It is sometimes said that we are strangers to ourselves, bearers of internal alterity, as well as to each other. The profounder this strangeness then the greater the difficulty of giving any systematic account of it without paradox: of supposing that our obscurity to ourselves can readily be illuminated. To attempt such an account, in defiance of the paradox, is to risk knowingness: a condition which, appearing to challenge our alterity but in fact often confirming it, holds an ambiguous place (...) in the ?ethics of belief? and has largely escaped philosophical attention. Like alterity, knowingness can only be approached indirectly. Charles Dickens, in David Copperfield, is exemplary in the way he handles these themes. (shrink)

Dans l’essai qu’elle consacre au roman de Dickens David Copperfield, Martha Nussbaum affirme que si ce roman montre qu’une union de l’amour et de la moralité est possible, le narrateur y parvient à travers l’écriture du roman et grâce à l’amour « romantique et érotique » qu’il éprouve pour le personage de Steerforth. Je montre au contraire que la forme de moralité que l’amour permet d’atteindre caractérise aussi, dans ce roman, d’autres types d’amour, non-érotiques, notamment l’amour parental, l’amour filial (...) et l’amour chrétien. Je montre également qu’Agnès Wickfield n’est pas dans ce roman le personnage kantien ou le spectateur impartial qu’y voit Nussbaum, de sorte qu’Agnès exprimerait « une position éthique qui diffère de celle qui anime la narration dans son ensemble ». Je montre au contraire qu’à travers l’amour sans jugement qu’elle porte à son père, Agnès illustre précisément, tout comme d’autres personnages qui s’y trouvent, la position éthique générale de ce roman. (shrink)

Dans l’essai qu’elle consacre au roman de Dickens David Copperfield (« Le bras de Steerforth : l’amour et le point de vue moral »), Martha Nussbaum affirme que si ce roman montre qu’une union de l’amour et de la moralité est possible, le narrateur y parvient à travers l’écriture du roman et grâce à l’amour « romantique et érotique » qu’il éprouve pour le personage de Steerforth. Je montre au contraire que la forme de moralité que l’amour permet d’atteindre (...) caractérise aussi, dans ce roman, d’autres types d’amour, non-érotiques, notamment l’amour parental, l’amour filial et l’amour chrétien. Je montre également qu’Agnès Wickfield n’est pas dans ce roman le personnage kantien ou le spectateur impartial qu’y voit Nussbaum, de sorte qu’Agnès exprimerait « une position éthique qui diffère de celle qui anime la narration dans son ensemble ». Je montre au contraire qu’à travers l’amour sans jugement qu’elle porte à son père, Agnès illustre précisément, tout comme d’autres personnages qui s’y trouvent, la position éthique générale de ce roman. (shrink)

How do we know right from wrong? Do we even have moral knowledge? Moral epistemology studies these and related questions about our understanding of virtue and vice. It is one of philosophy’s perennial problems, reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and Kant, and has recently been the subject of intense debate as a result of findings in developmental and social psychology. Throughout the book Zimmerman argues that our belief in moral knowledge can survive sceptical challenges. He also draws (...) on a rich range of examples from Plato’s Meno and Dickens’ David Copperfield to Bernard Madoff and Saddam Hussein. (shrink)

Questions about the status of literary truth are as old as literary criticism, but they have become both more intricate and more compelling as literature has grown progressively more self-conscious and labyrinthian in its dealings with "reality." One might perhaps read The Iliad or even David Copperfield without raising such issues. But authors like Gide , Nabokov, Borges, and Robbe-Grillet seem continually to remind their readers of the complex nature of literary truth. How, for instance, are we to deal (...) with a passage like the following from William Demby's novel The Catacombs:"When I began this novel, I secretly decided that, though I would exercise a strict selection of the facts to write down, be they 'fictional' facts or 'true' facts taken from newspapers or directly observed events in my own life, once I had written something down I would neither edit not censor it ."1What does this sentence mean? When an apparently fictional narrator distinguishes between "fictional" and "true" facts, what is the status of the word "true"? It clearly does not mean the same as "fictional," for he opposes it to that term. Yet it cannot mean "true" in the sense that historians would use, for he calls what he is writing a novel, and even if he quotes accurately from newspapers, the events of a narrator's life are not "historically" true. · 1. William Demby, The Catacombs , p.93. Peter J. Rabinowitz, assistant professor at Kirkland College, is currently working on articles on Raymond Chandler, Faulkner, and Dostoyevsky and is, as well, a music critic for the Syracuse Guide. He wrote his doctoral dissertation in comparative literature on the philosophical implications of Nabokov's use of humor and terror. "Truth in Fiction" is the first article he has had published in a scholarly journal. (shrink)

Nussbaum seems to have had a spell during which she made villains heroes (and sometimes visa versa). Thus she has argued, in effect, that Steerforth is the hero of David Copperfield, and Heathcliff the most admirable character in Wuthering Heights. Here I discuss her more or less explicit claim that Alcibiades is the hero, (and Socrates the villain) in Plato’s Symposium. -/- .

