On Literature and Ethics

Michael Eskin
Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia
Abstract This essay deals with the complex relationship between literature and
ethics. More specically, 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 theo-
retical positions informing literatures perception as ethically exemplary (from Aris-
totle 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 signicance of lit-
erature 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 .oo). Copyright .oo by the Porter Institute for Poetics and
Semiotics.
574 Poetics Today 25:4
Austins (:q; [:q6.]) termscertain things ethical that moral philosophy
would fall short of.
2
This is not to deny the latters heuristic signicance in
ethical matters (nor its recourse to devices that have been said to be char-
acteristic of literature, such as ction, gural 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 lmic narra-
tives 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 litera-
ture 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
seemto 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 :qq: :::). For
critical discussions of the rise of the specically modern notion of literature as an aesthetic
category and institution, see Todorov :q;; Derrida :qq.: ;; Eagleton :qq6: ::6.
.. Throughout this essay, I usefor the purpose of stylistic variationethics and moral phi-
losophy 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 claricatory note, I should stress that although ethics has been viewed as distinct
from moral philosophy in the wake of Kants (:q8q [:;88/:;8]: .oo) subsumption of Moral-
philosophie under the more general head of Ethik (ibid.: :q8), the terms interchange-
able use persists as before Kants distinction (cf., e.g., Banner :q68). 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 (charac-
ter/custom/habit/usage); but it is suitable to call it, by way of expanding the Latin language,
moral (philosophy) (Cicero :q68: :q.; my translation). Seneca (:qq6: 8.) and Quintilianus
(:qq:q6, esp. book .:.:, book 6:8q, book :.:., :) popularize Ciceros linguistic inno-
vation. Although Quintilianus already uses the term Ethice (ibid.: :.:., :), it is the fourth-
century Christian apologist Lactantius (:q6 [:8o]: .:) who rst employs the term ethica
as equivalent to philosophia moralis in his Divinae intitutiones (written between o and ::). By
the fth century, ethics or ethical philosophy and moral philosophy are used interchangeably and
with no need for explanation or justication, as the following quote from Macrobius (:qqo:
:.6) indicates: Since there are three parts to philosophy in its entirety, moral, natural and
rational, what else does that exaltationof virtues containbut the moral precepts of ethical phi-
losophy? (my translation). The German rationalist philosopher Christian Wol (:6;q:;)
cements the interchangeability of ethics and moral philosophy for the modern period in
his monumental Philosophia moralis sive ethica (:;o:;, vols.).
. On philosophys reliance on literature and literary devices, see, for instance, Wittgen-
stein :q6: ;; Derrida :q;.; de Man :q;q; Harries :q;q; MacIntyre :q8 [:q8:]: 6;o,
;;, :o;; Nietzsche :q88: 66, ;.;; Murdoch :qq8: q;; Miller .oo:: 66.. Among
the plethora of texts on the morally formative, educational function of literature, see, for
instance, Augustine :qq:: :.o; Bruni .oo.; Schiller :qa [:;8], :qb [:;q]; MacIntyre
:q8 [:q8:]: .:6.
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 of
a continuum along which dierences in mode and degree determine dif-
ferences in ethical impetus. More specically, I suggest that insofar as we
take literature to be ethically signicant in an exemplary way, we may want
to start thinking about locating its ethical force not so much in its referen-
tial makeup and thematicsfor reasons that I shall clarifyas in, among
other 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 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 nal 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 the
diculties posed by available takes on the subjectthe impasses of what
could 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 the West-
ern intellectual and cultural tradition in ancient Greece, ethics has been,
not surprisingly, enmeshed with literature. The subject which, according
to Hegel (:qq: 6), 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 human
life, interaction, and conduct, namely, poetry.
4
Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and
Aeschylos, to name only a few, constituted a prephilosophical moral tradi-
tion 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 (vari-
ously conceived) good life.
5
Whether as positive or negative instances of
. Hegel follows Diogenes Laertius (:q.: .;), who credited Socrates with the introduction
of ethics as a distinct philosophical eld 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 :qq..
