On Literature and Ethics

Michael Eskin
Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia

Abstract This essay deals with the complex relationship between literature and
ethics. More specifically, it inquires into and problematizes the conceptual ways in
which such discursive distinctions as that between literature and moral philosophy
have been upheld, as well as the assumptions and presuppositions underlying the
ascription to literature of an ethically exemplary role. Accepting the methodological
and conceptual challenges presented by some of the major philosophical and theoretical positions informing literatures perception as ethically exemplary (from Aristotle to Jakobson and Derrida), this essay suggests a new theoretical framework for
thinking about the enmeshment of literature and ethics, drawing especially on the
works of Bakhtin and MacIntyre.

they cite poets as witnesses

Plato, Republic

I want to begin the following meditation on the ethical significance of literature and its relation to moral philosophy from the empirical recognition
that what we have come to call literature has been credited, in the Western
cultural context at least, with an ethical force ostensibly exceeding that of
moral philosophy.1 Literature has been held to be capable of doingin J. L.
I would like to thank Kathrin Stengel, Harro Mller, Derek Attridge, and H. Martin Puchner
for discussing this essay with me and reading and commenting on drafts. Work on this essay
has been supported by a Chamberlain Fellowship and a Faculty Leave, both from Columbia
University.
. I use literature throughout in its most general, inclusive sense to refer to the body of texts
Poetics Today : (Winter ). Copyright by the Porter Institute for Poetics and
Semiotics.

574

Poetics Today 25:4

Austins ( []) termscertain things ethical that moral philosophy

would fall short of.2 This is not to deny the latters heuristic significance in
ethical matters (nor its recourse to devices that have been said to be characteristic of literature, such as fiction, figural language, etc.); it is simply to
foreground the fact that our moral education has not, fundamentally, been
entrusted to ethics. Nursery rhymes, stories, plays, verbal and filmic narratives perused from early childhood have been supposed to ensure, more or
less successfully, the formation of the variously conceived good person.3
My objective in this essay is threefold: () to raise the question of literature and the ethical with a view to () uncovering the theoretical impasses
vitiating traditional accounts of their enmeshment and, subsequently, to
() suggesting what I take to be a plausible explicatory frame for what we
seem to have been taking for granted prior to and beyond any philosophical
problematization, namely, that literature is capable of doing things ethical
in an exemplary way.
from Homer to the present that have come to be called literature (Attridge : ). For
critical discussions of the rise of the specifically modern notion of literature as an aesthetic
category and institution, see Todorov ; Derrida : ; Eagleton : .
. Throughout this essay, I usefor the purpose of stylistic variationethics and moral philosophy as well as their adjectival cognates interchangeably. It should be contextually evident
whether ethical/moral refers to philosophical argument or to pragmatic import. On a
conceptual clarificatory note, I should stress that although ethics has been viewed as distinct
from moral philosophy in the wake of Kants ( [/]: ) subsumption of Moralphilosophie under the more general head of Ethik (ibid.: ), the terms interchangeable use persists as before Kants distinction (cf., e.g., Banner ). My use of both terms
follows, in particular, Cicero, who introduced (in De Fato) the neologism moralis and coined
the technical term philosophia moralis to translate the Greek ton thikon: because it pertains
to [what] the Greeks call thos, we usually call this part of philosophy on mores (character/custom/habit/usage); but it is suitable to call it, by way of expanding the Latin language,
moral (philosophy) (Cicero : ; my translation). Seneca (: ) and Quintilianus
(, esp. book :, book :, book :, ) popularize Ciceros linguistic innovation. Although Quintilianus already uses the term Ethice (ibid.: :, ), it is the fourthcentury Christian apologist Lactantius ( []: ) who first employs the term ethica
as equivalent to philosophia moralis in his Divinae intitutiones (written between and ). By
the fifth century, ethics or ethical philosophy and moral philosophy are used interchangeably and
with no need for explanation or justification, as the following quote from Macrobius (:
) indicates: Since there are three parts to philosophy in its entirety, moral, natural and
rational, what else does that exaltation of virtues contain but the moral precepts of ethical philosophy? (my translation). The German rationalist philosopher Christian Wolff ()
cements the interchangeability of ethics and moral philosophy for the modern period in
his monumental Philosophia moralis sive ethica (, vols.).
. On philosophys reliance on literature and literary devices, see, for instance, Wittgenstein : ; Derrida ; de Man ; Harries ; MacIntyre []: ,
, ; Nietzsche : , ; Murdoch : ; Miller : . Among
the plethora of texts on the morally formative, educational function of literature, see, for
instance, Augustine : ; Bruni ; Schiller a [], b []; MacIntyre
[]: .

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

575

Rather than focusing, as has frequently been done, on the putative differences between literature and ethics, I want to look at them as parts of
a continuum along which differences in mode and degree determine differences in ethical impetus. More specifically, I suggest that insofar as we
take literature to be ethically significant in an exemplary way, we may want
to start thinking about locating its ethical force not so much in its referential makeup and thematicsfor reasons that I shall clarifyas in, among
other things, what I would call, for lack of a better term, its discursivetransformational capaciousness, that is, in its ability to absorb and transform virtually any kind of discourse, including the discourse of ethics.
After a brief historical sketch of the enmeshment of literature and ethics,
I discuss some of the theoretical assumptions informing dominant accounts
of literatures ethical import. I then present a number of powerful criticisms
of these assumptions, which necessitate a reassessment of the very notion of
literature in its relation to ethics. In a final step, I want to suggest a framework for casting the question of literature and its relation to ethics in a productive new light while obviating, as I will endeavor to show, some of the
difficulties posed by available takes on the subjectthe impasses of what
could summarily be called textual essentialism and pragmatic contractualism in particular.
Literature and Ethics: A Historical Sketch

Since its appearance as a philosophical discipline on the scene of the Western intellectual and cultural tradition in ancient Greece, ethics has been,
not surprisingly, enmeshed with literature. The subject which, according
to Hegel (: ), Socrates invented [and] added to . . . philosophy
continued to be informed by its (by no means exclusive) roots in its predecessor and begetter in matters of the discursive engagement with human
life, interaction, and conduct, namely, poetry.4 Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and
Aeschylos, to name only a few, constituted a prephilosophical moral tradition which presumably provided Socrates, Plato, and their successors with
the basic themes (and their paradigmatic artistic treatment) of what we
have come to call ethics: how we ought to live and act so as to live a (variously conceived) good life.5 Whether as positive or negative instances of
. Hegel follows Diogenes Laertius (: ), who credited Socrates with the introduction
of ethics as a distinct philosophical field of inquiry: Philosophy . . . in earlier times discoursed on one subject only, namely physics, then Socrates added the second subject, ethics
[ton thikon], and Plato the third, dialectics. See also Cooper .
. See Murdoch []: , esp. ; MacIntyre []: , , ; Nussbaum : , : ; Kahn .

