eskin lit & ethics

On Literature and Ethics

Michael EskinGermanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia

Abstract This essay deals with the complex relationship between literature andethics. More specifically, it inquires into and problematizes the conceptual ways inwhich such discursive distinctions as that between literature and moral philosophyhave been upheld, as well as the assumptions and presuppositions underlying theascription to literature of an ethically exemplary role. Accepting the methodologicaland conceptual challenges presented by some of the major philosophical and theo-retical positions informing literature’s perception as ethically exemplary (from Aris-totle to Jakobson and Derrida), this essay suggests a new theoretical framework forthinking about the enmeshment of literature and ethics, drawing especially on theworks of Bakhtin and MacIntyre.

‘‘they cite poets as witnesses’’Plato, Republic

I want to begin the following meditation on the ethical significance of lit-erature and its relation to moral philosophy from the empirical recognitionthat what we have come to call literature has been credited, in theWesterncultural context at least, with an ethical force ostensibly exceeding that ofmoral philosophy.1 Literature has been held to be capable of doing—in J. L.

I would like to thankKathrin Stengel, HarroMüller, Derek Attridge, andH.Martin Puchnerfor discussing this essay with me and reading and commenting on drafts.Work on this essayhas been supported by a Chamberlain Fellowship and a Faculty Leave, both from ColumbiaUniversity.!. 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 andSemiotics.

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Austin’s (!&'# [!&("]) terms—certain things ethical that moral philosophywould fall short of.2 This is not to deny the latter’s heuristic significance inethical matters (nor its recourse to devices that have been said to be char-acteristic of literature, such as fiction, figural language, etc.); it is simply toforeground the fact that our moral education has not, fundamentally, beenentrusted to ethics. Nursery rhymes, stories, plays, verbal and filmic narra-tives perused from early childhood have been supposed to ensure, more orless successfully, the formation of the variously conceived good person.3My objective in this essay is threefold: (!) to raise the question of litera-

ture and the ethical with a view to (") uncovering the theoretical impassesvitiating traditional accounts of their enmeshment and, subsequently, to()) suggesting what I take to be a plausible explicatory frame for what weseem to have been taking for granted prior to and beyond any philosophicalproblematization, namely, that literature is capable of doing things ethicalin an exemplary way.

from Homer to the present that have come to be called ‘literature’ ’’ (Attridge !&&#: !!!). Forcritical discussions of the rise of the specifically modern notion of ‘‘literature’’ as an aestheticcategory and institution, see Todorov !&'); Derrida !&&": ))–'#; Eagleton !&&(: !#–!(.". Throughout this essay, I use—for the purpose of stylistic variation—ethics and moral phi-losophy as well as their adjectival cognates interchangeably. It should be contextually evidentwhether ‘‘ethical’’/‘‘moral’’ refers to philosophical argument or to pragmatic import. On aconceptual clarificatory note, I should stress that although ethics has been viewed as distinctfrom moral philosophy in the wake of Kant’s (!&*& [!'**/!'*#]: "%%) subsumption of ‘‘Moral-philosophie’’ under the more general head of ‘‘Ethik’’ (ibid.: !&*), the terms’ interchange-able use persists as before Kant’s distinction (cf., e.g., Banner !&(*). My use of both termsfollows, in particular, Cicero, who introduced (in De Fato) the neologism moralis and coinedthe technical term philosophia moralis to translate the Greek ton !thikon: ‘‘because it pertainsto [what] the Greeks call !thos, we usually call this part of philosophy ‘on mores’ (charac-ter/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 Cicero’s linguistic inno-vation. Although Quintilianus already uses the term Ethice (ibid.: !":", !#), it is the fourth-century Christian apologist Lactantius (!&(# [!*$%]: "!)) who first employs the term ethicaas equivalent to philosophia moralis in his Divinae intitutiones (written between )%) and )!!). Bythe fifth century, ethics or ethical philosophy and moral philosophy are used interchangeably andwith no need for explanation or justification, as the following quote from Macrobius (!&&%:!"() indicates: ‘‘Since there are three parts to philosophy in its entirety, moral, natural andrational, what else does that exaltation of virtues contain but themoral precepts of ethical phi-losophy?’’ (my translation).The German rationalist philosopher ChristianWol+ (!('&–!'#$)cements the interchangeability of ‘‘ethics’’ and ‘‘moral philosophy’’ for the modern period inhis monumental Philosophia moralis sive ethica (!'#%–!'#), # vols.).). On philosophy’s reliance on literature and literary devices, see, for instance, Wittgen-stein !&(#: #–'; Derrida !&'"; de Man !&'&; Harries !&'&; MacIntyre !&*$ [!&*!]: ($–'%,')–'#, !%'; Nietzsche !&**: ($–(#, '"–'#; Murdoch !&&*: #&–'#; Miller "%%!: (–(". Amongthe plethora of texts on the morally formative, educational function of literature, see, forinstance, Augustine !&&!: !#–"%; Bruni "%%"; Schiller !&##a [!'*$], !&##b [!'&#]; MacIntyre!&*$ [!&*!]: "!(.

Eskin • On Literature and Ethics 575

Rather than focusing, as has frequently been done, on the putative dif-ferences between literature and ethics, I want to look at them as parts ofa continuum along which di+erences in mode and degree determine dif-ferences in ethical impetus. More specifically, I suggest that insofar as wetake literature to be ethically significant in an exemplary way, we may wantto start thinking about locating its ethical force not so much in its referen-tial makeup and thematics—for reasons that I shall clarify—as in, amongother things, what I would call, for lack of a better term, its discursive-transformational ‘‘capaciousness,’’ that is, in its ability to absorb and trans-form 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 accountsof literature’s ethical import. I then present a number of powerful criticismsof these assumptions, which necessitate a reassessment of the very notion ofliterature in its relation to ethics. In a final step, I want to suggest a frame-work for casting the question of literature and its relation to ethics in a pro-ductive new light while obviating, as I will endeavor to show, some of thedi,culties posed by available takes on the subject—the impasses of whatcould summarily be called ‘‘textual essentialism’’ and ‘‘pragmatic contrac-tualism’’ in particular.

