Can Literature Be Moral Philosophy?

Author(s): D. D. Raphael
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 15, No. 1, Literature and/as Moral Philosophy (Autumn,
1983), pp. 1-12
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 Can Literature Be Moral Philosophy?

D. D. Raphael
HILOSOPHY, including moral philosophy, can certainly be lit-
erature. Can literature be moral philosophy? The question is
more conceptual than empirical. That is to say, the answer
depends less on looking for instances than on deciding what is meant
by "moral philosophy." Before concentrating on this issue, it will be
as well to clear the ground by making some distinctions.
The thesis that there is a positive connection between literature
and moral philosophy can mean different things. There are at least
the following four possibilities: (1) A work of moral philosophy can
also be a work of literature. (2) A work of literature can also be a
work of moral philosophy. (3) Moral philosophy can feed literature.
(4) Literature can feed moral philosophy. Propositions three and four
can themselves mean more than one thing. The metaphorical use of
feed does not indicate a single relationship unambiguously.
Let us consider first proposition four. If someone says that litera-
ture feeds moral philosophy, he may mean that characters or situa-
tions in a work of literature can be used as evidence for some issues
in moral philosophy; this is the most obvious, the richest, and the
most satisfying way in which literature and moral philosophy are
connected. But to say that literature feeds moral philosophy can also
mean that literature may stimulate a philosophical perception which
otherwise might have been missed. This is not common but it does
happen. Here is an example. Mary Midgley, in a recent "Viewpoint"
article in The TimesLiterarySupplemententitled "Selves and Shadows,"'
suggests that philosophical discussion of personal identity has ne-
glected a moral dimension which comes out in literary treatments of
a double, or a shadow, as an aspect of personality that the owner
rashly thinks he can dismiss. She illustrates her idea largely from two
Scottish novels, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and
James Hogg's Confessionsof a Justified Sinner (whose double uses Cal-
vinist doctrine to justify murder); and she refers also to Chamisso's
tale of Peter Schlemihl, who sold his shadow to the Devil, and to
Oscar Wilde's story of Dorian Gray, who unloaded his defects onto
his picture.
Proposition three is thinner than proposition four, and it uses the

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2 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

word feed in a different sense again. Some of Iris Murdoch's novels

feed on her views as a moral philosopher in that they exemplify in
imagined individuals her abstract ideas about good and evil. Sartre
likewise tries to exemplify his existentialist theory of ethics in a play
like Les Mouches or in his novels, La Nausee and the unfinished Les
Chemins de la liberte. What Murdoch and Sartre are doing here has
some affinity with the activity of a novelist who is not an explicit
philosopher but who gives expression, in imagined characters and
situations, to a moral insight. The possession of moral insight is of
course not a prerogative of moral philosophers and indeed is sadly
lacking in some of them. Moral philosophy can clarify moral insight
but can also twist it askew. If Iris Murdoch and Sartre had not been
philosophers and had given their literary talents free rein without
any guidance from a preconceived ethical theory, the moral tone of
their fictional works might have rung more true.
The example of Sartre, unlike that of Iris Murdoch, shows the
difficulty of marking a firm line of distinction between proposition
three and proposition two. Iris Murdoch draws on her philosophy as
one element among others in the material that she works into a novel.
She does not, I think, regard her writing of novels as a way of writing
moral philosophy. Sartre, on the other hand, did seem to treat the
writing of plays and novels as an alternative method of conveying his
philosophical notions to a wider public than would or could read his
strictly philosophical works. To me, however, proposition two is in-
teresting, not for the literary works of explicit philosophers like Sartre,
but for the works of literary artists who manage to achieve willy-nilly
what moral philosophers are after.
Enough of "feeding." Let us turn to propositions one and two. The
first is straightforward enough. It is evident that a book which is
primarily a work of philosophy (not only but including moral philo-
sophy) can also have merit as a work of literature. Obvious examples
are Plato's Phaedo, Republic, Symposium,Hobbes's Leviathan, Berkeley's
Three Dialogues betweenHylas and Philonous.
Plato's Phaedo is worth some special attention. While clearly a work
of philosophy, seeking to prove by rational argument the immortality
of the soul, the book depicts the character of Socrates and its effect
on his friends with a dramatic intensity that could scarcely be bettered
by any poet. So much so that Sir Richard Livingstone, presenting an
English translation of the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo under the title
Portrait of Socrates, printed the more strictly philosophical arguments
of this particular dialogue in smaller type "so that they can be either
read or omitted." He had, he said, "concentrated on what makes these
dialogues immortal," and evidently Plato's own arguments for im-

