伊格尔顿的“文学与道德”观

Eagleton's View of Literature and Morality

伊格尔顿站在马克思主义现实批判的立场,吸收亚里士多德的德性伦理学思想,认为文学运用仪式、表演、修辞、话语等多种手段,建立与现实世界之间的实践关系。一方面在言语行为中实现了自身的目的,即亚里士多德意义上的最高的善,另一方面通过读者不断体味文学作品所展示的言语行为,对社会产生道德效应,修复人类生存处境。因此,文学成为了在言语行为中自我实现、自我完成的事件,而道德性是构成文学共相的主要特征。文学作为人类实践活动的一种形式,是人类应对和处理现实问题的策略,道德意义在此具有关键作用。伊格尔顿高度评价了亚里士多德的关于“怜悯”与“恐惧”的悲剧观念,但他不同意亚里士多德只是以自我为中心理解德性,认为应该从马克思的观点出发,揭示德性在人与人之间的交往中呈现,具有互惠性。基于此,伊格尔顿运用精神分析学说阐述了当代社会文化语境中悲剧的伦理功能。

From the standpoint of Marxist Realistic Criticism and under the influence of Aristotle's virtue ethics,Eagleton believed that literature used rituals,performance,rhetoric,discourse and other means to establish a practical relationship with the real world.On the one hand,it achieves its own purpose in speech acts,that is,the highest good in Aristotle's sense;on the other hand,it achieves its own goal through readers'non-interference.The speech acts displayed in literary works have a moral effect on the society and repair the living situation of human beings.Therefore,literature has become an event of self-realization and self-fulfillment in speech act,and morality is the main feature of literature.Literature,as a form of human practical activities,is a strategy for human beings to cope with realistic contradictions,where moral significance plays a key role.Eagleton spoke highly of Aristotle's tragic ideas of"pity"and"fear",but he did not agree with Aristotle's self-centered understanding of virtue.He believed that from Marx's point of view,it should be revealed that virtue presented in interpersonal communication had reciprocity.From this point of view,Eagleton absorbed the theory of psychoanalysis and expounded the ethical function of tragedy in the contemporary social and cultural context.