hermeneutics and morality

0

Society for Phenomenology and Existntial Philosophy, 1985

Hermeneutics and Morality

Lawrence M. Hinman Department of Philosophy University of San Diego

Alcala Park San DiegoJ CA 92110

U.S.A.

Introduction

I want to begin my remarks today with a story--not a story

of my own, but an episode from a novel by Alison Lurie, Foreign

• Affairs.l I won't apologize in advance for the length of the

story, but later I will provide a philosophical account of why it

had to be as long as it is. I will use this story to develop a

number of the claims about the hermeneutical character of the

moral life.

First, the story.

Part One. Virmie's Choice

The central character in Lurie's Foreign Affairs is Vinnie

Miner, a short, thin tenured professor of literature in her early

fifties (with a specialization in children's literature) at

Corinth University in upstate New York. She is spending her

sabbatical leave in London, doing research for her next book, a

comparative study of rhymes of American and English

schoolchildren. At the beginning of her stay, she is still

smarting from an article in the Atlantic which dealt with useless

scholarship in general and which singled out her work in

1Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs (New York: Randan House, 1984). Hereafter all references to this work will be given in brackets in the text of the paper.

\...)

v

Hermeneutics and Morality Page 2

particular--for no reason that Vinnie could discover, since she

had never even met the author, L. D. Zirnmern--for a full

paragraph as an obvious example of pointless research. (The

criticism is all the more insulting because it appeared in the

Atlantic, the magazine she holds in highest esteem--indeed, the

very place she had always dreamed of seeing her work published

and praised.) )Far from being a paragon of academic impartiality, ~ Vinnie is like most of us, refreshingly huma~ Her reactions to

the article are understandable and very human: hurt, anger,

dismay, self-pity, and a deep and abiding desire for revenge.

Indeed, she sometimes even passes the time by thinking of new and

increasingly inventive tortures for L. D. Zimmern to endure,

especially when, later in her stay, she realizes that his article

probably contributed to her grant's not being renewed.

Vinnie is also a person who has constructed a 1 ife for

herself alone, a life with which she is often pleased or at least

content. She values her privacy and autonomy and prefers to

avoid either depending on other people or having them be

obligated in any way to her. Yet as often happens to us with our

fellow countrypersons when we are abroad, Vinnie is drawn--almost

despite her wishes and better judgment--into the personal lives

of several. Americans in L d · 1 on on, inc uding the life of a younger

colleague from Corinth, Fred Turner, who is also doing research

in London. She learns that Fred had broken up with his wife

shortly before leaving for London, d h an s e occasionally is


dragged into mediating the tempestuous and eventually disastrous

affair that Fred has with an English actress. Yet throughout

this, Vinnie only wants to be left alone. She has no desire to

involve herself in the lives of. other people, much less junior

faculty.

Despite this deep and abiding desire to remain uninvolved

with other people, Vinnie does become in vol ved--not with the

incredibly handsome Fred, but with an Oklahoman named Chuck

Mumpson whom she met on a cheap charter flight to London. Chuck,

to understate the point, is not Vinnie's type. She is short and

thin and finds his sheer physical bulk to be almost rude. He

knows nothing of literature and lacks the sophisticated manner so

necessary in Vinnie's eyes to survive academic gatherings. He is

loud, spontaneously generous, and apparently either unaware of,

or unconcerned about, what other people think of him. Whenever

Vinnie thinks of introducing Chuck--she sees him as "her amusing

cowboy friend"--to her friends, embarrassment floods over her.