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CAN LITERATURE BE MORAL PHILOSOPHY? 3

mortality did not, in Livingstone's eyes, contribute to the immortality

of the Phaedo.2
What was Plato's aim in writing this dialogue? Was it philosophical
or something else? It was not literary-if indeed there is such a thing
as a bare literary aim. We can ask whether Plato's intention was to
present a philosophical case for immortality or to engage our admir-
ation for Socrates; and the answer surely is both. The second of these
two aims requires literary art if it is to succeed. In itself it is a didactic
aim, to instill in readers an appreciation of the moral virtues of Soc-
rates' character and a desire for self-improvement in emulation of
him. Suppose we were to say to Plato, following A. J. Ayer, that "there
is a distinction ... between the activity of a moralist ... and that of
a moral philosopher,"3 and that Plato's second aim in the Phaedo is
moralism and not moral philosophy. Would Plato accept this? He
would agree that one can be a moralist without being a moral phi-
losopher, but he would not agree that one can be an adequate moral
philosopher without being a moralist.
Allowing this, you may still question whether the moralism of the
Phaedo is part of an enterprise in moral philosophy; the philosophical
arguments of the dialogue are concerned with the immortality of the
soul, a topic for metaphysics rather than moral philosophy. However,
the matter is not as simple as that. We all know that the different
branches of philosophy run into each other, and in this particular
instance Plato had good reason to connect moral philosophy with the
topic of immortality.
To show why, let me go back to my statement that the literary
quality of the Phaedo includes a "dramatic intensity." The dialogue is
literally dramatic. It has the form of a Greek drama. Dialogue in itself,
of course, follows the method of presentation used by a dramatist
(ancient Greek drama depended almost entirely on what was said;
action was limited by the raised boots and the masks worn by the
actors), and Plato probably derived the dialogue form as much from
the drama as from Socrates' practice of dialectic. The Phaedo, how-
ever, follows the method of drama in more than the bare use of
dialogue. Like a Greek drama, the work is divided into "episodes"
(what later drama would call Acts), interrupted by pauses of a less
weighty character and, at two critical points, by comment from a
separate little group, the narrator and the spokesman of the circle of
listeners, forming a sort of mini-"chorus" to express the feelings of
the wider "audience" of the work. Still more significant is an indica-
tion that the drama is a kind of tragedy. The hero dies, nobly, having
excited our admiration; but early on, in the introductory discussion
of the "chorus," the narrator Phaedo, who had been present at the

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4 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