. See Murdoch .oo: [:q;o]: :o:, esp. q; MacIntyre :q8 [:q8:]: :.:, :8, :;8; Nuss-
baum :q86: ., :qqo: :; Kahn :qq..
576 Poetics Today 25:4
virtue, character, interaction, and response or as dangerous seductions, the
yarns spun by the poets, their protagonists situations, quandaries, deci-
sions, words, and deeds served and continue to serve philosopherswitness
the profuse recourse to literature on the part of contemporary moral phi-
losophers of various colorsas touchstones for their theoretical reections.
6
If it is true that before philosophy there was poetry (Kahn :qq.: ),
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 :qqo: :), 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 specic site and force of the ethical in the literary
have been the subject of considerable debate among poets, critics, and phi-
losophers, 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
eect a change in perception, inherent appeal to responsibility, or capacity
of discursive subversion.
7
Literature has been ascribed the idiosyncratic, if
6. See Plato :qq6: 6o6:, esp. 6.; Aristotle :q.6: :::6a:;6, :::6b.:::;a::, ::;;b.
::;8a:., ::8oa.:bq, :qqq: :.a., :b;, :a::a.o; Augustine :qq:: :.o; Nuss-
baum :qqo: , :qq: xiii; MacIntyre :q8 [:q8:]: :8:8;, .q; Rorty :qqq [:q8q]: xiv, ::
88; McGinn :qq;: :o8;8; Levinas :q8.: q8, :qqo [:q;]: ..8; Jonas :qq6: , 8;, q;, :o6, .o6.
;. I have in mind such approaches as could loosely be labeled ontological (e.g., Plato, Hegel,
Heidegger, Gadamer), psychological or aect- 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-
plied, purely heuristic perspective on an exceedingly complex historical realitythe recep-
tion 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 :qq6: 6o6:, 8:q; Hegel :q8q: :;.;q; Heidegger :q8o [:qo]: :
;., :qq; [:qq]; Gadamer :q6o; Aristotle :q: ::a::6, :qqq; Bruni .oo.; Schiller :qa
[:;8], :qb [:;q]; Nussbaum:qqo, :qq; McGinn :qq;: :;:;8; Kant :q86 [:;qo]: ::q, o
:o; Wilde :q6 [:8q:]: ;6; Nabokov :q: :6:;; Schleiermacher :q;; [:88]; Dilthey :qq:
[:qo]; Spitzer :q6:: ::;, q86; Shklovsky :qq: [:q:;]; Jakobson :q8; [:q6o]; Brodsky
:q86: o, qq, :6q, :qq: 8; Ingarden :qq [:q;]; Iser :qqa [:q;], :qqb [:q;]; Fish
:q8o; Derrida :qq.: ;; Miller :q8;, :q8q; Attridge :qq, :qqq; Levinas :qqo [:q;]: :;,
..8, :q8; [:q;6]: q6. For helpful discussions of the history and notion of literature from
an ethical perspective, see esp. Eaglestone :qq;: :; Nussbaum :qqo: .
Eskin

On Literature and Ethics 577
variegated, ability to make us see, feel, and realize certain truths about
human life [that] can only be ttingly and accurately stated in the language
and forms characteristic of the . . . artist [as opposed to] abstract theoreti-
cal discourse (Nussbaum:qqo: ), to solicit the supremely dicult ethical
act of responding to . . . singularity and otherness (Attridge :qq: ::q).
8
Aristotle, again
Notwithstanding their specicities and putative dierences, 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 philoso-
phy (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 (:q8: :;a:8) makes an (onto)logical dis-
tinction between two modes of speech: While every sentence [logos] has
meaning [smantikos] . . . not all can be called propositions. We call proposi-
tions [apophantikos] those only that have truth or falsity in them. Aprayer 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.: :;aq:o) species that a proposition can
be either an armation [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 armed or denied.
