Jane Austen and the Ethics of Description demonstrates that Elizabeth Bennet and her creator are misunderstood, and often unrecognized, geniuses of moral philosophy, but not simply because of their virtue or wit or natural skills in game theory. The engine driving the moral judgement and growth of Austen’s protagonists consists of a particular and not well-understood ability to reason by description, a skill which we moderns must recover and remaster in order to negotiate the complexities of contemporary life. The forms of rational description this book derives from Austen will be of great interest not only to literary critics and theorists, but also to philosophers and anyone interested in ethics, the dynamics of power, and practical reasoning.
Written in a clear style, the book is for those who love Austen and for those who want to understand how we should reason about our lives, how we should understand power, social conflict, and our own motives and prejudices. It is a literary analysis, a philosophical argument, and a practical guide to ethical thinking.
Preface
Part I: Jane Austen and the Powers of Description
1 Disciplines of Description
2 Reading Ignorance into Sense
3 Elizabeth Bennet, the Socrates of Descriptive Reason
4 Frank and Impertinent: Paradiastolic Descriptions
5 An Excursus on Richard Rorty and Lady Catherine
6 Fanny’s Garden Thoughts
7 Reasoning by Description
8 Coda: "Part Hawk, Part Man"
Part II: The Apprehension of Power and Life
Prologue
9 The Cook and the Count: A Psychological Anthropology of Tyranny
10 Is Power Coercive?
11 A Parable of Action and Event
12 The Afflictions of Life: Montale’s Poetic Description of Flux
13 What Is a Life?
14 A Concluding Postscript
Biography
Brett Bourbon received his Ph.D. from Harvard, where he studied literature and philosophy. He was a professor at Stanford for ten years, and is now an Associate professor of English at the University of Dallas. He has received a Fulbright Award, a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, the Harvard English Scholar Award, and the top teaching awards at both the University of Dallas and Stanford. He is the author of Finding a Replacement for the Soul: Meaning and Mind in Literature and Philosophy (2004), as well as Everyday Poetics: Ethics, Love, and Logic (2022). He has published numerous essays on philosophy, literature, and art. He is also a published poet and fiction writer.
"This is an extraordinarily well-designed book. The structure is rock solid; the content fascinating. The reasoning and argumentation is deeply insightful. The re-conception of reasoning (in and by description) is profound, and this, as the backbone of the book, will be recognized as a new, fuller, richer, way of contemplating both what Austen did and why that is so important. Brett Bourbon’s approach is original and excellent. This will be recognized as a very significant contribution."
Garry Hagberg, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy, Bard College, and Editor of Philosophy and Literature
"At last a book on Jane Austen's morals and politics that doesn't turn her novels into forms of advocacy. Brett Bourbon offers brilliant insights on power, reasoning and conflict, but mostly on how Austen's novels always remain admirable exercises in thoughtfulness. This is clearly one of the most original books on Jane Austen that I know of."
Miguel Tamen, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Lisbon, and Professor of Literary Theory
