Arcadia 2015; 50(1): 83101

Nie Zhenzhao

Towards an Ethical Literary Criticism

DOI 10.1515/arcadia-2015-0006

Abstract: Ethical literary criticism reads interprets and analyzes literature from an
ethical perspective. It argues that literature is a unique expression of ethic and
morality within a certain historical period, and that literature is not just an art of
language but rather an art of text. In light of ethical literary criticism, moral
enlightenment and education are literatures primary function, while aesthetic
appreciation is merely second to it. Specifically, ethical literary criticism seeks to
unpack the ethical features of literary works, to describe characters and their lives
from the vantage point of ethics, and to make ethical judgments about them. In
the history of human civilization, mankind underwent two important processes:
natural selection and ethical selection. Natural selection allowed human beings
to evolve from apes physically, whereas ethical selection distinguishes them from
animals spiritually. In an ethical sense, mankind is the outcome of the Sphinx
factor, which can be seen as the combination of the human and animal factors.
The Sphinx factor is the central element expressed in literary works.
Keywords: ethical literary criticism, ethical selection, ethical taboo, ethical identity, Sphinx factor

Since opening up to the outside world, China has imported a huge number of
western critical theories, such as Psychoanalysis, Russian Formalism, Structuralism, Narratology, Reception Theory, Post-colonialism, Feminism, New-historicism, Cultural Criticism, to name a few. Widely used in Chinas literary criticism,
the imported western critical theories have contributed to the overall progression
of literary studies in China. Viewed from todays vantage point, those imported
western critical theories fall into three general categories: the first comprises
those theories that lay much stress upon the values of literary form, such as
Russian Formalism, New Criticism, and Structuralism; the second includes those
that focus on cultures subjection to social and political systems, for instance
cultural criticism, which emphasizes the interaction between culture and power
and that between culture and ideology; the third category is oriented towards

Nie Zhenzhao: Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Korea, E Mail: niezhenzhao@163.com

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politics, such as Feminism, Ecocriticism, New-historicism, and Post-colonialism.

Although these critical theories put literature into dialogue with politics, morality, gender and ethnicities, there is a deficit of ethical engagement in them.
It is no exaggeration to argue that Chinese literary criticism, since Chinas
opening up to the outside world, has been dominated by western critical theories.
On the one hand, as pointed out above, we should acknowledge the fruitful
results of importing and applying western critical theories. For instance, they
have helped Chinese scholars to communicate with western academics through
the adoption and use of their critical tools. On the other hand, we feel that
something is regrettably lost in this process, for our contribution to the development of literary theories is seriously limited. As it is, we cannot help pondering
over the question whether there is any possibility for Chinese scholars to develop
a set of critical toolkits of their own and thus contribute more actively to world
literature studies.
I shall attempt to answer this question by proposing a new critical theory:
Ethical Literary Criticism. Beginning with a differentiation between ethical literary criticism and traditional moral criticism, I seek to explain the origin of
literature. Arguing against the popular view that sees literature as ideology or as
aesthetic ideology, I claim that literature takes its origin from ethics, and moral
teaching is its primary function. This essay also illuminates the working mechanisms of ethical literary criticism and its terminology such as ethical taboo, ethical
identity, ethical choice, ethical environment, ethical knot, ethical line, ethical
confusion, the Sphinx factor, the human factor, the animal factor, rational will,
irrational will, natural will, and free will.

Ethic as the Origin of Literature

Ethical literary criticism can be defined as a critical theory that approaches
literary works and their authors from the perspective of ethics. Unlike moral
criticism, ethical literary criticism does not simply evaluate a given literary work
as good or bad on the basis of todays moral principles. Instead, it emphasizes
historicism, that is, the examination of the ethical values in a given work with
reference to a particular historical context or a period of time in which the text
under discussion is written. The overarching aim of ethical literary criticism is to
uncover ethical factors that bring literature into existence and the ethical elements that affect characters and events in literary works. It seeks to illuminate
issues concerning the events, the characters and their actions from an ethical
perspective, and to make an ethical judgment about them accordingly. Though
some traditional ethical critics have attempted to unpack ethical elements in

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literature, they have usually analyzed literature from their personal ethical values
and moral principles or, at best, the moral principles of their contemporaries,
which not only makes their critique unreliable but also causes a much serious
problem by inverting ends and means. Theoretically, their point of departure
should have been to analyze literature from an ethical perspectiveor, to put it
differently, the ethical value of the literary text should have been the target of
their research, and their moral principles should have merely served as toolkits in
that process. However, in practice, the analysis of literary texts ceased to be their
target of investigation and merely turned into evidence of their personal moral
principles. In contrast to traditional ethical critics, ethical literary criticism proposed here represents a particularly strong its call for objectivity and historicism.
Grounding itself on specific historical contexts or ethical environments, ethical
literary criticism sees the contemporary value of literature as its historical value
rediscovered.
Ethical literary criticism differs from other strands of literary criticism in its
view of the origin of literature, by claiming that literature is a product of ethic, or
a unique expression of morality in a given historical period. In other words,
literature is fundamentally an expression of ethic. Many theories exist concerning
the origins of literature, including Mimetic Theory, Catharsis Theory, and Labor
Theory. So far, the most influential theory on the origin of literature has been
Labor Theory, which argues that literature, or arts in a broad sense, has originated from human labor. For instance, Frederick Engels believes that the development of labor necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer
together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making
clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the
making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other
(454455). Unlike Engels, I think that labor is just one of the conditions for
human beings to produce arts. In my opinion, literature is produced out of the
need of humans to express their views on ethic or the desire to share their ethical
experience. When early human beings recognized the need for collaboration and
cooperation in their working, they learned to deal with their relations with
others, which gradually brought them to a recognition of order. To some degree,
their recognition of collaboration, cooperation, and order marks the initial form
of ethical relations. In other words, their recognition of the advantages of help
and collaboration generates the earliest form of ethical consciousness. From my
point of view, human beings created scripts and written characters out of their
desire to express ethical values, so that they could document the incidents of
their collaboration coupled with their own understandings. In doing so, they
turned abstract life stories into written texts made of letters and words, which in
turn served as references or guides for them as well as for their descendants to

