Deploying ‘Ethics’ in Victorian England

Bibliographic Data

ID12880720
AuthorsHao Li (0000-0001-5192-5458, University of Toronto, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume7
Issue3
Pages226-242
Publication date2010-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLiterature Compass (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1741-4113 • E-ISSN: 1741-4113
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00686.x
OpenAlexW1997549484
LanguageEN
References cited32

Current survey studies of Victorian ethics have clearly and helpfully charted the different strands of ethical thought (e.g. utilitarianism, intuitionism). This article approaches ethics as a linguistic practise. It explores the major shifts in the use of the term ‘ethics’ by bringing together Victorian literary writings and those of philosophers and other public figures. Throughout this period, as ethical thinking had to meet the challenge of social changes, the use of the term became increasingly broadened and diversified. What could be taken as common, though tenuously shared, terms of understanding in the early Victorian period became more entangled and ambiguous in the mid‐Victorian period. In the mid‐ and late‐Victorian period, through periodical publishing, ethical debates also enabled writers to find themselves not only contesting with but also arguing past one another due to a gradual loss of common context. Yet, it was by means of rhetorical manipulations, especially irony, that the Victorian writers were able effectively to balance the contingency of articulating an ethical position with their desire to make a normative statement

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Contingency · Epistemology · Irony · Literature · Media studies · Normative · Period (music · Political science · Rhetorical device · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Utilitarianism · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Legal and Social Philosophy · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence

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