Wanted: A Ground for the Imagination

Don J. Briel Wanted: A Ground for the Imagination It has been increasingly common in the last twenty years to find expressions of agreement with the spirit of Jean Baptiste Rousseau's 171S observation that "the philosophy of Descartes has cut the throat ofpoetry"and that the loss ofa broad poetic or imaginative view of life has brought with it certain dehumanizing consequences .1 In PoeticJustice:The Literary Imagination and Public Life, Martha Nussbaum has again argued the central importance of the literary imagination as a corrective to the increasingly analytical and adversarial character ofmuch modern poUtical, legal, and economic theory. Nussbaum praises the subversive character ofliterature and insists that the novel, which she inexplicably privileges over other literary forms, "expresses in its very shape and style, in its mode of interaction with its readers, a normative sense of life."2 It does so, she argues, because it directs the reader's attention to certain postures ofthe mind and heart rather than others. This seems fair enough for it is true in general that novels have a tendency to emphasize concrete events, experiences, and attitudes Logos 1:1 1997 138 Logos over phüosophical or analytical theories and Nussbaum is certainly correct in suggesting that in this sense works offiction are both disturbing and subversive, for the novel "inspires a distrust of conventional pieties and exacts a frequently painful confrontation with one's own thoughts and intentions."3 One of the central claims then of fiction is its capacity to make one conscious of hidden prejudices and assumptions that restrict the possibiUty for an authentic or real sense of life. A principal consequence of this internal confrontation is a growing awareness ofthe irreducibly individual nature ofall ofhuman experience and a subversion of abstract theories about the nature of the real. Such a view is not without poUtical impUcations and Nussbaum insists that "group hatred and the oppression of groups is very often based on afailure to individuaUze."4 Ofcourse itis not clear that this renewed emphasis on individuaUsm wiU provide a more adequate response to group hatred, but Nussbaum's assertion of its importance is central to her account ofthe nature as well as the poUtical and moral significance ofthe Uterary imagination. This recognition of the complexity and irreducibility of human experience revealed by the literary imagination has, according to Nussbaum, a profoundly moral character because it disposes the reader to a recognition ofthe equal dignity ofall citizens.The ultimate outcome ofthis recognition is both a deeper emotional appreciation for the "richness and complexity of each citizen's inner world" and a concomitant awareness of the need for the moral virtue oftolerance for the profound diversity of individual human experience.5 In the novel, Nussbaum insists, each life must be understood as individual and separate from other lives. The literary imagination or fancy gives a preference not only to individuality but also to the appreciation of things for their own sake, an appreciation expressed not only in the pursuit of beauty but also in the practice of play and amusement. This multiple appreciation is best expressed in terms of wonder and Nussbaum appeals to the commitment of both Dickens and Whitman to the Wanted: A Ground for the Imagination view that the imagination is the necessary political basis for a country of equal and free citizens because both equality and freedom require an account of life that is neither narrowly utiUtarian nor rigidly conventional.The imagination discloses a veiled wholeness oflife whose rich possibiUties are often constrained by the pressure to conform to abstract social norms. In this sense, her emphasis on the subversive character ofthe imagination, its disclosure ofhidden complexities, its opening to wonder, its insistence on the creative and generous construction of the seen, and on the playfulness and eroticism of human experience is much in Une with many traditional accounts of the literary imagination. But her insistence on the creativity of the literary imagination, its profoundly private character and her general neglect of reUgious insights perhaps inevitably lead her to argue that the principal moral imperative of the imagination is a respect for the individual's autonomous, creative self interpretation of experience as the foundation of a...