Moral Imagination/Moral Sense:
O'Brien, Dennis
contaminating its own life. The society that Along the way, Callahan declares, "I am skeptical Callahan still keeps the door urges without let or limit a battle against not a believer," but a...
...Rejecting rationalism is the basis of are applied in the confusion of actual cirtinuing moral dialogue...
...imagination and metaphor, or Wilson's somewhat dubious substitute of moral Commonweal 22 October 1993: 27...
...Mark Johnson cites that the notion of univocal rules is defeated specificity of the materials on which they George Eliot: "All people of broad, strong before it starts...
...There may not be rational objectivity, would use knowledge-and technology- enthusiasm for maxims arise...
...Thus the medical establish- natural theology governs the work...
...George Eliot (and Johnson) Stipend: $6,000 stipend, plus living universal experience of the race, there are are correct...
...Enthusiasts for active Free Press, $22.95, 313 pp...
...Relying on work As befits a classical teleologist, Callahan matter of imagina- in cognitive science, Johnson argues that chooses aesthetic images to express our tion or sense, it is the clear-cut concepts in which the moral proper vocation within the limits of our clear for these two rules are stated are anything but...
...While it is true is not as categorical as Johnson claims, and Awards announced: April 19, 1994 that the sense of sympathy may extend my when he wants to assert that "the Moral Applications and further information available consideration to an unfortunate neighbor, Law Folk Theory" has been the moral phi- from: The Milton Center it may also cement me with my criminal losophy of the West, I wonder what he Kansas Newman College 3100 McCormick Avenue gang...
...Very much in- cial up-bringing, both authors common- The virtuous person acquires habits of acfluenced by John Dewey, Johnson rejects ly reject reason as the basis of the moral tion (courage, self-control, fairness) which a "quest for certainty" in favor of a con- life...
...Not only does such a vision of fering of dying and the embarrassment of VV Dennis O'Brien morality oversimplify a deduction which depending on others, and promptly opt out in real life seems full of dilemmas, Johnof living...
...because such people is that it is a straight road to utter moral longing for flowers not available...
...He is skeptical of the imperial self-the self that refuses to accept lim- BETWEEN LAW & CHARACTER its-either those limits which mortality itself imposes upon us or the limits borne of our finite and diminishing powers and our mutual dependency...
...their common rejection of the Enlight- cumstance "as a man of practical wisdom" James Q. Wilson is one of our most enment...
...Nevertheless, without a "natural" makes of Aristotle who seems not to have Wichita, Kansas 67213 trend toward sympathy no society, crim- been interested in moral law at all...
...both authors the principal villain turns out fulfilling life narratives...
...ity of fellow writers and artists...
...longer aging and James Q. Wilson bringing concrete cases under moral rules increased dementia...
...Our condition...
...The subtitle of the book-Living with Mortality-nicely ex- MORAL IMAGINATION to be the Enlightenment...
...The society that Along the way, Callahan declares, "I am skeptical Callahan still keeps the door urges without let or limit a battle against not a believer," but a kind of natural piety open, "Can death, and the life in which it suffering and death, often imposes worse suffuses the book, and the epistemologi- is embedded, be transcended...
...Johnson's understanding that the amount evolutionary survival value...
...Humans are social an- I find much that is congenial in these application...
...Thus tique of the greatest of the Enlightenment ination" that seems crucial, it is moral exit is interesting that he should consider "the rationalists, Immanuel Kant...
...Johnson offers various counligiously put, Callahan's book can be read plexity of our life is not embraced by ters to a conclusion he does not wish to as an antignostic tract, against those who maxims...
...He mainder of my days in a way that at least ment ought to aim at a good death, not at writes with a view to recovering what, in puts me in a position to be (as Wordsworth eliminating death...
...If morality isn't from reason, what other "mental" apparatus will serve...
...11 poses excess...
...While the position Johnson Required: book proposal, writing samples, studies and conjectures about how social stakes out has merit, I find his reading of recommendations and family context select for traits which the history highly tendentious...
...control our fate totally...
...It is not rea- perience which leads to practical wisdom...
...Even Kant Deadline: January 15, 1994 are at least "proto-moral...
...that is eloquent...
...Adjectives that constantly appear in the text are "excessive," "obsessive...
...Humanity would not persevere on rational- Tie Milton Center ative: clarify all values but castigate none...
...unself-conscious humility (what other ly with a life that somersaults beyond should yield to the more appropriate ques- kind is there...
...Of the two treatments, I am College in Wichita, Kansas...
...Do we not already particfering, but it will help avoid those evils Samuel Johnson put it, "We are all moral- ipate here and now in the transcendent, as that beset us when we claim the right to ists perpetually, geometers only by we live limitedly with and for others...
...tellectualist morality creates an "adverPurpose: to provide an opportunity for new Wilson looks for the roots of morality sary culture" which sets itself in opposition writers of Christian commitment to in facts about the species that are so com- "to the habits and preferences of the work- complete their first book length manuscripts within a supportive communmon that the application of "natural" seems ing and middle class...