9
Apophansis requires,
Aristotle (ibid.: :;a:6:;) emphasizes, the presence in a proposition of an
is, was, or will be . . . indicat[ing] a single fact [or] many. The dis-
8. See also Rorty :qqq [:q8q]: xvxvi, ::88; McGinn :qq;: :;:;8; Attridge :qqq: .;
Miller .oo:: 68. In this essay, I do not deal with the specic dierences 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 to
our attempts at understanding the ethical in its relation to the literary.
q. We mean by armation a statement arming one thing of another; we mean by negation
a statement denying one thing of another (Aristotle :q8: :;a..;).
578 Poetics Today 25:4
tinction between apophantic and nonapophantic discourse, which Aristotle
clearly establishes onthe basis of anutterances referential relationto 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 (:qqq: :;a:) has in mind poetry in general and
the specic genres of epic and tragic poetry, as well as comedy [and] dithy-
ramb . . . all, taken as a whole, kinds of mimesis (ibid.: :;a::6)
in short, what we have come to call literature
11
when 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.: ::a6q).
12
Aristotles (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 viewheld by many a philosopher
and poet alikeof philosophy and literature as serious or nonctional
and nonserious or ctional modes of discourse, respectively.
13
While the
former makes referential statements, the latter dispenses with direct propo-
sitionality 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
ction (Boccaccio :qo [:;.]: 6). Aristotles conception of poetry as non-
apophantic speech, popularized by Sir Philip Sidney (:q6 [:q6]: :.)
the poet, he nothing arms, and therefore never liethdoes not seem to
have lost its epistemological or poetological appeal; such recent notions as
literatures pretended reference (Searle :q;: o) or pseudoreference
(Genette :qq: .) speak to the Stagirites continuous sway.
:o. For discussions of Aristotles distinction between apophantic and nonapophantic speech
in terms of referentiality and factuality, see Halliwell :qq.: .; Woodru :qq.: 888q.
::. The passage also lists most music for aulos and lyre among kinds of mimesis, but in
this essay I do not specically address music.
:.. Although poetry does not arm anything about facts, states of aairs, or actual events
the way history or philosophy in their own complex ways do, it can and indeed often does,
as Aristotle (:qqq: ::b.;q) observes, concern actual events.
:. I should stress that Aristotle does not and could not possibly equate poetry with what we
call ctionan 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 cate-
gorize as nonapophantic have been interpreted as implying ctionality (see, for instance,
Augustine :qq:: .; Frege :q6;: ;; Russell :q6: 6, ; Austin :q; [:q6.]: q, :., .., :o,
:..); (.) rightly or wrongly, mimesis has frequently been taken to mean, and been translated
as, ction (see esp. Genettes [:qq: 6:.] discussion of mimesis and its history; Hamburger
:q8; [:q;]: :o; Halliwell :qq.: .., .8). For an insightful critique of translating mime-
sis as ction, see Woodru :qq.: esp. ;, ;q, qo. On poetrys relation to fact and ction
in Aristotle, see de Ste. Croix :qq..
Eskin

On Literature and Ethics 579
Aristotle (:qqq: ::bq:o) drew an important conclusion from his in-
sights into the manifold uses of language: because literature does not work
apophantically, because it is neither bound by states of aairs or fact nor
by the limits of logical truth, it can be, paradoxically, in its very concrete-
nesseven though attaching names to agentsmore universal than apo-
phantic speech.
14
Literature, Julia Kristeva (:q6q: :q:) writes in a passage
representative of the continuous presence of Aristotles thought, takes the
most concrete signieds, concretizes themto the utmost degree, and, simul-
taneously raises them to a level of universality which surpasses that of con-
ceptual discourse. . . . The poetic signied . . . is simultaneously concrete
and universal.
15
In order to understand the ethical signicance 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
(:qqq: :8bq) anthropology or psychology, namely, the twofold stipu-
lation 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 mime-
sis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural that
everyone enjoys mimetic objects.
16
Everyone, Aristotle (:q: :oa::)
:. See Aristotle :qqq: ::a6b:o. I am well aware that in general Aristotle reserves the
domain of the particular to history (::b8)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 (::b8q).
On Aristotles notion of history, which I do not discuss here, see Louis :q; de Ste. Croix
:qq.; on his notion of the universal in poetry, see Halliwell :qq.; Rorty :qq.: :6; Woodru
:qq.: 8..