Literature and Ethics: A Historical Sketch

Since its appearance as a philosophical discipline on the scene of theWest-ern intellectual and cultural tradition in ancient Greece, ethics has been,not surprisingly, enmeshed with literature. The subject which, accordingto Hegel (!&#&: $(), Socrates ‘‘invented [and] added to . . . philosophy’’continued to be informed by its (by no means exclusive) roots in its prede-cessor and ‘‘begetter’’ in matters of the discursive engagement with humanlife, interaction, and conduct, namely, poetry.4Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, andAeschylos, to name only a few, constituted a prephilosophical moral tradi-tion which presumably provided Socrates, Plato, and their successors withthe basic themes (and their paradigmatic artistic treatment) of what wehave come to call ethics: how we ought to live and act so as to live a (vari-ously conceived) good life.5 Whether as positive or negative instances of

$. Hegel follows Diogenes Laertius (!&"#: )"'), who credited Socrates with the introductionof ethics as a distinct philosophical field of inquiry: ‘‘Philosophy . . . in earlier times dis-coursed 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 "%%! [!&'%]: $#–!%!, esp. &#; MacIntyre !&*$ [!&*!]: !"!, !)*, !$'–$*; Nuss-baum !&*(: "–), !&&%: !#; Kahn !&&".


virtue, character, interaction, and response or as dangerous seductions, theyarns spun by the poets, their protagonists’ situations, quandaries, deci-sions, words, and deeds served and continue to serve philosophers—witnessthe profuse recourse to literature on the part of contemporary moral phi-losophers of various colors—as touchstones for their theoretical reflections.6If 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’’ (Nuss-baum !&&%: !#), then the very practice of literature must evince an ethicaldimension.While the overall moral import of literature has certainly beenimplicitly and explicitly acknowledged and put to use through the ages as amatter of course—as is borne out by pedagogical and educational practicesinvolving literature—the specific site and force of the ethical in the literaryhave been the subject of considerable debate among poets, critics, and phi-losophers, beginning with Plato’s and Aristotle’s pioneering meditations onthese issues.Depending on the given author’s particular theoretical framework and

approach, the ethical valence of literature (and art in general) has beenlocated, for instance, in what could be roughly subsumed under the headsof its relation to truth, thematics, structure and uses of language, power toe+ect a change in perception, inherent appeal to responsibility, or capacityof discursive subversion.7 Literature has been ascribed the idiosyncratic, if

(. See Plato !&&(: (%#–(!, esp. ()"–)$; Aristotle !&"(: !!!(a!'–)(, !!!(b"$–!!!'a!!, !!''b"#–!!'*a!", !!*%a"!–b&, !&&&: !$#"a"$, !$#)b', !$#$a!–!$##a"%; Augustine !&&!: !#–"%; Nuss-baum !&&%: #, !&&#: xiii; MacIntyre !&*$ [!&*!]: !*!–*', ")&–$); Rorty !&&& [!&*&]: xiv, !$!–**;McGinn !&&': !%*–'*; Levinas !&*": &*, !&&% [!&'$]: ""*; Jonas !&&(: $$, *', &', !%(, "%(.'. I have in mind such approaches as could loosely be labeled ontological (e.g., Plato, Hegel,Heidegger, Gadamer), psychological or a+ect- and cognition-based (e.g., Plato, Aristotle,Bruni, Schiller, Nussbaum, McGinn), aestheticist (e.g., Kant, Wilde, Nabokov, de Man),emotive-pragmatic (e.g., Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Spitzer), poetic-linguistic (e.g., Shklovsky,Jakobson, Brodsky), phenomenological (e.g., Ingarden, Iser, Fish), or deconstructive (e.g.,Derrida, de Man, Miller, Attridge, Levinas). I should stress that this is, of course, a very sim-plified, purely heuristic perspective on an exceedingly complex historical reality—the recep-tion and assessment of art—in which all of the suggested approaches (and probably manymore) mingle, overlap, interact, and constantly inform each other with shifting emphases.The select authors mentioned merely stake out the ‘‘sub-traditions’’ constituted by theseapproaches. See Plato !&&(: (%#–(!, *!&–$$; 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 !&&": ))–'$; Miller !&*', !&*&; Attridge !&&#, !&&&; Levinas !&&% [!&'$]: !',""*, !&*' [!&'(]: $&–#(. For helpful discussions of the history and notion of literature froman ethical perspective, see esp. Eaglestone !&&': !–)$; Nussbaum !&&%: )–#).


variegated, ability to make us see, feel, and realize ‘‘certain truths abouthuman life [that] can only be fittingly and accurately stated in the languageand forms characteristic of the . . . artist [as opposed to] abstract theoreti-cal discourse’’ (Nussbaum !&&%: #), to solicit the ‘‘supremely di,cult ethicalact of responding to . . . singularity and otherness’’ (Attridge !&&#: !!&).8

