The Enlargement of Life: Moral Imagination at Work 9781501732232

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The Enlargetnent of Life

OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN KERES

A Justification of Rationality The Nature of Philosophy The Examined Life Moral Tradition and Individuality Facing Evil The Morality of Pluralism Moral Wisdom and Good Lives Against Liberalism A Case for Conservatism Pluralism in Philosophy: Changing the Subject The Art of Life The Illusions of Egalitarianism The Roots of Evil

The Enlargement

of Life

Moral Imagination at Work JOHN KEKES

Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright© 2006 by Cornell University All right' reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or part' thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2006 by Cornell Vniversity Press Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kekes,John. The enlargement of life : moral imagination at work I John Kekes. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-B: 978-0-8014-7627-3 1. Imagination (Philosophy) ~. Autonomy (Philosophy) 3. Self (Philosophy) 4. Conduct of life. 5. Self-realization-Moral and ethical aspects. 6. Imagination in literature. 7. Self (Philosophy) in literature. 8. Conduct of life in literature. 9. Self-realization in literature. I. Title. BH30l.l53K45 2006 171' .3-dc22 2006019:\43

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Contents

Acknowledgments

XI

Introduction

Xlll

Part One The Ideal 1. Reflective Self-Evaluation

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1.1 From Autonomy to Reflective Self-Evaluation 3 1. 2 The Problem of Exclusion 5 1.3 The Problem of Morality and Responsibility 7 1. 4 The Problem of Moral Obtuseness 11 1.5 The Balanced Ideal 13 1.6 Imagination 15

2. Moral Imagination 2. I Characteristics 19 2.2 Possibilities and Limits 24 2.3 Reason and the Voluntarist Ideal

2. 4 Moral Imagination and the Good 2.5 Overview 33

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Part Two The Corrective Imagination 3. Understanding Life Backward 3.1 Mill's Case 37 3. 2 Limitations 40 3.3 Sincerity 42

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Contents 3. 4 Prornetherm Romanticism 46 3.5 Transcending Limits 49 3. 6 The Need for Balance 52

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4. From Hope and Fear Set Free 4.1 4.2 4.3 4. 4 4.5

Myth and Reality 55 Contingency 59 Oedipus's Achievement 62 Coping with Contingency 66 IsRealismEnough? 73

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5. All Passion Spent 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5. 6

Responsibility and Fulfillment 75 Living Responsibly 77 opting for Responsibility 79 Going Deeper 82 Shortchanged by Morality 86 Overview 90

Part Three From Exploratory to Disciplined Imagination 6. Registers of Consciousness 6.1 6.2 6.3 6. 4 6.5

95

The Approach 95 The General Imbroglio 96 The Failure and Its Sources 102 Aesthetic Romanticism and Its Snares 108 Exploratory Imagination and Aesthetic Romanticism

7. This Process ofVision 7.1 7. 2 7.3 7.4 7.5

117

Halfway to Fulfillment 117 Growing in Appreciation of Life 119 Seeing Things as They Are 121 Integrated Lives 125 An Honorable Failure 131

8. An Integral Part of Life 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6

115

Self Transformation 134 A Book Consubstantial with Its Author Innocence and Reflection 142 Growing Inward 146 Living Appropriately 150 Overview 152

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Contents

IX

Part Four The Disciplined Imagination 9. Toward a Purified Mind 9.1 9.2 9. 3 9.4 9.5

Purit;; 159 Two Kinds ofPurity 160 Transcendental Romanticism 166 Reflective Purity 173 Reflective Purity and the Balanced Ideal

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10. The Self's Judgment of the Self 10. 1 I 0. 2 10.3 10.4 10.5

11. The Hardest Service 11.1 11. 2 11.3 11.4 11.5

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The Standard View 181 Doubts about the Standard View 185 The Revised View 188 Doubts about the Revised View 195 Shame and the Balanced Ideal 200

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Reason and Reflective Self-Evaluation 203 The Uses of Reason 205 Reason in Reflective Self-Evaluation 208 Wrestling with Truth 211 Overview 217

Notes

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Works Cited

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Index

235

Acknowledgments

The title of this book has been suggested to me by George Santayana, writing in Three PhilosojJhical Poets of "a steady contemplation of all things in their order and worth. Such a contemplation is imaginative. No one can reach it who has not enlarged his mind and tamed his heart." Wallace Stevens consciously echoes this in The Necessary Anp;el, where he says in the introduction that imagination leads to "the enlargement of life." My interest is in the moral importance of imagination, and this is best revealed, I think, in works of literature. The chapters that follow focus on literary works that show something important about the place of imagination in a good life. I have discussed five of these works before, but I hope that my treatment of them here reflects a deeper understanding than l had earlier. The discussions of Oedipus in chapter 4, Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence in chapter 5, and Thomas More in chapter 9 use substantially revised versions of what I say about them in The Art of Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), chapters 4, 3, and 2. My reflections on Montaigne in chapter 8 draw on Moral Wisdom and Good Lives (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), chapter 6. And I first wrote about Herodotus's story in chapter 10 of The Momlity of Plumlism (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1993), chapter 8. Chong Kim Chong and Ann Hartle have kindly read and commented on several chapters. ln revising them, I have greatly benefited from their help, and I gratefully acknowledge it. In the book I am critical of some works of Harry G. Frankfurt, Stuart Hampshire, and Iris Murdoch. I want to make clear that I am deeply indebted to them. For many years now their writings have been part of the furniture of my mind. Their questions have been my questions, and they have remained so even when I could not accept their answers. I have learned very much from these fine tl1inkers. I also want to make clear that although this book is about the construeXI