:. 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 ctional or imaginary status, its referents can be speci-
ed (situationally, epithetically, etc.) to a degree that the spatiotemporal connes of reality
would presumably not allow for. Obviously, Kristevas notion of universality is only nomi-
nally related to Aristotles concept of the universal as hinging on probability, necessity, and
the unied design of the art-work (Halliwell :qq.: .o). On the notion of the concrete
universal in literature, see, for instance, Wimsatt :q;: .6; Murdoch .oo: [:q;o]: q, :;
Nussbaum :qqo: 8q, :66;, :8; Attridge :qq: ::q. The concrete universal obviates
the logical enmeshment of the general, the individual, and the particular, as analyzed by
Hegel (:qq: ::, ;, ., ., 6o6:, :...).
:6. 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 (Woodru :qq.: ;). It has been translated, for
instance, as ction (see note :), imitation, and representation. In the present context, it
does not really matter what we take it to mean, as I amonly 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 eects on the reader, listener, etc.
580 Poetics Today 25:4
explains, when listening [or watching] imitations is thrown into a cor-
responding state. Thus, tragedys fearful and pitiable (Aristotle :qqq:
:b:) events nd their responsive correlate in the audiences horror and
pity (ibid.: :b) by dint of the complex interface between what Aris-
totle calls fellow-feeling and the perception of resemblance with or dier-
ence from one like [or unlike] ourselves (ibid.: :.b8:a6). In turn,
the catharsis of fear and pityachieved through the audiences participa-
tion
17
in imitationsis, as Aristotle (:q.6: :oqa:b::, :q: ::b;o)
emphasizes, ethically crucial: it facilitates the citizens virtuousness, allow-
ing themto reenter the polis, as it were, free of those emotions andviews that
may turn out to be ethically-politically perilous.
18
It is important to keep in
mind at this point that arts ethical-political eectiveness is based, accord-
ing to Aristotle (:qqq: ::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 logicnonapo-
phantic. 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 nonapo-
phantic kind of language;
19
that we enjoy contemplating the most precise
images of things whose actual sight [may be] painful to us (ibid.: :8bq
:.; my emphasis) rather than avoiding or eeing them; that literature can
function, according to Aristotle, as the ethical medium par excellence, as
equipment for living (Burke :q8q [:q;]).
As the following representative statements suggest, much of contempo-
rary moral philosophy and literary criticismcontinues 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 ctional, nonapophantic,
nonserious character of literature and its concurrent capacity to short-
circuit the universal and the particular that ultimately opens a space for the
ethical closed to apophantic modes. Literature, Daniel Schwarz (.oo::
) writes, provides surrogate experiences for the reader, experiences that,
:;. See Rorty :qq.: :8; Nussbaum :qq.: .;. Interestingly, the audiences 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 identication with the character(s) on stage, then the
recognition of who and what we are (Rorty :qq.: .) 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.
:8. On the inseverability of poetics, ethics, and politics in Aristotle, see Aristotle :q.6 :oqa:
b:, :q: ::b:.a::; Rorty :qq.: :::.; Davis :qq.: xiiixviii.
:q. Irrespective of whether or not we call and think of it as ctional in the common sense.
On the readers/recipients perception of literature as nonapophantic, see esp. Halliwell
:qq.: ..; Genette :qq: 6;; Fuhrmann :q8..