576

Poetics Today 25:4

virtue, character, interaction, and response or as dangerous seductions, the

yarns spun by the poets, their protagonists situations, quandaries, decisions, words, and deeds served and continue to serve philosopherswitness
the profuse recourse to literature on the part of contemporary moral philosophers of various colorsas touchstones for their theoretical reflections.6
If it is true that before philosophy there was poetry (Kahn : ),
and if it is furthermore true that prior to the rise of ethics the poets . . .
were understood . . . to be the central ethical teachers and thinkers (Nussbaum : ), then the very practice of literature must evince an ethical
dimension. While the overall moral import of literature has certainly been
implicitly and explicitly acknowledged and put to use through the ages as a
matter of courseas is borne out by pedagogical and educational practices
involving literaturethe specific site and force of the ethical in the literary
have been the subject of considerable debate among poets, critics, and philosophers, beginning with Platos and Aristotles pioneering meditations on
these issues.
Depending on the given authors particular theoretical framework and
approach, the ethical valence of literature (and art in general) has been
located, for instance, in what could be roughly subsumed under the heads
of its relation to truth, thematics, structure and uses of language, power to
effect a change in perception, inherent appeal to responsibility, or capacity
of discursive subversion.7 Literature has been ascribed the idiosyncratic, if
. See Plato : , esp. ; Aristotle : a, ba, b
a, ab, : a, b, aa; Augustine : ; Nussbaum : , : xiii; MacIntyre []: , ; Rorty []: xiv,
; McGinn : ; Levinas : , []: ; Jonas : , , , , .
. I have in mind such approaches as could loosely be labeled ontological (e.g., Plato, Hegel,
Heidegger, Gadamer), psychological or affect- and cognition-based (e.g., Plato, Aristotle,
Bruni, Schiller, Nussbaum, McGinn), aestheticist (e.g., Kant, Wilde, Nabokov, de Man),
emotive-pragmatic (e.g., Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Spitzer), poetic-linguistic (e.g., Shklovsky,
Jakobson, Brodsky), phenomenological (e.g., Ingarden, Iser, Fish), or deconstructive (e.g.,
Derrida, de Man, Miller, Attridge, Levinas). I should stress that this is, of course, a very simplified, purely heuristic perspective on an exceedingly complex historical realitythe reception and assessment of artin which all of the suggested approaches (and probably many
more) mingle, overlap, interact, and constantly inform each other with shifting emphases.
The select authors mentioned merely stake out the sub-traditions constituted by these
approaches. See Plato : , ; Hegel : ; Heidegger []:
, []; Gadamer ; Aristotle : a, ; Bruni ; Schiller a
[], b []; Nussbaum , ; McGinn : ; Kant []: ,
; Wilde []: ; Nabokov : ; Schleiermacher []; Dilthey
[]; Spitzer : , ; Shklovsky []; Jakobson []; Brodsky
: , , , : ; Ingarden []; Iser a [], b []; Fish
; Derrida : ; Miller , ; Attridge , ; Levinas []: ,
, []: . For helpful discussions of the history and notion of literature from
an ethical perspective, see esp. Eaglestone : ; Nussbaum : .

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

577

variegated, ability to make us see, feel, and realize certain truths about
human life [that] can only be fittingly and accurately stated in the language
and forms characteristic of the . . . artist [as opposed to] abstract theoretical discourse (Nussbaum : ), to solicit the supremely difficult ethical
act of responding to . . . singularity and otherness (Attridge : ).8
Aristotle, again

Notwithstanding their specificities and putative differences, the various

accounts of the ethical valence of literature outlined above share certain
assumptions about literature as a particular mode of discourse which are
by no means unproblematic. Insofar as these assumptions can be shown
to be, if not unfounded, at the very least (onto)logically contestable, the
theoretical positions subtended by them, too, reveal themselves as equally
contestable. Probably the most basic among these assumptions is the very
acknowledgment of modes of discourse, that is, of the possibility somehow
clearly to distinguish between literature and such other modes as philosophy (of which ethics is, of course, a branch). And it is precisely this basic
distinction, which has relied on a particular view of language and its uses
and on a particular anthropology or psychology hinging on the notion of
mimesisboth paradigmatically articulated by Aristotlethat needs to be
critically interrogated.
In On Interpretation, Aristotle (: a) makes an (onto)logical distinction between two modes of speech: While every sentence [logos] has
meaning [smantikos] . . . not all can be called propositions. We call propositions [apophantikos] those only that have truth or falsity in them. A prayer is,
for instance, a sentence but neither has truth nor falsity. . . . Let us pass over
all such, as their study more properly belongs to the province of rhetoric or
poetry. We have in our present inquiry propositions [apophantikos] alone for
our theme. Aristotle then (ibid.: a) specifies that a proposition can
be either an affirmation [kataphasis] or a negation [apophasis], whereby
the presence of some other thing in a subject in time past or present or
future (ibid.: a) is being affirmed or denied.9 Apophansis requires,
Aristotle (ibid.: a) emphasizes, the presence in a proposition of an
is, was, or will be . . . indicat[ing] a single fact [or] many. The dis. See also Rorty []: xvxvi, ; McGinn : ; Attridge : ;
Miller : . In this essay, I do not deal with the specific differences between analytical
(Anglo-American) and continental ethical theory and their respective engagements with literature, viewing both, rather, as complementary and mutually illuminating with regard to
our attempts at understanding the ethical in its relation to the literary.
. We mean by affirmation a statement affirming one thing of another; we mean by negation
a statement denying one thing of another (Aristotle : a).

