Psychological Complexity in James's "The Aspern Papers"

I have long admired Henry James.  He was a college discovery.  I should say, rather, that he was an author whom I discovered while studying in university through a course assignment.  To some, such an assignment would have seemed onerous.  To me, it was felicitous.

Joyce's Achievement in Dubliners

In the 13 June 2014 article "James Joyce's 'Dubliners' still worth celebrating 100 years later" in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the author notes:

Joyce used his collection's 15 stories to piteously examine how life in his native city — provincial, intolerant, hypocritical and awash in drink — had deformed its politically frustrated, economically backward and spiritually bankrupt residents.

This captures well the sense I got from re-reading the full collection of Joyce's short stories.

Updating the "About" Page

Bordering somewhere between a housekeeping item and a bona fide posting, I note here that I have just updated the "About" page for this blog.  (You can find that page by clicking here.)

If you read (or remember) my first post, "Introducing a New Blog Experiment," or stumbled once late at night early in the morning onto the "About" page, then you might find this "About" update of interest.  You might want to read it also if you have time to kill or are incurably curious.  Otherwise, there is nothing to see here. Carry on.

Dante and Human Contentment in Paradiso

What expresses the fulfillment of the highest hope for human existence?  One way to answer this question is to examine conceptions of blessedness such as heaven or nirvana.  Both are, traditionally conceived, dimensions in which there is no more striving, in which there is true contentment. In Paradiso 3.63-66, Dante observes that there is a hierarchy in heaven, and he asks Piccarda Donati whether she longs to be higher in heaven than she is and closer to the blazon light of the empyrean, God:

But tell me, do you, who are here content,

Desire to achieve a higher place, where you

Might still see more and make yourself more dear?

          (Paradiso 3.63-66; trans. Hollander)

Her response tells us, who might wonder about real joy in our lives, something about where true joy might be found, not only in heaven but also here and now.

"Ruthless Force": James on Whitman's War Poetry

In 1865, in first issue of The Nation, a young Henry James pointedly critiqued -- better, criticized -- Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps. James’s main points seem to be that Whitman’s poetry lacks both an appeal to more than feeling (i.e., the intellect) and taste (i.e., a sense of the aesthetic): “It is not enough to be grim and rough and careless. … it [his poetry] pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste … Mr. Whitman sits down at the outset and counts out the intelligence.”  Whitman’s poetry, according to James, also lacks a seriousness that the nature of the occasion, the Civil War, demands. Further, it fails to demonstrate a deep personal involvement in the war and the self-commanded eloquence to speak about it by “possessing this possession.”  James may have been correct that Whitman’s poetry does not have a pleasing aesthetic sense. James is picking up on something noteworthy about Whitman's unorthodox style, but that uncommon poetic aesthetic is part of the seriousness that Whitman’s grasp of the disruption to ordinary life occasioned by the Civil War reflects.  The jarring event that was the war called for jarring poetry to capture it.

On Melville’s "A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight"

Is the perspective in Herman Melville's Civil War poem about the USS Monitor's naval battle with the CSS Virginia -- the Battle of Hampton Roads -- “utilitarian”?

That is the question I want to pose in a few brief reflections on "A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight," that appeared in his Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, published in 1866. I am curious why Melville chooses that word for his title.

Dante and Forgiveness in Purgatorio

Is forgiveness, for Dante, the most radical form of freedom and the fullest expression of love? I believe that it is, although not precisely as some readers of Dante sometimes argue.  I have in mind in particular the overstatement of forgiveness in terms of the existentialist reading that I perceive permeates some contemporary readings of the Commedia.

Emotions & Morals, pt. 5b: Reflections -- British Sense Theorists

Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith in their own distinctive ways were attempting to explore what counts as moral and -- although less explicitly or directly in their writings -- what should count as moral.  They did so by seeking to discover how human psychology worked and by giving due attention to the observation that we humans respond to moral matters powerfully and initially with our emotions.  They were engaging in an interdisciplinary study of ethics and psychology in light of Newton's recent findings of natural laws, and they saw a connection between the way that humans worked and what was proper or fitting for them to do or say in certain situations.  The precise basis for their normative claims is open to question, and the mechanics of human moral psychology are still being explored three hundred years later.

As I reflect on the relationship between emotions and morals through these three British sense theorists, an important consideration emerges, which is the nature of an emotion and its power in and over humans.  Hume seems to view emotions, or passions, as equivalent to but distinct from physical sensations, which is why he posits a separate faculty to process their moral content.  Emotions for him are given in the way that perception of an apple on a table is given. Are they really sensations like that?  Smith seems to have recognized that our feelings are not just given; they are malleable.  That is the basis, in fact, for his view of sympathy, or imaginative exchange with another person, and the device of an impartial spectator to evaluate and to question what was the proper passion to feel morally in a particular situation.  Smith's goal was emotional conformity to the impartial spectator's objective moral assessment of propriety and, to a secondary extent, utility.

Among many things that could be said, let me, in conclusion, mention only two. One relates to the passivity or activity of emotions, and the other pertains to the  narrative structure that emotions imply are connected to ethics.

Emotions & Morals, pt. 5a: Reflections -- British Sense Theorists

Since introducing this short series of posts on the interplay between emotions and morals, I have taken a brief look at how the major British moral sense theorists -- Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith -- addressed that question. It is now time for some reflections, which I will break up into two parts.

Each of the moral theories of these thinkers is subject to critique.  It is worthwhile to mention some limitations.  For the most part, however, I want to focus on what I think is perceptive and valuable in these theories and to note some areas that I think deserve additional consideration both in their own right and in their potential application to life.

Emotions & Morals, pt. 4: Adam Smith -- British Sense Theorists

Adam Smith is the last of the three major British moral sense theorists that we will examine in this series.  Smith was a friend of David Hume's, whom we discussed last time. Smith, much like Hume before him, saw himself engaged in moral science, the empirical description of how we as humans think about morals, how we make moral judgments, and how we assess the motivations, words, and actions of others.

Emotions & Morals, pt. 3: David Hume -- British Sense Theorists

Francis Hutcheson importantly influenced fellow Scot David Hume, although Hume would argue against Hutcheson's particular view of benevolent affections (see prior post on Hutcheson here). Before analyzing closely some places where Hume's moral theory differs from that of his mentor Hutcheson, what, first, is the main area of agreement between them?

Emotions & Morals, pt. 2: Francis Hutcheson -- British Sense Theorists

In the previous post that introduced this series on the British moral sense theorists, I noted that these eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers raise fascinating questions about the role of emotions, or passions, in moral judgments.  Some went so far as to posit a separate moral sense, a distinct faculty that engages those subjects, persons, actions, or thoughts that we judge to pertain to the moral sphere. One of those moral sense theorists is Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746).

Emotions & Morals, pt. 1: Introduction -- British Sense Theorists

Have you ever wondered about the interaction between emotion and reason in forming moral views?  The cartoon below reflects interactions that I am sure we have all had, just as it also reflects a presumed dichotomy between fact and value, reason and emotion, that I have in many ways come to question. Still, it humorously points to the "fact" that reason is not always the only or the strongest influence on belief.

What about our moral beliefs, those pertaining to what we consider virtuous? Our daily conversations with others presuppose the need to provide justification for our beliefs. But what exactly counts as justification?

Indeed, what will legitimately serve as adequate grounds for our beliefs and actions is often disputed. Many times the contention revolves around what one party thinks is based on reason (i.e., conclusions reached by deduction or induction from concepts or empirical data) rather than emotion (i.e., internal sentiments, impulses, or feelings). And the other party might take sentiment to be quite adequate grounding, or at least part of it.