Eskin

On Literature and Ethics 581
because they are embodied within artistically shaped ontologies, heighten our
awareness of moral discriminations (my emphasis); Martha Nussbaum
(:qqo: :8) suggests that literature cultivate[s] our ability to see and care
for particulars while simultaneously catering to our interest in the univer-
sal and in the universalizability of ethical judgments (ibid.: 8); and Colin
McGinn (:qq;: :;6) observes that the ctional 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 (rst 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 fromnonapophantic speech
and its corollaries for our understanding of the putative specicities of
literature and its ethical signicance is provided by structuralist linguis-
tics and poetics. In particular, Roman Jakobsons (:q8; [:q6o]: ;:) stipula-
tion 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
nd verbal messages that would fulll only one function. The diversity [of genres
of speech] lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in
a dierent hierarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a message
depends primarily on the predominant function. But even though a set (Ein-
.o. Schwarz (an English professor), McGinn (an analytic philosopher), and Nussbaum(strid-
ing various disciplines) cover the spectrum of the current literature/ethics debate. For simi-
lar views, see also Rorty :qqq [:q8q]: xvi, ::88; Booth :q88. Even such deconstructivists
as de Man (:q8 [:q;:]: :;:8, :., .:;) and Miller (.oo:: , , o, 6o6:, ;q) base their
approaches to literature on the stipulation of its ctional status (see below). While not all c-
tions may be literature, all literature is (treated as) ctional. Interestingly, the so-called
turn to ethics (Garber et al. .ooo) in parts of the humanitiesliterary studies in particu-
larhas its counterpart in (moral) philosophys turn to literature (Antonaccio .ooo: :8).
For some works signaling the turn to ethics in literary studies, see New Literary History :q8;
Miller :q8;; Booth :q88; Siebers :q88; Eaglestone :qq;; Buell :qqq; Robbins :qqq; Madison
and Fairbairn :qqq; Garber et al. .ooo; Eskin .ooo; Davis and Womack .oo:. For some works
signaling the turn to literature in (moral) philosophy, see MacIntyre :q8 [:q8:]; Elridge
:q8q; Rorty :qqq [:q8q]; Nussbaum :qqo, :qq; Derrida :qq.; Goldberg :qq; McGinn :qq;;
Kearney and Dooley :qqq.
582 Poetics Today 25:4
stellung) toward the referent . . .briey 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.: 66)
Given that all utterances are constituted by the interplay of all six linguis-
tic functions, generic dierences, 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 func-
tions. Thus, literature, according to Jakobson (ibid.: 6q), distinguishes itself
from 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 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 con-
ne poetry to the poetic function would be a delusive oversimplication.
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 as
a subsidiary, accessory constituent (ibid.).
Jakobsons insights into the complex functioning of utterances continue
to informcontemporaryespecially deconstructiveattempts to get away
from essentialist or (onto)logical approaches to questions of genre. Thus,
Derridas (:qq.: ) 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 suspen-
sion of referential naivety, of thetic referentiality (not reference or the inten-
tional 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 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
Derridas attention to thetic naivety and the suspension . . .
of thetic referentiality (not reference or the intentional relation in gen-
eral) equally points to the readers participation in the creation of those
.:. Genette (:qq: vii) rightly observes: . . . the [poetic] function is intentional in nature . . .
On Einstellung, see Husserl :q8: :;.
Eskin

On Literature and Ethics 583
discursive-referential boundaries that warrant the reception of a text as lit-
erature. 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 anddeconstructive critiquesthe strong-
est and most serious to be brought to bear on Aristotelian semioticsis
that, in uncovering the (onto)logical and semiotic deciencies of a strict
separation between modes of speech, they nonetheless guarantee the con-
tinuous functioning of such separation by displacing it onto the level of
psychology and pragmatics. It is, emphatically, an agreement or con-
tract between reader and author/textto the eect that the reader sus-
pend 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 Aristotelian-
ism 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 lit-
erary in terms of its potential for unsettling philosophical categories [e.g.,
ction/nonction, literature/nonliterature]and with them, of course, a
whole series of political and ethical [as well as poetological] positions
(Attridge :qq: :::), or in terms of the constitutive possibility of [its] mis-
reading and misinterpretation (de Man :q8 [:q;:]: .8o) due to its self-
presentation as ctional/gural
23
tacitly engage, while certainly complicat-
ing and renegotiating, precisely those Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian
distinctions that have been uncovered as problematic, not to say untenable,
namely, apophantic/nonapophantic, ction/nonction.
24
In other words,
... See also Hamburger :q8; [:q;]: .; Hof :q8: q6o.
.. In the same manner that poetic lyric . . . proceeds to invent ctional emotions . . . the
work of ction invents ctional subjects to create the illusion of . . . reality . . . Fiction . . .
knows and names itself as ction (de Man :q8 [:q;:]: :8). This persistent naming, de Man
(ibid.) emphasizes, is what we call literature.