...His strength is moral...
...Carried to an extreme, in- two post-graduate fellowships "natural...
...One might but there is what he calls "transperspecand medicine-to distract us from com- imagine the Ten Commandments and the tivity"-a sort of gathering of the metaing to terms with our mortal, limited rest of Deuteronomy were at fault, but in phors with which we humans have told condition...
...Johnson mounts a sustained cri- would apply them...
...As such requires...
...I wait and watch...
...Playing imagination off against reason seems to me to accept too much of the "faculty" psychology which Johnson is at pains to reject...
...chance...
...text consists of fascinating sociological casual reader...
...1:1 osophers or advanced educators who tellectuals who "believe in systems of opine that moral judgments are utterly rel- thought rather than habits of life...
...To the extent that "imagination" suggests a looser, more creative approach to moral situations, I applaud the direction of Johnson's argument...
...That sounds right...
...a sense, we already partly know and to put it) `surprised by joy.' It is unlikely but At the policy level, Callahan recom- reaching a consensus even though a con- perhaps not impossible...
...Here is a death...
...Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed inal or saintly, could survive...
...It is not moral "imagnoted scholars of criminal behavior...
...Matthew 25 seems to suggest so in another Like the ancient Greeks, Callahan op- In a closing coda, the provisionally version of surprised by joy...
...We need to cultivate those virtues son doubts that there are even any moral that allow us to live with our mortality...
...totypes for the good life...
...Following Aristotle (and Wilson), ethinative exercise we can derive certain pro- emphasis on natural tendencies and so- ics is a study of habits (virtues not laws...
...Where did draw...
...But morality may rest neither on reason nor imagination, but in habits of character...
...presses the equilibrium we should seek...
...Mark Johnson Mark Johnson's Moral Imagination is Manic aggressive medicine has sought to University of Chicago, $29.95, 287 pp...
...Johnson's disdain for Kantian moral rea- envelope...
...mends that the old question-"when is a sensus may entail some reshaping of our In this passage, Callahan perhaps too patient dying, and thus a candidate for the national character...
...mount rules through "character...
...From this imag26: 22 October 1993 Commonweal imagination...
...Perhaps because he normally deals imagination which extends our sense of rely on basic character, the moral perwith actions which almost any sane per- the good life...
...Wilson believes that the average person ly argued morality...
...Re- early discern that the mysterious com- relativism...
...Degrees not a requirement for hardly out of place...
...a sustained attack on what he calls "the eliminate mortality and inflicted upon us Moral Law Folk Theory" which, he says, longer lives and worse health, longer ill- MORAL SENSE holds that moral reasoning consists in nesses and slower deaths...
...who write as medical ethicists, but he dures immanently in and through the "livThis new way of putting the question will himself writes with a tone and spirit that ing sacrifices that human existence as not eliminate absolutely all pain and suf- reminds us of the moralist in us all...
...However, I think that Wilson is closer to the truth, when he seeks to sur"He wouldn't kill a fly...
...I do not see suffering and more turbulent deaths upon cal optimism of his Catholic heritage in this for myself, but I hope to live the reits members...
...imals raised in families...
...Life is more complex than ca- accommodations for one at the Milton Center's host campus, Kansas Newman certain natural dispositions for sympathy, suists claim...
...Systems collapse a center for excellence in writing has more moral sense than such theoreti- faster, and with greater collateral damage announces cians admit, and that this moral sense is than habits...
...other side of the coin": the moral sense of son that dictates us the moral law, it is Rules fail in our moral dilemmas, so we people...
...Whether it is Johnson's advocacy for son misleads him, I believe, toward a This program is supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts...
...Since this is the two accounts...
...Wilson, while admitting sonality which acts with bravery and son would regard as morally wrong, he some of the liberating aspects of Enlight- consideration in "the mysterious comhas no patience with sophisticated phil- enment individualism, condemns those in- plexity of our life...
...He also writes with an quickly associates the transcendent soleabatement of lifesaving treatment...
...which will then specify "the right thing euthanasia run up against the pain and suf- to do...
...Nether morality is a rules from which to start...
...Married writers are invited to apply, with the fairness, self-control, and duty which have more impressed with Wilson...
...Much of the book is certainly for philosophers, not the provided for living expenses is limited to one person...
...He likens us to sculptors who authors that it is not thinking is everywhere metaphorical so must respect and honor the limits and a matter of rules...
...His own closing pages on "Solidarity tion-"at what point, or within what range, man who more than anyone helped to and Death" suggest that he already knows, should lifesaving treatment be abated to create and congregate the pool of experts but does not name, a transcendent that perenhance the likelihood of a good death...
...work or the flower arranger who learns how sense have an instinctive repugnance to The obvious worry of such an analysis to work with the materials at hand, not men of maxims...
Vol. 120 • October 1993 • No. 18
