Mark Twain and Philosophy ed. by Alan H. Goldman (review)

The conversation between philosophy and literature is interesting and often insightful even if it sometimes can be a difficult straddle. When I submitted what was ultimately published as The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane (1993), the editor of the first press returned my manuscript saying it was “insufficiently literary”; a second press said, in effect, the opposite. So Goldman and his colleagues are to be commended for an insightful volume of fifteen essays that embraces both poles of the philosophy-literature dialogue.

Goldman’s collection begins with a reprinting of Jonathan Bennett’s seminal and probing examination of “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn.” Bennett’s piece has sparked lots of controversy and interesting comment—it also has had legs. It first appeared in Philosophy some forty plus years ago! Part one of Goldman’s volume is made up of Bennett’s essay along with four tightly-argued analyses/critiques of Bennett’s position. These essays in Part I of the volume are the most “philosophical” of the whole volume.

For the four responses to Bennett the nub of the matter comes down to whether weakness of will does or does not explain Huck’s decision to protect Jim from the two men hunting runaway slaves. On Bennett’s account Huck’s heartfelt sympathy for Jim simply overrides an imperative of conscience that was sanctioned by the official morality of slave-owning in rural Missouri. And so acting out of bad faith, “I tried . . . but I warn’t man enough—hadn’t the spunk of a rabbit,” he resigned himself to go to Hell. Goldman’s response, “Huckleberry Finn and Moral Motivation” argues that instead of irrationally caving in, Finn’s decisions are quite rational: “his reasons for helping Jim are stronger than his reason for turning him in and returning him to slavery . . . so his action is courageous as opposed to weak-willed.” Robert Fudge’s “‘Sympathy, Principles and Conscience’: Getting to the Heart of Huck Finn’s Moral Praiseworthiness,” concurs also finding Huck’s decisions rational. Michael Lyons’ “Huckleberry Finn’s Struggle between Sympathy and Moral Principle Reconsidered” first spends several pages summarizing Bennett’s position which he then recasts into two formal syllogisms, one for “the stronger argument” and the other for “the adjusted argument.” Lyon’s informal precis is more helpful—what is to be gained from Huckleberry Finn is that the natural rather than “the societal nurtured morality” best elucidates what Mark Twain accomplices in his exploration into the workings of conscience in chapters 16 and 31 of the novel. Kristina Gehrman’s “Twain’s Last Laugh” argues that Jim is the book’s moral exemplar. He is “the only just, kind, and morally mature person in the world of the novel.” In her focus on Jim instead of Huck, Gehrman casts Twain as Socrates’ fellow ironist and a gadfly seeking to stir up a sluggish society’s tolerance of slavery and racism.

The ten essays in the remainder of the volume are decidedly more reader-friendly for the non-philosopher. These chapters are generally more dis-cursive than analytical and appear to be aimed at audiences who may be unfamiliar with many of Twain’s later writings. Namely, Twain’s tracts that express his humorous, but also acidic and cynical views on religion, the afterlife, morality, and the situation of “the damned human race.”

In Craig Vasey’s “The Gospel According to Mark (Twain)” and James M. McLachlan, “Mark Twain and the Problem of Evil” take Twain’s writings at face value, never mind that his views are routinely “blasphemous, sarcastic and mocking.” In Vasey’s piece we hear from Twain’s spokesperson Satan, who marvels at God’s exceedingly difficult, even absurd demands: “God creates humans of such a nature that are curious and then orders them not to follow their nature.” Beyond that Satan wonders why Adam and Eve (and their children forever after) are not given a second chance for such “a trifling...