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Acknowledg;ments

tive, sunny side of our moral life, moral life has a destructive, dark side as well. I say little about the latter here, not because I doubt its importance but because I have said about it what I could in The Roots of Evil (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). My editor at Cornell was once again Roger Haydon. It has become a habit to thank him again and again for his sympathy and support for the kind of work this and previous books of mine represent. I cannot imagine a better editor than he, and I am grateful for his excellence and encouragement. The book is dedicated to my wife, who makes it all possible and worthwhile.

ITHAKA Charlton, New York

J.K.

Introduction

Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture. This is the process which moral philosophy must attempt to describe and analyse. -IRIS MURDOCH, "Metaphysics and Ethics"

The epigraph expresses with remarkable economy the aim of this book. There are three processes I describe and analyze: making pictures, coming to resemble them, and reflecting in a particular way. I hope to show that these processes jointly lead away from a widely held contemporary ideal of a good life. Its ruling ideas are freedom, choice, individuality, self-direction, and responsibility. The connecting link between them is the importance attributed to being in control of one's life and actions. Coercion, manipulation, obedience, authority, repression, and compulsion are its enemies. I call this the ideal of autonomy, and have serious doubt~ about it. Many people in affluent Westem democracies take this ideal for granted without having made a conscious commitment to it. It forms the background of what they value and shapes what they expect out of life. But when they try to live according to it, they frequently fail because misfortune, failure, boredom, confusion, hostile interference, inconsistent aspirations, communal ties, religious and political allegiances, impersonal demands by bureaucratized institutions, family and work-related obligations, personal shortcomings, conflicting desires, and other obstacles stand in their way. These obstacles force them to become conscious of the ideal in the background and to examine critically their commitment to it. I think that such critical examination discloses that although the ideal has great attractions, it also has great problems. These problems lead to my central X Ill

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Introduction

concern: to show one wav in which a substantially revised version of this ideal may be reasonably pursued through the three processes of which the epigraph speaks. We make pictures by means of the moral imagination. We come to resemble them by transforming ourselves. And we do so by reflective self-evaluation, which is the name I give to the revised version of the ideal of autonomy. Moral imagination, self~transformation, and reflective self-evaluation together enlarge life by enlarging its possibilities and overcoming obstacles to their realization. To live is to act, and we act because we want to satisfy our desires and avoid their frustration. We thus aim at a future condition that we suppose would be an improvement over the present. Such activities are essential to living, and we are unavoidably engaged in them. Some people, however, succeed better than others because they reflect better on their desires, frustrations, and aims and form a more realistic view of their possibilities and limits. They show that we need not be passive subjects at the mercy of external forces, but active agents who at least sometimes decide what desires to satisfy, what frustrations to endure, and what aims to pursue. We can often make such decisions because in civilized circumstances many possibilities are available. The objects of reflective self-evaluation are these possibilities. We reflect on them in order to understand why we want to pursue some of our possibilities rather than others. The result may be to act as we want or to refrain from acting that way because we suppose it would be a mistake. Moral imagination is one chief means by which this reflective selfevaluation proceeds. Its moral component is concerned with living a good life, understood as combining responsibility and fulfillment. Responsibility has to do with how our actions affect others. Fulfillment is overall contentment with life. Good lives require both because a responsible life may leave many important desires and aims frustrated, and a fulfilling life may be detrimental to the desires and aims of others. Frustrated lives and those lived in indifference or hostility to others are wanting in significant respects, so they fail to be good in the full sense of the word. The imaginative component of moral imagination involves both the correction of the unrealistic view we form of our limits and possibilities and the exploration of what it would be like to live according to our various possibilities. It enables us to understand how we might think, feel, and act, and how others might be affected by our actions if we were to change how we live by correcting our past mistakes and exploring particular possibilities. Moral imagination thus enlarges our understanding of the possibilities that are open to us and the limits within which we should pursue them. This kind of imagination must be concrete and particular because our limits and possibilities differ; beliefs, emotions, and desires vary; and so do

Introduction

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the contexts in which we live. To be sure, all of us are limited by having to conform to some universal requirements, but these constitute only a minimum. The possibilities oflife are much richer than the unavoidable physiological, psychological, and social limits to which all members of our species must conform or suffer the consequences. The abundance of possibilities and the concreteness and particularity of moral imagination make it impossible to formulate rules about how it should do its work. But that does not mean that we cannot be helped by learning from the lives of others. The richest source of lives from which we can learn is literature. There is, therefore, a special affinity between literature and moral imagination-an affinity of which I make much use. The chapters that follow focus on literary works that exemplify the success or failure of individuals as they try to correct their unrealistic view of themselves and explore more realistically their possibilities. These works, in the order in which I consider them, are John Stuart Mill's "Bentham" and Autobiography; Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus; Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence; Henry James's The Golden Bowl and The Ambassadors; Michel de Montaigne's f