She wonders what they would think of her if they thought she

liked people like Chuck, was comfortable with them, was perhaps

even like them underneath her carefully maintained exterior. Yet

there is something about Chuck that touches her deeply {besides

the obvious), something that touches a part of herself that she

usually keeps carefully hidden from everyone else, including her

previous lovers. It is a part of herself that even she is not

comfortable with. On one occasion, for example, Chuck says to

'J


her, 11 Aw, Vinnie . . You 're a good woman, 11 and Vinnie finds

herself resisting such a claim:

Vinnie does not smile. No one has ever said this to her before, and she knows it to be false: she is not, in Chuck's presumed sense of the word, or any sense of it, a good woman. She is not particularly generous, brave, or affectionate; she · s tea 1 s roses from other people's gardens and enjoys imagining nasty deaths for her enemies. Of course, in her own opinion, she is quite justified in being like this, considering how the world and its inhabitants have treated her; and she has positive qualities as well: intelligence, tact, taste ... [182]

The side of her . that Chuck sees is one that Vinnie can barely

look at without immediately turning away.

Near the end of the novel, Fred--after he has been jilted

by his English actress--realizes how foolish he had been to break

up with his wife and writes to her, suggesti~ a reconciliation.

Through a series of improbable circumstances, Fred's wife Roo

tries to send a message of reconciliation to Fred through Vinnie,

the only acquaintance of Fred's she knows in London with a phone.

Roo tel ls Vinnie that Fred can cal 1 her in New York at her

father's home--" It's in the book under L. D. Z immern. "--as soon

as he arrives there. Roo clearly wants to try to set things

right between herself and Fred. If Fred doesn't contact her in

New York, it will look as though he is not really interested in

their getting back together. The only way Vinnie can contact

Fred and deliver the message before he leaves the next morning is

by trying to find him in the audience of a Druid ritual being re-

enacted on Parliament Hill. To do so would require that she go


out late that night on an errand that would be highly

inconvenient, somewhat expensive, and even a bit dangerous, given

the sections of Hampstead Heath she would have to walk across

late a" night. Moreover, she would have no guarantee of finding

him in the crowd,< nor could she even be sure that he had not

changed his plan~ The choice that Vinnie has to make centers around whether

to try to find Fred or not. To do so certainly involves

inconvenience to herself, perhaps even danger. She is under no

particular obligation to Fred. They are not especially close

friends, nor does she want to see their friendship grow.

Moreover, she realizes that this would be the perfect opportunity

to get back at L. D. Z immern, whom she has now discovered is

Fred's wife's father, by thwarting the possibility of his

daughter's happiness. Yet even leaving the revenge motive aside,

it's just not her to go trudging across the Heath at night to

deliver a message. Yet she thinks of Chuck, and of how he would

look at her if she were to tell him that she did nothing, that

she did not even try to find Fred. It would be that same mixture ~nc:L J L.?~po.'1rr,.._n?

of bewilderment.a-frd di$may he had shown when she told him she had

never met a dog she liked. "You mean you didn't even try," his

face would say. "Aw hell, Vinnie."

She decides to go in search of Fred and to deliver the

message.

Hermeneutics and Morality

Part Two. The Hermeneutical Dimensions of the Moral

Life

Page 6

The central point that I want to develop in the following

remarks through an analysis of the preceding example is that

interpretation lies at the heart of the moral life. The primarY-)

task of the moral life is coming to see, learning to perceive,

ourselves and those around us, and this is fundamentally a

hermeneutical process. Yet the word "hermeneutical" is a

portmanteau term here: a lot of things are being carried inside

it. The remainder of this paper is devoted primarily to

unpacking this term; yet in the process of unpacking, I sha 11

also be concerned with showing what is not contained in this

term. Thus, the following remarks will do two things at once.

First, they will show some of the ways in which morality is

fundamentally a hermeneutical process, concentrating on the

central role of interpretation in the moral life, the relation

between emotions and interpretation, the temporality which is

characteristic of the moral life, and the importance of narrative

in moral understanding. Second, they will indicate some of the

ways in which standard models of morality--primarily Kantian and

uti 1 i tarian accounts--omi t important aspects of the moral 1 ife

which are captured by the hermeneutical model, especially the

four aspects singled out here for attention.


\...) '!he Prinery Focus of the febral Life

The Standard Focus. First, in maintaining that the primary

focus of the moral life is a herrneneutical one, I am suggesting a

shift in our understanding of what the moral life is all about.

