Kantian Dignity

Tracing Nussbaum’s engagement with Henry James’s The Ambassadors, this chapter delves further into the differences between her concept of perceptive equilibrium and Rawls’s concept of reflective equilibrium. Returning to Kantian first principles, which define and defend the supreme value (or worth) of dignity, the ongoing argument concludes in favor of reflection over perception. The thoughts of philosopher Derek Parfit help to support this conclusion, as does the literature of Richard Wright, who “gives us the details about kinds of suffering being endured by people to whom we [as philosophers] have previously not attended” (Richard Rorty xvi). While Nussbaum’s attempt to conciliate literary theory and ethical theory founders on the writerly attributes of James’s literature, Wright offers a readerly alternative by which to forge such consilience.