Aristotle or Bernard Williams?: Self, Suffering, and Moral Residue in James Baldwin and J.M. Coetzee

Date
Wed October 23rd 2019, 5:30 - 7:30pm
Location
Pigott Hall, German Library (260-252)

Speaker(s): Prof. Ato Quayson

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle explores the essential aspects of eudaimonia (the good life, happiness, living well, virtuous living) in terms firstly of the exercise of virtuous activity or virtue (courage, justice, magnanimity, patience, etc.) and secondly in relation to access to worldly goods (friends and family, prosperity, health, etc.). The dialectical relation between virtue and worldly goods means that the good life is dependent on a careful balancing act between inside and outside, not all the terms of which are entirely within the control of the individual. Furthermore, that happiness is a process and not a state and derives from an entire lifespan and not merely from its individual moments. But Aristotle's ethical model leaves some prickly questions unanswered, such as: Are there conditions under which the virtues might seem to conflict or contradict one another? And how about conditions in which a person has to make a choice between equally compelling options? This last question is answered in part in Bernard Williams's discussion of moral inconsistency and moral dilemma.
 
Professor Quayson's talk will illustrate the key concepts implied in Aristotle and Williams's different ethical accounts with reference to James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" and J.M. Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians.
 
Professor Ato Quayson is Professor of English at Stanford. He is currently Vice-President, African Studies Association, and will become President of the ASA in November of 2019. He has published 5 monographs and 8 edited volumes. His monographs include Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing (1997), Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process? (2000), Calibrations: Reading for the Social (2003), and Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (2007). Professor Quayson is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2019 was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
 
See pre-circulated reading attached.
Sponsored by Philosophy + Literature, a DLCL Focal Group.