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Philosophy & Social Criticism

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Literary imagination and morality: A modest query of an immodest


proposal
Axel Honneth
Philosophy Social Criticism 1998; 24; 41
DOI: 10.1177/019145379802400204
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1998 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Axel Honneth

Literary imagination and


morality
A modest query of

an

immodest

proposal

In his 1991 lecture that has since become famous, Joseph Brodsky,
accepting his nomination as Poet Laureate of the United States, made

the immodest proposal that volumes of poetry be made available to


wide segments of the population at a minimal price.By subsidizing the
retail price and multiplying the circulation a hundredfold, or even a
thousandfold, it would be possible to offer poetry at a going-rate as
favorable, say, as that of ice cream or the daily paper:
must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is. It
should be as ubiquitous as the nature that surrounds us, and from which
poetry derives many of its similes; or as ubiquitous as gas stations, if not as
cars themselves. Bookstores should be located not only on campuses or
main drags, but at the assembly plants gates also. Paperbacks of those we
deem classics should be cheap and sold at supermarkets. This is, after all,
a country of mass production, and I dont see why whats done for cars cant
be done for books of poetry, which take you quite a bit further. Because you
dont want to go a bit further? Perhaps; but if this is so, its because you are
deprived of the means of transportation, not because the distances and the
destinations that I have in mind dont exist. (32)

Poetry

Anyone who

proposes such

extensive redistribution of public


for
that proposal, even if it is only
good
made ironically or in order to be provocative. For it is not self-evident
that poetry, or fiction in general, serves purposes that we all would
consider worthy of our support. If I read him correctly, Brodskys
lecture puts forth two independent arguments to justify subsidizing the
monies

must

have

an

reasons

41-

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42

production of literature, and at first glance, it is not easy to see


the connection between the two. Indeed, both arguments refer to the
positive effects that the reading of fiction should have on the moral
capacities or qualities of ordinary humans - Brodsky claims categorically that aesthetics is the mother of ethics (35). But what sort of
edifying function literature should have, and how our moral capacities
are to be amplified in the reading of poems, are questions that are
mass

answered in

completely different manner in Brodskys two argufirst, Brodsky describes the moral effect of literature in
connection with human sensitivity: since our expressive vocabulary
multiplies and grows more differentiated in the reading of fiction, our
capacity to feel the pain of the other and to relate to the suffering of
the other is also heightened. According to Brodskys terse formulation,
literature is the only insurance available against the vulgarity of the
human heart (35). As long as it is not penetrated by the metaphorical
power of poetic text, normal language is bound to merely instrumental
ments.

In the

action:
Yet what weve mastered
to

outfox

an

is but an idiom, good enough perhaps


product, to get laid, to earn a promotion, but
good enough to cure anguish or cause joy. Until one learns

[as adults]

enemy, to sell

certainly not
to pack ones

sentences with meanings like a van or to discern and love in


the beloveds features a pilgrim soul, until one becomes aware that no
memory of having starred/atones for later disregard/or keeps the end from
being hard - until things like that are in ones bloodstream, one still
belongs among the sublinguals. Who are the majority, if thats a comfort?

(34)
While this argument sees the moral effect of literature in its ability,
thanks to its metaphorical riches, to heighten our sensitivity, the second
refers to our cognitive faculties. According to Brodskys lecture, the
reading of fiction increases our perceptive capacity and staves off
ignorance (35); only thus are the cultural presuppositions of a true
democracy established on a broad foundation. But this thesis only gives
rise to a complete argument when it is supplemented with a further
determination, one which is of classical origin and which can elucidate
the sense of what Brodsky means: Literature today presents an indispensable medium, because it offers to us the cognition of the unique
properties of the special case and of the singular form of life in a
way that is indispensable to the democratic associating of citizens with
one another. In other words, Brodsky sees the moral effect of fictional
texts in its heightening of our capacity to perceive differences by virtue
of an aesthetic presentation of the particulars. We may infer that this
heightened capacity benefits the ethical life of democracies, where we
have to learn to deal with individual differences both sensitively and

calmly.
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43

In what follows I would like to show that neither of these arguments


is able to ground Brodskys far-reaching proposal. With these arguments
he does no favors to his own proposal, as important and as worthy of
defense as it is. To anticipate: the theses put forward by Brodsky are
either too one-sided or too general to characterize precisely the moral
effect that arises only in literary texts, and in every literary text. Too onesided, in that they can find support from only a small sampling of the
multiplicity of poetic and fictional literature; too general, in that they
refer to characteristics of literature that are found just as readily, if not
more readily, in our other cultural media. Here I do not bring objections