Aristotle, again

Notwithstanding their specificities and putative di+erences, the variousaccounts of the ethical valence of literature outlined above share certainassumptions about literature as a particular mode of discourse which areby no means unproblematic. Insofar as these assumptions can be shownto be, if not unfounded, at the very least (onto)logically contestable, thetheoretical positions subtended by them, too, reveal themselves as equallycontestable. Probably the most basic among these assumptions is the veryacknowledgment of modes of discourse, that is, of the possibility somehowclearly to distinguish between literature and such other modes as philoso-phy (of which ethics is, of course, a branch). And it is precisely this basicdistinction, which has relied on a particular view of language and its usesand on a particular anthropology or psychology hinging on the notion ofmimesis—both paradigmatically articulated by Aristotle—that needs to becritically interrogated.In On Interpretation, Aristotle (!&)*: !'a!–*) makes an (onto)logical dis-

tinction between two modes of speech: ‘‘While every sentence [logos] hasmeaning [s!mantikos] . . . not all can be called propositions.We call proposi-tions [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 overall such, as their study more properly belongs to the province of rhetoric orpoetry.We have in our present inquiry propositions [apophantikos] alone forour theme.’’ Aristotle then (ibid.: !'a&–!%) specifies that a proposition canbe either an ‘‘a,rmation [kataphasis]’’ or a ‘‘negation [apophasis],’’ whereby‘‘the presence of some other thing in a subject in time past or present orfuture’’ (ibid.: !'a")–"$) is being a,rmed or denied.9 Apophansis requires,Aristotle (ibid.: !'a!(–!') emphasizes, the presence in a proposition of an‘‘ ‘is,’ ‘was,’ or ‘will be’ . . . indicat[ing] a single fact [or] many.’’ The dis-*. See also Rorty !&&& [!&*&]: xv–xvi, !$!–**; McGinn !&&': !'!–'*; Attridge !&&&: "#;Miller "%%!: (*. In this essay, I do not deal with the specific di+erences between analytical(Anglo-American) and continental ethical theory and their respective engagements with lit-erature, viewing both, rather, as complementary and mutually illuminating with regard toour attempts at understanding the ethical in its relation to the literary.&. ‘‘Wemean by a,rmation a statement a,rming one thing of another; wemean by negationa statement denying one thing of another’’ (Aristotle !&)*: !'a"#–"').


tinction between apophantic and nonapophantic discourse, which Aristotleclearly establishes on the basis of an utterance’s referential relation to realityand the world, is further elaborated in the Poetics (to which, among otherthings, the reader interested in nonapophantic discourse is referred in OnInterpretation).10 Aristotle (!&&&: !$$'a!) has in mind ‘‘poetry in general’’ andthe specific genres of ‘‘epic and tragic poetry, as well as comedy [and] dithy-ramb . . . all, taken as a whole, kinds of mimesis’’ (ibid.: !$$'a!)–!()—in short, what we have come to call ‘‘literature’’ 11—when he writes, in thefamous ninth chapter of Poetics: ‘‘it is not the poet’s function to relate actualevents, but the kinds of things that might occur and are possible in termsof probability and necessity’’ (ibid.: !$#!a)(–)&).12

Aristotle’s (onto)logical distinction between apophantic and nonapo-phantic speech, that is, assertive discourse aiming at propositional truth(e.g., philosophy, history) and nonassertive, nonpropositional discourse(e.g., literature) facilitated the common view—held by many a philosopherand poet alike—of philosophy and literature as ‘‘serious’’ or nonfictionaland ‘‘nonserious’’ or fictional modes of discourse, respectively.13 While theformer makes referential statements, the latter dispenses with direct propo-sitionality and referentiality.Whatever the poets may say or state ‘‘in theirworks . . . they neither believe nor assert it as a fact, but only as a myth orfiction’’ (Boccaccio !&)% [!$'"]: (#). Aristotle’s conception of poetry as non-apophantic speech, popularized by Sir Philip Sidney (!&(# [!#&(]: !"))—‘‘the poet, he nothing a,rms, and therefore never lieth’’—does not seem tohave lost its epistemological or poetological appeal; such recent notions asliterature’s ‘‘pretended reference’’ (Searle !&'#: ))%) or ‘‘pseudoreference’’(Genette !&&): "#) speak to the Stagirite’s continuous sway.

!%. For discussions of Aristotle’s distinction between apophantic and nonapophantic speechin terms of referentiality and factuality, see Halliwell !&&": "$)–$$; Woodru+ !&&": **–*&.!!. The passage also lists ‘‘most music for aulos and lyre’’ among ‘‘kinds of mimesis,’’ but inthis essay I do not specifically address ‘‘music.’’!". Although poetry does not a,rm anything about facts, states of a+airs, or ‘‘actual events’’the way history or philosophy in their own complex ways do, it can and indeed often does,as Aristotle (!&&&: !$#!b"'–)&) observes, ‘‘concern actual events.’’!). I should stress that Aristotle does not and could not possibly equate poetry with what wecall ‘‘fiction’’—an essentialist notion alien to Aristotle’s poetics (and metaphysics). Aristotlemerely notes that poetry does not make apophatic or kataphatic claims about the world andthat it is mimesis. It is worth remembering that: (!) certain modes that Aristotle would cate-gorize as nonapophantic have been interpreted as implying ‘‘fictionality’’ (see, for instance,Augustine !&&!: "$; Frege !&(': )$'; Russell !&#(: $(, #$; Austin !&'# [!&("]: &, !", "", !%$,!""); (") rightly or wrongly, mimesis has frequently been taken to mean, and been translatedas, ‘‘fiction’’ (see esp. Genette’s [!&&): (–!"] discussion of mimesis and its history; Hamburger!&*' [!&#']: !#–)%; Halliwell !&&": "$"–$#, "$*). For an insightful critique of translatingmime-sis as ‘‘fiction,’’ see Woodru+ !&&": esp. '$, '&, &%. On poetry’s relation to fact and ‘‘fiction’’in Aristotle, see de Ste. Croix !&&".