578

Poetics Today 25:4

tinction between apophantic and nonapophantic discourse, which Aristotle

clearly establishes on the basis of an utterances referential relation to reality
and the world, is further elaborated in the Poetics (to which, among other
things, the reader interested in nonapophantic discourse is referred in On
Interpretation).10 Aristotle (: a) has in mind poetry in general and
the specific genres of epic and tragic poetry, as well as comedy [and] dithyramb . . . all, taken as a whole, kinds of mimesis (ibid.: a)
in short, what we have come to call literature 11when he writes, in the
famous ninth chapter of Poetics: it is not the poets function to relate actual
events, but the kinds of things that might occur and are possible in terms
of probability and necessity (ibid.: a).12
Aristotles (onto)logical distinction between apophantic and nonapophantic speech, that is, assertive discourse aiming at propositional truth
(e.g., philosophy, history) and nonassertive, nonpropositional discourse
(e.g., literature) facilitated the common viewheld by many a philosopher
and poet alikeof philosophy and literature as serious or nonfictional
and nonserious or fictional modes of discourse, respectively.13 While the
former makes referential statements, the latter dispenses with direct propositionality and referentiality. Whatever the poets may say or state in their
works . . . they neither believe nor assert it as a fact, but only as a myth or
fiction (Boccaccio []: ). Aristotles conception of poetry as nonapophantic speech, popularized by Sir Philip Sidney ( []: )
the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never liethdoes not seem to
have lost its epistemological or poetological appeal; such recent notions as
literatures pretended reference (Searle : ) or pseudoreference
(Genette : ) speak to the Stagirites continuous sway.
. For discussions of Aristotles distinction between apophantic and nonapophantic speech
in terms of referentiality and factuality, see Halliwell : ; Woodruff : .
. The passage also lists most music for aulos and lyre among kinds of mimesis, but in
this essay I do not specifically address music.
. Although poetry does not affirm anything about facts, states of affairs, or actual events
the way history or philosophy in their own complex ways do, it can and indeed often does,
as Aristotle (: b) observes, concern actual events.
. I should stress that Aristotle does not and could not possibly equate poetry with what we
call fictionan essentialist notion alien to Aristotles poetics (and metaphysics). Aristotle
merely notes that poetry does not make apophatic or kataphatic claims about the world and
that it is mimesis. It is worth remembering that: () certain modes that Aristotle would categorize as nonapophantic have been interpreted as implying fictionality (see, for instance,
Augustine : ; Frege : ; Russell : , ; Austin []: , , , ,
); () rightly or wrongly, mimesis has frequently been taken to mean, and been translated
as, fiction (see esp. Genettes [: ] discussion of mimesis and its history; Hamburger
[]: ; Halliwell : , ). For an insightful critique of translating mimesis as fiction, see Woodruff : esp. , , . On poetrys relation to fact and fiction
in Aristotle, see de Ste. Croix .

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

579

Aristotle (: b) drew an important conclusion from his insights into the manifold uses of language: because literature does not work
apophantically, because it is neither bound by states of affairs or fact nor
by the limits of logical truth, it can be, paradoxically, in its very concretenesseven though attaching names to agentsmore universal than apophantic speech.14 Literature, Julia Kristeva (: ) writes in a passage
representative of the continuous presence of Aristotles thought, takes the
most concrete signifieds, concretizes them to the utmost degree, and, simultaneously raises them to a level of universality which surpasses that of conceptual discourse. . . . The poetic signified . . . is simultaneously concrete
and universal. 15
In order to understand the ethical significance of what for the longest
time has been taken to be literatures particular ways of creating meaning,
it is necessary to attend to one contextually pertinent aspect of Aristotles
(: b) anthropology or psychology, namely, the twofold stipulation that human beings are essentially mimetic beings and that mimesis
is a source of pleasure and cognition: It is an instinct of human beings,
from childhood, to engage in mimesis (indeed, this distinguishes them
from animals: man is the most mimetic of all, and it is through mimesis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural that
everyone enjoys mimetic objects. 16 Everyone, Aristotle (: a)
. See Aristotle : ab. I am well aware that in general Aristotle reserves the
domain of the particular to history (b)which, for this very reason, is, to him, less
universal than poetry. By universal, (ibid.) Aristotle means the kinds of things which it
suits a certain kind of person to say or do in terms of probability and necessity (b).
On Aristotles notion of history, which I do not discuss here, see Louis ; de Ste. Croix
; on his notion of the universal in poetry, see Halliwell ; Rorty : ; Woodruff
: .
. Literature is more universal than conceptual discourse, Kristeva suggests, in the sense
that its meanings and referents will have never existed or been true and more concrete
in the sense that, precisely due to its fictional or imaginary status, its referents can be specified (situationally, epithetically, etc.) to a degree that the spatiotemporal confines of reality
would presumably not allow for. Obviously, Kristevas notion of universality is only nominally related to Aristotles concept of the universal as hinging on probability, necessity, and
the unified design of the art-work (Halliwell : ). On the notion of the concrete
universal in literature, see, for instance, Wimsatt : ; Murdoch []: , ;
Nussbaum : , , ; Attridge : . The concrete universal obviates
the logical enmeshment of the general, the individual, and the particular, as analyzed by
Hegel (: , , , , , ).
. I do not deal here with the vexed question of the meaning of mimesis, which is as obscure
in Aristotle as it is in other ancient authors (Woodruff : ). It has been translated, for
instance, as fiction (see note ), imitation, and representation. In the present context, it
does not really matter what we take it to mean, as I am only interested in mimesis to the extent
that it is predicated on Aristotles binary notion of speech (apophantic/nonapophantic) and
to the extent that it has, on the basis of this notion, certain effects on the reader, listener, etc.