solely against Brodskys reflections, which remain, for good aesthetic


reasons, argumentatively rather undeveloped. For in the currently widespread debate about the relation of ethics and aesthetics both of Brodskys arguments have been independently and philosophically defended.
new book, Poetic Justice, Martha Nussbaum (1995) argues for
the first of Brodskys theses: fiction owes its moral quality to the aesthetic
property that allows us to participate in the suffering and pain of the
other, and in such a way that leads to a de-centering of our feelings and
an increase in our sensitivity. And Wolfgang Welsch (1996) has recently
provided philosophical support to the second argument Brodsky makes
use of: in different texts he has maintained the thesis that literature,
indeed aesthetic presentations in general, possess a moral effect insofar
as they heighten our capacity to set off the particular from the universal
and to perceive it in its concrete singularity. To this degree there is an
impulse to justice (Welsch) inherent in modern art. As is easily seen,
both philosophical positions hark back to considerations already developed in the classical debates on the moral role of art: the reference to
the aesthetic heightening of our sensitivity is already found in Schillers
letters on the aesthetic education of mankind, and the reference to the
aesthetic elevation of our capacity for individualizing cognition is
already recognizable, in a certain way, in Kants concept of reflective
judgment. But this relation with classical aesthetic positions is not what
leaves both philosophical theories inappropriate for a justification of
Brodskys proposal. It is the complementary weaknesses of the two arguments (too exclusive and too general) that prevent them from providing
good moral reasons for subsidizing literature.
Like Brodsky in his first thesis, Nussbaum sees the ethical function of
literature in the fact that it lets us take on the role of a disinterested yet
passionate participant, one who learns to see with his own eyes the argumentative weight of the pain and suffering of others in aesthetically
presented attitudes and stances. For feelings and emotions possess a
cognitive content; they are affective bearers of convictions that we can
only disclose when we find for them, through the expressive power of
fiction, the appropriate language. In this Nussbaum is in almost word for

In her

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44

word agreement with

Brodsky. In this way the reading of literature


strengthens our capacity to include the affective reactions of others as
potential arguments in moral judgment. An extensive grounding for the
specific connection that Nussbaum sees between literary imagination and
morality is found in her essay, Finely Aware and Richly Responsible
(1986), which offers an interpretation of an action-sequence from The
Golden Bowl by Henry James. In light of a revised moral conception,
according to which the adequacy of a moral judgment is to a large extent
appropriate to principle-guided attentiveness to all nuances of a particular context, she produces the constructive contribution of an aesthetically
guided presentation of the practice of moral attention. According to
Nussbaum, in our refracted identification with protagonists we as readers learn, with the help of the authors creative metaphors, to set ourselves
in the infinite complexity of a morally exemplary situation so that in the
end we have shouldered our moral attentiveness for moods, life expectations, and

concrete duties.
The weakness, not of this moral-theoretical conception but rather
of the aesthetic one presented here, shows itself immediately when we
ask which type of fictional texts in general cohere with such a characterization of literature. This position is bound to those literary presentations that permit a certain measure of disinterested identification
insofar as they allow us to participate in the action-sequence of a story
of emotional reactions and affects. That back and forth movement

between identification with and compassion for the protagonist, of


which Nussbaum speaks, is only possible in narrative texts that develop
a morally instructive interaction between sufficiently deep characters. In
short, such a determination is applicable only to the novels of the realistic tradition, to bourgeois drama, and perhaps to parts of classical and
expressionistic poetry. Thus it is no surprise that Nussbaum develops her
thesis in connection with the novels of Charles Dickens or Henry James,
once in a while allowing herself a side glance at E.M. Forster. With such
a systematic and, from Nussbaums position, unavoidable limitation,
one renders no aid to Brodskys proposal. For in the final analysis, only
a particular sampling of fictional literature would prove to be worthy of
support from such moral criteria: Dickens, Fontane, and perhaps
Faulkner might thus be available at any gas station, but Mallarme and
Ernst Jandl, Joyce and William Gaddis would be so expensive that
almost no one would be able to afford their works.
Wolfgang Welsch, on the other hand, starts out from a position identical to Brodskys second thesis, claiming that the reading of fiction
permits us an aesthetic experience that indirectly delivers a cognitive
gain. For in understanding what is aesthetically presented, we sharpen
our perception of the incomparable [unverfiigbar] individual, so that in
the end we arrive at a developed sense for the particularity of the single
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45