events he is going to describe, distinguishes the death of Socrates

from other tragedies. He says that Socrates died so fearlessly and
with such confidence that "he appeared blessed ... and about to be
happy, if any man ever was," in the next world. And therefore, adds
Phaedo (twice, to make sure that we have taken the point), "I did not
pity him" as one might otherwise have expected; instead there was a
strange mixture of pleasure and pain.
To understand this we must look at Plato's criticism of literature
in the Republic (Books II-III and X). The central point of that crit-
icism is an attack on the tragic drama, especially for inducing pity
and for allowing us to fear death and its aftermath. The Phaedo is a
reformed version of a tragic drama, one that meets Plato's criticism
of the poets. In the Republic Plato talks of a long-standing quarrel or
rivalry between poetry and philosophy; he means a rivalry for the
role of moral educator. The Phaedo is a "philosophical" tragedy, in
place of the "poetical" tragedies familiar to Plato's readers. Its dra-
matic form is necessarily connected with its philosophical purpose.4
Plato's Phaedo is a special case. For my present theme its importance
lies less in illustrating proposition one (that a work of moral philo-
sophy can also be a work of literature) than in affording indirect ev-
idence for proposition two (that a work of literature can also be a
work of moral philosophy). In the Phaedo Plato is trying to take the
place of tragic drama. He presupposes that the tragic drama of the
previous century performed the function which he was now taking
over. The function certainly included moral education, but I think it
can be called moral philosophy. To repeat what I once wrote on this
topic: "Tragic drama was the moral philosophy of fifth-century
Athens."5
What do I mean by that? I mean first that the ethical dimension
of Attic tragedy was not simply the preaching of moral doctrine; that
would be moralizing pure and simple. Yet I do not mean that the
moral doctrine is presented as the outcome of carefully structured
argument. I mean rather that it is presented as the outcome of a new
perspective, in a form of persuasion that can fairly be called rational
although not reducible to rules of inference like logic. If others accept
my view that some literature has an ethical dimension which strikes
the eye through a novel perspective, an ethical dimension which goes
beyond moralizing but is not reached by explicit argument-if they
accept this, will they also agree that such literature can be called a
form of moral philosophy?
That is the crux of the thesis I put forward at the start of this
paper. The question whether literature can be moral philosophy de-
pends on what we are prepared to call moral philosophy. I am ready

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CAN LITERATURE BE MORAL PHILOSOPHY? 5

to answer the question affirmatively for two reasons. First, the sharp-
ened moral insight which the reader or audience receives from such
works of literature seems akin to the sharpened moral insight which
one receives from an outstanding work of moral philosophy. (Moral
philosophy which contains clever and impeccable logical argument
but adds nothing to moral insight can be valuable as a piece of applied
logic but is not, in my judgment, a distinguished piece of moral phi-
losophy.) Secondly, there are acknowledged philosophers who make
their mark by means of novel perspective rather than structured ar-
gument. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are obvious examples. Of course,
if you choose to say that Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are not genuine
philosophers precisely because they do not rely on reasoned argu-
ment, then you will want to reject the suggestion that literature can
be moral philosophy.
I have some sympathy with this stance and am not too happy myself
about conferring the title of philosopher on thinkers like Nietzsche
and Kierkegaard. But this is not because of the absence or paucity of
structured argument in their work. It is rather because their method
of persuasion, the kind of novel perspective they employ, strikes me
as nonrational. I hope this reaction is not just a way of expressing
my disagreement with their views. I disagree with many of the views
of Plato, but that does not lead me to say that his method of persua-
sion is nonrational. While Plato's arguments are often faulty, they still
are arguments, rational steps in persuasion. A closer analogy can be
found in Plato's myths. He uses them as an adjunct to his arguments,
as a supplementary mode of persuasion. They are very much a lit-
erary device, a way of giving us a new perspective for seeing what
Plato takes to be important truths. Some readers are (or have been
in the past) carried away by the force of the imagery so as to feel a
measure of sympathy for Plato's conclusions, just as happens to many
readers of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Others find Plato's myths un-
convincing. I am one of the latter group, yet I would say of Plato's
invented myths, as I would say of Aeschylus' or Sophocles' reinter-
pretation of an established myth, that they are a rational method of
presenting a moral viewpoint. They are rational because they refer,
albeit obliquely, to common human experience and rely on that for
their support. This is not true of those attitudes of Nietzsche and
Kierkegaard which strike me as irrational. They rely on idiosyncratic
experience, and one is led to criticize them (to offer rational argu-
ment against them) by showing that common human experience
points in a different direction.
Another thinker relevant to this discussion is Martin Buber. Like
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard (who unfortunately impressed him in his

