Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
The two central characters, sisters, are both in love with men who may or may not reciprocate. But whereas Marianne, who represents sensibility, reveals her love and is then snubbed and humiliated by the worthless Willoughby, Eleanor is much more discreet and after many twists and turns she finally marries her man. Jane Austen’s purpose is to illustrate this very Aristotelian virtue of prudence: that you’ve got to look out for your interests, you mustn’t just give in to passion.
Shall we move on to Jane Austen? Why did you choose Sense and Sensibility?
Really to make the point that many of the greatest moral thinkers are not philosophers, but novelists. Alasdair MacIntyre, one of my other choices, describes Austen as “the last classical moralist”, and I think Sense and Sensibility bears that out. There are two central characters, sisters, and they’re both in love with men who may or may not reciprocate. But whereas Marianne, who represents sensibility, reveals her love and is then snubbed and humiliated by the worthless Willoughby, Eleanor is much more discreet and after many twists and turns she finally marries her man. Jane Austen’s purpose is to illustrate this very Aristotelian virtue of prudence: that you’ve got to look out for your interests, you mustn’t just give in to passion. Passion must be guided by reason, which goes against the grain of the way we think about it today. But Jane Austen is saying that passion that is rational and controlled is no less deep than passion that’s uncontrolled: in fact it may be deeper. This might sound cold or austere, but I think it’s right.
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Edward Skidelsky is a philosopher at Exeter University, interested in ethics, aesthetics and German idealism. His first book, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture, was published in 2009. He writes regularly on philosophy and religion for Prospect, the New Statesman and the Telegraph. He is currently working on a collection of essays on ethics.