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pursue a worthy life. The texts generated in this manner can be considered as the
earliest form of literature.
In line with its origin, literature can also be deemed as an art based on text.
Without scripts or letters, there would be no text, not to mention the existence of
literature. Scripts and letters are mere semiotic symbols before they make up a
text. In other words, it is the text made of scripts and letters that functions as the
carrier of literature. Nevertheless, most literary critics think otherwise. For instance, Literary Theory, a widely used textbook in Chinese universities, sees
literature as an art of language, arguing that Literature distinguishes itself from
economy in that it is a type of ideology; it is distinct from other types of ideology
in that it is a kind of aesthetic art; while it differs from other genres of arts in that
it is an art of language. The medial nature of language lays down a material
foundation for the production of literature (97). Or as Tong Qinbing argues, As
an aesthetic art of language, literature is the discursive act or practice for people
to communicate in a given social context (69). These arguments are problematic
in the sense that they confuse letters with language, and therefore they fail to
recognize the textual basis of literature. It is true that language can be used as a
tool for the making of literature. For instance, stories told verbally can be indeed
resources for literary creation. However, before the creation of documenting or
recording devices, verbal language cannot be converted into its material form.
Therefore, the stories told orally only find their existence in the memory of human
beings. Viewed in this light, literature cannot be seen as an art of language. It is
not until the creation of scripts and letters that verbal language finally takes on
written form. But it would be a misconception to argue that scripts are created
merely for the sake of recording verbal language; they are also used to document
ideology or thoughts and make them exist in material form. Only when recorded
through scripts or letters can verbal language, ideology, or thoughts gain their
stable material forms, which become then finally visible and readable. Hence,
seeing literature as an art of language blurs the distinction between different
forms of art. An example would be stage drama, which cannot be termed as
literature but as an art of performance. In brief, scripts and letters are the material
form of language and the basic materials constituting a text. Consequently, the
text is both the material form of language and the material form of thoughts,
which allow their becoming the carrier of literature. In contrast to text, language
cannot directly contribute to the existence of literature; it must go in a roundabout way, that is, language must be converted into letters and text before it is
used as a material form to convey meanings. When serving as a readable and
visible form of language and thoughts, the text has laid a solid foundation for
literature to come into being. It is in this sense that we consider literature not as
an art of language but as an art of texts.

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Before the creation of documenting devices, literature takes on its material

form in texts only. Therefore, literature is not abstract but rather concrete; it is not
a kind of ideology but a material form dependent on texts. Unfortunately, this
point has not been fully accepted. For instance, some scholars claim that according to historical materialism, like other artistic genres, literature falls into the
category of social ideology or a reflection of the world in human minds. Or, as a
type of social ideology, literature is an artistic creation of social life in accordance
with the writers worldviews. It has the features of cognition, implication and
reality (Tong, etal. 75). As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon for literature to
be frequently labeled as a type of ideology. Tong Qinbing argues that apart from
having some universal propertyliterature is ideology in general sense, it also
has its own unique propertyit is aesthetical ideology (57). From Tongs point of
view, the general meaning of literature is understood in an aesthetic sense:
literature is an aesthetic art of language (53). Tong concludes that in China, the
reason why literature is regarded as aesthetic ideology can be attributed to Marxist Literary Criticism, which has gained popularity since the 1980s (58). Similarly, the concepts of ideology and aesthetic ideology are frequently used by
western literary critics to describe literature. For instance, in Criticism and Ideology (1976), Terry Eagleton talks much about general ideology, aesthetic ideology,
authorial ideology, and textual ideology. In Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983,
1996), Eagleton argues that Literature, in the meaning of the word we have
inherited, is an ideology (19). Douwe Fokkema and Elrud Ibsch also make a keen
observation on the Marxist critics view on literature: It is clear that literature,
which Marxist critics view primarily as ideology, must be studied within the terms
of historical materialism (83).
Both ideology and aesthetic ideology are highly abstract concepts, while
literature is the specific material existing in texts. Seen in this light, literature
cannot be considered as an abstract concept. In fact, seeing literature as ideology is rather opposite to Marxism. As is widely known, it was Destutt de Tracy
(17541836) who proposed the concept of ideology. It follows that it does not
necessarily go in accordance with Marxism to postulate that literature equals
ideology. Furthermore, the core of this problematic issue is that ideology designates a set of concepts, whereas literature, as I have argued above, is the
material object existing in texts. This is to say that literature and ideology are not
of equal status at all. In my opinion, literature comes first, or it is literature that
affects ideology or aesthetic ideology, not vice versa. According to Marxism, the
most fundamental question for philosophy is about which comes first, material
or ideology? In other words, is ideology determined by material, or vice versa?
The similar case goes with literature. The most fundament issue about Marxist
views on literature centers on the question whether the literary text determines