Aristotle (!&&&: !$#!b&–!%) drew an important conclusion from his in-sights into the manifold uses of language: because literature does not workapophantically, because it is neither bound by states of a+airs or fact norby the limits of logical truth, it can be, paradoxically, in its very concrete-ness—‘‘even though attaching names to agents’’—more universal than apo-phantic speech.14 Literature, Julia Kristeva (!&(&: !&!) writes in a passagerepresentative of the continuous presence of Aristotle’s thought, ‘‘takes themost concrete signifieds, concretizes them to the utmost degree, and, simul-taneously raises them to a level of universality which surpasses that of con-ceptual discourse. . . . The poetic signified . . . is simultaneously concreteand universal.’’ 15

In order to understand the ethical significance of what for the longesttime has been taken to be literature’s particular ways of creating meaning,it is necessary to attend to one contextually pertinent aspect of Aristotle’s(!&&&: !$$*b#–&) anthropology or psychology, namely, the twofold stipu-lation that human beings are essentially mimetic beings and that mimesisis a source of pleasure and cognition: ‘‘It is an instinct of human beings,from childhood, to engage in mimesis (indeed, this distinguishes themfrom animals: man is the most mimetic of all, and it is through mime-sis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural thateveryone enjoys mimetic objects.’’ 16 ‘‘Everyone,’’ Aristotle (!&$$: !)$%a!!)

!$. See Aristotle !&&&: !$#!a)(–b!%. I am well aware that in general Aristotle reserves thedomain of the ‘‘particular’’ to history (!$#!b*)—which, for this very reason, is, to him, lessuniversal than poetry. By ‘‘universal,’’ (ibid.) Aristotle means ‘‘the kinds of things which itsuits a certain kind of person to say or do in terms of probability and necessity’’ (!$#!b*–&).On Aristotle’s 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 !&&": !(; Woodru+!&&": *".!#. Literature is more universal than ‘‘conceptual discourse,’’ Kristeva suggests, in the sensethat its meanings and referents will have never ‘‘existed’’ or been ‘‘true’’ and more concretein the sense that, precisely due to its fictional or imaginary status, its referents can be speci-fied (situationally, epithetically, etc.) to a degree that the spatiotemporal confines of ‘‘reality’’would presumably not allow for. Obviously, Kristeva’s notion of universality is only nomi-nally related to Aristotle’s concept of the universal as hinging on probability, necessity, andthe ‘‘unified design of the art-work’’ (Halliwell !&&": "#%). On the notion of the ‘‘concreteuniversal’’ in literature, see, for instance, Wimsatt !&$': "(); Murdoch "%%! [!&'%]: )&, $!;Nussbaum !&&%: )*–)&, !(#–(', !*$; Attridge !&&#: !!&. The ‘‘concrete universal’’ obviatesthe logical enmeshment of the general, the individual, and the particular, as analyzed byHegel (!&$&: !$–!#, )$–)', $"–$), #"–#), (%–(!, !""–"$).!(. I do not deal here with the vexed question of the meaning of mimesis, which is ‘‘as obscurein Aristotle as it is in other ancient authors’’ (Woodru+ !&&": '$). It has been translated, forinstance, as ‘‘fiction’’ (see note !)), ‘‘imitation,’’ and ‘‘representation.’’ In the present context, itdoes not reallymatter what we take it tomean, as I am only interested inmimesis to the extentthat it is predicated on Aristotle’s binary notion of speech (apophantic/nonapophantic) andto the extent that it has, on the basis of this notion, certain e+ects on the reader, listener, etc.


explains, ‘‘when listening [or watching] imitations is thrown into a cor-responding state.’’ Thus, tragedy’s ‘‘fearful and pitiable’’ (Aristotle !&&&:!$#)b!) events find their responsive correlate in the audience’s ‘‘horror andpity’’ (ibid.: !$#)b#) by dint of the complex interface between what Aris-totle calls ‘‘fellow-feeling’’ and the perception of resemblance with or di+er-ence from ‘‘one like [or unlike] ourselves’’ (ibid.: !$#"b)*–!$#)a(). In turn,the catharsis of fear and pity—achieved through the audience’s participa-tion 17 in ‘‘imitations’’—is, as Aristotle (!&"(: !%&$a!–b!!, !&$$: !)$!b)'–$%)emphasizes, ethically crucial: it facilitates the citizens’ virtuousness, allow-ing them to reenter the polis, as it were, free of those emotions and views thatmay turn out to be ethically-politically perilous.18 It is important to keep inmind at this point that art’s ethical-political e+ectiveness is based, accord-ing to Aristotle (!&&&: !$#!b$), precisely on the fact that it takes its audienceout of the domain of ‘‘actual events,’’ that its ‘‘events and names alike havebeen invented’’ (ibid.: !$#!b""–")) in the broad sense of not immediatelyrelating to ‘‘facts,’’ that it is—to translate aesthetics into logic—nonapo-phantic. It is because we perceive what art gives us not as referentially tiedto our immediate reality that we know it to be, and read it as, a nonapo-phantic kind of language;19 that ‘‘we enjoy contemplating the most preciseimages of things whose actual sight [may be] painful to us’’ (ibid.: !$$*b&–!"; my emphasis) rather than avoiding or fleeing them; that literature canfunction, according to Aristotle, as the ethical medium par excellence, as‘‘equipment for living’’ (Burke !&*& [!&$']).As the following representative statements suggest, much of contempo-

rary moral philosophy and literary criticism continues to rely on amediatedversion (through the likes of Boccaccio and Sidney) of Aristotle’s semioticsand poetics, taking it for granted that it is the fictional, nonapophantic,‘‘nonserious’’ character of literature and its concurrent capacity to short-circuit the universal and the particular that ultimately opens a space for theethical closed to apophantic modes. ‘‘Literature,’’ Daniel Schwarz ("%%!:#) writes, ‘‘provides surrogate experiences for the reader, experiences that,