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6 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

youth), Buber tends in his most famous work, I and Thou, to use
nonrational methods of persuasion. As it happens, I agree with his
conclusions about ethics (not about theology), which seem to me to
convey moral insight of the utmost importance. In the same way as
the other thinkers I have mentioned, Buber presents us with a novel
perspective. Where we find in it a profound truth, this is because we
can verify it from common experience. Where we feel it is turning
into bizarre exaggeration (as when Buber talks of having an I-thou
relation with a tree or with the forms embodied in a work of art), this
is because the alleged experience cannot be verified. It is either a
mystical experience peculiar to Buber or, more probably, a poetical
interpretation by Buber of a common but mundane experience. I
agree with Buber's ethics and disagree with Plato's, but I regard Pla-
to's methods of persuasion as rational and Buber's as often non-
rational.
I do not much care whether or not the label of moral philosophy
is attached to literature which sharpens moral insight by the rational
use of a novel perspective. What matters is the recognition that some
literature does have this function and so has a degree of resemblance
to moral philosophy. The best way to win recognition is to give
examples.
Attic tragedy is in one way the most obvious source for examples.
Moral philosophy as we know it in the Western tradition began in
fifth-century Athens with Socrates and was then developed in written
form by his pupil Plato. So the potential for it was there in the
preceding generation of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In another re-
spect, however, illustration from ancient Greek literature is haz-
ardous, since there is so much room for charges of misinterpretation.
This is true even in dealing with moral philosophy proper. When we
read Plato or Aristotle, there is some difficulty about the associations
of key terms like dikaiosyne,kalon, and eudaimonia,some risk in taking
them to be equivalent to English translations such as "justice,"
"beauty," and "happiness." We are apt to assimilate the thought of
Plato and Aristotle to that of more modern moral philosophers who
in fact have a different conceptual framework, derived in part from
the philosophical ancestry of the Greeks and in part from the reli-
gious ancestry of the Bible. The risk is even greater in talking about
the ethical content of Greek tragedy. Much of it speaks powerfully
to us as it did to the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. It is great
literature because it has an apparently universal appeal. It must be
building upon human experience that touches us no less than those
Athenians of long ago. But of course we can make the wrong con-
nections. When we are moved by a performance of Euripides' Medea,

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CAN LITERATURE BE MORAL PHILOSOPHY? 7

we are liable to think that he is pleading for the rights of women to

be recognized equally with those of men. But is he? Scholars remind
us that ancient tradition represented Euripides as a woman-hater and
that there are plenty of quotations from his works which might be
held to support that conclusion.
I am going to use as my example the Oresteiaof Aeschylus. It seems
to me quite plain that this work presents us with a development of
the concept of justice. Interpretation of this particular work is a little
less hazardous than with other plays of Aeschylus because the whole
trilogy has survived. We are not required to speculate about the al-
leged development, as people have done in connection with Prome-
theus Bound, for instance. With the Oresteia we have the whole se-
quence of Aeschylus' presentation before our eyes. We can even, if
we are lucky, see it on the stage, performed as a continuous produc-
tion within the confines of a single day.
The opportunity for that experience was recently provided by The
National Theatre of Great Britain, which put on the whole of the
Oresteiain a theater constructed after the pattern of a Greek amphi-
theater. The production was in English translation, but otherwise it
tried to follow the ancient model. The actors were all male and wore
masks resembling those of the ancient Athenian theater; the rhythm
of the choric odes was emphasized by musical accompaniment on a
simple set of instruments. The translation had its faults but it had
great merits too. While it would be absurd to say that the audience
could repeat the experience of fifth-century Athenians, appreciation
of the work was much heightened for those of us who previously
knew it only as a text. As an example, I found that whereas in the
study the first play Agamemnon seems clearly the most dramatic, on
stage the second play Choephoroeproved to be more moving.
The production strengthened one's understanding of the trilogy
as, among other things, a development of the concept of justice. The
older conception calls for killing to be revenged by killing. It is in-
voked in Agamemnon, both by Clytemnestra and by her paramour
Aegisthus, to justify the murder of Agamemnon: Clytemnestra claims
to be requiting the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia; Aegisthus
claims to be requiting the even more horrid deed of Agamemnon's
father Atreus in killing the children of Thyestes and serving them
up to Thyestes as a meal. But it is not clear that these claims are
meant to strike us as serious moral issues. For the fact remains that
Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are lovers and have motive enough to
kill Agamemnon for that reason. The next stage, however, is un-
doubtedly a serious challenge to the moral consciousness. Agamem-
non's son Orestes is morally bound to revenge the murder of his

