Henry James and the Modern Moral Life (review)

Henry James and the Modern Moral Life. Robert B. Pippin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 193. $49.95.

In examining Lambert Strether's impassioned outburst to Little Bilham in Henry James's Ambassadors (1903), the one, we recall, in which he blurts out in a kind of verbal efflorescence that whatever else one does one must be sure to live, "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to," Robert Pippin calls attention to another of Strether's directives (or admissions) in a way that effectively puts to rest the notion that James was a genteel aesthete (159). Buried in the middle of his encomium for the lived life is a remark that "It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?" (ibid.). For Pippin, Strether's adjuration for personal independence, or even individual determination, is the central thesis of James's work and the crux upon which the much celebrated but equally ambiguous notion of Jamesian morality rests. It wouldn't be excessive to claim that, for Pippin, Strether's advice that ownership of the lived life could be an endnote for James's entire oeuvre: a straightforward, even simple remark that becomes infinitely complicated in attempts at its actualization. In Pippin's words, James's fiction is all about "[j]ust what one must do in order to achieve 'having one's life,' or presumably not having it be someone else's" (ibid.).

In answer to that question, and in spite of some rather challenging sentences that show the imprint of his Hegelian background, Pippin constructs a careful, comprehensive, and compelling argument for the moral consequences of modernism as they register themselves in the lived experiences of James's characters. More specifically yet, he brings sharp philosophical insight to bear on the way James's fiction documents, in the experiences of its characters, the results of the "vast historical alteration" James believed "had been taking place in Western Europe and America for some time" (11). And while recent work in James studies has begun to focus much more on the cultural and political backdrop from which his fiction emerges, Henry James and the Modern Moral Life will likely foster another and a powerful change in approaches to this author. Indeed, one could make the case, after reading Pippin's book, that James is not only as critically and socially relevant at the turn of this century as he was at the turn of the last, but that this time around we simply cannot afford to be as "completely baffled and quite irritated" with him (ibid.). After all, if it is true that he was so finely attuned to the period of "transition and renegotiation" that marked his time, we must bear similar attention as the cultural ground now shifts beneath our own feet (10). We must, as Pippin argues, embrace Strether's advice and exercise whatever degree of self-determination we can on a life we can shape as and then comfortably call our own, whatever that comes down to in the end.

While a literary audience will find much to admire and develop in Pippin's book, hardened philosophers too should take notice. It's not surprising that James is such a focal point when philosophy turns to fiction writers. What both Martha Nussbaum and Pippin himself (to name two of the more recent contributors to the philosophical significance of his work) underscore to great effect is how finely aware and richly detailed are the ethical and moral dilemmas presented in James. In fact, philosophers seem to be attracted to him precisely because he consistently accomplishes what perpetually eludes more specific philosophical projects. As Pippin eloquently states, James's fiction is about life and living, especially in moments of tremendous ambiguity amidst a rapidly changing culture in which had become so fluid that it was no longer...