580

Poetics Today 25:4

explains, when listening [or watching] imitations is thrown into a corresponding state. Thus, tragedys fearful and pitiable (Aristotle :
b) events find their responsive correlate in the audiences horror and
pity (ibid.: b) by dint of the complex interface between what Aristotle calls fellow-feeling and the perception of resemblance with or difference from one like [or unlike] ourselves (ibid.: ba). In turn,
the catharsis of fear and pityachieved through the audiences participation 17 in imitationsis, as Aristotle (: ab, : b)
emphasizes, ethically crucial: it facilitates the citizens virtuousness, allowing them to reenter the polis, as it were, free of those emotions and views that
may turn out to be ethically-politically perilous.18 It is important to keep in
mind at this point that arts ethical-political effectiveness is based, according to Aristotle (: b), precisely on the fact that it takes its audience
out of the domain of actual events, that its events and names alike have
been invented (ibid.: b) in the broad sense of not immediately
relating to facts, that it isto translate aesthetics into logicnonapophantic. It is because we perceive what art gives us not as referentially tied
to our immediate reality that we know it to be, and read it as, a nonapophantic kind of language;19 that we enjoy contemplating the most precise
images of things whose actual sight [may be] painful to us (ibid.: b
; my emphasis) rather than avoiding or fleeing them; that literature can
function, according to Aristotle, as the ethical medium par excellence, as
equipment for living (Burke []).
As the following representative statements suggest, much of contemporary moral philosophy and literary criticism continues to rely on a mediated
version (through the likes of Boccaccio and Sidney) of Aristotles semiotics
and poetics, taking it for granted that it is the fictional, nonapophantic,
nonserious character of literature and its concurrent capacity to shortcircuit the universal and the particular that ultimately opens a space for the
ethical closed to apophantic modes. Literature, Daniel Schwarz (:
) writes, provides surrogate experiences for the reader, experiences that,
. See Rorty : ; Nussbaum : . Interestingly, the audiences response/participation could itself be perceived as a kind of mimesis in the second degree (if the imitation
aspect of mimesis is valorized) of the events on stage. If, as Nussbaum (ibid.) suggests,
fellow-feeling is predicated on our identification with the character(s) on stage, then the
recognition of who and what we are (Rorty : ) that tragedy at its best . . . brings
can be viewed as homologous to, a kind of imitation of, the anagnorisis experienced by the
character(s) on stage.
. On the inseverability of poetics, ethics, and politics in Aristotle, see Aristotle a
b, : ba; Rorty : ; Davis : xiiixviii.
. Irrespective of whether or not we call and think of it as fictional in the common sense.
On the readers/recipients perception of literature as nonapophantic, see esp. Halliwell
: ; Genette : ; Fuhrmann .

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

581

because they are embodied within artistically shaped ontologies, heighten our
awareness of moral discriminations (my emphasis); Martha Nussbaum
(: ) suggests that literature cultivate[s] our ability to see and care
for particulars while simultaneously catering to our interest in the universal and in the universalizability of ethical judgments (ibid.: ); and Colin
McGinn (: ) observes that the fictional work can make us see and
feel good and evil in a way no philosophical treatise canunless it takes on
board what literary works achieve so well (first emphasis mine).20
Pace Aristotle

But what if the apophansis/nonapophansis distinction cannot be sustained?

It is precisely on the basis of a critique of the Aristotelian view of language
that a critique of Aristotelian poetics and its subsequent versions can be
and, in fact, has been mounted.
Methodologically, the most powerful critique to be brought to bear on
the strict Aristotelian separation of apophantic from nonapophantic speech
and its corollaries for our understanding of the putative specificities of
literature and its ethical significance is provided by structuralist linguistics and poetics. In particular, Roman Jakobsons ( []: ) stipulation of the interface of six linguistic functionsemotive, referential, poetic,
phatic, metalingual, and conativeoperative in any utterance, discloses
the (onto)logical impossibility of clearly distinguishing between apophantic
and nonapophantic speech:
Although we distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however, hardly
find verbal messages that would fulfill only one function.The diversity [of genres
of speech] lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in
a different hierarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a message
depends primarily on the predominant function. But even though a set (Ein. Schwarz (an English professor), McGinn (an analytic philosopher), and Nussbaum (striding various disciplines) cover the spectrum of the current literature/ethics debate. For similar views, see also Rorty []: xvi, ; Booth . Even such deconstructivists
as de Man ( []: , , ) and Miller (: , , , , ) base their
approaches to literature on the stipulation of its fictional status (see below). While not all fictions may be literature, all literature is (treated as) fictional. Interestingly, the so-called
turn to ethics (Garber et al. ) in parts of the humanitiesliterary studies in particularhas its counterpart in (moral) philosophys turn to literature (Antonaccio : ).
For some works signaling the turn to ethics in literary studies, see New Literary History ;
Miller ; Booth ; Siebers ; Eaglestone ; Buell ; Robbins ; Madison
and Fairbairn ; Garber et al. ; Eskin ; Davis and Womack . For some works
signaling the turn to literature in (moral) philosophy, see MacIntyre []; Elridge
; Rorty []; Nussbaum , ; Derrida ; Goldberg ; McGinn ;
Kearney and Dooley .

582

Poetics Today 25:4

stellung) toward the referent . . .briefly the so-called referential, denotative,

cognitive functionis the leading task of numerous messages, the accessory
participation of the other functions in such messages must be taken into account.
(Ibid.: )

Given that all utterances are constituted by the interplay of all six linguistic functions, generic differences, Jakobson suggests, are not a matter of
ontology or essence but of the degree of predominance. In other words,
what distinguishes apophantic from nonapophantic speech is the place of
the referential and poetic functions, respectively, in the hierarchy of functions. Thus, literature, according to Jakobson (ibid.: ), distinguishes itself
from apophansis not on the basis of the presumed obliteration of referentiality but on the basis of the predominance in it of the poetic function,
that is, by dint of its emphatic solicitation of a set (Einstellung) toward the
message as such, focus on the message for its own sake. Concomitantly,
every apophantic utterance is also informed by the literary or poetic: Any
attempt to reduce the sphere of the poetic function to poetry or to confine poetry to the poetic function would be a delusive oversimplification.
The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as
a subsidiary, accessory constituent (ibid.).
Jakobsons insights into the complex functioning of utterances continue
to inform contemporaryespecially deconstructiveattempts to get away
from essentialist or (onto)logical approaches to questions of genre. Thus,
Derridas (: ) observations that in literature the thetic naivety of
the transcendent reading (i.e., reading for reference) is suspended, that
without annulling either meaning or reference, [literature] does something
with this resistance [to a transcendent reading] and negotiates the suspension of referential naivety, of thetic referentiality (not reference or the intentional relation in general) (ibid.: ) rearticulate Jakobsons insights within
a poststructuralist frame. While disclosing the impossibility of essentially
distinguishing between literature and nonliterature, Jakobsons approach
implicitly valorizes the intentional aspect of Aristotles psychological argument: How an utterance is received is, at bottom, a function of our set
or Einstellung [lit., attitude, focus]a term borrowed from Husserl
toward it.21 Derridas attention to thetic naivety and the suspension . . .
of thetic referentiality (not reference or the intentional relation in general) equally points to the readers participation in the creation of those
. Genette (: vii) rightly observes: . . . the [poetic] function is intentional in nature . . .
On Einstellung, see Husserl : .