!'. See Rorty !&&": !*; Nussbaum !&&": "'$. Interestingly, the audience’s response/partici-pation could itself be perceived as a kind of ‘‘mimesis’’ in the second degree (if the ‘‘imitation’’aspect of ‘‘mimesis’’ is valorized) of the events on stage. If, as Nussbaum (ibid.) suggests,‘‘fellow-feeling’’ is predicated on our ‘‘identification’’ with the character(s) on stage, then the‘‘recognition of who and what we are’’ (Rorty !&&": ") that tragedy ‘‘at its best . . . brings’’can be viewed as homologous to, a kind of ‘‘imitation’’ of, the anagnorisis experienced by thecharacter(s) on stage.!*. On the inseverability of poetics, ethics, and politics in Aristotle, see Aristotle !&"( !%&$a!–b!), !&$$: !)$!b)#–!)$"a!!; Rorty !&&": !!–!"; Davis !&&": xiii–xviii.!&. Irrespective of whether or not we call and think of it as ‘‘fictional’’ in the common sense.On the reader’s/recipient’s perception of ‘‘literature’’ as nonapophantic, see esp. Halliwell!&&": "$"; Genette !&&): (–'; Fuhrmann !&*".


because they are embodied within artistically shaped ontologies, heighten ourawareness of moral discriminations’’ (my emphasis); Martha Nussbaum(!&&%: !*$) suggests that literature ‘‘cultivate[s] our ability to see and carefor particulars’’ while simultaneously catering to our ‘‘interest in the univer-sal and in the universalizability of ethical judgments’’ (ibid.: )*); and ColinMcGinn (!&&': !'() observes that the ‘‘fictional work can make us see andfeel good and evil in a way no philosophical treatise can—unless it takes onboard 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 languagethat a critique of Aristotelian poetics and its subsequent versions can beand, in fact, has been mounted.Methodologically, the most powerful critique to be brought to bear on

the strict Aristotelian separation of apophantic from nonapophantic speechand its corollaries for our understanding of the putative specificities ofliterature and its ethical significance is provided by structuralist linguis-tics and poetics. In particular, Roman Jakobson’s (!&*' [!&(%]: '!) stipula-tion of the interface of six linguistic functions—emotive, referential, poetic,phatic, metalingual, and conative—operative in any utterance, disclosesthe (onto)logical impossibility of clearly distinguishing between apophanticand nonapophantic speech:

Althoughwe distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however, hardlyfind verbal messages that would fulfill only one function.The diversity [of genresof speech] lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but ina di+erent hierarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a messagedepends primarily on the predominant function. But even though a set (Ein-

"%. Schwarz (an English professor),McGinn (an analytic philosopher), andNussbaum (strid-ing various disciplines) cover the spectrum of the current literature/ethics debate. For simi-lar views, see also Rorty !&&& [!&*&]: xvi, !$!–**; Booth !&**. Even such deconstructivistsas de Man (!&*) [!&'!]: !'–!*, !)", "!') and Miller ("%%!: ), #, $%, (%–(!, '&) base theirapproaches to literature on the stipulation of its fictional status (see below).While not all ‘‘fic-tions’’ may be literature, all literature is (treated as) ‘‘fictional.’’ Interestingly, the so-called‘‘turn to ethics’’ (Garber et al. "%%%) in parts of the humanities—literary studies in particu-lar—has its counterpart in (moral) philosophy’s ‘‘turn to literature’’ (Antonaccio "%%%: !*).For some works signaling the ‘‘turn to ethics’’ in literary studies, see New Literary History !&*);Miller !&*'; Booth !&**; Siebers !&**; Eaglestone !&&'; Buell !&&&; Robbins !&&&; Madisonand Fairbairn !&&&; Garber et al. "%%%; Eskin "%%%; Davis andWomack "%%!. For some workssignaling the ‘‘turn to literature’’ in (moral) philosophy, see MacIntyre !&*$ [!&*!]; Elridge!&*&; Rorty !&&& [!&*&]; Nussbaum !&&%, !&&#; Derrida !&&"; Goldberg !&&); McGinn !&&';Kearney and Dooley !&&&.


stellung) toward the referent . . .—briefly the so-called referential, ‘‘denotative,’’‘‘cognitive’’ function—is the leading task of numerous messages, the accessoryparticipation of the other functions in suchmessages must be taken into account.(Ibid.: (()

