Aesthetics & ethics2008
otherness and moral imagination from Aristotle to Levinas and from Uncle Tom's Cabin to House Made of Dawn
by Thomas Claviez
In the first part, this study analyzes what role “otherness” plays in the most influential moral-philosophical approaches to date - from Aristotle and the Neo-Aristotelians (Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum) via Kantianism and its deconstructors (Jean-François Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller) to the works of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas - and sheds light on its highly problematic status in Western notions of justice. Moreover, on the background of these analyses it examines the role that aesthetics plays not only for, but within these approaches, with a special focus on what task literature is accorded to dramatize the clash of sameness and otherness. Starting from a revised notion of the sublime, the second part “applies” the different approaches to four American novels: Harriet...