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

583

discursive-referential boundaries that warrant the reception of a text as literature. In a way, then, the reception of literature as literature is ultimately
a function of the readers consciousness (intentional relation), that is,
the reader must assume such an attitude toward the text at hand so as to
treat itthis being the positive version of the suspension of referential
naivetyas nonapophantic.
The result of these structuralist and deconstructive critiquesthe strongest and most serious to be brought to bear on Aristotelian semioticsis
that, in uncovering the (onto)logical and semiotic deficiencies of a strict
separation between modes of speech, they nonetheless guarantee the continuous functioning of such separation by displacing it onto the level of
psychology and pragmatics. It is, emphatically, an agreement or contract between reader and author/textto the effect that the reader suspend referential naivetythat now warrants the more or less smooth
functioning of distinctions of discursive genres.22 Ironically, this brings us
right back to Aristotle, who was very much aware of the necessity on the
readers/audiences part not to view the events depicted in literature as
actual events, that is, precisely, to suspend referential naivety. What we
wind up with is yet another kind of Aristotelianism, albeit an Aristotelianism without essenceas far as the (onto)logical makeup of the text itself is
concerned.
It would appear, then, that contemporary deconstructive critiques of the
philosophy/literature opposition surreptitiously perpetuate this opposition
in the guise of its displacement. Attempts to capture the ethical in the literary in terms of its potential for unsettling philosophical categories [e.g.,
fiction/nonfiction, literature/nonliterature]and with them, of course, a
whole series of political and ethical [as well as poetological] positions
(Attridge : ), or in terms of the constitutive possibility of [its] misreading and misinterpretation (de Man []: ) due to its selfpresentation as fictional/figural 23 tacitly engage, while certainly complicating and renegotiating, precisely those Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian
distinctions that have been uncovered as problematic, not to say untenable,
namely, apophantic/nonapophantic, fiction/nonfiction.24 In other words,
. See also Hamburger []: ; Hof : .
. In the same manner that poetic lyric . . . proceeds to invent fictional emotions . . . the
work of fiction invents fictional subjects to create the illusion of . . . reality . . . Fiction . . .
knows and names itself as fiction (de Man []: ). This persistent naming, de Man
(ibid.) emphasizes, is what we call literature.
. For further instances, see Derrida : , : , : ; Miller , :
, , , , ; Booth : .

584

Poetics Today 25:4

insofar as an idiosyncratic ethical appeal is attributed to literature in excess

of the inherently axiologicalhence, ethicalnature of language as such,25
insofar as it is said somehow to solicit our special respect [and] responsibility (Attridge : ), this pretended, intentionally generated distinction
is always already in place: a pragmatic agreement or contracthowever
tenuous or taciton the status of the text at hand subtends its particular
force of moral appeal. J. Hillis Millers (: ) influential postulate of a
fundamental I must issuing forth from a literary text already presupposes that we have agreed to view the text as literary. This is not to suggest that literature and its ethical dimension would be the figments of the
merely subjective or projective . . . caprice of each reader (Derrida :
). But it is to suggest that, on deconstructive readings, literature and its
ethical valence emerge, primarily, as the functions of our perception of certain texts as literary. And this, in turn, means that while denying literariness
as a natural essence, an intrinsic property of the text (ibid.) and reinscribing it as an intentional category, the very question of what it is in a text that
would call for the literary reading remains within Aristotelian parameters: we read a text as literature to the extent that we (are told to, agree
on, have been taught to) interpret it as nonapophanticon the basis of, as
Derrida notes, convention, institution, or history (ibid.).26
A Modest Proposal

Leaving behind the maze of theoretical difficulties outlined above, I want to

suggest a different approach to the plausibility of our continued acknowledgment that literature does something ethically in excess of moral philosophy. I should stress that I am not concerned with explicating how literature
does what it does. I am merely interested in offering a theoretical backdropin no need of psychology or ontologyfor our ascription to literature of an ethically exemplary performative function.
Insofar as both literature and moral philosophy are concerned with the
ethical, an inquiry into the specifically ethical significance of the former
in relation to the latter ought to begin with the recognition of similarities
. Insofar as language is, as Saussure (: ) points out, essentially enmeshed and
imbued with value. See also Adorno : ; Enzensberger : .
. Derrida (: ) locates the constitution of literature in the interface between noetic
act and noematic structurebetween that creative, sense-bestowing mental dynamic that
forms . . . stuff into intentional mental experiences (Husserl : ; my translation) and
its intentional correlates (ibid.: ), that is, the actual how of [a phenomenons] intentional appearance [in consciousness] (Husserl : ; my translation). Accordingly, Derridas approach thus suggests, echoing Stanley Fish and others, literatures functional dependence on the constituting subject or community of subjects.

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

585

rather than differencesof points of intersection between the two.What do

literature and moral philosophy have in common? Whatever else they may
share, there are two traits in particular that are central to the present discussion: () both are fundamentally concerned with the variegated domain
of what could be called, formulaically, the human person in all of its relations, facets, and intricacies;27 () both are, as I shall presently explain, secondary speech genres. The first common trait speaks to the close practicalhistorical link between the two and is in no need of commentary.The second
underwrites the thematic rapprochement between the two on discursive
grounds. And it is only on the basis of both points in conjunction that the
particular juxtaposition of literature and moral philosophyas opposed to
a number of other possible conceptual or discursive couplings (e.g., literature and science)is warranted. What does this mean exactly?
Let me begin with the notion of speech genre, which I use here following Mikhail Bakhtin and Alasdair MacIntyre. One of the central postulates
of Bakhtins (: ) metalinguistics is that all utterances clothe themselves in typical forms or speech genres, which can in turn be divided
into primary (simple) and secondary (complex) (ibid.).28 Primary speech
genres, such as responses in ordinary conversation or letters, emerge in
the context of immediate verbal interaction (ibid.) and are closely dependent on all the factors of the [immediate] extraverbal context (Voloshinov
[]: ) for their functioning; while secondary speech genres, such
as novels, plays, scientific treatises of all kinds, etc. (Bakhtin : )
are relatively independent of their immediate contexts (Voloshinov
[]: ).29 Secondary speech genres are predicated on the absorption
and transformation of both primary and secondary genres (Bakhtin :
, ). This means that secondary speech genres are by definition metageneric, that is, they are utterances enclosing or encompassing utterances
and, as such, utterances about utterances.
A contextually relevant discursive connection can be established between
literature and (moral) philosophy in light of MacIntyres ( []: )
observation that we allocate [utterances] to genres and that the particu. See note above. I mean here simply that both ethics and literature in one way or another
cannot avoid dealing with human agents as speaking, choosing, loving, hating (etc.) beings
whether directly or indirectly, that is, through the prism of one of the manifestations of the
human (e.g., language).
. It will be remembered that metalinguistics is Bakhtins (: ) term for his approach to
language through the prism of utterance. On the relation of Bakhtins metalinguistics to pragmatics, which I do not discuss here, see Eskin : , , . See also Morris ; Carnap
. All translations from Bakhtin are mine.
. See also Clark and Holquist : . I do not deal with issues of authorship in the
Bakhtin circle.

