Emerson’s abolitionist perfectionism

This article aims to rewrite Emerson’s moral perfectionism – his anti-foundationalist pursuit of an always more perfect state of self and society – onto his moral and intellectual participation in the abolitionist movement. I argue that Cavell artificially separated Emerson’s moral perfectionism from his extensive, decades-long abolitionism. The source of Cavell’s oversight is his participation in the long-standing norm of dichotomizing Emerson’s work into the theoretical ‘essays’ and the ‘anti-slavery writings’ or the philosophical and the polemical. Recent scholars of Emerson have questioned and even dismissed this dichotomy, however, while recentring Emerson’s politics in his oeuvre as a whole. They find much to praise, and also plenty to criticize, in Emerson’s abolitionist writings. I follow and extend that scholarly trend here and introduce what I call Emerson’s abolitionist perfectionism as an expansion of Cavell’s influential work on moral perfectionism.

Kingian Personalism, Moral Emotions, and Emersonian Perfectionism

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor misses the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics.

Moral Disengagement: Mediator Between Moral Perfectionism and Machiavellian Behavior Among Undergraduates?

To better understand Machiavellian behavior among undergraduate students, the current study examines moral disengagement as a mediator in the relationship between Machiavellian behavior and two dimensions of moral perfectionism (concern over moral mistakes perfectionism and personal moral standards perfectionism). Participants were 210 undergraduate students (64% female) from three universities in Tehran, Iran, aged between 18 and 27 years old. Structural equation modeling revealed that Machiavellian behavior was negatively associated with personal moral standards perfectionism and positively associated with moral disengagement. The results of the structural model showed a non-significant relationship between concern over moral mistakes perfectionism and Machiavellian behavior. However, multi-model analysis provided evidence that moral disengagement partially mediated the relationship between personal moral standards perfectionism and Machiavellian behavior. The findings also showed that there was a relationship between concern over moral mistakes perfectionism and Machiavellian behavior through moral disengagement. The results suggest that while moral perfectionism is often accompanied with moral disengagement, Machiavellian behavior may be an explanation for individuals with these traits.

Barthes and the Lessons of Ancient Philosophy

Roland Barthes was a classicist by training; his work frequently alludes to the classical literary canon and the ancient art of rhetoric. This chapter argues that ancient Greco-Roman philosophy permits insights into Barthes’s very late work, particularly when we understand ancient philosophy not as an academic discipline, but as a mode of thought which prioritises an art of living. This chapter will focus on Barthes’s posthumously published Collège de France lecture notes (1977–80) and on other posthumous diary material, arguing that this work can be seen as part of a tradition of thought which has its roots in the ethics and care of the self proposed by ancient Greco-Roman philosophical thought. The chapter uses the work of the historian of ancient philosophy, Pierre Hadot, to set Barthes’s teaching in dialogue with Stoic and Epicurean thought, and subsequently refers to Stanley Cavell’s work on ‘moral perfectionism’ to demonstrate how Barthes’s final lecture courses, and the associated Vita Nova project, can be seen as efforts by Barthes to transform his ‘intelligibility’. Barthes’s late moral perfectionism, and the individualism of his teaching, corresponds to the ancient philosophical ethical imperative to think one’s way of life differently and thereby to transform one’s self.

Good Enough Justice?

This essay contends that Stanley Cavell’s criterion of “good enough justice,” which designates the minimal condition of social justice necessary for his perfectionist understanding of ethical selfhood, constitutes an avoidance—rather than an acknowledgment—of the problem of injustice. Taking Cavell’s misreading of Walter Benjamin as exemplary of this tendency, the essay shows how Cavell’s moral perfectionism consistently converts questions about the suffering of others into a problem of the self and its conscience, thereby avoiding the ethical claim at the heart of Benjamin’s project.

Moral Perfectionism, Optatives, and the Inky Line in Besant’s All in a Garden Fair and Gissing’s New Grub Street

This chapter argues for the importance of moral perfectionism to the life of writing depicted in Besant’s All in a Garden Fair (1883) and Gissing’s New Grub Street (1891). Scholarship by Andrew H. Miller has identified our desire to improve as ‘a defining aspect of modernity’. Miller’s terms explain a good deal about these novels, in both of which characters routinely (aspire to) improve themselves by means of comparing themselves with others. In All in a Garden Fair, for example, Claire rejects Allen by imagining untoward future outcomes, prospects cancelled by their decisions in the present. Meanwhile, New Grub Street opens with Milvain referring to a man who is being executed: his self-conceptualization arises out of an understanding of who he is not, or at least not yet. My aim, in the first half of this essay, is to show how the two works articulate a larger, Victorian conversation regarding moral perfectionism. In the second half, I concentrate on Besant’s and Andrew Lang’s conversation about New Grub Street in the Author, and Gissing’s responses, revealing how they reenact some of the novels’ debates.