.. For further instances, see Derrida :q8:: .., :q88: :, :qq.: ; Miller :q8;, .oo::
, , o, 6o6:, ;q; Booth :q88: :.
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] responsi-
bility (Attridge :qqq: .), 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 (:q8;: q) inuential 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 gments of the
merely subjective or projective . . . caprice of each reader (Derrida :qq.:
). But it is to suggest that, on deconstructive readings, literature and its
ethical valence emerge, primarily, as the functions of our perception of cer-
tain texts as literary. And this, in turn, means that while denying literariness
as 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 that
would call for the literary reading remains within Aristotelian parame-
ters: 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 diculties outlined above, I want to
suggest a dierent 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 literature
does what it does. I am merely interested in oering a theoretical back-
dropin no need of psychology or ontologyfor 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 specically ethical signicance of the former
in relation to the latter ought to begin with the recognition of similarities
.. Insofar as language is, as Saussure (:q8: :::;) points out, essentially enmeshed and
imbued with value. See also Adorno :q8:: .q; Enzensberger :q8: :.
.6. Derrida (:qq.: ) locates the constitution of literature in the interface between noetic
act and noematic structurebetween that creative, sense-bestowing mental dynamic that
forms . . . stu into intentional mental experiences (Husserl :q.8: :;; my translation) and
its intentional correlates (ibid.: :8:), that is, the actual how of [a phenomenons] inten-
tional appearance [in consciousness] (Husserl :q86: :8; my translation). Accordingly, Der-
ridas approach thus suggests, echoing Stanley Fish and others, literatures functional depen-
dence on the constituting subject or community of subjects.
Eskin

On Literature and Ethics 585
rather than dierencesof 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 dis-
cussion: (:) both are fundamentally concerned with the variegated domain
of 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 rst common trait speaks to the close practical-
historical link betweenthe two andis inno needof 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., 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 postulates
of Bakhtins (:qq6: :8o) metalinguistics is that all utterances clothe them-
selves 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 depen-
dent on all the factors of the [immediate] extraverbal context (Voloshinov
:q8; [:q.6]: :o6) for their functioning; while secondary speech genres, such
as novels, plays, scientic treatises of all kinds, etc. (Bakhtin :qq6: :8o)
are relatively independent of their immediate contexts (Voloshinov :q8;
[:q.6]: :o6).
29
Secondary speech genres are predicated on the absorption
and transformation of both primary and secondary genres (Bakhtin :qq6:
:6:, :8o). This means that secondary speech genres are by denition meta-
generic, that is, they are utterances enclosing or encompassing utterances
and, as such, utterances about utterances.
Acontextually relevant discursive connectioncanbe establishedbetween
literature and (moral) philosophy in light of MacIntyres (:q8 [:q8:]: .::)
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).
.8. It will be remembered that metalinguistics is Bakhtins (:qq: q) term for his approach to
language through the prismof utterance. On the relation of Bakhtins metalinguistics to prag-
matics, which I do not discuss here, see Eskin .ooo: , 6, 6q. See also Morris :q8; Carnap
:qq. All translations from Bakhtin are mine.
.q. See also Clark and Holquist :q8: .oq. 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.: q). Utterances of the rst kind, MacIntyre (ibid.: :) stresses, de-
pend upon who utters them to whom . . . while utterances of the second
kind are not similarly dependent . . . on the context of utterance. Mac-
Intyres specication of the language of moral philosophy in the same meta-
linguistic terms that Bakhtin uses to describe literature points to a similarity
between the two discursive modes which relegates putative ontological-
referential dierentiations to a place of metalinguistic insignicance. Mac-
Intyre (ibid.: 6;o, ;;, :o;) suggests as much when he unmasks some
of the central concepts of moral philosophysuch as happiness, utility,
natural and human rights, and goodnessas moral ctions. 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 rela-
tion to its extralinguistic context, to the worldand this holds both for
adequational and vericationist theories of reference and truthany sec-
ondary utterance is structurally ctional insofar as it purports to be con-
textually independent; no strict ontological, referential distinction can be
upheld between the truth/untruth of ction and the truth/untruth
of propositions falling into the realmof secondary speech genres, especially
moral propositions.