586

Poetics Today 25:4

lar link between the context of utterance and the force of reason-giving
which always holds in the case of expressions of personal preference or
desire is severed in the case of moral and other evaluative utterances
(ibid.: ). Utterances of the first kind, MacIntyre (ibid.: ) stresses, depend upon who utters them to whom . . . while utterances of the second
kind are not similarly dependent . . . on the context of utterance. MacIntyres specification of the language of moral philosophy in the same metalinguistic terms that Bakhtin uses to describe literature points to a similarity
between the two discursive modes which relegates putative ontologicalreferential differentiations to a place of metalinguistic insignificance. MacIntyre (ibid.: , , ) suggests as much when he unmasks some
of the central concepts of moral philosophysuch as happiness, utility,
natural and human rights, and goodnessas moral fictions. In other
words, from a metalinguistic perspective, the apophantic/nonapophantic
distinction is supervenient upon, posterior to the foregoing distinction
between primary and secondary speech genres. Given that the problem of
(immediate) reference is fundamentally a problem of an utterances relation to its extralinguistic context, to the worldand this holds both for
adequational and verificationist theories of reference and truthany secondary utterance is structurally fictional insofar as it purports to be contextually independent; no strict ontological, referential distinction can be
upheld between the truth/untruth of fiction and the truth/untruth
of propositions falling into the realm of secondary speech genres, especially
moral propositions.
A metalinguistic approach, then, allows us to obviate the difficulties involved in attempting to distinguish modes of discourse (and their attendant
ethical valence) on the basis of referential-ontological criteria. In fact, such
binaries as fictional/nonfictional or apophantic/nonapophantic, far from
being foundational, reveal themselves as the internal semantic effects, as it
were, of particular kinds of utterance. In other words, apophansis would
be the fiction of certain kinds of utterance (e.g., philosophical, scientific,
historical), whereas fictionality would be the fiction of certain other kinds
of utterance (e.g., literary), whereby fiction reveals itself as equivalent to
meaning or the semantic in general.The impossibility of distinguishing
between the two kinds ontologically comes clearly to the fore, for instance,
in MacIntyres (ibid.: ) observation that the first great enunciation of
moral truth in Greek culture occurred in the Iliad, that is, in literature!
What a metalinguistic consideration of literature and moral philosophy
yields, then, is the insight that insofar as both are fictionalalbeit in
qualitatively different ways (and this is crucial)they are indeed amenable

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

587

to being mutually imbricated. And it is the specific subject of their fictionswhat I have referred to as the human person in all of its relations,
facets, and intricacieswhich warrants in particular their marriage.
So, if both are fictions and if both deal with the human person as a
whole, what is the difference between them? And why would literature be
capable of doingto return to my empirical point of departurecertain
things ethical in excess of moral philosophy? It is here that literatures internal makeup, as it were, ought to come into play. By internal makeup I do not
mean its uses of figures or its fictionality but its semiotic homology with
language as such. Recourse to mile Benvenistes discussions of language
will facilitate this final move in my ruminations.
The semiotically most significant characteristic of language, according
to Benveniste (: ), is that it is the interpretant of all [other meaningcreating] systems, verbal and non-verbal. Language is the sole medium
in which other semiotic systems and media (e.g., music, painting, etc.) can
be described, conceptually exposed and reflected, and made sense of. In
other words, language is the most semiotically capacious medium. In
analogy with Benvenistes view of languages capaciousness, we can say
that, insofar as literature is said to be ethically exemplary, this is, fundamentally, due to its discursive capaciousness: it can incorporate, encompass,
embody, engage in live contexts, illuminate from innumerable perspectives, and thus transformin short, interpretthe propositions, problems
addressed, and truths attained in ethics. In a literary work, the philosophemes and speculations of a Locke, Hume [and] Berekely (Woolf
[]: ) acquire a linguistic and thematic concreteness and vividness,
a depth and dimensionality which they could never possess without the
words, ruminations, observations, thoughts, and deeds of a Mrs. Ramsay,
a Mr. Ramsay, and a Charles Tansley, who, in Virginia Woolf s To the Lighthouse thought [Mr. Ramsay] the greatest metaphysician of the time (ibid.:
). Whereas moral philosophys only fiction would be moral truth,
the latter is merely one aspect or componentalbeit a central oneof the
manifold truth of the fiction of literature. In a way, then, literature could
be viewed as ethics in the second degree, as ethics of ethics or criticism of
ethics, as that discourse which literally interprets ethics.
We have attained an unexpected insight: keeping in mind that the interpretant designates, according to Charles Sanders Peirce (from whom Benveniste borrows the term), what is ordinarily called the meaning of the
sign (Peirce , :), and that meaning for Peirce is merely
yet another, perhaps a more developed sign (ibid.: :) translating the
first, the relation between literature and ethics reveals itself, at the most

