Home What Maisie Knew: Moral Imagination and Two Conceptions of Moral Thought
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

What Maisie Knew: Moral Imagination and Two Conceptions of Moral Thought

  • Craig Taylor EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 10, 2017

Abstract

According to a widely held view, moral thought essentially involves the survey of an array of independently specifiable morally relevant facts, on the basis of which an agent is to reach a judgment about how anybody in that situation ought to act. I argue, drawing on Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, that one thing that such a view discounts is the role of imagination in moral thought, and specifically in contributing to what Iris Murdoch has called someone’s personal vision of life.

References

Armstrong, Paul. 1983. “Consciousness and Moral Vision in What Maisie Knew.” In his The Phenomenology of Henry James (Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press), 3–36.Search in Google Scholar

Dancy, Jonathan. 2000. “The Particularist’s Progress.” In Hooker B. and Little M., eds., (Moral Particularism. Oxford: Oxford University Press), 130–156.Search in Google Scholar

–––– 2004. Ethics Without Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Diamond, Cora. 1983. “Having a Rough Story about What Moral Philosophy Is.’ New Literary History 15.1: 156–169. Reprinted in Diamond, The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy. and the Mind. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1995.Search in Google Scholar

–––– 1997. “Henry James, Moral Philosophers, Moralism.” The Henry James Review 18 (3):243–257.10.1353/hjr.1997.0028Search in Google Scholar

Driver, Julia. 2012. “’For every Foot its Own Shoe’: Method and Moral Theory in the Philosophy of Iris Murdoch.” In J. Broakes, ed., Iris Murdoch, Philosopher (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 293–305.Search in Google Scholar

Empson, William. 1935. “Alice in Wonderland: The Child as Swain.” In his Some Versions Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus).Search in Google Scholar

Hopwood, Mark. Forthcoming a. “Murdoch, Moral Concepts and the Universalizabilty of Moral Reasons.” Philosophical Papers.Search in Google Scholar

–––– Forthcoming b. “‘The Extremely Difficult Realization That Something Other Than Oneself Is Real’: Iris Murdoch on Love and Moral Agency.” European Journal of Philosophy.Search in Google Scholar

James, Henry. 1897. What Maisie Knew. London: Vintage, 2007.Search in Google Scholar

Jordan Jessy. 2014. “Reconsidering Iris Murdoch’s Moral Realism.” Journal of Value Inquiry 48(3): 371–385.10.1007/s10790-014-9416-2Search in Google Scholar

Murdoch, Iris. 1956. “Vision and Choice in Morality.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 30: 14–58.10.1093/aristoteliansupp/30.1.14Search in Google Scholar

–––– 1970. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Ark Paperbacks, 1985.Search in Google Scholar

Nussbaum, Martha, 1983. “Flawed Crystals: James’s The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy.” New Literary History 15.1: 25–50.10.2307/468992Search in Google Scholar

–––– 1990. “‘Finely Aware and Richly Responsible’: Literature and the Moral Imagination.” In her Love’s Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 148–167.Search in Google Scholar

Raz, Joseph. 2000. “The Truth in Particularism.” In Hooker B. and Little M., eds., Moral Particularism (Oxford: Oxford University press), 48–78.Search in Google Scholar

Taylor, Craig. 2014. “Literature and Moral Thought.” British Journal of Aesthetics 54.3: 285–298.10.1093/aesthj/ayu036Search in Google Scholar

Winch, Peter. 1972. “The Universalizability of Moral Judgments.” In his (Ethics and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 151–170.Search in Google Scholar

Wollheim, Richard. 1983. “Flawed Crystals: James’s The Golden Bowl and the Plausibility of Literature as Moral Philosophy.” New Literary History 15(1): 185–19110.2307/469001Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2017-11-10
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 8.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/sats-2017-0007/html
Scroll to top button