Questioning Gratitude in an Unequal World with Reference to the Work of Toni Morrison

Liz Jackson

《Concentric： Literary and Cultural Studies》 43卷1期 (2017/03) Pp. 227-243

https://doi.org/10.6240/concentric.lit.2017.43.1.11

摘要

The last few decades have seen an increasing amount of philosophical, psychological, and educational research and theory promoting the virtue and value of gratitude. Such works elaborate various reasons for gratitude and argue for it in various cases, including unintuitive situations such as cases of harm. This essay challenges broad contemporary promotions of gratitude by considering gratitude in difficult, realistically complex moral circumstances, exploring gratitude in contemporary American author Toni Morrison's novels, particularly The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1973). It then explores the alternative form of moral education that reading such fiction can provide in relation to relevant philosophical and educational views, reflecting particularly on Martha Nussbaum and Morrison's own perspectives regarding the possibilities and limitations of learning from fiction.

關鍵字

gratitude ； moral education ； Toni Morrison ； American fiction ； social inequality

參考文獻

Als, Hilton(2003).Ghosts in the House: How Toni Morrison Fostered a Generation of Black Writers.The New Yorker.27 Oct.

Applebaum, Barbara(2005).In the Name of Morality: Moral Responsibility, Whiteness and Social Justice Education.Journal of Moral Education.34(4),277-90.

Baumann, Peter(2011).A Puzzle about Responsibility: A Problem and Its Contextualist Solution.Erkenntnis.74(2),207-24.

Card, Claudia(1988).Gratitude and Obligation.American Philosophical Quarterly.25(2),115-27.

Carr, David(2015).Is Gratitude a Moral Virtue?.Philosophical Studies.172(6),1475-84.