Book Review:
Anthony Cunningham, The Heart of What Matters: The role for literature in moral philosophy,
This
book makes the case that literature has a significant role to play in moral
philosophy. It makes that case first in the abstract, and then through in-depth
case-studies of four relatively-popular modern novels. Cunningham engages
deftly in the practice of using literature for the purpose of attaining moral
insight, and this achievement alone makes his book very worthwhile reading for
anyone interested in literature or indeed of morality -- as arguably all of us
must be.
Cunningham
is I think on balance a more effective philosophical reader of literature than
his famous predecessors (e.g. Nussbaum, Rorty). For instance, his account of
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day -- as a tragedy of failure to
open up to the possibility of love, as a subtle ‘argument’ for the moral
vitalness of vitality and passion in life, as a rejoinder to Kantian
derogations of the moral significance of intimacy, and especially as making
possible a balanced but nevertheless stark view of the weaknesses of Stoicism
as an ethical (and yet viably and distinctively human) way of life -- is novel
and almost faultless.
One
could take issue with the criticism Cunningham makes (on p.104f. of The
Heart...) of Stevens (the quasi-stoical protagonist of the novel)
concerning the latter’s blind faith in his employer, Lord Darlington (who will
later be judged severely by history, as a Nazi-appeaser). Cunningham urges that
the novel teaches us that Stevens’s failure to even consider allowing any place
in his life for passion is a moral failing. But if Stevens has a ruling passion (albeit a professional
one), it is perhaps for serving
One
could also take issue with Cunningham’s (similar) failure to notice the one
domain in Stevens’s life, the one element in his story, in which we see him
(Stevens) directly ruled (though even here, fairly unknowingly) by ordinary
human love or something resembling it: for if Stevens shows love for anyone by his actions, it is
for his father -- for “Mr Stevens senior”, as Miss Kenton (the woman who would
love Stevens if he let her) is coldly forced to call him. This love is the one
thing that Stevens allows to get in the way of his utter professional
flawlessness. Through this loving respect for his father, Stevens cannot bring
himself to see that his father is increasingly unable to carry out his duties;
but, tragically, Stevens allows himself to love his father only by giving him
an exceptional degree of latitude to continue in his duties even when he is
manifestly not up to them, and not by more conventional means (such as
responding to his father’s questions as to whether he has been a good father,
or by attending his deathbed, or in fact by showing him any normal human warmth
whatsoever).
These
are perhaps important difficulties with Cunningham’s reading of The Remains
of the Day -- but they are absolutely the only difficulties I could find
with it. As a case-study to back up Cunningham’s central contentions, this one
is manifestly successful. (Moreover, the fact that this book, like the others
that Cunningham reads here, is fairly widely-read,
makes his book perhaps more useful for teaching purposes than comparable work
by (say) Nussbaum or Diamond.)
Furthermore,
Cunningham’s ‘case-studies’ are not simply an extended list, coming after an
‘in principle’ argument. They genuinely flesh out the more abstract
considerations of the first part of the book; and they follow on one from
another in a concerted fashion. Objections remaining to Cunningham’s account of
The Remains of the Day (concerning in particular Cunningham’s
counter-intuitive but impressive account of the desirability on occasion of psychological or characterological
breakdown) are finally despatched in his account of Beloved. The book
has no concluding chapter, but one is not necessary -- the closing account of
Zora Neal Hurston’s novels efficaciously concludes the book’s discussion in and
of itself. This is a crucial point: Cunningham has a view of the complex nature of our emotional life, an anti-Stoical
post-Kantian view which he develops
through reading novels, and that view is of real interest. The view needs
literature in order for it to be developed, because only something as complex
as literature can yield such a subtle view – the trolley-case just won’t do.
(For reasons which may therefore be obvious, Cunningham’s view of the emotions
etc. resists easy summary -- and so I will not attempt such summary. If you
want to know more, you’ll have to read the book, I’m afraid.)
