In a strange chapter in After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre muses on that great virtue ethicist--wait for it--Jane Austen. He re-categorizes her fiction as the latest entry into the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition of ethics. And if that strikes you as bizarre, it should.
My best guess is that Austen herself operated on a simple maxim: action reveals character. Human beings elevate deception to an art form—-especially with respect to who we really are. The nature is itself unchanging (so thinks Austen), but naughty folks have a vested interest in convincing their compatriots to believe them honest, loyal, courageous, etc. Austen supposes these tangled webs always unravel if one merely observes the actor for an extended period of time. A lout may bedazzle you with his tales, but pay attention and soon enough you’ll find him face down in the gutter or begging you for a bailout.
According to our experts, Austen was at least wrong about human nature. Not only is it not static, it is constantly being reinvented. Yes, the You of yesterday is long gone and only causally—not substantively—related to the You of today. Of course this should jam up our notions of criminality, rehabilitation and the like, but it doesn’t—we are a strange species—and instead guarantees our limitless freedom, our existential potential or some such. Don’t like yourself? No problem; buy this book and in ten easy steps you too can become Somebody Different! I find this a little unnerving, and the neuroscience seems to imply that this as much an American fairy tale as its Enlightenment predecessor, but the underlying point is apt: your nature can be sub- or con- verted and probably has been.
Which brings us back to MacIntyre. Given that you may become radically different, what Austen chronicles as a revelation of true nature is really another product of human cultivation. Constancy is a virtue. What I call constancy is what impels Darcy to act as Darcy always must act, even when (and especially when) it must cost the very things Darcy must want. Austen’s enlightenment anthropology prevents her from seeing what we cannot ignore: consistent day to day, week to week, year to year, decade to decade character is as practiced and as willed as the deceptions which falsely project it.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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I don't get it: Your account of Austen's characters seems purely Aristotelian. Their virtue resides solely in habitual practice of socially valued behavior. They may fake being something else for a time, but, in the end, the habits they have developed over a lifetime reappear, and the character is revealed accordingly as either vicious or virtuous.
ReplyDeleteFor instance: I have practiced the vice of laziness most of my life. I can, for a time, fake the virtue of industriousness, but, without extreme effort on my part, the vice will quickly reassert itself. Conversely, my father, who has practiced hard work his whole life, has real difficulty just relaxing and being lazy. It is as though he is faking it, and, quite quickly, one finds my father hard at work doing something.
I will grant that, by Austen's time, something more like Kantian morality was in place. It is difficult to imagine that Darcy's virtue of habitual honesty would not be instantly shattered by a single instance of falsehood, or even a half-truth. Leonidas could have ordered a retreat, and no Greek would have doubted his courage. It's like the difference between digital and analog.
MacIntyre is doing an Aristotelian reading of Austen, so yeah, that's exactly how he characterizes it.
ReplyDeleteIn his defense, I think that after you have read PnP through, you could easily write fan fiction about Darcy or Liz or anyone. Why? because the characters are practically automatons--it is obvious what any of them would do in any given situation (not unlike Rand characters actually). What gives the book drama is the way Austen holds back information about *circumstances*, not any major inner conflict Ms. Bennet may have. I mean, think about her inner turmoil. It's always of the "Why would he be acting that way?" sort rather than "What should I do?" (and this precisely because she has the virtue of constancy whereas her sisters do not).
Whether she was conscious of it or not, JA really does come across as an Aristotelian if you come at her work from a teleological PoV (as Mac does). If nothing else, it makes re-reading her more fun.
My point is that what Austen takes for granted (that nature is fixed and so constancy is always a given) is not true in the real world. To be a Darcy (and this is what Mac points out) you have to *practice* acting in the same way, based on the same ideological beliefs, over time. If you do not, Dan at time (t) may be wholly unrecognizable to Dan at time (t+10). This is a good thing if you are currently a piece of poo, frightening if you are assured of your own virtue.
I see. That makes more sense. I agree that the characters in PnP both benefit and suffer from their extreme definition. It makes them highly memorable, and, in the case of the heroes and heroines, we want to identify with them. At the same time, one doesn't necessarily get the feeling that anyone can change. There is no Dmitri character. Then again, how often do people really change noticeably? It may occur, but it would take something more on the scale of War and Peace to have a realistic time line of that change.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I wouldn't rule out the idea of a human nature. It is nowhere near as clean and defined as the enlightenment versions (nor is it as noble), but it is there. I would argue that its existence is exactly why so many other cultures, notably Islam at present, fear the BORG that is secular global socialism. McDonald's, Nickelback, and American Idol all tap into something that is basically universal, which is why the culture that they represent is so terrifyingly effective in squashing opposition.
Tom, I do not think Austen 'takes for granted' that nature is fixed. Certainly there are some characters, such as Wickham, who first appear good natured, but turn out to be bad. But we never see a real attempt by Wickham to change his nature.
ReplyDeleteWe do, however, see a transformation in Darcy. We first see him proud and reserved, refusing to dance with Elizabeth. Near the end of the book, he goes out of his way to make the Gardiners (from Cheapside) feel welcome during their visit at Pemberly. Elizabeth is shocked by the change in his manners.
Darcy also claims to have been brought up to be selfish and overbearing. It is not until Elizabeth refuses him that he realizes his faults and attempts to correct them.
We see similar changes in characters in Emma and Sense and Sensibility. While it may be said that the characters had good natures to begin with and our merely making themselves better, Austen shows them bettering themselves by practicing the habits of virtue.
There is a character in Mansfield Park who appears in the eyes of the heroine bad natured from the beginning. He attempts to change himself in order to win her affection, but ends up falling back into his old ways. Rather than this enforcing the view that his nature was fixed and could not be changed, it enforces the idea that maintaining virtuous habits is what decides one's nature. Instead of attending to his affairs as a landowner, which he acknowledges he should, he stays to party in London in the company of someone he knows he should avoid if he wants to avoid temptation.
@Missy: The question is *why* does Darcy act the way he acts toward Lizzy at the dance? Is it because he has defective character? No, although Lizzy assumes this to be the case. It is because Darcy *lacks information*. Having observed Mrs. Bennet's behavior, Darcy concludes (correctly) that the Bennet family has some serious deficiencies in character. That Lizzy has miraculously avoided this fate is inconceivable to him. Once he sees that he was mistaken, he alters his behavior accordingly. Darcy self-describes this as a change in character, but *we* know that it isn't. And even if it is, his nature is fixed and *provides* him with the moral resources to alter his habits. I think Austen is thoroughgoing in her Enlightenment take on human nature.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Mansfield Park or SnS so I just have to grant that this theory may only apply to PnP.
@Dan: I wonder about human nature quite a bit. Part of the issue is *what constitutes nature.* Is it human desires? Because those do seem remarkably consistent over time and space. Is it personality type? Is it decision-making hermeneutics? Etc.? Some of those things change, some don't, and all are highly subject to circumstance, breeding, and deep cultural roots.
The problem as I see it is that Enlightenment thinking vastly underestimated the complexity of the issue and we're only beginning to get a feel for what's on the table.