Openness to contingency: Huckleberry Finn and the morality of phronesis.

Gerald Bruns' book, Tragic Thoughts at the End of Philosophy: Language, Literature, and Ethical Theory, makes some compelling claims about the philosophical climate of our time. Drawing mainly on Stanley Cavell, but also on philosophers as diverse as Levinas, Nussbaum, and Gadamer, Bruns claims that we have indeed come to the "end of philosophy," where the key questions of the day are not "What do we know and how do we know?", but "How can we relate to things besides just knowing them?" (Bruns 14). (1) For Bruns, one of the pivotal thinkers to show how philosophy has moved beyond epistemology is Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose dialogical model of reading extols the value of openness. Bruns states that this openness is "not the open-mindedness of liberal pluralism," but an "exposure to the other, in which our self-possession, or say our existence, is at stake" (195). This is reading "without epistemology" (2)--reading not for knowledge of a text, but as an act of self-questioning. In this model, understanding a text is more than just knowing what it says, it's also knowing "what it asks of us" (196).

Though Gadamer isn't primarily regarded as an ethical philosopher, his philosophical hermeneutics can have significant implications for ethical philosophy, as Bruns' application of Gadamer demonstrates. Furthermore, Gadamer seems to invite such applications of his hermeneutics to ethics in his discussions of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, found in Truth and Method and elsewhere in his work. (3) One of Gadamer's most provocative uses of Aristotle is in his resurrection of the terms phronesis and techne. (4) Phronesis can be translated as "practical wisdom" or "wisdom in action," (Ostwald 312) and it designates behavior that is good in itself, means and ends undivided. Techne, on the other hand, is a term taken from the kind of knowledge artisans use to construct an object according to a predetermined plan. It designates an action that has a predetermined end in view--the means separated from the ends. With phronesis, a right-minded person will grasp the situation at hand and act in the right way, without any predetermined idea in mind, such as "Will this action pay-off for me?" or even, "Does this action correspond to what is right, categorically?" For Gadamer, the concept of phronesis is important for understanding interpretation as a complex task for which predetermined rules are never adequate. Similarly, for Aristotle the moral universe is too complex to be navigated with preset rules; thus a "technical" morality will never be adequate to meet the most difficult moral challenges. For both Gadamer and Aristotle, the key to practical wisdom is openness. One must be open to the possibilities of the text, or to the person next to you, or to the difficulties of the situation at hand, if one is to adequately interpret the situation and decide what must be done. Where a morality of techne seals itself off in order to follow a set of rules, a morality of phronesis remains open to new, unthought of possibilities.

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn keenly demonstrates the value of "practical wisdom." Twain's book fits well into the current philosophical mood when it comes to ethics, since much of the irony of the book rests on Huck's lack of a sense of epistemology. But, one of the problems that critics fall into, even ones who see the morality of Huck as intensely pragmatic, is that they tend to view Huck as an individual ego, hermetically sealed and shut off from others. They fail to see how Huck, in his pragmatics, his wisdom in action, remains open to the people and communities surrounding him. Only through this openness is Huck able to successfully navigate the muddy moral waters in which he finds himself. This study critiques, even as it adds to, the swollen body of work that claims to be moral or ethical criticism of Huckleberry Finn. By viewing Huck's moral decision-making through the lens of the Aristotelian ethical terms phronesis and techne (as appropriated by Gadamer's hermeneutics of openness), I will demonstrate that Huck's moral development is not compromised by the book's final sequence since a morality of phronesis allows one to remain open to others and is primarily directed toward specific situations, not towards any teleological goal of moral development.

HUCK'S EARLY RELATIONSHIPS

Many critics rightly point out the rather repressive environment in which Huck finds himself at the beginning of the novel. The widow and Miss Watson attempt to instill in Huck a dogmatic and technical morality and mythology. (5) William Heath writes that Miss Watson and the widow "combine to inflict their insipid sanctity on Huck" (66), and James D. Wilson similarly comments that the Christianity of the widow and Miss Watson is an abstract moral code that Huck must come to reject (81). Wilson's description of the Christianity of Huck's guardians as an abstract moral code is perfectly suited to this discussion since it highlights the distinction between moral techne, which would adhere to pre-established codes, and phronesis, which is "directed towards the concrete situation" (Gadamer, Truth 21). The critical temptation is to see Huck as somehow inviolable, as above the squeamish moralism surrounding him, and as essentially morally superior to the widow and Miss Watson, since he sees through the dogma to the problems and inconsistencies of such morality. However, giving in to this temptation simplifies Huck's character to an unrealistic extent. He does not completely reject the widow and Miss Watson's Christianity, standing apart from it, inviolable. Instead, he is in conversation with both of them and their dogma throughout the novel, but especially when he is under their supervision at the beginning of the book.

The place where Huck most clearly does not stand completely apart from the doctrine of his two guardians, but instead engages it in a dialogue occurs when Miss Watson instructs Huck about prayer. Huck listens to Miss Watson and actually tries to pray; and even though it does not work to his satisfaction ("I got a fish-line, but no hooks" 15), he tries it again. He even reengages Miss Watson in conversation about it by asking her to do his praying for him. Miss Watson is, of course, incredulous, but Huck does not yet ...