Refining the Account

The account of the virtue of honesty developed in chapter 2 is a promising start. But it needs a lot more improvement. One big omission has to do with honest motivation. That is the topic of chapter 4. This chapter looks at a variety of challenges and potential counterexamples. In doing so, it turns to our second desideratum, avoiding counterintuitive results. In particular the chapter focuses on Nazi-at-the-door cases and the case of Huck Finn. It also explores the idea that honesty pertains to distortions of normative as well as descriptive facts, and the sense in which many of the wrong actions we perform also might fail to be honest.

The Unsivilized Figure as Cultural Hero of Artifice: Suassuna’s João Grilo and Twain’s Huck Finn

In their close ties to a folkloric past, and in a conscientious effort to dialogue with a far-reaching literary inheritance, the Brazilian Ariano Suassuna (1927-2014) and the U.S.’s Mark Twain (1835-1910) present regional protagonists who negotiate roles as heroes of artifice. As they feed off models of the Trickster and pícaro, an analysis based on cognitive and psychosocial theory reveals a João Grilo and Huck Finn that model valued skills as socioeconomically marginalized figures on the outskirts of civilization. In Auto da Compadecida (1955) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), both Suassuna and Twain manage to highlight these skills by creating character duos that mimic the cognitive counterpointing between Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote and Sancho Panza.

"Huck Finn at King Arthur's Court"

F. O. Matthiessen was a key player in an event which took place at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg in the summer of 1947 and which launched the legendary Salzburg Seminar and may be considered the birth of American studies in Europe. Matthiessen's reflections on this remarkable session, From the Heart of Europe, remains outstanding in its conjuring of a humanist vision amidst ruins. This travelogue, his last major—if largely forgotten—work published shortly before his suicide, has been variously reassessed as an elegiac document of his tragic failure, as a politically deluded scholar, and as a groundbreaking foray into sketching out a radically alternate transnational understanding of American studies avant la lettre. These highly diverging perspectives on Matthiessen's final book, in particular, and on the professional and personal troubles during his last years, more generally, account for the lasting myth-making fascination with Matthiessen, which has left its mark not only on academic discourses ranging from socialist criticism to queer theory but may also be found in the novels of May Sarton (Faithful Are the Wounds) and Mark Merlis (American Studies). Hence, this article reflects on Matthiessen's impact on the 1947 seminar and traces the legacy of this controversial founding father of American studies.

Ordinary Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness

This chapter defends the connection between subjective rightness and ordinary praiseworthiness. First, merely acting on conscience is not enough for praiseworthiness. On the other hand, merely being motivated towards what is actually good is not enough either. Praiseworthiness, like trying, is subject to a ‘reflexivity requirement’. Nomy Arpaly uses the example of Huck Finn to argue that an agent can be praiseworthy without having a good grasp of morality, and without acting as they believe they ought. On a competing view, the ‘Searchlight View’, full awareness of every relevant aspect of the act at the moment of action is necessary for praise- or blameworthiness. Both of these views fail: Arpaly’s view does not meet the reflexivity requirement, and the Searchlight View meets too strong a version. Some awareness, some background knowledge is required, but it need not be as bright as a searchlight.