Joseph Conrad's ethical perspective is one of the deepest in
twentieth-century fiction, yet its study has been overlooked in recent
scholarship. Joseph Conrad and Ethics is one of very few books fully
devoted to ethics in Conrad's fiction. It offers a thorough, in-depth
analysis of Conrad's ethical reflection that challenges and extends
current scholarly discussions.
The authors of this theoretically informed, accessible volume examine
Conrad's representation of ethics through the lens of Levinas, Derrida,
Foucault, Deleuze, and Ricoeur, among others, and confront Conrad's
ethical perspective to these philosophers' views. Through detailed
studies of works like "Heart of Darkness," The Secret Agent, Lord
Jim and Under Western Eyes, they navigate the conflicted terrain of
ethics and morality, highlighting the enmeshment of ethics and
aesthetics, ethics and narrative, and ethics and ideology in Conrad's
fiction. The key issues they address include the ethics of storytelling
and readership, ethical commitment and detachment, the ethics of
uncertainty and uneasiness, and planetary ethics and ethical
disillusionment.
Conrad is ambivalent about ethics and this interdisciplinary volume
pivots around a fundamental Conradian ethical paradox: how to account
for ethical responsibility in a world not meant for ethics in the first
place and, as Conrad stated, whose "aim cannot be ethical at all." It
demonstrates that Conrad adopts a planetary ethics that embraces the
human condition in its universality, while he also doubts the viability
of ethics itself. Via his protagonists' moral predicaments he expresses
both the necessity of ethics in human relationships and the
impossibility of individual ethical fulfillment.
The book is volume 30 of the series Conrad: Eastern and Western
Perspectives, edited by Wieslaw Krajka. It explores a major,
understudied Conradian topic - Ethics, and adds an important thematic
and theoretical dimension to this series. The chapters are written by
experts from various universities worldwide, in keeping with the
international, cosmopolitan spirit of Eastern and Western Perspectives.
The authors' wide-ranging, original perspectives on ethics open new
venues in Conrad scholarship that will greatly benefit scholars and
students of Conrad, modernism, and ethics.
