, for Nussbaum, goes beyond the examples used in rule based ethical
systems1 reflecting a situation specific Aristotelian ethics that only Henry James’s
imagery (or a similar work) can do justice to. As she puts it on page 334:
If this view of morality is taken seriously and if we wish to have texts that
represent it at its best…it seems difficult not to conclude that we will need to turn
1
Kantianism or Utilitarianism for example.
to texts no less elaborate, no less linguistically fine-tuned, concrete, and intensely
focused, no less metaphorically resourceful, than this novel.
Now this surely restricts us to a very limited selection of books and this is the first
argument I take from Skilleas’s article. As he puts it (ibid p. 133) it seems not a question
of opening yourself to the possible moral insights of a work but simply one of “..picking
out the “right friends.” It appears that for Nussbaum moral conceptions are worked out
before encountering the work supposedly doing the philosophy.2 However come with
such expectations surely removes the suggestiveness present in even the simplest story. Is
it not this very openness to multiple readings that makes literature ethically interesting?
…that the process of literary interpretation is complex, and that different epochs,
cultures and people come up with different interpretations of the same work. The
choices and emphasises in literary interpretation are also important in what the
reader takes the work to “teach” in terms of moral significance.
If one approaches “the canon” looking for friends or, alternatively, for works that disrupt
commonplace ethical norms you are limiting you choice of works fairly radically.3
This leads directly to his next point that one of the things to be open to in reading
literature is how it may pick up resonances and questions particular to its time.4 He
illustrates this through the work of the American Philosopher and critic Stanley Cavell
and his analysis of a type of scepticism he sees working in many Shakespearian plays,
2
It might be open to Nussbaum to counter that it is in and through the process of reading literature from a
young age that we actually build and develop our moral ideas and pick our friends but this certainly isn’t
what she says here. As Skilleas points out this would actually mean hanging out with some bad friends
initially in order to discover the good ones.
3
In reference to this approach Skilleas uses Kafka’s lovely quote: ““I think we ought only to read the
books that wound and stab us…A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside us” (ibid p.140) - this
would surely apply to many modernist art movements from Dadaism, Futurism and Surrealism to, more
recently, Situationism.
4
Or, even more strangely, it may actually come to highlight particular questions and issues for times
hundreds of years after its publication.
2
In the famous opening scene Lear demands that his daughters declare their love
for him in effusive terms. This proves to be no problem for the conniving older sisters
who do so in extravagant and lying terms but Cordelia refuses to play the game replying
“Nothing my Lord”5 (ibid p.143) As Skilleas puts it “…this is all she can say in a context
where the words of love have taken on the opposite meaning through the false
pronouncements of her sisters.” Lear’s scepticism about human relations and the
“natural” love between father and daughter proves his undoing. Cavell posits that “…
scepticism concerning other minds is not scepticism but tragedy” (ibid) This is all made
even more interesting by the fact that shortly after the play was published6 a certain
French philosopher called Rene Descartes writes his “Meditations on First Philosophy”
which focus on a doubter seeking something on which to ground his knowledge of the
world.
Cavell’s point7 is that certain questions (often implicit) are in the air in any given
society and time. Knowledge may accrete around these but the “grit” on which it builds
may remain unstated, murky. As Cavell puts it (ibid) “the presence of the sceptical
tormenting the culture of the time.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that Shakespeare was a
conscious philosopher or that Descartes ever read his plays. However when Descartes sat
down to pen his meditations the question of scepticism per sae was: “already in full flight
5
We see later that her love reside deeply at the level of action rather than words.
6
King Lear was probably first published between 1603 and 1608 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear)
where as The Meditations came out in 1641
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy) I know Wikpedia is not highly reliable but
surely gives us a “ball park” figure anyhow.
7
Which also may have something in common with historically minded philosophers like Hegel and, more
recently Foucault in works like the Order of Things
3
in the Shakespearean corpus” (ibid). Literature and philosophy may work on broadly
I will examine Ray Bradbury’s short story “Night Meeting.” (2001) using these
two ideas from Skilleas. I will further touch on an interesting question that Skilleas raises
briefly towards the end of his article: have literature and philosophy always been as
up” (Brians 1995): a collection of previously published 1940s pulp stories stitched into a
rough chronology with short fillers and some new stories. A range of suggestions as to
what may have happened on Mars from mass extermination of the Martians to the
humans somehow being telepathically absorbed by them are presented. Though each
story is fairly short and simple quiet a rich tapestry of possible histories is woven with no
“Night meeting” (written for the collection in 1950) is the story of a brief meeting
between the Earthman Tomás Gomez and the Martian Muhe Ca on an ancient highway in
the dark Martian hills. Although the Martian seems to be a ghost from a civilisation
centuries in the past and Tomás is alive and well in his present they get along well after
some initial suspicion. This possibility for friendship across a gulf in time, space and
culture in itself, may well be the major point Bradbury wanted to get across.