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ideology, or the other way round. Once this question is answered, the nature of
literature will be revealed.
It is equally problematic to regard literature as an art of aesthetics. For
instance, Tong argues that aesthetic ideology about literature refers to the
interaction between aesthetic expression and ideology within literature, which
means that the process of aesthetic expression is involved with ideology and
ideology is conveyed through aesthetic expression (61). In addition to its long
and wordy expression, Tongs argument lies in the disinterestedness of literature.
He explains the disinterestedness of literature by arguing that in their engagement with literature, both the writer and the reader have no practical aims (61).
Not only is it self-contradictory to prove the disinterestedness of literature by
explaining its aesthetics, but also problematic to say that the writer and the reader
engage in literature without any practical aims. In my view, aesthetics is not the
distinctive feature of literature at all. Rather, it is a means for literature to fulfill its
practical aims. As long as the writer and the reader engage with literature, they
must do it out of certain motivations, which are eventually related to their
practical purposes.
All literary works embed practical aims, which are mainly about moral
enlightenment and education. This point can be aptly demonstrated by a huge
number of literary works. For instance, Homers poetry conveys to the reader the
rules of living; Hesiods Theogony helps the reader to know the world; Greek
tragedy teaches the reader to abide by the ethical order and moral codes. The
process of reading is closely related to the process of aesthetic appreciation,
which ends in the receiving of moral enlightenment. Therefore, moral teaching is
the fundamental function of literature.
Aesthetic appreciation serves the means for us to read and interpret literature
or to help us to receive moral teaching. In other words, without moral teaching,
the aesthetics of literature will cease to exist. The primary purpose of literature is
not to provide entertainment but to offer moral examples for human beings to
follow, to enrich their material and spiritual life with moral guidance, and to
achieve their self-perfection with moral experience. In brief, only by working
together with morality can the aesthetic value of literature be fully realized.

Ethical Literary Criticism and Its Terminology

Unlike the concept of ethics in philosophy, ethic in ethical literary criticism refers
to the ethical relationship or ethical order between man and man, man and
society, or man and nature. Within particular literary texts, ethic also refers to the
moral conceptions based upon ethical order, or the relevant norms used to

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maintain the ethical order. The general aim of literature is to describe the ethical
order, the changes of ethical order, and moral problems caused by those changes,
so as to offer some experience for human beings to learn from. From my perspective, owing to its ethical nature, literature always serves as an expression or a
form of social systems. Ethical literary criticism seeks to unpack the ethical
features of literary works, to describe characters and their lives from the vantage
point of ethics, and to make ethical judgments about them. Ethical taboo, ethical
chaos, ethical consciousness, ethical environment, ethical identity, ethical choice,
the Sphinx factor, the human factor, the animal factor, rational will, irrational will
and natural will are the major concepts in the practice of ethical literary criticism.
With the development of reason, mankind became an advanced species with
ethical consciousness. Reason can be regarded as the key property that distinguishes man from other animals, and the most fundamental part of reason is
ethical consciousness. I am going to illuminate this point by taking the Sphinx
Riddle as an example. This riddle deals with a philosophical question about what
distinguishes man from other animals. Though it is not a question for us today, in
ancient society few people knew the answer to the question. The reason why
Oedipus was able to answer that question lies in his reasoning power, which is in
turn marked by his ethical consciousness. Oedipuss ethical consciousness derives from his obedience to the ethical order of his time, and ethical taboo in
particular. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles artfully demonstrates the development of
mans reason via an ethical allegory of patricide. In ancient literature, taboo
constituted the kernel of a texts value. Taboo is created out of mans need to
control his instincts and primitive desires, and to free himself from chaos. Before
the development of his reason, man was mainly driven by his instincts or primitive desires, which usually ended in incest. In my opinion, mans instincts and
primitive desires can be called ethical chaos. From todays vantage point, no
matter how simple mans ethical consciousness was at that time, they already
realized that it was rather important for them to walk out of ethical chaos and to
establish a set of moral codes and principles for their existence. Oedipus has tried
as best as he could to obey such ethical norms as taboo against killing his father
and marrying his mother. It is in this sense that we can conclude that Oedipus
was a man of reason. The greatness of Oedipus Rex lies in its educational
significance, in telling a shocking ethical story. The conflicts between mans
primitive desires and reason can be further exemplified by a considerable number
of other literary works, such as Euripidess Orestes, Shakespeares Hamlet and
Macbeth, and D.H.Lawrences Sons and Lovers. Originally, human ethical consciousness was represented in abiding by the incest taboo as well as the recognition and acceptance of an ethical order built upon taboos. Ethical consciousness
requires human beings to write down ethical experience and share it with others,

