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Literature and Moral Feeling

Literature and Moral Feeling

Literature and Moral Feeling

A Cognitive Poetics of Ethics, Narrative, and Empathy
Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut
May 2022
Available
Hardback
9781009169516

    An influential body of recent work on moral psychology has stressed the interconnections among ethics, narrative, and empathy. Yet as Patrick Colm Hogan argues, this work is so vague in its use of the term 'narrative' as to be almost substanceless, and this vagueness is in large part due to the neglect of literary study. Extending his previous work on universal story structures, Hogan argues that we can transform ill-defined intuitions about narrative and ethics into explicit and systematic accounts of the deep connections between moral attitudes and narratives. These connections are, in turn, inseparable from empathy, a concept that Hogan proceeds to clarify and defend against a number of widely read critiques. In the course of the book, Hogan develops and illustrates his arguments through analyses of global narratives, constructing illuminating ethical interpretations of literary works ranging from Shakespeare to Chinese drama and the Bhagavad Gita.

    • Draws out the deep connections between ethics and literature
    • Analyses the nature of narrative and empathy
    • Identifies cross-cultural patterns with examples from global literatures

    Reviews & endorsements

    'The philosophy of ethics has been central to understanding human interaction since ancient times. Now Patrick Colm Hogan, the most important researcher in the twenty-first century on the relationships between psychology and worldwide literature, has written a fascinating update. He says that ethical actions typically 'oppose egocentric self-interest' and are often based in empathy. With this beginning, and explorations that range from Shakespeare's plays to Chinese poetry and a German movie, he deepens our understanding of how we might act for the best towards others.' Keith Oatley, author of Our Minds, Our Selves: A Brief History of Psychology

    'The morality tale in literature, and the thought experiment in moral philosophy, remind us that ethics and narrative are deeply entwined. In a superb example of consilience, breaching arbitrary disciplinary boundaries, Patrick Colm Hogan provides important new insights into how members of our species make sense of our feelings and obligations to one another.' Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of How the Mind Works and Rationality

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    Product details

    May 2022
    Hardback
    9781009169516
    360 pages
    235 × 157 × 21 mm
    0.6kg
    30 b/w illus.
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction: What (comparative) literature tells us about ethics
    • 1. Defining ethics
    • 2. The implied ethics of Julius Caesar
    • 3. Narrative universals, emotion, and ethics
    • 4. Ethics and narrative genre: Some illustrative cases
    • 5. Emotion and empathy
    • 6. The dynamics of empathic response: Simulation and inference in A Midsummer Night's Dream
    • 7. Evaluating empathy
    • 8. The critical empathy of Angels in America
    • Afterword: The limits of ethics – On free will and blame.
      Author
    • Patrick Colm Hogan , University of Connecticut

      Patrick Colm Hogan, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the English Department and the Cognitive Science Program at the University of Connecticut, is the author of over twenty scholarly books, including The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion (Cambridge University Press, 2011).