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Striking toward peace and harmony the human being is ceasely torn apart in personal, social, national life by wars, feuds, inequities and intimate personal conflicts for which there seems to be no respite. Does the human condition in interaction with others imply a constant adversity? Or, is this conflict owing to an interior or external factor of evil governing our attitudes and conduct toward the other person? To what criteria should I refer for appreciation, judgment, direction concerning my attitudes and my actions as they bear on the well-being of others? At the roots of these questions lies human experience which ought to be appropriately clarified before entering into speculative abstractions of the ethical theories and precepts. Literature, which in its very gist, dwells upon disentangling in multiple perspective the peripeteia of our life-experience offers us a unique field of source-material for moral and ethical investigations. Literature brings preeminently to light the Moral Sentiment which pervades our life with others -- our existence tout court. Being modulated through the course of our experiences the Moral Sentiment sustains the very sense of literature and of personal human life (Tymieniecka).
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THE ENIGMA OF GOOD AND EVIL; THE MORAL SENTIMENT IN LITERATURE A N A L E C TA H U S S E R L I A N A THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH VOLUME LXXXV Founder and Editor-in-Chief: A N N A -T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning Hanover, New Hampshire For sequel volumes see the end of this volume. THE ENIGMA OF GOOD AND EVIL; THE MORAL SENTIMENT IN LITERATURE Edited by ANNA-TER ES A TYMIENIE C K A The World Phenomenology Institute, Hanover, NH, U.S.A. Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning A-T. Tymieniecka, President Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available ISBN-10 ISBN-13 ISBN-10 ISBN-13 1-4020-3575-6 (HB) 978-1-4020-3575-3 (HB) 1-4020-3576-4 (e-book) 978-1-4020-3576-0 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springeronline.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2005 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. TABLE OF CONTENTS xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PART ONE P THE ENIGMA OF GOOD AND EVIL SECTION I THE MORAL SENTIMENT ˜ OZ / A Question of Interest? Between Good ALIRA ASHVO-MUN and Evil in IInstinto de Ines by Carlos Fuentes 5 DOROTHY G. CLARK / Being’s Wound: Evil and Explanation in T he Killer Inside Me 17 LJUNG-BARUTH / A Paradox of Love: The Manifestation of Life and the Moral Sentiment in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Her Son’s W ife 29 ANNIKA WILLIAM EDELGLASS / Levinas’s Language 47 SECTION II RECOGNIZING GOOD AND EVIL REBECCA M. PAINTER / Sympathy for the Devil ?: A Historical Tour of Literature and Cultural Representation 65 JONES-CATHCART / Kierkegaard’s Fear and T rembling: An Experiment in the Self-Recognition of Evil 77 ANDREW LEWIS LIVESAY / Beyond Evil in Heart of o Darkness: Levinasian Face-to-Face as Reliable Narration 91 RICHARD S. FINDLER / Bartleby’s Existential