Philosophy and Literature on Moral Sense

It is commonly believed that all moral problems boil down to the question of how we should behave towards other people, as well as towards ourselves. The leading role in the solution of these problems is usually assigned to reason. However, more recently, moral reasoning has begun to emphasize not the abstract prescriptions of reason, but human “passions,” such as shame, love, friendship, cruelty, and so on. For example, shame, being the immediate cause of moral behavior, suggests no gulf between moral precepts and the real life of the individual. Feeling ashamed is not a prescription or a rule – it directly causes us to avoid one kind of behavior in favor of another. But the same can be said about love or friendship. In other words, today’s philosophers suggest that ideas about moral duty are a direct result of our emotional relationship with others. Similarly, morality is not something to which our emotions and feelings should be subjected, but a proper realization of those emotions and feelings. It is not surprising, therefore, that reflection on the nature of our moral obligations often draws on examples from fiction, which seeks not so much to subject our lives to certain principles as to capture its most characteristic features. In this course, we will study the works of such philosophers as Bernard Williams, Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, Harry Frankfurt, Alexander Nehamas, Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty. We will also examine literary works such as Homer’s ‘Iliad’, Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, plays like Samuel Beckett’s ‘Endgame’ and Yasmina Reza’s ‘ART’, and novels by Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, and J. M. Coetzee. Also, through an analysis of literary works from this period, we will explore how sentimental education helped to shape the modern conception of human rights and its emphasis on human dignity and equality.