Moral Depth Research Articles

The Swedish Municipal Workers' Union A Study in the New Political Unionism

Previous examples of political unionism have focused on issues of public and private economic management and the distribution of income between capital and labour. This article examines a union that has adopted a more fundamental political mission in not only defending the welfare state against economic liberal subversion, but also in tackling the inequities of gender in work life that have so far survived comfortably with the orthodox reformist approach to pursuing gender equality in the labour market and society at large. In an integrated strategy to meet these problems, inspired by the country's resurgent women's movement, the Swedish Municipal Workers' Union-it is argued here-has imbued unionism with a new moral depth that goes to the core of current citizenship issues in Western society, and by so doing it has taken the political lead in the Swedish union movement, not least around institutionalized strategies for work life reform.

Scars and Wings: Rita Dove's Grace Notes

The discipline of writing Thomas and Beulah, a family epic in lyric form, required Rita Dove to focus, as never before, her talent for compression. How to get years of her grandparents' joy and anguish into spare lines without presuming to sum up for them; how to telescope distances of place, background, dreams, without narrating-these were some of the problems she solved so brilliantly in that book. The past shed its patina as bits of voice and image shone through to bespeak whole epochs and regions. The book moved us by its understatement, the major ally of compression, and by its sympathetic imagination, that to make Thomas and Beulah stereotypes, the mere objects of our pity or nostalgia. In Grace Notes Dove returns to the range of subjects and settings that characterized her first two books (she is remarkably broad in the scope of her references without ever being showy). All the features we have grown to appreciate in this poet arise here in their finest form: descriptive precision, tonal control, metaphoric reach within uncompromising realism. Moreover, she has brought these talents to bear upon a new intimacy and moral depth, served by memory and imagination working together. The first poem of Grace Notes, set off as a kind of prologue, estalishes the tone and terms of the volume. Summit Beach, 1921 presents a girl of courtship age, refusing to join in the festive abandon of young dancers on the and choosing to sit by the fire instead. Within 25 lines we learn the history of this girl's stance and come to know her motives and desires even while we never know her name or her relation to the poet. A scar on her knee is the consequence of her childhood fantasy of flying off Papa's shed. Yet she still refused / to cut the wing, advised by her father to preserve angelic innocence (you're all you've got) and waits, instead, for love's music skittering up her calf. The dreams of this young woman, her parasol and invisible wings are in one sense betrayed by the reality around her, the limits imposed because of gender and race this is a Negro beach and more universally because of gravity and mortality. The winking scar on her knee is the constant reminder of the real world's pull. Yet the poet clearly admires the resilience of this dreamer and her spiritscarred but winged-pervades the poems of Grace Notes. All of Dove's books have been marked by their thoughtful arrangement and Grace Notes, divided into five sections, marks out several distinctive areas of reflection, united by the dual images of wounds and wings, themes of pain and the will to resist one's limits, which she introduces in this first poem. Section 1 of Grace Notes is autobiographical, dealing especially with the poet's memories of early adolescence (specifically her tenth year) in which fear of the world and

The remarkable case of Dorothy L. Sayers

Sayers' three main accomplishments serve as the organizing principle of this book: first, her transformation of the modern detective story into a serious novel of social criticism and moral depth; second, her penetrating critique of the situation of modern woman; and, finally, her compelling work as a lay theologian and interpreter of Christianity.

Moral Depth

Few would disagree that depth is an admirable, highly desirable, and yet rare quality. One would expect to find, therefore, that much has been written on the subject. But this is not so. Perhaps the topic appears forbidding, because the nature of depth is itself a deep and difficult question, since it forces those who ask it to decide what is ultimately worth caring about. Be that as it may, I shall venture on to this rarely explored ground. My strategy is to begin with some introductory remarks about depth in general and about moral depth as a particular form of it; then discuss Sophocles' dramatic treatment of the development of Oedipus toward, as I shall interpret it, greater depth; and then go on to formulate a more discursive account based on Sophocles' poetic intimations.

History and Other Spectres in Arthur Miller's The Crucible

In his Defense of Historical Literature, David Levin has argued that Arthur Miller's The Crucible fails to achieve artistic profundity because of Miller's inability to project seventeenth-century sensibilities and thus to sympathize with them. The play, in Levin's view, and in the views of many other critics as well, is not seriously historical and, therefore, not seriously literary or political. "Mr. Miller's pedagogical intention," writes Levin, "leads him into historical and, I believe, aesthetic error. . .. Since Mr. Miller calls the play an attack on black-or-white thinking, it is unfonunate that the play itself aligns a group of heroes against a group of villains." Levin concludes his discussion with the observation that "stupid or vicious men's errors can be appalling; but the lesson would be even more appalling if one realized that intelligent men, who tried to be fair and saw the dangers in some of their methods, reached the same conclusions and enforced the same penalties.” Miller's Crucible, it would seem, fails to reach the social, historical, and (therefore) moral depth of a great work of an, because it cannot imaginatively conjure the world that it pretends to describe.

Some Moral Problems and Depth Psychology

Some Moral Problems and Depth Psychology