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especially with descendants. It is the ethical consciousness and the desire to

document it that gives birth to letters and literature.
At the beginning of human civilization, taboos were used to maintain the
ethical order of society. In ancient society, taboos were indeed the basis for the
formation of ethical order and the maintenance of that order. Originally, taboos
imposed restrictions upon transgressive acts, and worked through customs. With
the creation of scripts and characters, taboos and the relevant activities in human
society began to be documented in written form, which in turn textualized the
taboos. To some extent, those texts about taboos constitute the earliest form of
literature. Once textualized, the oral and arbitrary taboos have taken on material
forms. In the history of human civilization, taboos have very often been converted
into ethic or have become one of the main forms of ethic. It is therefore reasonable
to argue that taboos are the premises for the constitution and formation of the
ethical order. The initial aim of literature is to textualize taboos, which is
evidenced by oracles in Europe and Pu Ci in China. In ancient society, oracles
very often led to the production of literature. For instance, Euripidess Orestes,
and Sophocless Oedipus Rex. Similarly, Pu Ci can be seen as the earliest forms of
Chinese literature. Together with ancient Greek tragedies and epics, Pu Ci can be
regarded as the ethical textbook of ancient China.
Not only are taboos described in literature, but so are mans basic desires
and instincts. When mans basic desires and instincts are revealed by a writer,
we can see their consequences upon the persons fate. Examples of this abound:
Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Lady Chatterleys Lover, to name a few of
the most notable ones. In Madame Bovary, we can see how Emma is negatively
affected by her primitive desire. Lacking in adequate self-control, Emma lets her
reason be overcome by her primitive desire. She betrays her husband and has
extramarital affairs with Rodolphe and Lon. Human beings need to obey a
certain type of ethical order, otherwise they will receive due punishment. Emma
commits suicide and duly receives her punishment, because she has broken the
ethical rules. There is also a vivid description of primitive desire and its negative
consequences in Leo Tolstoys Anna Karenina. On the one hand, because of her
wisdom and beauty, Anna is wooed by all upper-class men; on the other hand,
she is a wife and a mother. Yet in this particular ethical environment, Anna is
driven by her primitive desire and instinct; she puts aside her ethical identity as
wife and mother, and chooses thereby to betray her husband and recklessly
starts an extramarital relationship with Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky. When Anna
gives up her ethical identity, she gives up her ethical responsibility as well. That
is to say, she has already broken the ethical order governing society. It is then
no wonder that she ends her life tragically. D.H.Lawrences Lady Chatterleys
Lover also provides an in-depth exploration of the conflicts between a persons

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reason and primitive desire. In the eyes of most critics, Connie is the quintessential example of human nature. Her betrayal and indulgence in her primitive
desire is not regarded as a defiance of the ethical order but as a confirmation of
human nature. However, viewed from the perspective of ethical literary criticism,
Connies betrayal does not mean the liberation of human nature but, on the
contrary, symbolizes the loss of it. If human beings were driven by their primitive desires and did not obey the ethical orders built upon reason, they would be
like the rest of animals, or they would lose their distinctive feature as ethical
beings. In reality, in contemporary literature, man is often depicted as a new
Sphinx possessing both the features of human beings and those of animals.
However, unlike Oedipus who could easily solve the Riddle of the Sphinx,
modern man has met difficulties in controlling his primitive desire with his
reason or in liberating himself from the control of his primitive desire. There is a
misconception here that we need to be aware of: many contemporary works
mistake human instinct for human nature, and, accordingly, human instinct is
unduly praised.
Ethical literary criticism pays particular attention to the analysis of the ethical
environment, which comprises the historical conditions for the production and
dissemination of literature. Ethical literary critics are thus exhorted to set their
study in a certain historical context. In other words, they need to investigate
literature in a given ethical environment. Historically speaking, literature is only
a part of human civilization and human history. It cannot work without history or
be disconnected from history. Literature in distinct historical periods has its own
specific ethical environment and ethical context. Hence the basic premise for
studying literature is to read it against a particular ethical environment and
ethical context. Since literature is produced in a certain historical context, any
changes of its ethical environment in our criticism will necessarily lead to misreading and misjudgment. For instance, if we set and analyze those literary works
produced in the past within todays ethical environment and ethical context, we
are very likely to encounter an ethical paradoxthat is, conflicts between the
ethic of the past and the ethic of today. To be more specific, it is possible that the
literature which used to be considered immoral is going to be considered rather
moral today; conversely, it is also possible that the literature which used to be
considered moral is going to be considered immoral. Therefore, I argue that
ethical context and ethical environment play an important role in reading literature. A slight change in them might lead us to arrive at a completely unreliable
conclusion. Thus ethical literary criticism does not intend to make a moral judgment about literature but tries instead to criticize literature from the perspective
of historicity, and to shed a new light on literature of different historical periods
from an ethical point of view.