Given that all utterances are constituted by the interplay of all six linguis-tic functions, generic di+erences, Jakobson suggests, are not a matter ofontology or essence but of the degree of predominance. In other words,what distinguishes apophantic from nonapophantic speech is the place ofthe referential and poetic functions, respectively, in the hierarchy of func-tions.Thus, literature, according to Jakobson (ibid.: (&), distinguishes itselffrom apophansis not on the basis of the presumed obliteration of referen-tiality 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 themessage as such, focus on the message for its own sake.’’ Concomitantly,every apophantic utterance is also informed by the literary or poetic: ‘‘Anyattempt to reduce the sphere of the poetic function to poetry or to con-fine poetry to the poetic function would be a delusive oversimplification.The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its domi-nant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts asa subsidiary, accessory constituent’’ (ibid.).Jakobson’s insights into the complex functioning of utterances continue

to inform contemporary—especially deconstructive—attempts to get awayfrom essentialist or (onto)logical approaches to questions of genre. Thus,Derrida’s (!&&": $#) observations that in literature ‘‘the ‘thetic’ naivety ofthe transcendent reading’’ (i.e., reading for reference) is suspended, that‘‘without annulling eithermeaning or reference, [literature] does somethingwith this resistance [to a transcendent reading] and negotiates the suspen-sion of referential naivety, of thetic referentiality (not reference or the inten-tional relation in general)’’ (ibid.: $') rearticulate Jakobson’s insights withina poststructuralist frame. While disclosing the impossibility of essentiallydistinguishing between literature and nonliterature, Jakobson’s approachimplicitly valorizes the intentional aspect of Aristotle’s psychological argu-ment: 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 Derrida’s attention to ‘‘ ‘thetic’ naivety’’ and ‘‘the suspension . . .of thetic referentiality (not reference or the intentional relation in gen-eral)’’ equally points to the reader’s participation in the creation of those

"!. Genette (!&&): vii) rightly observes: ‘‘. . . the [poetic] function is intentional in nature . . .’’On ‘‘Einstellung,’’ see Husserl !&*#: !)'.


discursive-referential boundaries that warrant the reception of a text as lit-erature. In a way, then, the reception of literature as literature is ultimatelya function of the reader’s consciousness (‘‘intentional relation’’), that is,the reader must assume such an attitude toward the text at hand so as totreat it—this being the positive version of the ‘‘suspension of referentialnaivety’’—as nonapophantic.The result of these structuralist and deconstructive critiques—the strong-

est and most serious to be brought to bear on Aristotelian semiotics—isthat, in uncovering the (onto)logical and semiotic deficiencies of a strictseparation between modes of speech, they nonetheless guarantee the con-tinuous functioning of such separation by displacing it onto the level ofpsychology and pragmatics. It is, emphatically, an agreement or ‘‘con-tract’’ between reader and author/text—to the e+ect that the reader sus-pend ‘‘referential naivety’’—that now warrants the more or less smoothfunctioning of distinctions of discursive genres.22 Ironically, this brings usright back to Aristotle, who was very much aware of the necessity on thereader’s/audience’s part not to view the events depicted in literature as‘‘actual events,’’ that is, precisely, to suspend ‘‘referential naivety.’’ What wewind up with is yet another kind of Aristotelianism, albeit an Aristotelian-ism without essence—as far as the (onto)logical makeup of the text itself isconcerned.It would appear, then, that contemporary deconstructive critiques of the

philosophy/literature opposition surreptitiously perpetuate this oppositionin the guise of its displacement. Attempts to capture the ethical in the lit-erary in terms of its ‘‘potential for unsettling philosophical categories [e.g.,fiction/nonfiction, literature/nonliterature]—and with them, of course, awhole series of political and ethical [as well as poetological] positions’’(Attridge !&&#: !!!), or in terms of the constitutive ‘‘possibility of [its] mis-reading and misinterpretation’’ (de Man !&*) [!&'!]: "*%) due to its self-presentation as fictional/figural23 tacitly engage, while certainly complicat-ing and renegotiating, precisely those Aristotelian and post-Aristoteliandistinctions that have been uncovered as problematic, not to say untenable,namely, apophantic/nonapophantic, fiction/nonfiction.24 In other words,

"". See also Hamburger !&*' [!&#']: "$$; Hof !&*$: #&–(%."). ‘‘In the same manner that poetic lyric . . . proceeds to invent fictional emotions . . . thework of fiction invents fictional subjects to create the illusion of . . . reality . . . Fiction . . .knows and names itself as fiction’’ (deMan !&*) [!&'!]: !*). ‘‘This persistent naming,’’ deMan(ibid.) emphasizes, ‘‘is what we call literature.’’"$. For further instances, see Derrida !&*!: ""), !&**: !))–)$, !&&": $$; Miller !&*', "%%!:), #, $%, (%–(!, '&; Booth !&**: !).


insofar as an idiosyncratic ethical appeal is attributed to literature in excessof the inherently axiological—hence, ethical—nature of language as such,25insofar as it is said somehow to solicit our special ‘‘respect [and] responsi-bility’’ (Attridge !&&&: "#), this pretended, intentionally generated distinctionis always already in place: a pragmatic agreement or contract—howevertenuous or tacit—on the status of the text at hand subtends its particularforce of moral appeal. J. Hillis Miller’s (!&*': &) influential postulate of a‘‘fundamental ‘I must’ ’’ issuing forth from a literary text already presup-poses that we have agreed to view the text as literary. This is not to sug-gest 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 itsethical valence emerge, primarily, as the functions of our perception of cer-tain texts as literary. And this, in turn, means that while denying literarinessas a ‘‘natural essence, an intrinsic property of the text’’ (ibid.) and reinscrib-ing it as an intentional category, the very question of what it is in a text thatwould ‘‘call for the literary reading’’ remains within Aristotelian parame-ters: we read a text as literature to the extent that we (are told to, agreeon, have been taught to) interpret it as nonapophantic—on the basis of, asDerrida notes, ‘‘convention, institution, or history’’ (ibid.).26

A Modest Proposal

Leaving behind themaze of theoretical di,culties outlined above, I want tosuggest a di+erent approach to the plausibility of our continued acknowl-edgment that literature does something ethically in excess of moral philoso-phy. I should stress that I am not concerned with explicating how literaturedoes what it does. I am merely interested in o+ering a theoretical back-drop—in no need of psychology or ontology—for our ascription to litera-ture 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 formerin relation to the latter ought to begin with the recognition of similarities

