The Enlargement of Life: Moral Imagination at Work

252 Pages·2006·15.609 MB·English

by  John Kekes

Tke Enlargement o fLife
OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN KEKES
A Justification of Rationality
The Nature of Philosophy
The Examined Life
Moral Tradition and Individuality
Facing Evil
The Morality of Pluralism
Moral Wisdom and Good Lives
Against Liberalism
A Case for Conservatism
Pluralism in Philosophy: Changing the Subject
The Art of Life
The Illusions of Egalitarianism
The Roots of Evil
Moral Imagination at Work
JOHN KEKES
Cornell University Press
ITHACA AND LONDON
DEC 2 2 29C6
Copyright © 2006 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book,
or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address
Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca,
New York 14850.
First published 2006 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kekes, John.
The enlargement of life : moral imagination at work / John Kekes.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-4511-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8014-4511-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Imagination (Philosophy) 2. Autonomy (Philosophy) 3. Self
(Philosophy) 4. Conduct of life. 5. Self-realization—Moral and
ethical aspects. 6. Imagination in literature. 7. Self (Philosophy) in
literature. 8. Conduct of life in literature. 9. Self-realization in
literature. I. Title.
BH301.I53K45 2006
17r.3—dc22 2006019343
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Cloth printing 10 987654321

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One Tke ideal
1. Reflective Self-Evaluation
1.1 From Autonomy to Reflective Self-Evaluation 3
1.2 The Problem of Exclusion 5
1.3 The Problem of Morality and Responsibility 7
1.4 The Problem of Moral Obtuseness 11
1.5 The Balanced Ideal 13
1.6 Imagination 15
2. Moral Imagination
2.1 Characteristics 19
2.2 Possibilities and Limits 24
2.3 Reason and the Voluntarist Ideal 28
2.4 Moral Imagination and the Good 30
2.5 Overview 33
Part Two Tke Corrective Imagination
3. Understanding Life Backward
3.1 Mill’s Case 37
3.2 Limitations 40
3.3 Sincerity 42
Vlll Contents
3.4 Promethean Romanticism 46
3.5 Transcending Limits 49
3.6 The Need for Balance 52
4. From Hope and Fear Set Free 55
4.1 Myth and Reality 55
4.2 Contingency 59
4.3 Oedipus’s Achievement 62
4.4 Coping loith Contingency 66
4.5 Is Realism Enough ? 73
5. All Passion Spent 75
5.1 Responsibility and Fulfillment 75
5.2 Living Responsibly 77
5.3 Opting for Responsibility 79
5.4 Going Deeper 82
5.5 Shortchanged by Morality 86
5.6 Overview 90
Part Three From Exploratory to
Discipl ineJ Imagination
6. Registers of Consciousness 95
6.1 The Approach 95
6.2 The General Imbroglio 96
6.3 The Failure and Its Sources 102
6.4 Aesthetic Romanticism and Its Snares 108
6.5 Exploratory Imagination and Aesthetic Romanticism 115
7. This Process of Vision 117
7.1 Halfway to Fulfillment 117
7.2 Growing in Appreciation of Life 119
7.3 Seeing Things as They Are 121
7.4 Integrated Lives 125
7.5 An Honorable Failure 131
8. An Integral Part of Life 134
8.1 Self-Transformation 134
8.2 A Book Consubstantial with Its Author 137
8.3 Innocence and Reflection 142
8.4 Groiuing Inward 146
8.5 Living Appropriately 150
8.6 Overview 152
Contents IX
Pari Pour Tke Discipl ineJ Imagination
9. Toward a Purified Mind 159
9.1 Purity 159
9.2 Two Kinds of Purity 160
9.3 Transcendental Romanticism 166
9.4 Reflective Purity 173
9.5 Reflective Purity and the Balanced Ideal 179
10. The Self’s Judgment of the Self 181
10.1 The Standard View 181
10.2 Doubts about the Standard View 185
10.3 The Revised Viexu 188
10.4 Doubts about the Revised View 195
10.5 Shame and the Balanced Ideal 200
11. The Hardest Service 203
11.1 Reasoyi and Reflective Self-Evaluation 203
11.2 The Uses of Reason 205
11.3 Reason in Reflective Self-Evaluation 208
11.4 Wrestling with Truth 211
11.5 Overview 217
Notes 223
Works Cited 231
Index 235
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1
A cknowledgments
The title of this book has been suggested to me by George San¬
tayana, writing in Three Philosophical Poets of “a steady contemplation of all
things in their order and worth. Such a contemplation is imaginative. No
one can reach it who has not enlarged his mind and tamed his heart.” Wal¬
lace Stevens consciously echoes this in The Necessary Angel, where he says in
the introduction that imagination leads to “the enlargement of life.”
My interest is in the moral importance of imagination, and this is best
revealed, I think, in works of literature. The chapters that follow focus on
literary works that show something important about the place of imagina¬
tion in a good life. I have discussed five of these works before, but I hope
that my treatment of them here reflects a deeper understanding than I
had earlier. The discussions of Oedipus in chapter 4, Edith Wharton’s The
Age of Innocence in chapter 5, and Thomas More in chapter 9 use substan¬
tially revised versions of what I say about them in The Art of Life (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2002), chapters 4, 3, and 2. My reflections on
Montaigne in chapter 8 draw on Moral Wisdom and Good Lives (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1995), chapter 6. And I first wrote about
Herodotus’s story in chapter 10 of The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), chapter 8.
Chong Kim Chong and Ann Hartle have kindly read and commented
on several chapters. In revising them, I have greatly benefited from their
help, and I gratefully acknowledge it.
In the book I am critical of some works of Harry G. Frankfurt, Stuart
Hampshire, and Iris Murdoch. I want to make clear that I am deeply in¬
debted to them. For many years now their writings have been part of the
furniture of my mind. Their questions have been my questions, and they
have remained so even when I could not accept their answers. I have
learned very much from these fine thinkers.
I also want to make clear that although this book is about the construc-
XI