Much of moral philosophy takes individual moral choices and acts

•to be the focus of the moral life. 2 It is what we do that really

matters. Not only is this obviously the case in utilitarianism,

but--despi te the presence of the Tugendlehre in the Meta phys ik

der Si tten--much of Kant's moral philosophy is directed toward

the development of a test for determining the moral

permissibility of particular actions.3 This concern with

individual choices and actions is even more evident today in, for

example, the structure of many of our standard anthologies in

'-..._) ethics, such as Dick Wasserstrom 's Today's Mora 1 Problems or

Mapes and Zembaty's Social Ethics. They are typically organized

around a number of specific moral problems such as abortion,

euthanasia, capital punishment, etc. Very 1 i ttle attention is

paid to such issues as the development of habits and character

2For an excellent critique of this theme, see the work of Iris Murdoch, especially, "Vision and Choice in Morality, 11 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, s. V. XXX { 1956), pp. 32-58 and "The Idea of Perfection," in The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 1-45. Also see the work of Larry Blum, Friendship, Altruism and Morality (I.Dndon: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) and his contribution to the Symposium on Gender and Moral Developnent at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (March 21, 1985).

3There are, of course, interpreters of Kant's moral philosophy who are quite sensitive to the seeds of a virtue ethic which his work contains. See especially the work of Onora Nell on this point.

'l t j .t


....._) which would allow an individual to deal· wisely with these

problems.4 In contrast to this, by suggesting that the moral

life is fundamentally a hermeneutical process, I am maintaining

that the focus of the moral life should be shifted from decisions

about these individual problems to the cultivation of the

perceptions and the development of the interpretations which

establish the context within which these choices are made.

The Centrality of Vinnie's Perceptions. Let me make this

point about the shift of focus from choice and action to

perception, emotion and interpretation by referring to our story.

The focus of our moral attention should not be solely or even 1 primarily · on Vinnie's final choice, but rather on the

interpretations--grounded in perceptions and emotions--on which

that choice was based and which make up the fabric of Vinnie's-- I __.-I

and our--moral life. In Vinnie's case, this means that most of

the morally significant work had been done prior to her actual

decision, and that this interpretative work was primarily

perceptual and emotional. Think of the numerous perceptions and

emotions which shaped the interpretations on which Vinnie's

choice was based. First, her perception of her colleague, Fred

Turner, certainly came into play. If she had seen Fred as a

despicable young man whom any woman would be lucky to be rid of,

4Again, there are exceptions to this general tendency. See, for example, the anthology by Christina Hoff Sornrers, Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovitch, 1985).


V she might very well not help Rao to get back together with him-

for Roo 's own good. Second, though she has only a passing

acquaintance with Roo, Vinnie's view of her is significant as

wel 1. If she thinks of Roo as deserving of bad things, and if

she sees Fred as a good thing, she may well be moved to refuse to

de 1 i ver the mes sage. Third, her feel in gs toward Roo 's father,

author of the infamous Atlantic article in which her work was

ridiculed, come into play here. Her anger and hurt and

resentment about that article are real, and some of the damage it

has done to her career is real as well. Part of the

interpretative task for Vinnie is certainly centered around

whether she is going to see Roo as an extension of her father,

but the much more important interpretative challenge has to do

with how Vinnie has to see herself. Is she going to see herself

as a resentful and spiteful person--or perhaps even just a person

who does not hesitate to repay the world for its gratuitous

slights and insults? If so, then not delivering the message may

well become acceptable to her, simply confirming her view of

herself. It is here that her perception of Chuck becomes so

important, for Chuck has presented her with another

interpretation of herself--"Aw, Vinnie. You're a good woman"

-which would hardly permit her just to ignore· the message. Yet

even here there are interpretative possibilities open to Vinnie.

