Henry James and Modern Moral Life

This important new book argues that Henry James reveals in his fiction a sophisticated theory of moral understanding and moral motivation. The claim is that in his novels and short stories James is engaged in a distinctive kind of original thinking and reflecting on modern moral life. Sensitive to the precarious and extremely confusing situation of moral understanding in modern societies, James avoids skepticism and presents powerfully the full nature of moral claims and moral dependence. The book is written by one of the pre-eminent interpreters of the modern European philosophical tradition and will interest both philosophers and literary critics. However, the style is completely non-technical with no reliance on terms from contemporary literary or philosophical theory and will therefore be accessible to students and general readers of James.

• Serious philosophical discussion of Henry James - will appeal to both students of novel, American literature, and philosophy • Strong endorsement from David Bromwich will help promote the book to literary scholars • Author is well-known philosopher who has published two books with Cambridge - Hegel’s Idealism and Idealism as Modernism

Acknowledgments; 1. Modern morals; 2. ‘A kind of morbid modernity?’; 3. ‘Crudities of mutual resistance’; 4. Beasts, secrets, and ghosts; 5. Isabel Archer’s ‘beastly pure mind’; 6. The ‘strange logic’ of Lambert Strether’s ‘Double consciousness’; 7. ‘… without your life, what have you got?’ Concluding remarks; Texts by James; Bibliography.