A metalinguistic approach, then, allows us to obviate the diculties in-
volved in attempting to distinguish modes of discourse (and their attendant
ethical valence) on the basis of referential-ontological criteria. In fact, such
binaries as ctional/nonctional or apophantic/nonapophantic, far from
being foundational, reveal themselves as the internal semantic eects, as it
were, of particular kinds of utterance. In other words, apophansis would
be the ction of certain kinds of utterance (e.g., philosophical, scientic,
historical), whereas ctionality would be the ction of certain other kinds
of utterance (e.g., literary), whereby ction 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 rst 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 ctionalalbeit in
qualitatively dierent ways (and this is crucial)they are indeed amenable
Eskin

On Literature and Ethics 587
to being mutually imbricated. And it is the specic subject of their c-
tionswhat 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 ctions and if both deal with the human person as a
whole, what is the dierence 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 inter-
nal makeup, as it were, ought to come into play. By internal makeup I do not
mean its uses of gures or its ctionality but its semiotic homology with
language as such. Recourse to mile Benvenistes discussions of language
will facilitate this nal move in my ruminations.
The semiotically most signicant characteristic of language, according
to Benveniste (:q;: 6:), is that it is the interpretant of all [other meaning-
creating] 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 reected, 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, fundamen-
tally, due to its discursive capaciousness: it can incorporate, encompass,
embody, engage in live contexts, illuminate from innumerable perspec-
tives, and thus transformin short, interpretthe propositions, problems
addressed, and truths attained in ethics. In a literary work, the philoso-
phemes and speculations of a Locke, Hume [and] Berekely (Woolf :q8:
[:q.;]: ) 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 Light-
house thought [Mr. Ramsay] the greatest metaphysician of the time (ibid.:
;). Whereas moral philosophys only ction would be moral truth,
the latter is merely one aspect or componentalbeit a central oneof the
manifold truth of the ction of literature. Ina 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 inter-
pretant designates, according to Charles Sanders Peirce (fromwhomBen-
veniste borrows the term), what is ordinarily called the meaning of the
sign (Peirce :q.:q66, :6), and that meaning for Peirce is merely
yet another, perhaps a more developed sign (ibid.: .:..8) translating the
rst, 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 per-
haps a more developed [more capacious, more universal and concrete]
signinto a medium and a context in which philosophical conceptu-
ality (Attridge :qq.: .) is transformed, developed into something that can
make us see and feel . . . in a way no philosophical treatise can (McGinn
:qq;: :;6). And insofar as any discourse becomes meaningful by dint of
translation (reading/interpretation), it is indeed justied to say that litera-
ture . . . is a moment or structural possibility (Attridge :qq: ::) of ethics
in particular.
In light of literatures metalinguistic, thematic, and semiotic enmesh-
ment with ethics, stipulated dierences between the two discourses predi-
cated on the ction/nonction 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 a
discursive-semiotic continuum, they yield themselves to productive juxta-
position and interface. From Platos (e.g., Republic 6a6e) recourse to
Homer to Levinass (:qqo [:q;]: ;:, ..8, :q8.: q8) invocation of Dostoevsky
and Celan, literature has been philosophys haunting twinits critic. In a
semiotic sense, ethics needs literatureits metalinguistic and thematic sib-
lingto 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 (:q86 [:;qo]: q/:o) already sug-
gested, 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 lit-
erature 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 fulll: the need to rationally rule and guide (Nussbaum
:q86: .) 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 fromliving
at the mercy of luck. But this ought to be the subject of another essay.
o. For Peirces numerous denitions and descriptions of the functioning of signs, see his
Collected Papers (:q.:q66), esp. vol. .:q., ..8, .., o; vol. :.:o; vol. :6; and vol. :.
:. Famously, Kant (:q86 [:;qo]: :;) relied on his Critique of Judgment to integrate the concep-
tual 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
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