Al 1 she has to do, for example, is to see Chuck in a different

light, to see him just as "her amusing cowboy friend," for all


the moral force of his vision of her to be undermined. As

Gadamer has pointed out in another context, understanding is

fundamentally self-understanding. Vinnie's understanding of

Chuck is intimately dependent upon, and presents a challenge to,

her understanding of herself. By suggesting that the focus of

the moral life is primarily a hermeneutical one, part of what I

mean is that the kinds of perceptions _and emotions mentioned here

form the very fabric of the moral life.

Emotions, Interpretations, and Morality

In the preceding section, I have several times referred to

perceptions and emotions as interpretations. The first part of

this claim is presumably clear enough to those who work within a

hermeneutical tradition, for it suggests that the very act of

perception already involves interpretation. There are, to put

the same point negatively, no interpretation-free sense data

which form the building blocks of experience. To perceive is

already to begin to structure, to begin to impose an

interpretation.

The references to emotions may, however, be less familiar.

Our emotions are, I am maintaining here, one of the primary ways

in which we structure our mora 1 experience. 5. Again, think of

5 See the theory of errotions developed by Robert Solat"On in The Passions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Darre Press, 1983) as well as the highly suggestive essays of Ronald de Sousa on "The Rationality of Brotions" and "Self-Deceptive Errotions" in Exolainin2 Errotions, edited by Arrelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).


Vinnie. She· feels embarrassed when she is out in public with

Chuck, and her embarrassment structures what she perceives about

him--anything he does which is gauche, or even typically

American, is thrown into sharp relief for her--and structures

what she perceives around her--she becomes, for example, acutely

conscious of what her friends at parties might be saying about

her and Chuck--and it even structures what sh.e perceives about

herself--she becomes very aware of any of her own American

mannerisms which might possibly suggest to her friends that she

i's like Chuck. Our emotions are a central way in which we give

structure and meaning to our world.

The Role of Principles in the Moral Life

In claiming that the moral life is fundamentally a

hermeneutical process, there is a second negative aspect to my

claim, namely, I want to suggest that morality is not primarily a

matter of the strict application of general principles to

particular cases. There are three separate claims here. First, (!J I am arguing that we simply do not have the absolute moral

' principles presupposed by the standard approaches. Second, a\ A./ number of other factors, in addition to the moral principles and\./

the particular problem, enter into the shaping our moral 1 ives

and the standard approaches fail to give adequate recognition to

these factors. Third, morality involves, at most, an interplay. ~)

between principles and cases such that, when there is a tension\_;/


between the two, it is possible that the general principle may be

revised in light of the particular case as wel 1 as that the

particular case must simply be handled according to the dictates

of the general principle. Let "s look at each of these points

more closely.

The Impossibility of Absolute Principles. First, in

claiming that the moral 1 ife is a hermeneutical process, I am

rejecting any view of it which would suggest that we have certain

absolute principles which simply need to be applied to particular

cases. There are a number of good reasons for rejecting this

view of moral principles, not the least of which is that we have

yet to arrive at a consensus about what those principles are or

even agreement about how to arrive at such a consensus. It is

also important to see that this view of moral principles is very

much a part of the project of the Enlightenment that Gadamer has

so penetratingly criticized in his analysis of its

epistemological aspirations. This view of moral principles that

I want to reject here is one which implicitly {or, at times,

explicitly) takes a deductive model of the relation between

general principles and particular decisions as its ideal. It

strives to reach the point where one can simply take general

principles, feed in the facts of the case and then deduce from

this the morally correct course of action. At no time would the

principle itself be open to question. Nor is this view always

u


sensitive to the ways--already indicated above--in which the

"facts" of the case are themselves interpretations

What the Standard Approaches Fail to Recognize. ~y rejecting the standard view of the role of moral principles in

the moral life, I want to stress that the standard view fails to

do justice to the complexity of the moral life, its messiness,

the diversity of factors involved in it. Again, consider our

story. Explicit principles play a very sma 11 role in Vinnie .. s

deliberations. Many other factors, such as her feelings about L.