"#. Insofar as language is, as Saussure (!&*#: !!$–!') points out, essentially enmeshed andimbued with value. See also Adorno !&*!: $"&; Enzensberger !&*$: !))."(. Derrida (!&&": $$) locates the constitution of literature in the interface between ‘‘noeticact’’ and ‘‘noematic structure’’—between that creative, sense-bestowingmental dynamic that‘‘forms . . . stu+ into intentional mental experiences’’ (Husserl !&"*: !'$; my translation) andits ‘‘intentional correlates’’ (ibid.: !*!), that is, the actual ‘‘how of [a phenomenon’s] inten-tional appearance [in consciousness]’’ (Husserl !&*(: !*; my translation). Accordingly, Der-rida’s approach thus suggests, echoing Stanley Fish and others, literature’s functional depen-dence on the constituting subject or community of subjects.


rather than di+erences—of points of intersection between the two.What doliterature and moral philosophy have in common? Whatever else they mayshare, there are two traits in particular that are central to the present dis-cussion: (!) both are fundamentally concerned with the variegated domainof what could be called, formulaically, ‘‘the human person in all of its rela-tions, facets, and intricacies’’;27 (") both are, as I shall presently explain, sec-ondary speech genres.The first common trait speaks to the close practical-historical link between the two and is in no need of commentary.The secondunderwrites the thematic rapprochement between the two on discursivegrounds. And it is only on the basis of both points in conjunction that theparticular juxtaposition of literature and moral philosophy—as opposed toa number of other possible conceptual or discursive couplings (e.g., litera-ture and science)—is warranted.What does this mean exactly?Let me begin with the notion of ‘‘speech genre,’’ which I use here follow-

ing Mikhail Bakhtin and Alasdair MacIntyre. One of the central postulatesof Bakhtin’s (!&&(: !*%) metalinguistics is that all utterances clothe them-selves in ‘‘typical forms’’ or ‘‘speech genres,’’ which can in turn be dividedinto ‘‘primary (simple) and secondary (complex)’’ (ibid.).28 Primary speechgenres, such as ‘‘responses in ordinary conversation or letters,’’ emerge inthe ‘‘context of immediate verbal interaction’’ (ibid.) and are ‘‘closely depen-dent on all the factors of the [immediate] extraverbal context’’ (Voloshinov!&*' [!&"(]: !%() for their functioning; while secondary speech genres, suchas ‘‘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 ‘‘absorptionand transformation’’ of both primary and secondary genres (Bakhtin !&&(:!(!, !*%). This means that secondary speech genres are by definition meta-generic, that is, they are utterances enclosing or encompassing utterancesand, as such, utterances ‘‘about’’ utterances.A contextually relevant discursive connection can be established between

literature and (moral) philosophy in light of MacIntyre’s (!&*$ [!&*!]: "!!)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 anothercannot 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 thehuman (e.g., ‘‘language’’)."*. It will be remembered that metalinguistics is Bakhtin’s (!&&$: )&#) term for his approach tolanguage through the prism of utterance.On the relation of Bakhtin’smetalinguistics to prag-matics, which I do not discuss here, see Eskin "%%%: ), (, (&. See also Morris !&)*; Carnap!&)&. All translations from Bakhtin are mine."&. See also Clark and Holquist !&*$: "%&. I do not deal with issues of authorship in theBakhtin circle.


lar link between the context of utterance and the force of reason-givingwhich always holds in the case of expressions of personal preference ordesire is severed in the case of moral and other evaluative utterances’’(ibid.: &). Utterances of the ‘‘first kind,’’ MacIntyre (ibid.: !)) stresses, ‘‘de-pend upon who utters them to whom . . . while utterances of the secondkind are not similarly dependent . . . on the context of utterance.’’ Mac-Intyre’s specification of the language ofmoral philosophy in the samemeta-linguistic terms that Bakhtin uses to describe literature points to a similaritybetween the two discursive modes which relegates putative ontological-referential di+erentiations to a place of metalinguistic insignificance. Mac-Intyre (ibid.: ($–'%, ')–'#, !%') suggests as much when he unmasks someof the central concepts of moral philosophy—such as ‘‘happiness,’’ ‘‘utility,’’‘‘natural and human rights,’’ and ‘‘goodness’’—as ‘‘moral fictions.’’ In otherwords, from a metalinguistic perspective, the apophantic/nonapophanticdistinction is supervenient upon, posterior to the foregoing distinctionbetween primary and secondary speech genres. Given that the problem of(immediate) reference is fundamentally a problem of an utterance’s rela-tion to its extralinguistic context, to the ‘‘world’’—and this holds both foradequational and verificationist theories of reference and truth—any sec-ondary utterance is structurally ‘‘fictional’’ insofar as it purports to be con-textually independent; no strict ontological, referential distinction can beupheld between the ‘‘truth’’/‘‘untruth’’ of fiction and the ‘‘truth’’/‘‘untruth’’of propositions falling into the realm of secondary speech genres, especiallymoral propositions.A metalinguistic approach, then, allows us to obviate the di,culties in-