According to the nineteenth century English philosopher John Stuart Mill, all human beings desire to live lives pregnant with happiness; we all long to be the recipients of liberal amounts of varied, high quality pleasures with pain making as brief an appearance in our conscious experience as possible. Happiness is the one and only thing we desire for its own sake; everything else is desirable simply as a means to securing happiness. Perhaps this is so. Mill, however, went on to (...) argue that promoting happiness of this sort is not only desirable, it is in fact a moral obligation on our part. Suppose that on some delicious fall evening you are contemplating whether to pick up Dickens' David Copperfield and read a chapter or two. Well, given the alternatives before you, if reading Dickens would result in the greatest amount of happiness, not only for yourself but also for all those affected by your solitary, bookish reverie, then you can be sure your action is morally right and indeed obligatory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 428-435 [Access article in PDF] Agapic Friendship Sharon E. Sytsma ARISTOTLE CATEGORIZED FRIENDSHIP into three types: friendships of pleasure, friendships of utility, and complete (perfect or true) friendships (1156a5-10). 1 The thesis developed here is that Aristotle neglects an important kind of friendship. Various aspects of his theory of friendship have been challenged, but no one has charged that his categorization is incomplete. 2 (...) In what follows, an Aristotelian account of the friendship between James Steerforth and David Copperfield in Dickens' David Copperfield will be given, and then shown to be inadequate. Then a brief account of agapic love will be given and shown to be another basis of friendship—agapic friendship. Finally, the agapic nature of the two young men's friendship will be highlighted. I One might suppose that the friendship between David Copperfield and Steerforth is a mixed form of the three types of friendships identified by Aristotle. There can be no doubt that their friendship was pleasurable and useful to both. The two boys (and later young men) were appreciative of the other's pleasing appearance. David frequently comments on the pleasure attending any kind remark issuing from Steerforth on his own behalf. He admits his pleasure in being "cherished as a kind of plaything in my room," indicating his awareness of Steerforth's pleasure in being with him. Steerforth took great pleasure in David's imaginative and talented storytelling, which David eagerly [End Page 428] used as a "cementing" force in their relationship. Surely, Steerforth also took pleasure in the respect and admiration of his doting schoolmate.Also undeniable is that both friends found each other to be useful. David treasured the gift of Steerforth's protection. Being favored by Steerforth automatically elicited the admiration and envy of the other schoolboys. "No one dared to annoy one whom [Steerforth] honored with his countenance." Steerforth, on his part, found David's storytelling to be a useful antidote to his insomnia.However, David's love for Steerforth went beyond any self-interested concern. David loved Steerforth for his friend's own sake. He stayed up late and rose early to recount and embellish tales, not because he was motivated by self-interest or fear, but only because he "admired and loved him." David perceived Steerforth to be considerate and generous, and he mistook his friend's self-confidence as evidence of nobility of character.These perceptions were hardly objective. David's good nature, generous-mindedness, and youthful naiveté kept him from recognizing the faults in his friend's character, even in the face of ample evidence. Steerforth's cruel streak should have been obvious to David since he witnessed Steerforth allowing another student, the hapless Traddles, to take the blame when Steerforth laughed in church, and his ruthless exposure of Mr. Mell's secret shame of having a mother living on charity in an almshouse. He heard Steerforth's story about how he had "accidentally" thrown a hammer into Rosa Dartle's face. David's uneasiness on these occasions was overcome by his natural generosity of spirit and sense of gratitude. When shocked by a cold and arrogant insult against Little Em'ly's fiancé, Ham, David responds with full confidence: [You may] try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them and how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman's, or humour a love like my old nurse's, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more! So even though David has an inflated sense of Steerforth's virtue, his thinking of Steerforth as virtuous was integral to their relationship, and that in itself would support thinking of the friendship as based on the good.Given Steerforth's defects of character, one might easily be led to the conclusion that Steerforth loved David only for the pleasure and [End Page 429] benefits of his... (shrink)

In his latest book, Marshall Gregory begins with the premise that our lives are saturated with stories, ranging from magazines, books, films, television, and blogs to the words spoken by politicians, pastors, and teachers. He then explores the ethical implication of this nearly universal human obsession with narratives. Through careful readings of Katherine Anne Porter's "The Grave," Thurber's "The Catbird Seat," as well as _David Copperfield_ and _Wuthering Heights_, Gregory asks the question: How do the stories we absorb in our (...) daily lives influence the kinds of persons we turn out to be? "__Shaped by Stories___ _weaves its own compelling story about the pervasive ethical effects of reading narrative, with Marshall Gregory serving as a highly engaging and ethically admirable narrator--a very model of good company." --_James Phelan, Distinguished University Professor of English, Ohio State University_ "Marshall Gregory's __Shaped by Stories_ _brings ethical criticism to the level of felt experience. Witty and passionate, full of personal reflections and sharp examples, this book will help anyone who has been drawn to the mysterious power of stories to think more carefully about the connections between narrative art and human ethos. Gregory reminds us that the urgency of our need for stories is tied permanently to the need to exercise judgment, belief, and empathy in the process of becoming who we are." --_Annette Federico, James Madison University _ "From a lifetime of reflecting on the ethics of fiction, Marshall Gregory has given us an elegant analysis of the power of stories to instruct and delight. No one interested in storytelling will want to be without this incisive guide to both the myriad ways that stories shape our lives and the strategies writers use to affect our responses. Both the theoretical and practical halves of __Shaped by Stories __have clarity and eloquence." --_Robert D. Denham, Fishwick Professor of English, Emeritus, Roanoke College_. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Epistemic Arguments The Ontological Argument The Aesthetic Argument Conclusion.