D. Z immern, Chuck .. s expectations of her and her percept ions of

both Chuck and herself, play much more central roles. Now

certainly there is a simple reply to al 1 this, namely, that

Vinnie is not morally very developed and that, if she were, moral

principles would then occupy center stage. My suspicion, in

contrast to this, is that Vinnie is rather like most of us, that

Lurie .. s description of the kinds of factors that make up her

moral life is rather accurate. She takes inconvenience, expense,

and danger into account; she is bothered by the opinion others

may have of her; she is concerned about her opinion of herself;

she wants to wreak revenge on her enemies. Of course, even if

this is a true description of most people .. s moral concerns as

well as Vinnie's , there is still room to reply that most of us

may not be morally very developed--so muc~ the worse for most of

us. Yet this will not do either, for what is the point of a


moral theory that is so distant from the way most of us actually

lead our moral lives?

Something very important gets lost when we simply dismiss

Vinnie's deliberations as being pre-moral or at some

underdeveloped stage of moral growth. Let me just briefly point

out three overlapping things which are usually either overlooked

or given insufficient attention in the standard theories.

First, imagine what it would have been like if Vinnie,

after receiving Roo's phone call, attempted to decide either by

applying a Kantian test of universalizability to the maxim

underlying her contemplated refusal to deliver the message or by

doing some utilitarian calculations about the overall utility

attached to either delivering the message or not doing so. The

first thing which is clearly excluded from these deliberations is

Vinnie's emotions.6 In a Kantian framework, what she feels--

about Zimmern, Fred, Chuck, and herself--is irrelevant. She can

only act on that maxim which can be willed as a universal law~

irrespective of what feelings she does or does not have. In a

utilitarian approach, her feelings can be taken into account, but

6Bernard Williams has explored this.problem most fully in a series of essays: "A Critique of Utilitarianism, " in J. J . C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973): "M:>rality and the Errotions," Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); and "Persons, Character, and Morality" "Moral Luck," and "Utilitarianism and Moral Self-indulgence," in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). I have criticized Kant on this issue in "On the Purity of Our Moral Motives: A Critique of Kant's Account of the Einotions and Acting for the Sake of Duty," The Monist, Vol. 66, No. 2

V (April, 1983), pp. 251-67.


no special significance can be attached to the fact that they are

her feelings.

The second thing which the

Vinnie's individuality, especially

future projects. The decision

standard approaches miss is & her individual history and

Vinnie makes is a fairly

significant one in a variety of ways. It breaks a pattern of

self-pity to which she had been inclined for decades. It

suggests a certain rewriting of her past, for it implies that the

possibility of being "a good woman" was one which was with her

for a long time even if it had gone unacknowledged. It opens up

new possibilities in the future, for she may now be more often

faced with the decision whether to be "a good woman" or not. Now

it is certainly possible to recognize some of these factors in

Kantian and utilitarian approaches, but even when they are

recognized, it is usually under another, less appropriate

description. Future consequences are recognized by the

utilitarian, but it is very difficult to provide a satisfactory

account of the fact that some of these consequences are !!lY

consequences, that they are part of !!!Y. life.

There is a third, closely related factor that the standard ~

approaches miss, namely, integration of the personality. If the

person has feelings, hopes, plans, etc., these are simply

overridden by moral imperatives rather than integrated into an

action which is expressive of the individual's own personality.

·One of the interesting things about the way in which Vinnie makes

·V


her decision is that she does not attempt to determine what

anyone--that is, any moral agent whatsoever--would do in the

situation; rather, she tries to arrive at a decision about what

she should do in the situation. As a result, the decision is

much more expressive of her individuality--both past and future-

than would have been possible within either a Kantian or

utilitarian approach.