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8 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

father. Insofar as this means killing Aegisthus, it is no problem. But

since it requires Orestes, first and foremost, to kill his mother, it
places him in an impossible dilemma. When he has steeled himself
to do what he has to do, in the Choephoroe,he is pursued by the Furies,
his mother's avengers. The final play, the Eumenides, highlights the
moral dilemma. It cannot be solved-both the conflicting claims are
equally valid-but it is resolved by a trial in a court of law at Athens.
The votes of the judges are equal, confirming the equal validity of
the two claims, but the goddess Athena gives her casting vote in favor
of Orestes. Her reason for doing so is specious: she had a father but
no mother, having sprung full grown from the head of Zeus, so she
can give more weight to the claim of the murdered father than to
that of the murdered mother.6 Are we expected to take this reason
seriously? The translator of the London production played up the
sexism of the work, favoring men over women; but if it was Aeschy-
lus' intention to treat as decisive the argument that men counted for
more than women, it would be incongruous to say so through the
mouth of a female divinity. I think that Athena's specious defense of
her vote is a way of saying: "There is no solution; the claims are
equal; then let the killing stop." It was in fact already the practice of
the court of the Areopagus at Athens to acquit if the votes of the
judges were equally balanced. I may be wrong in my interpretation
of Athena's speech, but what is clear is that the old unending pursuit
of vengeance is stopped by judicial process. One conception of justice
is overtaken by another.
This has some resemblance to what Plato does in the Republic: a
traditional concept of justice is contrasted with, and replaced by, a
superior new one. We are given a novel perspective and thereby reach
a deepened moral insight into the character ofjustice and its purpose.
Aeschylus does not present any explicit argument for preferring the
new concept, justice by legal process; and the overt argument for
finding Orestes innocent is obviously hollow, an admission, so it seems
to me, that there is no way of showing one of the conflicting claims
to be paramount. A modern philosopher would try to give a justifi-
cation in terms of a theory. A utilitarian, for example, might say that
since the conflicting claims are equal, we ought to choose the course
of action which will prevent a further addition to the unhappy con-
sequences that have mounted up so high. (Not that the suggestion
will do as it stands. The utilitarian must translate all the moral factors,
including the conflicting claims, into quantities of happiness, and that
misses the point of the original dilemma.) Plato's Republic does at-
tempt to give arguments, albeit unconvincing arguments, for prefer-
ring his new concept of justice. Aeschylus does nothing like that. So

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CAN LITERATURE BE MORAL PHILOSOPHY? 9