588

Poetics Today 25:4

basic level, as one of translation.30 Literature translates ethics into perhaps a more developed [more capacious, more universal and concrete]
signinto a medium and a context in which philosophical conceptuality (Attridge : ) is transformed, developed into something that can
make us see and feel . . . in a way no philosophical treatise can (McGinn
: ). And insofar as any discourse becomes meaningful by dint of
translation (reading/interpretation), it is indeed justified to say that literature . . . is a moment or structural possibility (Attridge : ) of ethics
in particular.
In light of literatures metalinguistic, thematic, and semiotic enmeshment with ethics, stipulated differences between the two discourses predicated on the fiction/nonfiction or apophansis/nonapophansis binaries reveal themselves as analytic disguises of their actual collusion and continuity.
Because literature and ethics are so closely linked, because they constitute a
discursive-semiotic continuum, they yield themselves to productive juxtaposition and interface. From Platos (e.g., Republic ae) recourse to
Homer to Levinass ( []: , , : ) invocation of Dostoevsky
and Celan, literature has been philosophys haunting twinits critic. In a
semiotic sense, ethics needs literatureits metalinguistic and thematic siblingto be fully integrated into the human and the social domain that it is
ultimately concerned with. Isnt it the ostensible purposefulness without
purpose of art that integrates, as Kant ( []: /) already suggested, philosophical conceptuality within the realm of the practical and
the social? 31
Surely, this is only one side of the story, for it could equally be said that literature needs philosophy. After all, the invention of the latter must have been
necessitated, in part at least, by certain intellectual and ethical needs that
literature, notwithstanding (or precisely due to) its capaciousness, could
presumably not fulfill: the need to rationally rule and guide (Nussbaum
: ) the messiness of existence, to attempt to impose a certain kind of
(epistemo)logical order and in a way master the unpredictability of life
the need, as Martha Nussbaum (ibid.) summarizes, to be saved from living
at the mercy of luck. But this ought to be the subject of another essay.

. For Peirces numerous definitions and descriptions of the functioning of signs, see his
Collected Papers (), esp. vol. :, , , ; vol. :; vol. :; and vol. :.
. Famously, Kant ( []: ) relied on his Critique of Judgment to integrate the conceptual architectonics of the Critique of Pure Reason with the practical postulates and implications
of The Critique of Practical Reason.

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

589

References
Adorno, Theodor W.
Noten zur Literatur, edited by Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp).
Antonaccio, Maria
Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch (New York: Oxford University Press).
Aristotle
The Nicomachean Ethics, translated by H. Rackham (London: Heinemann).
The Organon I: The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, translated by Harold P.
Cooke and Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Politics, translated by H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Poetics, translated by Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Attridge, Derek
Introduction: Derrida and the Questioning of Literature, in Acts of Literature, by
Jacques Derrida, edited by Derek Attridge, (New York and London: Routledge).
Singularities, Responsibilities: Derrida, Deconstruction, and Literary Criticism,
in Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing, edited by Cathy
Caruth and Deborah Esch, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).
Innovation, Literature, Ethics: Relating to the Other, PMLA (): .
Augustine
Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Austin, J. L.
[] How to Do Things with Words, edited by J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbis. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.
Problemy poetiki-tvorchestva Dostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevskys poetics/aesthetics],
edited by O. V. Garun (Kiev: Next).
Raboty x-nachala x godov [Works from the s to the early s], vol. of
Sobranie sochinenii v semi tomakh [Collected works in seven volumes], edited by S. G. Bocharov and L. A. Gogotishvily (Moscow: Russkie Slovari).
Banner, William
Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy (New York: Scribner).
Benveniste, mile
Problmes de linguistique gnrale II (Paris: Gallimard).
Boccaccio, Giovanni
[] Boccaccio on Poetry, translated by C. G. Osgood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Booth, Wayne C.
The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Brodsky, Joseph
Less Than One: Selected Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).
On Grief and Reason: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).
Bruni, Leonardo
De Studiis et Litteris Liber Ad Baptistam de Malatestis [The study of literature
to Lady Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro], in Humanist Educational Treatises, edited and
translated by Craig W. Kallendorf, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Buell, Lawrence, ed.
Ethics and Literary Study. Special issue, PMLA (): .
Burke, Kenneth
[] Literature as Equipment for Living, in Literary Criticism and Theory: The Greeks
to the Present, edited by Robert C. Davis and Laurie Finke, (New York: Longman).

590

Poetics Today 25:4

Carnap, Rudolf
Foundations of Logic and Mathematics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
De Oratore III. De Fato. Paradoxa Stoicorum. De Partitione Oratoria, translated by H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Clark, Katerina, and Michael Holquist
Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Cooper, John M.
Classical Greek Ethics, in A History of Western Ethics, edited by Lawrence C. Becker
and Charlotte B. Becker, (New York: Garland).
Davis, Michael
Aristotles Poetics: The Poetry of Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield).
Davis, Todd F., and Kenneth Womack, eds.
Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia).
de Man, Paul
The Epistemology of Metaphor, in On Metaphor, edited by Sheldon Sacks,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
[] Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press).
Derrida, Jacques
La mythologie blanche: La mtaphore dans le texte philosophique, in Marges de la
philosophie, (Paris: ditions de Minuit).
Dissemination, translated by Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Limited Inc (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
Acts of Literature, edited by Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge).
De Ste. Coix, G. E. M.
Aristotle on History and Poetry (Poetics /ab), in Essays on Aristotles Poetics, edited by Amlie Oksenberg Rorty, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press).
Dilthey, Wilhelm
[] Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung: Lessing, Goethe, Novalis, Hlderlin (Leipzig: Reclam).
Diogenes Laertius
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. , translated by R. D. Hicks (London: Heinemann).
Eaglestone, Robert
Ethical Criticism: Reading after Levinas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).
Eagleton, Terry
Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Elridge, Richard
On Moral Personhood: Philosophy, Literature, Criticism, and Self-Understanding (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus
Einzelheiten II: Poesie und Politik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp).
Eskin, Michael
Ethics and Dialogue in the Works of Levinas, Bakhtin, Mandelshtam, and Celan (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
Fish, Stanley
Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Frege, Gottlob
Kleine Schriften, edited by I. Angelelli (Hildesheim: Olms).
Fuhrmann, Manfred
Nachwort: Form, Erhaltungsstand, und Aufbau der Poetik, in Poetik, by Aristotle,
translated by Manfred Fuhrmann, (Stuttgart: Reclam).