A second strong theme centres on doubt (scepticism even) about identity. This
makes for some strange exchanges as both parties severely doubt each other’s existence.
Mr. Ca is supposed to be long dead and yet he finds “I have flesh…I am alive” (Bradbury
2001 p.110). Eventually he points out that there is nothing inherent to either of their
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systems nor any standard outside of them which can prove whether or not they can exist
You are so certain. How can you prove who is from the past and who is from the
future…It is as if I told you it is the year 4462853 S. E C.. It is nothing and more
than nothing! Where is the clock to show us how the stars stand? (ibid.p.113)
Bradbury consciously takes on the complex philosophical issue of identity at the end of
this almost Socratic dialogue – clearly philosophy being tackled directly in literature.
However this story could equally well be a “friend” for Martha Nussbaum’s
position. Tomás and the Martian quickly and easily get on and yet nothing could have
prepared them for this encounter. That wisdom gained through lived experience is the
only possible guide available. This is emphasised in Tomás’s meeting with the old petrol
pump attendant whose rather uncommon view is that as people get older they seek more
variety and stimulation. He stresses the value of experience and openness: “I’m just
looking. I’m just experiencing. If you can’t take Mars for what she is, you might as well
go back to Earth.” (p.106) Further it seems that Tomás’s experience of life has well
equipped him for novelty: “… Tomás had swum in blue rivers on Earth, with strangers
passing on the road, and eaten in strange houses with strange people and his weapon had
always been his smile” (p 108-109) The first thing Mr. Muhe Ca says is “Something
different?...eyeing him and the coffee, referring to them both, perhaps” (ibid) Both seem
Yet Bradbury seems quite an odd “friend” to Nussbaum given her own claim that
only dense works like James’s fiction can convey the ethical subtlety of real human
interaction. Though he uses some beautiful imagery8 this story is short and simple in
8
For example “the stars were white and sharp beyond the flesh of the Martian, and they were sewn into his
flesh like scintillas swallowed into the thin, phosphorous membrane of a gelatinous sea fish.” (p 110)
5
structure. Yet his point of understanding being possible across massive boundaries is
own philosophy too. In the study guide Paul Brians tells us:
One striking feature of these stories is the progressive political values they
embrace. Written during the height of the Cold War anti-Communist hysteria,
they criticize imperialism, racism, environmental pollution, censorship and the
nuclear arms race. (ibid 1995)
Cold war America was completely swept with the fear of Soviet style
communism. In the 1940s Sci Fi tales depicting hostile Martian and Venusian monsters
hell bent on ravaging planet earth were ubiquitous. The metaphor was obvious: hostile
“human” Martians who are sometimes quite friendly in intent. Tomás and Mr. Muhe Ca
approach each other with hands empty of weapons. Another tortured question is briefly
touched in this story. Just exactly what could complete hostility between two huge,
opposing belief systems lead to?9 “Yes, dead. I saw the bodies. Black, in the rooms, in the
Another common image from this age of pulp fiction is that of rugged
individualism and the frontier myth; the chance to escape a decadent, crumbling world
and start afresh. The works of James Blish, Fritz Lieber and Robert Heinlein are full of
steely eyed; self reliant young men busy launching rockets and building frontier towns. 10
Clearly Tomás and the Martian are two such individuals. In one way their meeting of
9
We must remember this story came out a mere five years after World War II
10
Some one has actually put up a fairly exhaustive timeline of 1940s sci fi on the web
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/timeline1950.html (accessed April 8th 2009)
6
minds is only possible because they are somewhat separated out from their cultures and
They are individuals - but mirrored individuals. They are both alone, both on
holidays, both driving on a deserted road after a long period of hard work to get back to
civilisation and party for a few days. In the end as they both return to their journeys both
are both confident in the existence of their respective universes and their place in them.
Yet there is no confidence at the end of the story (especially the poignant last paragraph)
in the existence of either. We are left simply with “Starlight twinkled on the empty
highway...no car, no person nothing.” (p.115) Any individual like any civilisation is
ultimately fleeting and even as Bradbury uses the trope of rugged individualism he also
seems to mock it. It seems that he is consciously doing ethics in his take on the fear of
communism and the attraction of, but limitations to the idea of rugged self-reliance. He
also looks at the question of personal identity: what gives us substance; the feeling of a
real existence.
Finally I think that this night meeting might even be seen as a metaphor
for the meeting of philosophy and literature. Initially this encounter may be suspicious
However as per the story they may at least come to agree to disagree and hope to meet
7
One hopeful sign in this regard is the dagger. Tomás and Mr. Ca quickly realise
that they are transparent and ghostly to each other. However can actually put their full
trust into this first shared assumption? When Mr. Ca reaches for his knife - Tomás is
startled:
You misunderstand, catch!” said the Martian, and tossed it. Tomás cupped his
hands. The knife fell through his flesh. It hit the ground. (p. 110)
Tomás is willing to reach for the knife immediately. Maybe both sides can begin working
on that very basis that they are completely apart and “unreal” to each other.
