Death of Literary Studies 4

way in the minds of students, professors and public alike.
The other response is to say that there is indeed, and there has been for millennia, a powerful, practical reason for the existence of literary studies. The study of literature, alongside philosophy and religion, has existed in order to describe, analyze and help shape the moral orders that hold societies, cultures and economic systems together. At the most basic and simplistic level, no human system can continue for long without some sense of what is "good" for the system and what is "bad" for the system. Some kinds of behavior will be beneficial, some will be detrimental, some will have no visible effect one way or the other.
In commerce, for example, some kinds of behavior, such as competition, are seen to be beneficial and therefore "good" for the system, and other kinds, such as insider trading or pyramid building, are seen to be detrimental and therefore "bad" for the system as a whole. These are moral sensibilities which underpin and cohere economic activities in the western world. If they are ignored or discarded, serious consequences ensue; anyone who has lived in or even visited Eastern Europe can see the ill effects of discarding these commercial and economic values. A failure of moral thinking which manifested itself in a vast pyramid scheme threw an entire country, Albania, into nearly total chaos in the winter of 1997.
All this is somewhat simplistic. Depictions of moral order for thousands of years indicate that moral orders are constantly shifting; what looks like sound moral judgment today looks, a few years later in a different context, like an error of cosmic proportions. We need only mention the
development and use of atomic bombs to illustrate this: Albert Einstein, one of the influential moral thinkers in our century, helped in the development of the atomic bomb as a moral imperative in the context of the threat of Nazism, but warned powerfully against its use and proliferation when the threat was past. Einstein explicitly saw the problem as a profound moral issue.
The moral concerns of whole cultures must be reflected and shaped. It is a group effort. Everyone who lives in a culture has a responsibility to give attention to the moral and ethical currents that hold commerce, art, scientific activities, technological development, education, political actions, military actions, economic actions together. Whether we admit it or not, almost all of us have a sense of fairness or justice which we follow around, or which follows us around, and this means we have a moral sensibility. We have the idea that some things are fair and some aren't, that certain extreme behaviors -- like murder -- are unacceptable, and others are.
Since World War I, whole systems of moral order have come under heavy scrutiny, criticism and attack. Some people believe there is no moral order at all, and conclude that any
feelings of morality are parallel to sentimentalities, of little or no real meaning in the world. I notice that many people who hold this view often react with outrage and indignation when politicians lie or children are molested or wars break out. Although they deny there is any moral order to be had, they suffer real pain when their moral sensibilities are violated.
Traditionally, religions provided cultures with most of their moral instruction, helped and shaped in the general population by art, literature and philosophy, and picked up, hopefully, by kings, queens and politicians. In the twentieth century, art and literature have gone to great lengths to criticize old, outdated moral orders -- perhaps giving the sense that in the absence of the old religious moralities, there is no moral order at all. The dominant view of the universe which replaced decayed religious views is that of science, but unfortunately, up to the last decade or so, science explicitly neglected to provide any moral guidance whatsoever.
When literature developed its critical methodologies along scientific lines, it created a crisis for itself: Literature traditionally treats moral issues, and science traditionally excludes them. Where literature went from there, I hope I have made clear so far.

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W.H. Auden, introducing a collection of writings by Loren Eiseley, wrote that at a symposium he attended on "The Place of Value in a World of Fact":

most of the those present were scientists, some of them very distinguished indeed. To my shock and amazement, they kept saying that what we need today is a set of Ethical Axioms. I can only say that to me the phrase is gibberish. An axiom is stated in the indicative and addressed to the intellect. From one set of axioms one kind of mathematics will follow, from another set another, but it would be nonsense to call one of them "better" than the other ... "Thou shalt love thy neighbor" and "A straight line is the

shortest distance between two points" belong to two totally different realms of discourse.
(Auden, p. xviii)

It may be that our culture generally accepts the view, derived from science, that if something is not factual or expressible as an axiom or law, it has no reality or validity. Accepting this view, it's clear that any idea of morality has no facticity and therefore no validity. So much for the study of literature in the eyes of a forestry professor.
But the point is that moral orders do exist. A culture's moral structures and currents have to be described, discussed and shaped constantly. The discussion can take place most intensely and believably in our age in literature, and literary studies have a responsibility to occupy themselves with discussions of moral significance. Since moral discussions are critical to the health and survival of societies, cultures, commercial systems, and so on, then literary studies are critical to us.
Up to now I have made the claim that many literary critics and teachers pay essentially no attention to any possible responsibilities literary study has to make discussions which are meaningful and helpful to culture. I am representing this as a shortcoming of literary study, and as a reason why students and others find little that is useful or pertinent in the study of literature.
But there are, of course, literary critics who take firmly moral stands in their work. Many multiculturalists, for example, take the stand that literary study should uphold certain moral values concerning racial, social and economic equality. This idea quickly becomes, in practice, the idea that literature itself should uphold particular moral values defined by the critic him or herself. Many brands of feminism take a similar stand.
But this view differs significantly from the view that literature and literary study should address, discuss and help shape the moral frameworks that hold things together. And a serious problem develops from it.
The problem is that the critic presumes to know the moral truth. The questions asked of the text tend to prescribe correct moral answers rather than to instigate exploration, debate or shaping. Asking, for example, "What is this book telling us about the ways in which men exercise power over women?" assumes that it is an established scientific fact that first, in virtually all places, all times and all contexts, men have power over women and second, men exercise this power immorally. The question prescribes its own answers, which turn out to be, in essence, moral axioms because those who pose the question frequently have particular answers in mind, corresponding to particular moral views.
The discussion, in other words, develops around a moral observation which is presented as an unchanging fact -- the mixing of two totally different realms of discourse -- and becomes not the shaping of a moral sensibility, but an indoctrination to a sociopolitical view. What looks like a moral discussion on the surface turns out to be political instruction underneath. In extreme incarnations of this particular approach, it can be learned that all literary texts, all works of art, all depictions of human relationships reveal and/or uphold this moral fact about the behavior of men toward women.
But it is not true. It is a contextual moral problem which needs constant attention, constant discussion. One might equally ask: "What is this book telling us about the ways in which women exercise power over men?"
Multiculturalist critics frequently ask and answer similar questions. "What is this book telling us about European imperialism?" asks Chinua Achebe of Heart of Darkness, and replies by showing that Conrad's language is racist and essentially concluding that Conrad himself is racist. Achebe makes a deep moral argument and judgment that has been accepted and utilized by many multiculturalist critics, despite the fact that any sensitive reader can see plainly that Heart of Darkness is an indictment of European imperialism, not to mention racism. Sensitive readers notice this, listen to the instructor make the same claims as Achebe, realize that the claims are not related to what they actually read, and dismiss literary criticism as meaningless. And they resent the fact that the instructor seems to be prescribing their moral and ethical views for them.
In this way, feminists and multiculturalists shoot at their own feet, not to mention in the general direction of the English department. The reader or student who is interested not in his or her own ideas but in the author's ideas, is also not interested in having a moral and ethical system or set of questions prescribed for him or her. These readers are interested in what the text is saying to them, what dimensions and experiences the text creates for them, and ultimately, how the text might help them shape their own inner lives.