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Compared with other strands of literary criticism, ethical literary criticism

puts particular stress on the ethical analysis of the text: it attempts to interpret,
analyze and evaluate the social phenomenon existing in the fictional world
created by literary texts. As a consequence, ethical literary critics should critique
literature by returning to its historical site and by avoiding misjudgments about
literature in a falsely autonomous situation disconnected from history. Moreover, ethical literary critics are encouraged to act as agents of some characters
so as to understand them and defend them for their sake. Let us consider
Hamlet as an example. Only by putting on his shoes can we really come to an
understanding of his dilemma. In doing so, we find that his hesitation about
his revenge (, if he took revenge on Claudius, line 13) is not caused by any
personality weakness but stems instead from his ethical dilemma. More specifically, if he took revenge, he would break the taboo of patricide for his father; if
he did not take revenge, he would shoulder the responsibility of revenge. For
hundreds of years, many scholars have misinterpreted Hamlets delay in a
falsely autonomous situation, and, in particular, they misread the oft-quoted
monologue by Hamlet: To be or not to be: that is the question. Because of the
falsely autonomous situation, they misread Hamlets ethical dilemma as a question about life and death. I think we can truly understand Hamlets dilemma
how to make right choice only by returning to the ethical situation in which he
is placed. We can also cite some Chinese classical works as an example. In All
Men Are Brothers, Wu Song is regarded as hero who has killed a tiger in a
particular historical context. Seen from todays position, he would be arrested
as a criminal for killing a protected animal. In Dreams of Red Chamber, only by
placing Jia Baoyu in the specific ethical environment of his huge family could
we see his sexual awakening as a maturity of his reason. The greatness of All
Men Are Brothers and Three Kingdoms is attributed to their depiction of a group
of heroes who are the firm believers and executors of their faith. On the surface,
The Journey to the West demonstrates the sprits of freedom and rebelling; in
fact, it shows humans recognition of the relation between the ethical order and
the spirit of freedom.
In my view, almost all literary works constitute documents of mans ethical
experience, and there always exist one or more ethical lines in a literary text.
Along the ethical lines, there are a set of ethical knots or ethical complexes.
Specifically, ethical lines can be seen as the vertical axis of the text, while ethical
knots can be regarded as the horizontal axis. Combined together, ethical lines and
ethical knots contribute to building up the ethical web of the text. The complexity
of a texts ethical web is determined by the number of ethical knots it contains
and the difficulty in untying theses knots. It is therefore very important for ethical
literary critics to find and untie the ethical lines and ethical knots in doing

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criticism. In most circumstances, different formations of the ethical knots and

different ways of untying them result in different interpretations of the text.
Sometimes, the ethical knots of the literary text are presumed. In the Iliad,
for instance, the ethical knot about Pariss elopement with Helen is an antecedent. Helen does not make her direct appearance in the text, but she is always
there in the narrators telling. In Oedipus Rex, the prophecy of Oedipuss killing
his father and marrying his mother is also presumed, so isAgamemnons killing
his daughter Iphigenia as a sacrifice for God in Orestes. The presumed ethical
knots also need to be deconstructed, and the process of deconstructing them
equals the process of criticism; the result from such a deconstructing equals the
result of criticism. For instance, Oedipuss efforts to avoid killing his father and
marrying his mother can be seen as a way of deconstructing the ethical knot in
the work.
However, it should be pointed out that some ethical knots take their shape in
the progression of the story, and their formation, to some extent, is also ethical in
nature. For instance, in The Merchant of Venice, the ethical knot about Antonios
bond of a pound of flesh comes into being in the process of our reading. In
Hamlet, there are at least two ethical lines in the play: Hamlets revenge being
one, and Claudiuss covering up of the truth being the other. Along each of the
two ethical lines, there are a set of ethical knots. Along the ethical line of Hamlets
revenge, there are such ethical knots as the secret-revealing scene involving the
ghost, the play within the play directed by Hamlet, the love affair between Hamlet
and Ophelia, Laertes and Ophelias hatred of Hamlet for his accidental killing of
their father, Hamlets journey to England, and the fencing match between Hamlet
and Laertes. As I argued above, literary texts form as well as deconstruct ethical
knots. Consider the play within play scene as an example. The ethical knot is
generated by Hamlets pursuit to uncover the truth of his fathers death. In other
words, the aim of setting the play-within-the-play scene is to reveal the truth, and
the truth disclosed becomes the ethical knot accordingly. Hamlets soliloquy
adequately demonstrates the process of deconstructing this ethical knot: he
attempts to convince himself not to lose his reasoning power so as to avoid the
taboo of matricide as he has strong desire to kill his mother after the play.
Similarly, the fencing between Hamlet and Laertes deconstructs the ethical knot
of Hamlets killing of Polonius. Hamlets mother marrying Claudius is the dominant ethical knot of the whole play, which affects Hamlets thoughts and actions
throughout the text. Most of the time, the ethical knot is a hard nut to crack, of
which Hamlets soliloquy To be or not to be is a paradigmatic example. Ethical
literary criticism attempts to reveal the generating process of ethical knots, to
deconstruct the ethical knots either presumed or generated in the progression of
the text, so as to conduct a critique of the work that is as impartial as possible.