Skilleas at the end of his article suggests that Philosophy and literature haven’t
always been strangers. He points out that “Philosophy was not established as a separate
discourse when Plato wrote…” (p 147) Plato uses his “consummate writerly skills” (ibid)
to address a public raised on Homeric myth. Skilleas points out that “the Phaedrus”
“reads like a modern play” (ibid) and that most of his dialogues are genuinely dramatic to
some extent. In chapter 4 of his analysis of “The Republic” Adi Ophir (1991) considers
the drama and movement at the start of the first book11 especially the interventions of
Thrasymachus; the sophist as he endeavours to control what Ophir terms “the space of
discourse” Unsurprisingly Socrates wins out and most of the book flows like a lecture
with minor interruptions. However this is not the end of Plato’s dealings with literature as
he has recourse to the ten myths in the course of his description of the city, the form of
the good etc. It seems that when logos run out Plato turns naturally to myth to continue
his point.
From Plato’s time forward the barrier between philosophy and literature has
11
Indeed the first three words “I went down…” are the title of a play by Irish playwright Conor Mc
Pherson.
8
mention Plutarch, Dante, Laurence Stern and Goethe purely as samples. By the end of the
nineteenth century there are tappings on the wall from both sides: Nietzsche and
Kierkegaard from Philosophy and Emerson and Dostoevsky from the literary side. A case
could be made that the latter’s “Brothers Karamazov” and “Notes from Underground” are
works of philosophy in literary form. Nietzsche’s earlier works like “the Genealogy” or
“the Birth of Tragedy” might be read as philosophy written in an inventive, literary style.
themes. By the twentieth century with existentialism and early modernism the trickle
through has become a decent sized river. In Walter Kaufman’s 1975 collection of
existentialist writing we get on the literary side Kafka, Rilke and Camus12 and from
philosophy (besides the two mentioned above) Ortega and Jaspers. Gordon Marino’s
2004 collection adds Ralph Ellison and De Unamuno Y Jugo to the fiction side.
On the fringes of “The Frankfurt School” were Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin;
philosophers, critics and stylish writers and there are many other consciously
Deconstructionists like Derrida and Barthes seem to have a foot in both camps. Deleuze
and Guttari write partially in technical, philosophical language and partially in bursts of
literary prose. Ethicists like Iris Murdoch wrote philosophical novels and Susan Sontang
was a great ethicist as well as a literary critic and fiction writer. Yet while some wings of
Philosophy have increasingly engaged with literature others have moved further away
from it. Today the gap between the broad camps of Analytical Philosophy and
12
To which you might add Samuel Beckett.
9
Yet some have crossed that gulf. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus” was written from within the analytical tradition of Moore and Russell. He
attempted to form an exact correspondence between the structure of language and the
logical structure of things - what can be said with clarity and what, in his view, amounted
to non-sense. However within about ten years he completely repudiated his previous
work in his “Philosophical Investigations”. Language does not, necessarily, say anything
about the world. In fact it is simply a tool, a practice, an exchange, an agreed socially
mediated game with no automatic correspondence to anything real. (See Fann 1969
pp.72-81) It seems that Wittgenstein took the possibility of analytical philosophy as far
he could and then quietly abandoned it admitting that language was a slippery human
construction useful only within limits. 13 So having reached the edge of philosophy we
may find ourselves back in myth. We are back with Plato who could with equal comfort
Artists and philosophers generally work within the assumptions, forms and frames
of reference of their disciplines. Exchanges between them may be friendly but they may
also be like suspicious signals semaphored across a gulf. Like Tomás and the Martian
they have first to convince each other of the other’s right to an existence; their right to
pursue questions in their particular way. The philosopher may suspect that the novel has
nothing systematic to say about life and conversely the novelist may find the
philosopher’s take on morality narrow and fixated with universals and rules. They may
remain strangers in the night despite being taken up with similar concerns. In this context
13
In a 2005 interview with Andrew klevan Stanley Cavell speaks of Wittgenstein’s (and his own): “distrust
of language as well as his trust in it…that combination of absolute reliance and absolute questioning of
every word that came out of me”
10
smoothly back and forth between myth and logos in pursuit of philosophical goals.
Practitioners of both disciplines may pursue questions to the edge of what is possible in
their domain but then surely the courageous step is to continue, in a friendly way and
with due modesty14, into the other’s domain if the pursuit warrants it.
14
Welcoming all available help from those already within that particular field.
11
References
Bradbury, Ray. ”Night Meeting” in The Martian Chronicles (London: Voyager Classics.
2001), pp 106-115.
Brians, Paul. “Study Guide for Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles” 1995 (revised
2003)
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/martian_chronicles.html
(Accessed March 19th 2009)
Kaufman, Walter. “Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre.” New York: Penguin 1975.
Marino, Gordon. Basic Writings of Existentialism. New York: New Modern Library
2004.
Ophir, Ade. “Plato’s Invisible Cities: discourse and power in the Republic.” London:
Routledge1991.
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