An Alternative Model of the Place of Principles in the

Moral Life. None of this is intended to suggest that principles

have no place in the moral 1 ife; rather I am suggesting, in

contrast to this standard model of the role of moral principles

in the moral life, an alternative model in which general

principles themselves are open to revision on the basis of new

and unanticipated moral experiences. Whereas the standard model

often takes deductive reasoning to be the ideal link between

highest principles and actual decisions, the model being

suggested here involves a much looser link between the two.

Indeed, the appropriate metaphor in this context is one of mutual

illumination rather than deduction. The general principles and

the particular cases mutually illuminate one another, but neither

has unconditional priority. While the weight of expectations can

certainly be on the side of the general principle, it is always

possible that the unusual case may prompt us to revise or

reconsider the general principle.


The Temporality of Moral Understanding

In suggesting that moral understanding is hermeneutical, I

am also calling attention to the particular type of temporality

which characterizes it, a temporality which is quite different

from that which is presupposed by a morality of principles. It

is, first and foremost, a type of understanding which is always

related to both past and future, one in which there is no

absolute point of reference, one in which the meaning of any

given event in the past can change with time. I will comment on

e~ch of these three points, contrasting them with the temporality

characteristic of the type of moral reasoning found in standard

moral theories.

'-.) The Temporality of Moral Understanding. {After Heidegger

and Gadamer, it is hardly necessary to prove that understanding

is related to both past and future; it is important, however, to

see the significance of this for the nature of moral

understanding ·_J Our moral decisions are based upon our

understanding of the situation within which the decision is to be

made. That understanding is always in light of our future

possible projects as well as against the backdrop of our previous

experience. Thus Vinnie's decision, for example, is made not

only with some kind of theoretical knowledge of her own past

choices, but who she is at that moment has in part been shaped by

those earlier decisions and experiences: her general pattern of

avoiding involvement with other people, her seemingly inadvertent

Hermeneutics and Morality Paqe 18

and gradual participation as an intermediary in Fred's affair

with the English actress, her affair with Chuck. Nor, of course,

is this limited only to the effects of her own personal history;

she is also affected by the actions of others in the past as

well: the ridicule of L. D. Zimmern, the numerous people who just

seemed to overlook her because she was short and s 1 ight, the

people who think a plain looking academic woman cannot be

interested in sex. All of this contributes to how she

understands the situation in the present moment. Yet just as

importantly, it is shaped by the future and its possibilities.

Not only must she try to find Fred that night if at all because

his plane left the next day, but her entire perception of the

situation was shaped by her projected conversation with Chuck

when she would tell him about what she did or did not do.

Standard moral theories are unable to recognize this kind

of temporal ity in an adequate manner. In Kant's ethics, the

moral agent is curiously timeless, existing outside the~menal realm. Insofar as the categorical imperative is used as the test

for the moral permissibility of our maxims, there is no reference

to the kind of temporality described here. In utilitarian moral

theory, the situation is somewhat different. As a

consequential ist theory, it does take account of the future in

its calculation of consequences. It fails, however, to provide

an adequate account of the way in which a specific future is !!!Y

future. From a ~tilitarian standpoint, there is little


foundation for singling out some of the possible future

consequences as bearing a special relation to me, as being part

of my own future rather than just part of the future in general.

The Absence of an Absolute Temporal Point of Reference.

This issue becomes even more significant for moral philosophy

when we realize that not only is all understanding temporal, but

that there is no privileged point along this temporal line.

Vinnie understands her situation in one way, given her past

experiences and future projected possibilities. She ·might have

understood the same situation differently if she had encountered

it a few months earlier or later in her 1 ife. There is no

guarantee that the standpoint of the present is necessarily

better than that of an earlier moment, nor is there any general I.I-" (.,.. .-J

rule that tj)e later viewpoint is superior .t.-~--t.ae earlier.

The Temporality of the Meaning of Experiences. There is a

third and final point to be made here about the temporality of

moral understanding, and it is a corollary of the preceding two

points, namely, that the meaning of an event or experience

changes through time, and there is no guarantee that a later

effect or interpretation of it is better than an earlier one.

