Jane Austen and Bishop Butler

Abstract

THE OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE between novelists and philosophers is that the former characteristically invite our judgment of specific acts on the part of individuals, while the latter are more usually concerned with the status of moral judgments in general and the principles which govern or ought to govern decisions in moral issues. If, then, we wish to claim for a novelist serious consideration as a moralist in that broader sense, we must be prepared to look behind the separate transactions of the novels for evidence of some system which provides a consistent set of principles. It is a commonplace among modern critics to speak of Jane Austen as a moralist, a term usually justified by pointing to certain classes of action which she normally approves or disapproves of. It is much more difficult to characterize her general moral position with sufficient precision to establish her affinity with one well-defined school of philosophy or another. Of the attempts to do this, perhaps the best, certainly the best known, is the essay by Gilbert Ryle in which he draws a number of suggestive parallels between Jane