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Ethical literary criticism pays particular attention to the ethical identities of

characters, because when reading the text we find that most ethical issues are
inextricably linked to the ethical identities of the character. Moreover, in many
literary texts, ethical lines, ethical knots and ethical taboos are closely related to
ethical identity. For instance, when Hamlets mother marries Claudius, Hamlets
ethical identity undergoes tremendous changes. This is to say that, to some
extent, he becomes Claudiuss stepson and his prince. These newly taken ethical
identities make him hesitate to take revenge, because he has to avoid the ethical
taboo of patricide and regicide. From my perspective, Hamlets delay in taking
revenge is mainly caused by his identifying the ethical relations between Claudius and him as father and son. To give more examples about ethical identities,
we can think of Macbeth as the general and the King, and Tom Jones the
illegitimate child.
In some literary texts, the ethical knots take the form of ethical chaos or
reconstruction of the ethical order. Good examples of this are Violas dressing as
a man in Twelfth Night, and Annas betrayal of traditional ethic and her reconstruction of ethical order in Anna Karenina. Originally, ethical chaos is used to
describe the social life before ethical taboos came into existence, whereas in
literature ethical chaos is typically represented by the characters defiance and
breaking of ethical taboos or the loss of reason. In most literary texts, ethical
knots are generated in the process of ethical chaos and caused by the changes in
the characters ethical identities. If ethical chaos is finally solved and reconstructed, comedies or tragicomedies will be produced, such as Twelfth Night, The
Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Tom Jones, and Resurrection. Otherwise,
tragedies will be produced, such as Hamlet, King Lear, and Anna Karenina.

Ethical Selection and the Sphinx Factor

In the history of human civilization, the biggest problem for mankind to solve is
to make a choice between the identities of animals and the identities of human
beings. Why and how human beings have come into existence are always central
to scholars interest. Charles Darwin developed his famous evolutionary theory to
account for the physical forms of human beings, who have evolved from apes
through a long process of natural selection. Relying on Darwins theory, Engels
claims that it is labor that differentiates human beings from animals. In my view,
labor is merely one of the conditions that enable human beings to evolve and
develop from apes. In other words, both Darwin and Engels succeed in accounting for where human beings have come from but fail to make a fundamental
distinction between man and animals. To me, natural selection is the first step

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taken by human beings, which helps them to be who they are in biological sense.
What truly differentiates human beings from animals is the second stepethical
selection. To illustrate the vital difference between natural selection and ethical
selection, we can consider the story of Adam and Eve as an example.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are human beings purely in a biological
sense. Despite of their being physically different from such creatures as livestock,
insects and wild animals, so far as knowledge is concerned, there are no fundamental differences between them and the rest of other animals. God created man
out of His own figure with the aim that man can manipulate fish in the sea, birds
in the sky, livestock in the field and all insects creeping on the ground. But with
no essential difference from other creatures, man is unable to fulfill this purpose.
Only after eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge has humanity
acquired knowledge about good and evil, which completes the distinction between man and the rest of other creatures. If we consider this story not as a
religious fable but as an allegory about the origin of human civilization, we can
identify the fundamental difference between mankind and animals.
Naked as wild animals, Adam and Eve ate fruits from trees when hungry and
drank water from streams when thirsty, and were thus unable to differentiate
themselves from other creatures. As is well known, Adam and Eve were forbidden
to eat the fruits from the Tree of Knowledge, because once they ate those fruits,
they would be able to tell good from evil. Having failed to resist such a temptation
for knowledge, Eve ate the fruit and made Adam take a bite too. As a consequence, the very knowledge acquired made them ashamed of their nakedness,
which is clearly evinced in their picking up leaves for covering. Viewed from the
perspective of ethical literary criticism, the so-called original sin committed by
our ancestors accounts for the existence of their animal factor after their ethical
selection, which enables them to get liberated from the herds of animals. For
Darwin, human intelligence is attained through natural selection, whereas for me
human rationality is a result of ethical selection.
With reference to ethical selection, the critical consequence caused by the act
of eating forbidden fruit is the ability to tell good from evil, which is documented
by Bible: And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil (Genesis 3: 22). Eating the forbidden fruit and the subsequent ability
acquired to tell good from evil helps Adam and Eve to complete their ethical
selection and become human beings not only in a biological sense but also in an
ethical sense. In other words, the ability to tell good from evil sets up a criterion
of identifying human beings from animals. The notion of good and evil emerges
along with ethical consciousness and is used to evaluate human beings only. In
this sense, good and evil constitute the basis of ethics.