Again, consider an example from Foreign Affairs. Fred Turner,

the young American professor in London, was married to a woman--

Roo--who originally seemed to him to be strong, refreshingly

unconventional, passionate and sincere. During his affair with

the English actress, who--being highly "feminine" and refined--is


\...,) in almost every way the opposite of his wife, Fred comes to see

his wife as garish, hardly ci vi 1 ized, uncouth, and unfeminine.

After he discovers that there is a dark side to the femininity of

the English actress and after they have split up, his

interpretation of Roo changes once again, moving back toward his

original view. (Let us imagine, for the sake of our example, that

Roo had died shortly after Fred left America, but that he had no

knowledge of this. (This places the event of his relationship

with Roo firmly in the -past, preventing any continuing

interaction with her.) The meaning that Roo had for him would

have undergone at least two significant changes and could

presumably ·undergo additional changes at a later date..:.) This is

one of the ways in which the meaning of past experiences changes

with time, and it is by no means clear that there is any single

temporal stage in the development of that meaning which is better

than any other, any point which necessarily provides us with

"the" meaning of the event or person in question.

The Role of Narrative in M:>ral Understanding

If moral decisions are based on our understanding of a

situation, and if that understanding is necessarily temporal in

the ways outlined in the preceding section, then we can see the

way in which moral understanding is essentially linked to

narrative in at least two important ways.


\.....) First, moral understanding always takes place within the (_9

'\....)

context of the narrative of some individual's life precisely

because of its temporality. Because understanding is always

situated at some particular moment, because it is always both

recollective of the past and projective of the future, and

because there is no single moment which is necessarily superior

to all other moments, understanding must always take place within

the context of the on-going narrative which constitutes each

individual's life.

There is a second respect in which moral understanding is ~ intimately related to narrative,

understanding of narratives of

name 1 y, it of ten invo 1 ves the

lives other than our own().

Certainly one of the challenges of the moral life which faces us

is understanding the meaning--both conscious and unconscious--

which another person's action has within the narrative of his or

her individual life, just as another of its challenges is

understanding the meaning--again, both conscious and unconscious

-that our own actions have within the narratives of other

people's lives.

Finally, we can now see the reason for the relatively long

example given at the beginning of this paper. The meaning of

Vinnie's decision does not exist independently of the story of

her own life, nor is it even independent of the narratives which

comprise the 1 ives of several of the people with whom she is

involved. Indeed, in contrast to Lurie' s novel, the sketch I


\....J hav:r::::the beginning of this paper is incredibly underdeveloped,

lacking in important detail. One suspects, for example, that

Vinnie's choice was not unaffected by the fact that, whenever she

travels, she feels that she must stake out her space on the plane

herself, making sure that she quickly gets the magazines she

wants to read, two pillows and at least one blanket. The world,

she feels, cares only about the young and attractiveo. Anyone

who has the bad grace to be old and unattractive should, so she

thinks the world feels, take up as little room as possible. Even

something as seemingly insignificant as this must play a role in

Vinnie's choice, for she must feel that the world always helps

young, attractive people like Fred Turner. Somewhere in the back

of her mind, one suspects that there is a lurking question: why

should I go out of my way to help this incredibly handsome young

man, who has just broken up with a beautiful English actress, to

become reconciled with his quite different, but probably equally

beautiful wife? It is details like this which make up the fabric

of our moral lives, 7 and until we develop a model of moral

understanding which is sufficiently sensitive to precisely these

kinds of details, we wil 1 fail to understand the subtlety and

complexity of the moral life or to work out a conception of

7Philip Hallie is one of the few moral philosophers today that I am aware of who does moral philosophy within the context of narrative, and his work shows a deep appreciation of the subtlety and canplexity of the lives of those he studies. See his Cruelty (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1982) and Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (New York: Harper, 1979) as well as his contribution to the recent issue of The Philosophical Forum on the Holocaust.


U morality which preserves and integrates the whole person in the

moral decision.

hermeneutics and morality

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