The conscience of huckleberry finn jonathan bennett summary

Almost no one doubts that cruelty is wrong. But philosophers differ on how to explain what is wrong about acting cruelly and even about the meaning of right and wrong. So we have various systems of moral theory. Inevitably we have the possibility that a philosopher may devise a pseudo-ethical doctrine that loses sight of basic intuitions about human dignity and elementary decency. When such a doctrine achieves currency and popular respectability, it becomes a powerful force for evil. For then, what passes as conventional wisdom allows the average person to behave in reprehensible but conventionally acceptable ways.

In Chapter One we find examples of the ways the moral intuitions of the indi- vidual may conflict with publicly accepted principles that are not grounded in re- spect for human dignity. In the first two selections, “From Cruelty to Goodness” by Philip Hallie and “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn” by Jonathan Bennett, the moral failure of principle is easy to diagnose. A dominant group adopts a phi- losophy that permits it to confine its moral concern to those inside the group, treat- ing outsiders as beyond the moral pale; their pain, their dignity, even their very lives merit no moral consideration. Huckleberry Finn, being white, is within the moral domain. His mentors have taught him that he does not owe moral behavior to slaves. Yet Huck treats Jim, the runaway slave, as if he too deserves the respect due a white person. And therein lies Huck’s conflict. Everything he conventionally believes tells him he is doing wrong in helping Jim elude his pursuers.

Mark Twain’s account of the conflict between official “book” morality and the ground-level morality of an innately decent and sympathetic person is one of the best in literature. Usually the conflict is embodied in two protagonists (Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables is an example), but Huck Finn’s conflict is within himself. And we are glad that his decency is stronger than his book morality. Both Jonathan Bennett and Philip Hallie quote the Nazi officer Heinrich Himmler, one of the fathers of the “final solution,” as a spokesman for those who advocate suspend- ing all moral feeling toward a particular group. Interestingly, Himmler considered

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himself all the more moral for being above pitying the children and other innocent victims outside the domain of moral consideration. Indeed, we hear stories of Germans who were conscience-stricken because—against their principles—they allowed some Jews to escape.

Our dismay at man’s inhumanity to man is qualified by the inspiring example of the residents of the French village Le Chambon-sur-Lignon who acted together to care for and save 6,000 Jews, mostly children, from the Nazis. Le Chambon is said to have been the safest place in Europe for a Jew during World War II. From his studies of the village, Hallie concludes that Le Chambon residents successfully com- bated evil because they never allowed themselves to be blind to the victim’s point of view. “When we are blind to that point of view we can countenance and perpetrate cruelty with impunity.” The true morality of Le Chambon drives out false and hyp- ocritical Nazi “decencies” that ignore the most elementary moral intuitions and that permit and encourage the horrors of Himmler’s and Hitler’s Germany.

The advent of totalitarianisms in the twentieth century has given rise to large concentration camps in which millions of innocents were incarcerated, tormented, and murdered. Moral philosophers have written much about the amorality of the people who planned, built, and administered these camps. Tzvetan Todorov and Anne Applebaum, in the selections we have chosen, focus their attention on the morale of those who lived in conditions of unspeakable horror but who managed to survive to tell their stories. Experiments such as those conducted by Yale Univer- sity Psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s dramatically suggest that even ordi- nary men and women living in ordinary times can be moved to inflict grave harm on hapless innocents.

In his selection, Josiah Royce defends a morality that respects human dignity. Beginning from the axiom that we owe respect and decency to our neighbor, Royce confronts the question that the Nazis and all those who ignore the humanity of spe- cial groups pervert: Who, then, are our neighbors? Royce answers that our neigh- bors include anyone with feelings: “Pain is pain, joy is joy, everywhere even as in thee.” Royce calls this the moral insight. He points out that treating strangers with care and solicitude is hardly unnatural; for each of us, our future self is like a stranger to us, yet we are naturally concerned with the welfare of that stranger.