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

591

Gadamer, Hans-Georg
Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tbingen: Mohr).
Garber, Marjorie, Beatrice Hanssen, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, eds.
The Turn to Ethics (New York: Routledge).
Genette, Grard
Fiction and Diction, translated by Catherine Porter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press).
Goldberg, Samuel
Agents and Lives: Moral Thinking in Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Halliwell, Stephen
Pleasure, Understanding, and Emotion in Aristotles Poetics, in Essays on Aristotles
Poetics, edited by Amlie Oksenberg Rorty, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Hamburger, Kte
[] Die Logik der Dichtung (Munich: DTV).
Harries, Karsten
Afterthoughts on Metaphor, in On Metaphor, edited by Sheldon Sacks, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Wissenschaft der Logik, vol. , edited by Hermann Glockner (Stuttgart: Frommanns).
Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. , edited by Hermann Glockner (Stuttgart: Frommanns).
Vorlesungen ber die sthetik I/II, edited by Rdiger Bubner (Stuttgart: Reclam).
Heidegger, Martin
[] Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann).
[] Unterwegs zur Sprache (Stuttgart: Neske).
Hof, Renate
Das Spiel des unreliable narrator: Aspekte unglaubwrdigen Erzhlens im Werk Vladimir Nabokovs (Munich: Fink).
Husserl, Edmund
Ideen zu einer reinen Phnomenologie und phnomenologischen Philosophie I: Allgemeine Einfhrung in die reine Phnomenologie (Halle: Niemeyer).
Phnomenologie der Lebenswelt: Ausgewhlte Texte II, edited by Klaus Held (Stuttgart:
Reclam).
Ingarden, Roman
[] Konkretisation und Rekonstruktion, in Rezeptionssthetik: Theorie und Praxis,
edited by Rainer Warning, (Munich: Fink).
Iser, Wolfgang
a [] Die Appellstruktur der Texte, in Rezeptionssthetik: Theorie und Praxis, edited
by Rainer Warning, (Munich: Fink).
b [] Der Lesevorgang: Eine phnomenologische Perspektive, in Rezeptionssthetik: Theorie und Praxis, edited by Rainer Warning, (Munich: Fink).
Jakobson, Roman
[] Linguistics and Poetics, in Language in Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska
and Stephen Rudy, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Jonas, Hans
Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, edited by Lawrence Vogel
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
Kahn, Charles H.
Presocratic Greek Ethics, in A History of Western Ethics, edited by Lawrence C.
Becker and Charlotte B. Becker, (New York: Garland).
Kant, Immanuel
[] Kritik der Urteilskraft, edited by Gerhard Lehmann (Stuttgart: Reclam).

592

Poetics Today 25:4

[/] Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten (Leipzig:
Reclam).
Kearney, Richard, and Mark Dooley, eds.
Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy ( London: Routledge).
Kristeva, Julia
Semeiotike: Recherches pour une smanalyse (Paris: Seuil).
Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus
[] Divnae institutiones et epitome divinarum institutionum, edited by Samuel Brandt
(New York: Johnson Reprint Corp.).
Levinas, Emmanuel
thique et infini: Dialogues avec Philippe Nemo (Paris: Fayard).
[] Noms propres (Paris: Fata Morgana).
[] Autrement qutre ou au dela de lessence (Dordrecht: Kluwer).
Louis, Pierre
Le mot chez Aristote, Revue de Philologie : .
MacIntyre, Alasdair
[] After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press).
Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius
Commento al Somnium Scipionis II, introduction, translation, and commentary by Mario
Regali (Pisa: Giardini).
Madison, Gary B., and Marty Fairbairn, eds.
The Ethics of Postmodernity: Current Trends in Continental Thought (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
McGinn, Colin
Ethics, Evil, and Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon).
Miller, J. Hillis
The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin (New York:
Columbia University Press).
Is There an Ethics of Reading? in Reading Narrative: Form, Ethics, Ideology, edited by
James Phelan, (Columbus: Ohio State University Press).
Speech Acts in Literature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Morris, Charles W.
Foundations of the Theory of Signs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Murdoch, Iris
Existentialists and Mystics (New York: Allen Lane/Penguin).
[] The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge).
Nabokov, Vladimir
Lolita (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons).
New Literary History
Literature and/as Moral Philosophy. Special issue, : .
Nietzsche, Friedrich
ber Wahrheit und Lge im aussermoralischen Sinne, in Die Geburt der Tragdie,
Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen IIV, Nachgelassene Schriften , edited by Giorgio Colli
and Mazzino Montinari, (Berlin: de Gruyter).
Nussbaum, Martha
The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Loves Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press).
Tragedy and Self-Sufficiency: Plato and Aristotle on Fear and Pity, in Essays on Aristotles Poetics, edited by Amlie Oksenberg Rorty, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press).
Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon).

Eskin

On Literature and Ethics

593

Peirce, Charles Sanders

Collected Papers, vols., edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Plato
The Collected Dialogues Including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington
Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius
Institutio oratoria, vols., translated by H. E. Butler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Robbins, Jill
Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Rorty, Amlie Oksenberg
The Psychology of Aristotelian Tragedy, in Essays on Aristotles Poetics, edited by
Amlie Oksenberg Rorty, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Rorty, Richard
[] Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Russell, Bertrand
Logic and Knowledge (New York: Macmillan).
Saussure, Ferdinand de
Cours de linguistique gnrale, edited by Tullio Mauro (Paris: Payot).
Schiller, Friedrich
a [] Die Schaubhne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet, in Werke II, edited by
Paul Stopf, (Berlin: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft).
b [] ber die sthetische Erziehung des Menschen, in Werke II, edited by Paul
Stopf, (Berlin: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft).
Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst
[] Hermeneutik und Kritik, edited by Manfred Frank (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp).
Schwarz, Daniel R.
A Humanistic Ethics of Reading, in Davis and Womack : .
Searle, John R.
The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse, New Literary History (): .
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus
Epistles (Ad Lucilium Epistulae), translated by Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
Shklovsky, Viktor
[] Art as Device, in Theory of Prose, translated by Benjamin Sher, (Elmwood
Park, IL.: Dalkey Archive Press).
Sidney, Sir Philip
[] An Apology for Poetry or the Defence of Poesy, edited by G. Sheperd (London:
Nelson).
Siebers, Tobin
The Ethics of Criticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
Spitzer, Leo
Stilstudien II: Stilsprachen (Munich: Hueber).
Todorov, Tzvetan
The Notion of Literature, New Literary History : .
Voloshinov, Valentin N.
[] Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art, in Freudianism: A Critical Sketch, translated by I. R. Titunik, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Wilde, Oscar
[] The Picture of Dorian Gray, in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, (London:
Hamlyn).

594

Poetics Today 25:4

Wimsatt, W. K.
The Structure of the Concrete Universal in Literature, PMLA : .
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Lecture on Ethics, Philosophical Review (): .
Woodruff, Paul
Aristotle on Mimsis, in Essays on Aristotles Poetics, edited by Amlie Oksenberg
Rorty, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Woolf, Virginia
[] To the Lighthouse, foreword by Eudora Welty (New York: Harcourt Brace).