if you regard explicit argument as a necessary condition for calling a

work philosophical, the Oresteiadoes not measure up to that require-
ment. Nevertheless, it is more than moralizing and more than illus-
trating moral truth through a concrete example. It is a comparison
of concepts and a method of rational persuasion for accepting the
superiority of the later, reconciling concept of justice.
Whether or not it is called moral philosophy, what I have been
talking about is, of course, only one strand in the Oresteia. I should
not like anyone to think that I am trying to reduce great drama to
moral philosophy. There is more, much more, in the Oresteiathan an
exploration of a developing conception of justice. Even that explo-
ration itself cannot be abstracted from the setting of Athens. The
Eumenides takes pride in the role that Athenian institutions play in
giving effect to justice. It urges the Athenians themselves, and espe-
cially the upper classes, to be reconciled to the recent reduction of
the powers of the Areopagus, depriving it of political influence and
confining it to judicial functions, especially cases of homicide.
Plato says in the Republic that the division of labor in his first,
oversimplified sketch of an ideal community is something like jus-
tice;7 the real thing has to wait for the fuller and richer picture of an
ideal city in which there is scope for virtue proper, as for vice. So too
we may say that the exploration of moral virtues in Greek tragic
drama is something like moral philosophy, an indication of its poten-
tial existence; the real thing had yet to come.
Literary artists of later ages had the example of moral philosophy
before them. If they wanted to pursue it through their literary work,
they could do so self-consciously. In giving a couple of examples, let
me stress again that I do not think that a contribution to moral phi-
losophy is in any way a central function of these works; it is tangential.
Henry Fielding's TomJones (1749) is certainly conscious of contem-
porary moral philosophy. There were two rival traditions of moral
philosophy in eighteenth-century Britain, rationalist and "sentiment-
alist" (or empiricist). The rationalists held that virtue was conformity
to reason or to some abstract property in the nature of things per-
ceived by reason. The sentimentalists held that it was action motivated
by natural (instinctive) altruistic feelings and that these motives
aroused equally natural feelings of approval in spectators. Fielding
satirizes the rationalists in the character of Mr. Square, who talks
about virtue in the arid terms of rationalist philosophy but displays
precious little of it in his own behavior. He and his sparring partner,
the Rev. Mr. Thwackum, are contrasted with the benevolent Squire
Allworthy, who, as his name implies, is Fielding's idea of a truly vir-
tuous man. But they are also to be contrasted with Tom Jones himself,

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10 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

a high-spirited youngster whose weaknesses can grow into strengths

of character just because they spring from untrammelled human
nature.
In the dedicatory preface to TomJones, Fielding professed a moral
purpose, "to recommend goodness and innocence" by "displaying
that beauty of virtue which may attract the admiration of mankind,"
and "to engage a stronger motive to human action in her favour, by
convincing men, that their true interest directs them to a pursuit of
her." That has been the aim of a number of moral philosophers, and
it recalls particularly the language of Lord Shaftesbury's Inquiry con-
cerning Virtue, or Merit, first published in 1699 and reprinted in his
widely read Characteristicsof Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711).
Modern moral philosophers would not accept it as their business to
show that virtue should be pursued for the sake of interest, but Tom
Jones does in fact make a genuine contribution to moral philosophy
proper in that its instances of goodness and innocence contradict the
theory of Mr. Square (a caricature of rationalist moral philosophers
such as Samuel Clarke and John Balguy), while implying support for
the "sentimentalist"theories of their opponents, notably Lord Shaftes-
bury and Francis Hutcheson. This philosophic enterprise is only a
minor feature of TomJones, but the introduction of Mr. Square into
the early chapters of the novel shows that Fielding did intend, among
other things, to refute the philosophical doctrine which Square
represents.
A more substantial piece of moral philosophy is to be found in
Samuel Butler's Erewhon (1872). It is common enough for a utopia
to satirize existing society by standing some institutions on their
heads. In itself this is a philosophical device, for it makes us look at
our concepts in a new perspective. Samuel Butler, however, uses the
device in an especially sharpened form, transposing one institution
with another and spelling names backwards (Erewhon, Yram, Nos-
nibor, Thims) as an indication of what he is doing. His satire is chiefly
directed against the hollowness of conventional religion, the hypoc-
risy of conventional morality, and the uselessness of conventional
higher education, but he is also genuinely bothered about the con-
ventional view of crime, and this is where his satirical reversal of
attitudes makes a serious contribution to moral philosophy.
In Erewhon illness is treated as we treat crime and crime is treated
as we treat illness. The point is to support determinism and to re-
commend a revision of the moral concepts we use about crime. Butler
is not so modern as to go soft on crime. He does not suggest that
criminal prohibitions be revoked or that lawbreakers be mollycod-
dled. He accepts that flogging and a diet of nothing but bread and

