ENG 7340: World Literature in Modern Times (15/3 Lesson 9)

Instructor: Dr. Zheng Yi

Office: OEM 1116
Office hours: Wednesday/Friday (15:30–18:30)
Email: zhengyi@hkbu.edu.hk

15/3 Lesson 9
World Literature, science, and ethics (2)

I. Objective today:
1. Continue to learn about how literature and ethics can be related (through relevant cognitive science
research).

II. Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, 1990.

1. Literature is indispensable for ethics. Why?
For ethics, (a) not only the content but the form of discussion matters;
(b) the concrete situation matters (otherwise we don’t know what ethical rules apply here);
(c) therefore, literature, a form that can richly illustrate the concrete situation, matters.

(a) The form matters:

- Our life is never simply presented as it is by a text, but always represented as something.

(b) The concrete situation matters:

- Aristotle: an ideal intermediate state between the excess and the deficiency
- What counts as intermediate?
But this [to hit the intermediate] is no doubt difficult, and especially in individual cases; for
it is not easy to determine both how and with whom and on what provocation and how long
one should be angry; for we too sometimes praise those who fall short and call them good-
tempered, but sometimes we praise those who get angry and call them manly. The man,
however, who deviates little from goodness is not blamed, whether he does so in the
direction of the more or of the less, but only the man who deviates more widely; for he does
not fail to be noticed. But up to what point and to what extent a man must deviate before
he becomes blameworthy it is not easy to determine by reasoning, any more than anything
else that is perceived by the senses; such things depend on particular facts, and the decision
rests with perception. (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics)
- Rules are not enough: Relevance, ordering, weighting, formulation? New, unexpected cases?

(c) Literature matters

- Not about length, but ambiguity: Concrete situations in real moral life are ambiguous; how
we categorize the world is also ambiguous.
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ENG 7340: World Literature in Modern Times (15/3 Lesson 9)

Instructor: Dr. Zheng Yi

Office: OEM 1116
Office hours: Wednesday/Friday (15:30–18:30)
Email: zhengyi@hkbu.edu.hk

III. James, The Golden Bowl, 1909.

1. What would a summary of this part look like?
Every evening after dinner Charlotte Stant played to him; seated at the piano and requiring no music
she went through his “favourite things”—and he had many favourites—with a facility that never failed,
or that failed but just enough to pick itself up at a touch from his fitful voice. […] His love of music,
unlike his other loves, owned to vaguenesses, but while, on his comparatively shaded sofa, and
smoking, smoking, always smoking, in the great Fawns drawing-room as everywhere, the cigars of his
youth, rank with associations—while, I say, he so listened to Charlotte's piano, where the score was
ever absent but, between the lighted candles, the picture distinct, the vagueness spread itself about him
like some boundless carpet, a surface delightfully soft to the pressure of his interest. It was a manner
of passing the time that rather replaced conversation, but the air at the end none the less, before they
separated, had a way of seeming full of the echoes of talk. They separated, in the hushed house, not
quite easily, yet not quite awkwardly either, with tapers that twinkled in the large dark spaces, and for
the most part so late that the last solemn servant had been dismissed for the night. (pp. 202–203)
- What would the readers of this summary miss that can be significant for a responsible moral
judgment?
a) Does Charlotte love Adam?
b) Does Adam love Charlotte?

2. How about this part?

“We’ve had, as it seems to me, such quite beautiful days together that I hope it won’t come to you too
much as a shock when I ask if you think you could regard me with any satisfaction as a husband.” […]
He had put the question on which there was no going back. […]
“It seems to me,” she went on, “that it’s for you to be sure.”
“Ah but I am sure,” said Adam Verver. “On matters of importance I never speak when I’m not. So if
you can yourself face such a union you needn’t in the least trouble.” […]
“It’s the state, I mean. I don’t like my own, ‘Miss,’ among us all, is too dreadful—except for a shopgirl.
I don't want to be a horrible English old-maid.”
“Oh you want to be taken care of. Very well then I’ll do it.”
“I dare say it’s very much that. Only I don’t see why, for what I speak of,” she smiled—“for a mere
escape from my state—I need do quite so much.”
“So much as marry me in particular?”
Her smile was as for true directness. “I might get what I want for less.”
“You think it’s so much for you to do?”
“Yes,” she presently said, “I think it’s a great deal.” (pp. 217–220)
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ENG 7340: World Literature in Modern Times (15/3 Lesson 9)

Instructor: Dr. Zheng Yi

Office: OEM 1116
Office hours: Wednesday/Friday (15:30–18:30)
Email: zhengyi@hkbu.edu.hk

3. Things that a summary would miss:

a) How exactly conflicted is Adam’s mind?
b) What is Charlotte thinking? (Ladylike reserve?
Adam is too old? “This cartel shit is too hot for
me”?)
c) Why does she say yes in the end? Better Call Saul, S4E03

IV. Reisberg, Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind, 2019

1. How do we categorize the world?
Definitional theory of meaning:
Bird: winged; covered with feathers; very likely being able to fly; being able to lay eggs.
Even number: divisible by two without a remainder

Prototype theory of meaning:

Bird:

Even number:

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ENG 7340: World Literature in Modern Times (15/3 Lesson 9)

Instructor: Dr. Zheng Yi

Office: OEM 1116
Office hours: Wednesday/Friday (15:30–18:30)
Email: zhengyi@hkbu.edu.hk

2. How is science relevant for literature and ethics?

- The concepts involved in an ethical question also have ambiguous definitions and admit flexible,
graded membership.
- Adam and Maggie: untypical father-daughter relationship
- Charlotte and Maggie: untypical friendship
- Universal moral rules containing general terms like “parent,” “daughter,” or “friend” not useful
- The inherent (and perhaps desired) ambiguity of the literary form resembles the ambiguity of our
conceptual organization, which plays a vital role in how we behave and thus obviously in ethics as
well.