Humanity Biologised: The Re-definition of Human Ethics in Ian McEwan's Enduring Love

Fazel Asadi Amjad,Seyed Mohammad Marandi,Amin Pourhossein Asli

doi:10.17576/3l-2018-2402-12

Fazel Asadi Amjad, Seyed Mohammad Marandi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2018-2402-12

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Abstract

The present study investigates how Ian McEwan's Enduring Love (1997) re-defines human ethical qualities within a Darwinian framework. McEwan's Enduring Love from the very beginning to the end abounds in Darwinian images and passages, thereby, it forms a Darwinian lens through which the events of the novel are scanned and interpreted, from the helium balloon gone out of control to a shared happiness resulted from seeing a familiar face at the airport. Within the Darwinian worldview the novel sets, it tries to subvert the traditionally-considered human ethical actions, like heroism, cooperation, courage, and love and therefore re-define them. To prove its claim, this paper, first, explores the Darwinian framework Enduring Love develops, benefiting from the ideas of literary Darwinists and other biopoetical theorists; then, it tries to show how the novel applies the same Darwinian principles to those human ethical qualities mentioned above which results in their redefinition. Keywords: McEwan; Darwinism; re-definition of human ethical qualities; Enduring Love

Highlights

This paper attempts to explore the re-definition of human ethics in Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, via approaching the novel from the interpretive framework of literary Darwinism
Enduring Love is filled with many action scenes with which the reader is very likely to find him/herself seriously concerned, the ethical dilemmas, as the offshoots of the ballooning accident of the novel, thoroughly dominate the narrative
Enduring Love, mainly through the character of Joe, puts forward a Darwinian worldview, in which the origin of existence, human beings, and their relations are reduced to material entities

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This paper attempts to explore the re-definition of human ethics in Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, via approaching the novel from the interpretive framework of literary Darwinism. The Darwinian valuation system, or ethics, in a sense is not objective and only conveys the illusion of objectivity, since human nature as the arbiter of ethical and moral qualities does not rest on solid ground In this regard, Ruse and Wilson in "Moral Philosophy as Applied Science," building on the same argument maintain that based on a Darwinian evolutionary ethic the most repugnant of deeds like cannibalism, incest, and eating of faeces become ethical: These rules [the ethical obligations] are in turn the idiosyncratic products of the genetic history of the species and as such were shaped by particular regimes of natural selection.

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION