Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives

Chapter Ten

167 Chapter Ten Y Postscript Toward an Ethical Theory Where Do Ethical Criteria Come From? Up to this point I have dealt mainly with what philosophers would call moral psychology rather than moral theory. I have built a case about how stories exert influence on the development of ethos based mainly on people’s need to learn, to enlarge their stock of experiences, to enlarge their range of human companionships, to acquire information beyond their firsthand lives, and to find models for how to put together a whole life. I have also focused on the use we make of such cognitive powers as the vicarious imagination, and on the kinds of aesthetic strategies in stories that hook our feelings, beliefs, and judgments. The upshot of the argument I have made can be schematically summarized in the following way. (Such a summary leaves out all the nuances but captures the basic structure of the argument.) 1. Because human beings are born incomplete and undeveloped and have no inevitable agenda of development or completeness programmed into them, they must acquire the arts and skills for becoming more or less developed and complete through learning. 168 s h a p e d b y s t o r i e s 2. Human beings learn from many sources and are influenced by many agents—families, churches, teachers, peers, ideas, and firsthand experience , to name only a few of the most important—and under the influence of that learning they make the choices that construct a life. 3. One of the important sources whose depth of influence is persistently underrated by most people is stories—narratives—regardless of whether they come to us from traditional literary forms such as short stories and novels or from narrative poetry, computer games, movies, TV programs, histories, biographies, autobiographies, radio talk shows, parables, legends, children’s games, gossip, travelogues, jokes, sermons, fairy tales, song lyrics, or other sources. 4. Human beings are eager for the influence from stories because­ stories’ invitations to feel in certain ways, to believe in certain ways, and to judge in certain ways—invitations that we almost always accept—give us deep pleasure and also operate as paradigms and models that we can use as guides for generating the steady stream of firsthand emotions, beliefs, and judgments that we must deploy in order to deal with events and people in real life. Our eagerness for fictional pleasure and paradigms, not to mention the nearly ceaseless engagements we have with narratives, cannot help but render us vulnerable to their influence. 5. Because everyone’s everyday life is saturated with stories, and because of stories’ role in shaping ethos, it is both logical and, indeed, imperative that everyone who values autonomy of personhood and independence of mind should develop supple, thoughtful, nuanced, and interrogative modes of ethical criticism (as opposed to dogmatic assertion or condemnation) for assessing whether the narrative influences we invite into our lives should be wholeheartedly embraced, examined at an arm’s distance, thoroughly rejected, or examined in a way that combines some or all of these responses. As I summarize my argument in this way, you may notice something important that I have not done. There is something missing. If you were students in my class on literary theory and had just finished reading the first nine chapters of this book, what I would now want you to say to me is, “Dr. Gregory, what is the theory that defines what ‘good for us’ and Postscript 169 ‘bad for us’ really means? Where do we get the criteria that generate and justify these kinds of judgments?” I would like to hear this question not because it’s the easiest question to answer—in fact it’s the hardest question so far—but because it’s the smartest and most important question. I hope at various points as I have made claims about stories’ invitations to ethical response, you have wanted to ask me where I get my criteria . I have shown that accepting Invitations A, B, and C from any given story might entail Alterations D, E, and F in our ways of feeling, believing, and judging, and I have made clear my conviction that whatever influences us in these ways is an ethical influence simply because our typical ways of feeling, believing, and judging just do constitute our ethos. But I have not shown (yet) the location, or the...