one removed from any generalization. The reading of literature,


indeed the experience of art in general, strengthens our capacity to
perceive situations and events from the point of view of the individual
other, and to include this unique viewpoint in evaluating moral conflicts.
Now the problem with this second position is certainly not that it is too
exclusive or restrictive. In fact, much of that which is achieved in
aesthetic experience generally understood can be described in a similar
way: as the perception of a foreign view of the world. But isnt this
determination then too general to be able to describe an advance in
cognition which should only be achieved in the experience of the work
of art? The model of a cognition that penetrates, by way of the circlelike disclosure of particularities, to the individual nucleus of a particular point-of-view is of hermeneutic descent; it was evolved, already in
Schleiermacher, in connection with the experience of conversation, and
was carried over by Gadamer, for one, to the understanding of works of
art. But then it is the communicative experience of reciprocal understanding that makes possible that specific form of individualizing cognition, the form which Welsch would like to reserve for aesthetic
experience alone. Thus Brodskys proposal isnt served by this aesthetic
position, either. For why should we support the production and distribution of the novels of Claude Simon, lets say, when the German-French
student exchange service accomplishes the same, morally speaking, or
indeed, much more? Why subsidize modern poetry for the sake of the
progress in moral cognition which mass tourism might produce on a
much broader foundation?2
The result of my excursion through the various aesthetic possibilities of justifying Brodskys proposal is thus negative: the concepts of
aesthetic experience that are here offered with an eye towards moral
insight are either too one-sided or too general to justify a special ethical position for literature. Obviously the question remains whether
there is an aesthetic idea of fiction that is both concrete and general
enough to justify, or at least to make plausible, Brodskys thinking. I
want to close with a speculative idea, one that attempts to draw consequences from ancient tragedy as to the indirect moral function of
fiction.3 In its political life, Athenian democracy, the polls, depended
fundamentally on tragic theater; for attendance at the tragedies permitted the citizens to withdraw temporarily from their routinized, everyday life of political decision-making in order that they be opened up to
an experience that was to benefit, in return, the rationality of their
decisions. To be more specific: in the experience of the aesthetically
presented event, these citizens were emotionally confronted with the
fact that they had to make their decisions in a world that was essentially more morally complex and more morally contradictory than was
visible in the rational will-formation of the polis. There were many

case,

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46

actions in tragedy that had more than one plausible interpretation.


Forms of life, in themselves just, always collided with one another: what

counted as rational was periodically and abruptly distorted, and even


transformed into its opposite.
Why shouldnt we understand literature as a whole as being for our
still incomplete democracy what ancient tragedy was for the rational
will-formation of the polis: a necessary form of interruption that
confronts us all with the fact that the human soul is too profound and
too rich in meanings to permit simple answers to the question about how
to live? Fictional literature in all its forms aesthetically reveals to us the
insight that our action always contains more in symbolic meaning than
we commonly visualize in the everyday life of democracy. Thus, in order
to protect ourselves from the over-hasty decisions that are guided only
by the easiest interpretations of utterances or the vicissitudes of life - in
other words, for the sake of political rationality - we must keep
ourselves open to this aesthetically presented surplus of meaning. In this
sense, the engagement with fiction would afford to every member of a
democratic community the interruption of the everyday that is necessary
in order to make us aware of the indispensable plurality of possible
interpretations of all that we do.
Such, it seems to me, could possibly justify Brodskys immodest
proposal. Literature deserves an economic subsidy from the constitutional state, since it opens for us in its various guises the experience of
the multiplicity of possible meanings for our everyday actions. For without such a knowledge, which can be developed only aesthetically, our
political decisions would lack that particular type of rationality that
consists in the consciousness of the provisionality and fragility of our
respective dominant, intersubjectively worked out interpretations of
meaning. In grounding his proposal Brodsky would have thus done
better to speak only of an indirect function of the literary imagination
for morality. What we reach in a unique way through literary imagination is neither moral sensitivity nor hermeneutic capability, but rather
that feel for the surplus of meaning in our actions that fosters level-headedness in political-moral decisions.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Faculty of Philosophy,


Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
(Translated by Stephen Findley)

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47
Notes
1

2
3

All numbers in parentheses in the following text refer to the corresponding


pages of this lecture.
I owe the comparison with mass tourism to Ruth Sonderegger.
In the following I make use of an idea developed by Jonathan Lear in
reference to psychoanalysis.

References
Brodsky, Joseph (1991)

An Immodest

November, 31-6.
Lear, Jonathan (1995) The Shrink

is

Proposal,

The New

,
Republic

11

in, The New Republic


, 25 December,

18-25.

Nussbaum, Martha (1986) Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Moral


Attention and the Moral Task of Literature, The Journal of Philosophy
,
82(10): 516-29.
Nussbaum, Martha (1995) Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public
Life. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Rorty, Richard (1989) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Welsch, Wolfgang (1996) Asthethik: Ethische Implikationen und Konsequenzen
der Asthetik, in Wolfgang Welsch Crenzgänge der Asthetik. Stuttgart:
Reclam Verlag.

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