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The story of Adam and Eve reveals the vital role played by ethical selection in
human beings liberation from herds of animals as well as in their realization of
their difference from animals. The nature of ethical selection lies in mans decision
to be a human or an animal, and the precondition of this decision is the knowledge
about mans self or about what distinguishes human beings from animals. Consider Sophocles Oedipus Rex as an example. Viewed in the light of ethical selection, the Sphinx Riddle can be interpreted not as an expression of mankinds
doomed failure to fight against fate but rather an exploration of the mystery of why
a human being is such. Hence the value of this riddle lies not in its difficulty but in
its implications for our understanding of mankind. Among all those human-animal
images in Greek mythology, the Sphinx is the most famous and the most representative one. The Sphinx is female with a womans head, a lions body, an eagles
wings, and a snakes tail. It was a hard question for ancient people to tell whether
the Sphinx is a human being or an animal. With regard to the features on her head,
the Sphinx is certainly a human beingmore exactly, she is a woman; as for her
lion body, she is not a human being but an animal; as for her snake-shaped tail,
she is an emblem of animal lust. Then what on earth is this half-human and halfanimal Sphinx? Is she a human being or an animal? In a word, the Sphinx Riddle is
actually a question about distinguishing man from animals. When human beings
acquired their figures through natural selection, they also found that they still
retained many animal features, such as the instinct to survive and to reproduce.
With a human head, the Sphinx is fully aware that she is different from animals,
but her lion body and snake tail make her feel no difference from animals, so she
longs for the truth about her own beingis it that of a human or an animals ?
To treat the Sphinx as an animal is far worse than treating her as a representation by ancient people of themselves and as a key to understanding human
nature. The feature of the Sphinxs combination of a human head and an animal
body suggests, first of all, that the most important feature of a human image lies
in its head, which stands for reason as a result of the evolutionary process.
Secondly, it indicates that human beings have evolved from animals and thus still
contain some features belonging to them. This feature can be thus called the
Sphinx factor, which is composed of two partsthe human factor and the animal
factor. Normally, the human factor is superior to the animal factor, and hence the
former can take control of the latter, which explains why a man could become a
person with ethical consciousness. To a large degree, the Sphinx factor is a key to
understanding literature. The various combinations and alternations of the human factor and the animal factor generate a variety of ethical events and ethical
conflicts in literary works, conveying thereby different moral implications.
The human factor equals ethical consciousness embodied by the human
head, which results from natural selection in evolution from savagery to civiliza-

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tion. Initially, the significance of the human head lies in its biological configuration in the human body, but, more importantly, it stands for the emergence of
ethical consciousness in human beings. The most striking feature of ethical
consciousness is the ability of tell good from evil, which is similar to the power
possessed by Eve and Adam after their taking the Forbidden Fruit. In contrast
with the human factor, the animal factor is human beings animal instinct, which
is mainly controlled by their primitive desires. As an irrational element, the
animal factor accounts for the animal instinct retained in human beings in the
evolutionary process. Viewed in this light, the Sphinx is an ethical proposition for
human beings to ponder over after their making of the natural selectionthat is
to say, after they answered the question whether to be a man or an animal. In
other words, the Sphinx Riddle urges human beings to go through another step in
evolutionethical selection, owing to which Oedipus is able to tell the difference
between man and animals. In turn, this helps him to solve the Sphinx Riddle. In
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles makes a full use of the incest story of Oedipus killing his
father and marrying his mother to explain the tragic process of Oedipus ethical
choice.
Though Oedipus had originally no knowledge that the man he had killed was
his father and the woman he had married was his mother, his incestuous actions
still bring disaster to the citizens of Thebes. In the very first part of the play, there
are such lines depicting the wretchedness of the state:
The city, storm-tossed,
cannot lift her prow from beneath the killing
waves. The buds are blighted and do not ripen
to fruit, the cattle are blighted too, and our women
birth dead babies. The god who carries fire
has visited us with fevered pestilence
to harry the house of Cadmus and all Thebes.
Black Pluto reaps a treasure of groans and tears. (Sophocles 61)

In the blight poured down by God, deaths destroy Thebes, which is like a boat
tumbled in waves of red blood and subject to the mercy of God. But what causes
this disaster? Creon is sent by Oedipus to the Pythian altar of Apollo Temple, and
he brings home the message that the murderer of Laios, previous King of Thebes,
is still hiding in the country. Only after the elimination of this source of pollution
can Thebes be liberated from the catastrophe. With the unfolding of the play,
Oedipus himself turns out to be the murderer proper. And yet, one cannot help
wondering why murdering Laios leads to such a serious disaster. The answer lies
in Oedipus incestuous acts of killing his father and marrying his mother, which
were strictly forbidden at that time.

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The ethical consequences of Oedipus incestuous acts are clearly predicted in

the play:
And he shall discover that he is,
to his children, not only father but also brother,
and to his mother both a son and husband.
And to his father, the sharer of his wife,
and the murderer! (Sophocles 82)

Oedipus filthy marriage is both a disaster and a crime, owing to which a

mother produces a husband for her husband and produces children for her son,
and her son becomes her husband and his mother becomes his wife, while his
children become his siblings. Needless to say, Oedipus incest does result in
serious consequences. Indeed, as a type of taboo, incest was strictly forbidden in
ancient society. As early as human beings experienced natural selection, taboos
were created to protect the pristine civilization. Taboos take their origin in totems.
Ancient people resorted to various kinds of animals as the emblem of totems, and
established their beliefs about them accordingly. Like the Sphinx, the animal
emblem of totems is a relic of human beings animal factor, which represents
human beings memory of their natural selection. As people of the same blood
share a common totem, it symbolizes the sprout of human rationality and forms
the basis of ethical taboos. Concerning the first ethic, the taboo mainly aims at
preventing incest from happening; that is, people of the same blood are prohibited from having sex or slaughtering, which is mainly reflected in the strict
prohibition of incest and murder between parents and children as well as between
siblings. Before the emergence of taboos, incest was fairly common, which is
clearly indicated in the play:
They had been happy and now all joy was gone,
supplanted by ruin and shame, pain and death.
What misery has mankind ever named
that they have not experienced today? (Sophocles 125)

