Jane Austen and the Ethics of Description

Jane Austen and the Ethics of Description demonstrates that Elizabeth Bennet and her creator are misunderstood, and often unrecognized, geniuses of moral philosophy, but not simply because of their virtue or wit or natural skills in game theory. The engine driving the moral judgement and growth of Austen’s protagonists consists of a particular and not well-understood ability to reason by description, a skill which we moderns must recover and remaster in order to negotiate the complexities of contemporary life. The forms of rational description this book derives from Austen will be of great interest not only to literary critics and theorists, but also to philosophers and anyone interested in ethics, the dynamics of power, and practical reasoning.

Written in a clear style, the book is for those who love Austen and for those who want to understand how we should reason about our lives, how we should understand power, social conflict, and our own motives and prejudices. It is a literary analysis, a philosophical argument, and a practical guide to ethical thinking.

Brett Bourbon received his Ph.D. from Harvard, where he studied literature and philosophy. He was a professor at Stanford for ten years, and is now an Associate professor of English at the University of Dallas. He has received a Fulbright Award, a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, the Harvard English Scholar Award, and the top teaching awards at both the University of Dallas and Stanford. He is the author of Finding a Replacement for the Soul: Meaning and Mind in Literature and Philosophy (2004), as well as Everyday Poetics: Ethics, Love, and Logic (2022). He has published numerous essays on philosophy, literature, and art. He is also a published poet and fiction writer.