volved in attempting to distinguish modes of discourse (and their attendantethical valence) on the basis of referential-ontological criteria. In fact, suchbinaries as fictional/nonfictional or apophantic/nonapophantic, far frombeing foundational, reveal themselves as the internal semantic e"ects, as itwere, of particular kinds of utterance. In other words, apophansis wouldbe the ‘‘fiction’’ of certain kinds of utterance (e.g., philosophical, scientific,historical), whereas fictionality would be the ‘‘fiction’’ of certain other kindsof utterance (e.g., literary), whereby ‘‘fiction’’ reveals itself as equivalent to‘‘meaning’’ or ‘‘the semantic’’ in general.The impossibility of distinguishingbetween the two kinds ontologically comes clearly to the fore, for instance,in MacIntyre’s (ibid.: !)') observation that the ‘‘first great enunciation ofmoral truth in Greek culture’’ occurred in the Iliad, that is, in literature!What a metalinguistic consideration of literature and moral philosophyyields, then, is the insight that insofar as both are ‘‘fictional’’—albeit inqualitatively di+erent ways (and this is crucial)—they are indeed amenable


to being mutually imbricated. And it is the specific subject of their ‘‘fic-tions’’—what I have referred to as the ‘‘human person in all of its relations,facets, and intricacies’’—which warrants in particular their marriage.So, if both are ‘‘fictions’’ and if both deal with the human person as a

whole, what is the di+erence between them? And why would literature becapable of doing—to return to my empirical point of departure—certainthings ethical in excess of moral philosophy? It is here that literature’s inter-nalmakeup, as it were, ought to come into play. By internalmakeup I do notmean its uses of figures or its ‘‘fictionality’’ but its semiotic homology withlanguage as such. Recourse to Émile Benveniste’s discussions of languagewill 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 meaning-creating] systems, verbal and non-verbal.’’ Language is the sole mediumin which other semiotic systems and media (e.g., music, painting, etc.) canbe described, conceptually exposed and reflected, and made sense of. Inother words, language is the most semiotically ‘‘capacious’’ medium. Inanalogy with Benveniste’s view of language’s ‘‘capaciousness,’’ we can saythat, insofar as literature is said to be ethically exemplary, this is, fundamen-tally, due to its discursive ‘‘capaciousness’’: it can incorporate, encompass,embody, engage in live contexts, illuminate from innumerable perspec-tives, and thus transform—in short, interpret—the propositions, problemsaddressed, and ‘‘truths’’ attained in ethics. In a literary work, the philoso-phemes 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 thewords, ruminations, observations, thoughts, and deeds of a Mrs. Ramsay,a Mr. Ramsay, and a Charles Tansley, who, inVirginiaWoolf ’s To the Light-house ‘‘thought [Mr. Ramsay] the greatest metaphysician of the time’’ (ibid.:)'). Whereas moral philosophy’s only ‘‘fiction’’ would be ‘‘moral truth,’’the latter is merely one aspect or component—albeit a central one—of themanifold ‘‘truth’’ of the ‘‘fiction’’ of literature. In away, then, literature couldbe viewed as ethics in the second degree, as ethics of ethics or criticism ofethics, as that discourse which literally interprets ethics.We have attained an unexpected insight: keeping in mind that the ‘‘inter-

pretant’’ designates, according to Charles Sanders Peirce (from whom Ben-veniste borrows the term), what is ‘‘ordinarily called the meaning of thesign’’ (Peirce !&)"–!&((, $:#)(), and that ‘‘meaning’’ for Peirce is merelyyet another, ‘‘perhaps a more developed sign’’ (ibid.: ":""*) translating thefirst, the relation between literature and ethics reveals itself, at the most


basic level, as one of translation.30 Literature translates ethics into ‘‘per-haps a more developed [more ‘capacious,’ more universal and concrete]sign’’—into a medium and a context in which ‘‘philosophical conceptu-ality’’ (Attridge !&&": "$) is transformed, developed into something that can‘‘make us see and feel . . . in a way no philosophical treatise can’’ (McGinn!&&': !'(). And insofar as any discourse becomes meaningful by dint oftranslation (reading/interpretation), it is indeed justified to say that ‘‘litera-ture . . . is a moment or structural possibility’’ (Attridge !&&#: !!$) of ethicsin particular.In light of literature’s metalinguistic, thematic, and semiotic enmesh-

ment with ethics, stipulated di+erences between the two discourses predi-cated on the fiction/nonfiction or apophansis/nonapophansis binaries re-veal themselves as analytic disguises of their actual collusion and continuity.Because literature and ethics are so closely linked, because they constitute adiscursive-semiotic continuum, they yield themselves to productive juxta-position and interface. From Plato’s (e.g., Republic )()a–($e) recourse toHomer to Levinas’s (!&&% [!&'$]: '!, ""*, !&*": &*) invocation of Dostoevskyand Celan, literature has been philosophy’s haunting twin—its critic. In asemiotic sense, ethics needs literature—its metalinguistic and thematic sib-ling—to be fully integrated into the human and the social domain that it isultimately concerned with. Isn’t it the ostensible ‘‘purposefulness withoutpurpose’’ of art that integrates, as Kant (!&*( [!'&%]: &#/§!%) already sug-gested, philosophical conceptuality within the realm of the practical andthe social?31

Surely, this is only one side of the story, for it could equally be said that lit-erature needs philosophy. After all, the invention of the lattermust have beennecessitated, in part at least, by certain intellectual and ethical needs thatliterature, notwithstanding (or precisely due to) its ‘‘capaciousness,’’ couldpresumably 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, asMartha Nussbaum (ibid.) summarizes, to be saved ‘‘from livingat the mercy of luck.’’ But this ought to be the subject of another essay.

)%. For Peirce’s numerous definitions and descriptions of the functioning of signs, see hisCollected Papers (!&)"–!&((), esp. vol. ":&", ""*, "$", )%); vol. ):"!%; vol. $:#)(; and vol. #:$.)!. Famously, Kant (!&*( [!'&%]: !') relied on his Critique of Judgment to integrate the concep-tual architectonics of the Critique of Pure Reason with the practical postulates and implicationsof The Critique of Practical Reason.


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