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Modernism/modernity 10.1 (2003) 207-209



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Henry James and Modern Moral Life. Robert P. Pippin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. 206. $55.00 (cloth); $20.00 (paper).

For many philosophers, the modern world is essentially disenchanted: Plato's eternal Forms turned out not to be eternal after all, Aristotle's biology has been discredited, Kant's metaphysics rejected, and God, of course, is dead. Bereft of metaphysics, theology or teleology, the modern philosopher must nonetheless show that moral life is possible. As moderns, we are confronted by the fact that our lives have no meaning beyond themselves and yet we must, somehow, find reason to be moral. We must, as it is now said, do philosophy on Dover Beach.

In their attempts to address disenchantment, philosophers have sought assistance from both modern and premodern sources: Bernard Williams likens our condition to that of the ancient Greek tragedians, Alasdair MacIntyre invokes St Thomas Aquinas, and John Rawls offers Kantian constructivism stripped of Kant's metaphysics. Each of these strategies has its difficulties. The appeal to the tragedians delivers a depressing, if not strictly tragic, view of life, according to which "the world was not made for us, nor we for the world". 1 In contrast, the appeal to St Thomas yields meaning, but not the sort of meaning that is available to us moderns. MacIntyre's Thomist paradise has been lost. Meanwhile, the constructivist strategy, beloved of twentieth century political philosophers, offers the possibility that there is indeed meaning and that it is available to us because we construct it ourselves.

But who are "we", and what resources do we have at our disposal? In responding to these questions, philosophers tend to appeal to reason or human nature, but in the modern world we have no defensible account of what human nature is, no explanation of the difference between a happy life and a fulfilled one, no compelling reason for being moral, especially when that might call for the sacrifice of our own interests. [End Page 207]

Perhaps these problems are better addressed by the novelist than by the philosopher. With their attention to particularity, novels can help us see what it would be to lead a moral life in conditions of modernity, and understand why we should try to do so. The point is a familiar one, and often associated with the later Wittgenstein for whom famously (or notoriously) "some things cannot be said, they can only be shown". 2 But Robert Pippin claims even more than this for the later novels of Henry James. While conceding that literature might play a role in refining the sensitivity—and sensibility—of those who engage in philosophical reflection, Pippin nonetheless insists that this is not all we find in James. He writes: "whatever else is going on in James's fiction, something more than the presentation of examples and illustrations, material for reflection, is being offered; a kind of thinking and reflecting on moral life is going on, and there is much to be learned from that reflection" (19).

According to Pippin, our historical context has changed us as moral agents, "what we owe to each other, what it would be good to bring about now, and why" (14). Moreover, James's novels demonstrate that the history that has transformed us is multiple, not single; conflicting, not unitary. For James,

the problem is not that we are too confused about what we dimly see must be done, or simply too weak to bring about what (we see) must be done. There is a much more fundamental and justified uncertainty about what must be done in itself; this uncertainty has a distinct historical ground, and threatens the very possibility of moral meaning—threatens, but, what I want to suggest throughout, does not destroy or finally undermine it (14-15).

Whereas constructivist philosophy holds out the hope that reason, properly applied, may yet deliver meaning, James's novels cause us to question whether there is any meaning to be had. This need not prompt a decline into scepticism or nihilism, for the novels also show...

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