Hence, taboos were formed as a result of human rationality, and their ethical
choice in particular.
It is generally assumed that that the ethical order was maintained on the basis
of taboos in ancient society. Let us take, for instance, sexual relations. People were
horrified at incest and therefore prohibited it in very strict terms. In Totem and
Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics, Sigmund Freud claims that in almost every place where we find totems we
also find a law against persons of the same totem having sexual relations with one
another and consequently against their marrying. (Freud 45). In this sense,

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taboo against incest results from peoples fear of it. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus
displays his fear of incest to the fullest degree. He remarks:
Oh, and the marriage that gave me
birth and gave them the seeds of their deaths, a father
who was a brother, children who were the product
of incest, a bride who was also her husbands mother (Sophocles 129130)

Owing to his ethical self-consciousness, Oedipus realizes how sinful he is and

eventually blinds himself out of fear.
We can now turn to the relations between Oedipuss tragedy and the Sphinx
Riddle. With regard to his solving the riddle, we can come to the knowledge that
Oedipus has acquired a certain degree of rationality, which enables him to tell
good from evil, and to identify human beings from animals. For Oedipus, the
symbol of his rationality lies in the emergence of his ethical consciousness, which
obliges him to abide by the ethical taboo. In the play under discussion, the ethical
taboo takes the form of prohibition from killing the father and marrying the
mother. In Oedipus Rex, the crime committed by Oedipus suggests that there
exists a certain animal factor represented by the lion body of the Sphinx in human
beings, even if they have acquired rationality. In other words, it is still possible for
human beings to do evil. But the rational will embodied in the Sphinxs human
head can take control of the animal factor and thus help human beings maintain
their human nature. Oedipuss rational will is typically concretized by his strong
self-awareness of ethic, which drives him to investigate the ethical crimes and
hunt for the criminal that has violated the ethical taboo by killing the father and
marrying the mother. He also attempts to punish the criminal as severely as
possible. That is why Oedipus is not willing to exempt himself from being
punished when he turns out to be the very criminal that he has so much wanted
to arrest. Oedipus misfortune implies that man has stepped from savagery to
civilization through ethical selection and has finally become an ethical being.
However, in Oedipus case this process is rather tragic.
In Oedipus Rex the protagonists incest can be seen as a loss of control of his
free will, while his observation of the taboo by investigating the murderer and
punishing himself in the end can be seen as a representation of his rational will. In
ethical literary criticism, free will, or natural will, is a will representing the animal
factor. Free will mainly derives from human beings animal nature, and it mainly
takes on the various forms of desires, such as the lust for sex and food. Rational
will is a will representing the human beings human factor. Literary works often
depict how opposing forces of free will and rational will affect the characters
morality and personality. Typically, for the purpose of praising virtue and punishing vice, most literary works set up moral examples and explore the ways of

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restraining free will through rational will, thus helping audiences pursue goodness. Even when depicting such vicious characters as Gray in The Picture of Dorian
Gray, the viscount in The Cloven Viscount, and the Monkey King in The Pilgrimage
to the West, these works still aim at conveying a moral lesson for readers to learn
from. Hence, the purpose of literatures depicting the conflicts and conversions of
rational will and free will is to underline the importance of making a person
ethical.

Conclusion
All in all, ethical literary criticism does not aim at making an over-simplified
judgment about literature by determining whether it is good or bad. Instead, it
attempts to unpack the ethical values of literature, and the truth about social life
depicted in literature from an ethical perspective. It should be reiterated that the
ethical value of literature is historical, stable and objective, regardless of the
changes undertaken in todays moral principles. Let us consider, once again,
Oedipus Rex as an example. The central concern of ethical literary criticism is not
to define the ethical principles accepted by Oedipus but rather to illuminate why
the prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother leads to his tragedy.
It does not aim at making a moral judgment about Oedipuss crime but aims at
explaining why his crime for killing his father and marrying his mother is
considered as the most horrible one. Furthermore, it does not mean to sum up the
moral inclinations of Oedipus or Sophocles but to reveal the factors leading up to
Oedipuss tragedy. The overall goal of ethical literary criticism is to shed new light
on a given literary text by performing a close reading from an ethical perspective.
To further extend this point, I believe that literary criticism is not a repetition of
existing criticism but a constant pursuit of new interpretations and new findings.
Literary criticism viewed in this light is thus not stable but rather dynamic and
progressive. The significance and value of ethical literary criticism is not to repeat
the existing conclusions or arguments but to establish new interpretations, cognitions, and new findings, surpassing thereby the existing scholarship, and ultimately moving critical scholarship forward.

Works Cited
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. (2nd ed.) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1996.
Engels, Frederick. The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. Collected Works
(vol.25). Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1987.

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Fokkema, Douwe and Ibsch, Elrud. Theories of Literature in the Twentieth Century: Structuralism,
Marxism, Aesthetics of Reception, Semiotics (2nd ed.) New York: St. Martins Press, 1995.
Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of
Savages and Neurotics. Trans. James Strachey. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
Sophocles, The Theban plays of Sophocles. Trans. David R.Slavitt. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2007.
Tong, Qinbing, ed. Course of Literary Theory. Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2004.
Tong, Qinbing, etal. Literary Theory. Beijing: Higher Education Press and Peoples Publishing
House, 2009.

Note: This work was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China, grant number
13&ZD128.

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