Mgr. Diana Kalášková
Katedra filosofie a religionistiky, FF UPCE
Onora O’Neill critiqued Stephen Clark’s The Moral Status of Animals for lacking sufficient arguments and moral principles to guide our actions toward animals (O’Neill, 1980). Her criticism reveals a view of morality, which consists of choosing the right principle. In my presentation, I propose an alternative understanding of morality, one that embraces the complexity and muddledness of our lives without simplifying them to clear-cut ethical principles.
Drawing on works of philosophers such as Alice Crary, Cora Diamond and Jonathan Lear, I argue against O’Neill’s view. I see a danger in simplifying our lives to fit a moral principle. Moreover, as Diamond notes, O’Neill’s view is also unable to acknowledge the value of literature for moral philosophy (Diamond, 1991). Also, Lear notices that our resorting to moral principles can lead us to overlook deeper layers of reality that we might ignore for the sake of convenience (Lear, 2010). Therefore, I want to emphasise how literature can contribute to a deeper understanding of our lives and other people’s lives. By bringing to our attention the lives of the fictional characters with their dilemmas, difficulties, and complexities, it shows us the lives of others in a light that moral principles are unable to capture. I will try to show that, despite its fictional nature, literature has the power to represent reality truthfully without simplifying it. Literature not only provides us with a richer, more nuanced understanding of moral issues, but it also gives us context for discussing these issues in moral philosophy.
Keywords: morality, philosophical value of literature, moral principle, complexity, reality
References:
- Crary, A. (2016) Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought. Harvard University Press.
- Diamond, C. (1991) “Anything but Argument?” in The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind. MIT Press.
- Diamond, C. (1998) “Martha Nussbaum and the Need for Novels” in Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, and Theory, edited by Adamson, Freadman, and Parker, Cambridge University Press.
- Lear, J. (2010) “Ethical Thought and the Problem of Communication” in J. M. Coetzee and Ethics: Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, edited by Leist and Singer, Columbia University Press.
- O’Neill, O. (1980) “Review: The Moral Status of Animals.” The Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 7.