Poe and Ethics: Hume and the Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance (by Ariela Tubert for SymPOEsium)
(1) Every work of art, in order to produce its proper effect on the mind, must be surveyed from a certain point of view,
and won’t be fully appreciated by people whose situation – real or imaginary – doesn’t fit with the one that the work
requires. (Hume, “The Standard of Taste”)
(2) Where any innocent oddities of life-style are represented, such as the ones I have mentioned, they ought certainly to be
accepted; and a man who is shocked by them shows clearly that what he has is a false delicacy and refinement. The poet’s
monument, more durable than brass, would fall to the ground like common brick or clay if men didn’t make some
allowance for the continual changes of life-styles and customs, and would accept only what fitted with the prevailing
fashion. Must we throw aside the pictures of our ancestors because of their ruffs and hooped skirts? But where the ideas of
morality and decency alter from one age to another, and where vicious behaviour is described without proper indications
of blame and disapproval, it should be granted that this disfigures the poem and is a real ugliness in it. I can’t enter into
such sentiments, and it wouldn’t be right for me to do so; and however I may excuse the poet, on the grounds that at his
time such things were accepted, I can never enjoy the poem. The lack of humanity and decency that is so conspicuous in
the characters drawn by a number of the ancient poets - even sometimes by Homer and the Greek tragedians - greatly
reduces the value of their grand performances, and gives modern authors an advantage over them. We aren’t interested in
the adventures and feelings of such rough heroes; we are displeased to find the limits of vice and virtue so much
confounded: And whatever indulgence we may give to the writer on account of his prejudices, we cannot prevail on
ourselves to enter into his sentiments, or bear an affection to characters, which we plainly discover to be blameable.
(Hume, “The Standard of Taste”)
(3) Speculative errors that are found in the literary works of any age or country don’t detract much from the value of those
works. To get us to enter into all the opinions that prevailed at that time, and to enjoy the sentiments or conclusions
derived from them, all that is needed is a certain turn of thought or imagination - ·e.g. getting into the frame of mind of
someone who thinks he can foretell the future from the entrails of slaughtered animals, or who thinks that one’s fate in the
after-life depends on whether one has had a proper funeral. But to change our judgments on conduct, and arouse in us
sentiments of approval or blame, love or hatred, different from the ones that long custom has made familiar to us - that
requires a very violent effort. And when a man is confident of the rightness of the moral standard that he judges by, he is
rightly protective of it, and won’t pervert the sentiments of his heart for a moment - e.g. getting into the frame of mind of
someone who thinks he ought to murder his daughter in order to persuade the gods to put wind into the sails of his ships at the behest of any writer whatsoever. (Hume, “The Standard of Taste”)
(4) If the story tells us that Duncan was not in fact murdered on Macbeth’s orders, then that is what we accept and
imagine as fictionally true. If we start doubting what the story tells us about its characters, then we may as well doubt
whether it’s giving us their right names. However, suppose the facts of the murder remain as they are in fact presented in
the play, but it is prescribed in this alternate fiction that this was unfortunate only for having interfered with Macbeth’s
sleep, or that we in the audience are relieved at these events. These seem to be imaginative tasks of an entirely different
order.” (Richard Moran, “The Expression of Feeling in Imagination,” Philosophical Review, 1994)
(5) Good Giselda
The next morning, Giselda killed her baby on the grounds of its gender. In killing her baby, Giselda did the right thing;
after all, it was a girl.
Bad Giselda
The next morning, Giselda killed her baby on the grounds of its gender. In killing her baby, Giselda did not do the right
thing; after all it was a human being.
(Tamar Gendler, “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” Journal of Philosophy, 2000)
(6) Craig saw that the cause of the backup had been Jack and Jill, he took his gun out of the glove box and shot them.
People then started driving over their bodies, and while the new speed hump caused some people to slow down a bit,
mostly traffic returned to its normal speed. So Craig did the right thing, because Jack and Jill should have taken their
argument somewhere else where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way. (Brian Weatherson, cited in Gendler)
(7) Taste contents herself with displaying the charms: – waging the war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity
– her disproportion – her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious – in a word, to Beauty. (Poe, “The
Poetic Principle”)
(8) Its [beauty’s] sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless
incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth. (Poe, “The Poetic Principle”)
(9) [one may incorporate into a poem’ “the incitements of passion, or the precepts of duty, or even the lessons of truth…
the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the
real essence of the poem. (Poe, “The Poetic Principle”)
(10) Let me conclude – by the recitation of yet another brief poem – one very different in character from any that I have
before quoted. It is by Motherwell, and is called “The Song of the Cavalier.” With our modern and altogether rational
ideas of the absurdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathize with
the sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real excellence of the poem. To do this fully, we must identify ourselves, in
fancy, with the soul of the cavalier.
Then mounte! Then mounte, brave gallants, all,
And don our helmes amaine:
Deathe’s couriers, Fame and Honour, call
Us to the field againe
No shrewish teares shall fill our eye
When the sword-hilt is in our hand, -Heart-whole we’ll part, and now whit sighe
For the fayrest of the land;
Let piping swaine, and craven wight,
Thus weepe and puling crye,
Our business is like men to fight,
And hero-like to die!
(Poe, “The Poetic Principle”)