If
there is a real difficulty with this book – and I am not certain that there is
-- then it lies in a different quarter. It lies in the question of what its
primary audience is. Who now -- in the wake of the recently influential
arguments of intellectuals as diverse as J.M.Coetzee and Richard Rorty and
Martha Nussbaum and Hillis Miller and Emmanuel Levinas, and in the face
moreover of the abiding obviousness of the widespread moral functioning (in
places as diverse as schools and prisons) of literary art -- really needs
convincing that the appreciation of literature can contribute to moral
philosophy? Cunningham does not try to argue the more radical case that
literature can contribute substantively to (say) epistemology. He does not try
to prove that literature is more valuable to moral philosophy than is (say)
autobiography, or history. He does not try to prove that all literature, or
even all good literature, has moral relevancy. He tries to prove only that some
good novels can provide moral enlightenment and can help to grow moral
knowledge in a manner hard to attain by writing standard philosophical
treatises alone.
This
is a much less radical cause now than
it was 20 years ago, even in the academy. I found this book very persuasive --
but that is hardly surprising, given that I, like many others, am already in
all essentials persuaded. The onus is now perhaps on those -- such as perhaps
Richard Posner, Alexander Nehamas, and Stanley Fish -- who would resist
‘Ethical Criticism’ in particular and the relevancy of literature to ethics in
general to fight for their corner,
rather than on the likes of Cunningham to make his case.
In
short, it is to this reviewer not absolutely obvious that a book like this --
however thorough and excellent and even faultless it is (as this book very
largely is) -- is necessary.
However,
I may well be being over-optimistic. Perhaps there are still legions of
benighted philosophers out there, philosophers who still dismiss Wittgenstein
or Virtue Ethics, philosophers who feel that only a systematic moral theory can
possibly teach us anything true about Socrates’s question of how to live. And
perhaps English Departments still harbour many theorists who shudder at words
like ‘value’ or ‘heart’, and who long for the continued right to practice those
varieties of post-Post-Structuralism which are undisturbed and unconvinced by
the claim that literature’s role in ethical life is real and worthy of academic
attention.
In
short, perhaps it is not the interesting arguments of Posner et al, but the broad mass of the
professions of Philosophy and Literary Studies which would resist Cunningham’s
case. Cunningham certainly provides some important criticisms in his book of
those contemporary Kantians (such as Guyer, Korsgaard, Herman)
who would so resist.
I hope that the high tides of Moral Theory and
Literary Theory are enough on the wane that Cunningham’s book might be left
stranded on fertile and growing golden sands, protesting rather too much. I
hope that the heart of the resistance to the relatively modest claims for
literature that Cunningham makes has in reality long since given out. But,
judging on the one hand by the continuing difficulty in defending ‘quality’ and
‘value’ in literature in the academy, and judging on the other by the enduring
power of Kantianism and of ‘systematic’ ethics, which are still sometimes
alleged to be the only available antidotes to relativism, I may be wrong.
Either
way, it remains the case that Cunningham’s readings remain of great intrinsic
value, especially in that they do a rare degree of philosophic justice to the
complex life of our emotions. Returning again to The
Remains of the Day: I think that much of what Cunningham finds in
Ishiguro’s wonderful novel will have been clear to any attentive reader not
blinded by pre-existing theoretical committments or the like. But still,
Cunningham’s own clear and yet subtle reading of the novel, and his engagement
with those who might continue to appraise Stevens on more or less Kantian or
Stoical grounds, is likely to serve to deepen one’s appreciation of the novel’s
moral themes and tasks. Rather than the increasingly obvious (even unarguable?)
role for literature in moral philosophy needing to be argued for, the role for
(a ‘post-theoretical’?) moral philosophy in (the detailed and extended
appreciation of) literature is perhaps the real and concretely-exemplified
lesson of Cunningham’s intelligent and wise writing.