Style and Ethics in George Eliot
The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it: the question, whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway of a passion ag...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Other Authors: | |
Format: | Article |
Language: | en_US |
Published: |
Raritan Quarterly
2017
|
Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112651 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8220-4108 |
Summary: | The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it: the question, whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway of a passion against which he had struggled as a trespass, is one for which we have no master key that will fit all cases. The casuists have become a by-word of reproach; but their perverted spirit of discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed: the truth, that moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they
are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special
circumstances that mark the individual lot. |
---|