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CAN LITERATURE BE MORAL PHILOSOPHY? 11

milk may perhaps be the best way to "cure" Mr. Nosnibor of his habit
of swindling (ch. 10). Butler's case is that criminals have been made
what they are by heredity and environment. If we want to change
their character and behavior, we must apply further determinants in
the form of unpleasant sanctions; but we confuse ourselves with ideas
of free will and responsibility.
Butler put an explicit argument for determinism into the treatise,
called "The Book of the Machines," which the narrator in Erewhon
was given at the city of Colleges of Unreason. The argument is
founded on the theory of evolution and makes use of an analogy
between organisms and machines. Otherwise it relies on familiar con-
siderations about human behavior, such as predictability (ch. 25).
This is undisguised philosophy, no better than that of the next man,
and finds its way into a novel simply by being alleged to be part of a
treatise that led to the abolition of machines in Erewhon. It does not
impress, as the transposition of crime and illness does, and its role is
simply to press home the moral of that transposition, namely, that
we should abandon the belief in free will and the concepts which go
along with it. The transposition itself is impressive, not because it
adds any new arguments, but because the novelty of its perspective
really makes one sit up and take more seriously the view that the
concepts of treatment and cure are the appropriate ones for under-
standing crime and punishment.
There is more moral philosophy than this in Erewhon. One short
passage discusses the alleged connection between morality and reli-
gion. The Erewhonians personify virtues as divinities and do not
appreciate that justice and hope can be perfectly well founded on
human needs and capacities. The narrator's Erewhonian sweetheart
retorts that the Christian conception of God could just as well be
called an unnecessary personification of the virtues (ch. 16). The
prime purpose of the passage is to shoot another arrow at conven-
tional religious doctrine, but it seems to imply also that a belief in
objective ethical properties is equally unfounded.
Then again there is rather a clever discussion of the rights of an-
imals and those of vegetables. One Erewhonian "prophet" argued for
the rights of animals by analogy with those of human beings and so
forbade eating the flesh of animals unless they had died a natural
death or committed suicide. (The exceptions, of course, gave rise to
lots of pretense.) Then an Erewhonian philosopher used the analogy
of animals to argue for the rights of vegetables. "The conclusion he
drew, or pretended to draw," was that eating vegetables, unless they
had died a natural death, was just as sinful as eating animals. "Having
thus driven his fellow-countrymen into a corner at the point of a

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12 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

logical bayonet," he proposed referring the whole matter to an oracle,

which delivered itself of the commonsense conclusion that "sinning"
cannot be avoided:

Beat or be beaten,
Eat or be eaten,
Be killed or kill;
Choose which you will.

I suppose Butler is implying that a sensible ethics must be based on

self-preservation. At any rate, this part of Erewhon (chs. 26-27), like
the transposition of crime and illness, is thoroughly philosophical in
presenting argument by means of a paradoxical novel perspective.
I have given examples of propositions one (a work of moral phi-
losophy can also be a work of literature), two (a work of literature
can also be-to some extent-a work of moral philosophy), and three
(moral philosophy can feed literature). I have left aside proposition
four (literature can feed moral philosophy), apart from a mention of
Mary Midgley's point. This is certainly not because I regard propo-
sition four as less interesting or important than the other three. On
the contrary, I think that this relation between literature and moral
philosophy is by far the most enriching. To deal with it adequately
one needs to have a deeper knowledge and appreciation of literature
than of conventional moral philosophy. So I have left this aspect of
our general theme to those better equipped than I to deal with it.

IMPERIALCOLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

NOTES

1 Times LiterarySupplement,30 July 1982, p. 821.

2 R. W. Livingstone, preface to Portrait of Socrates(Oxford, 1938), p. viii.
3 A. J. Ayer, editorial foreword to P. H. Nowell-Smith's Ethics (Harmondsworth,
1954), p. 7.
4 For an elaboration of this interpretation of Plato's Phaedo and his criticism of poetry
in the Republic,see my Paradox of Tragedy(Bloomington and London, 1960). pt. 2, § 1.
5 Raphael, Paradox of Tragedy, p. 89.
6 Aeschylus Eumenides 734-41.
7 Plato Republic 433A.

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