Literature has ethical value if reading it gives occasion to think about ethical questions. If a story dramatizes conflicts and dilemmas, it is not necessarily teaching us how to live, but it encourages us to contemplate the codes that the characters live by. If a poem has a speaker who promotes a particular world view or seems conflicted about the world he lives in, the reader can try to look through the eyes of that speaker and see what he or she sees. We may not agree with a speaker's or character's morality, but seeing that morality in action can shed light on what it means or how it changes the world. If we reflect on a moral code, instead of simply rejecting it or embracing it, then we are thinking ethically, and literature that promotes such thinking is ethically valuable. Here are some important ethical questions: What is the good life? What is the excellent life? Where do the definitions of good and excellent come from? Why do different definitions come into conflict? On what basis do they conflict? Remember: works that raise questions do not always answer them. To measure the ethical value of a work of literature, we need to ask the following questions:
- Do the characters make choices in the work? What are those choices?
- Do the characters or speakers defend particular beliefs or points of view? What are they?
- What motivates those choices or beliefs or points of view in the work?
- Where does the confidence in that motivation come from in the work?
- Is there a crisis in that confidence in the work? Why?
- To what place do those choices or beliefs or points of view lead in the work?
Yes, we can appreciate literature in the negative: we CAN decide that it holds little to no value for us, ethically speaking. But we must be able to explain WHY it holds no value, the same way we have to explain WHY it does. Your goal this semester is to learn how to explain your evaluation one way or the other. Before you accept or reject a work of literature based on its ethical value for you, you must first actually MEASURE that value.
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