Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 32 No. 2, 2012.
Review article
Ethical Criticism of Literature. The Debate between R. Posner and M. C. Nussbaum about the Public Role of Literature
Jasna Ćurković Nimac
; Institute of Social Sciences "Ivo Pilar", Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The article has intention to contribute to the so-called “ethical turn”, which in the last decades has been legitimated in many social and humanistic fields, especially with regard to the literary criticism of the Anglo-Saxon area that is more associated with the ethical concerns of the text, while in Croatia this trend is still practically overlooked. After a brief introduction to the complex and turbulent history of relations between ethics and literature, the author presents two opposing tendencies or two different attitudes towards the ethical function that literature integrates. For this purpose, author introduce a view of Richard Posner, who represents the autonomist position on the exclusive primacy of aesthetics when it comes to literature, and Martha C. Nussbaum, which represents the view that literature in itself has great ethical potential and can serve as a supplement to theories of moral philosophy as well as socio-legal theories. The author is inclined to Nussbaum’s concept because of its pluralistic approach to literature and the broader conception of morality.
Keywords
literature; ethics; criticism; Martha C. Nussbaum; Richard Posner; society; education
Hrčak ID:
97189
URI
Publication date:
25.10.2012.
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