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George Eliot often uses the language of determinism in her novels, but we do not understand her view very well by treating such phrasing as addressing debates about the freedom of will directly. Instead she uses seemingly deterministic terms, like the 'law of consequences', to depict and analyse a particular problem in moral psychology: those instances where we ourselves make it impossible to act on our own best judgements. When we fail to act on our best judgement, this has downstream effects, since it can produce a gap between prudential rationality and one's all-things-considered judgement. Surveying depictions of this problem in Silas Marner, Adam Bede, and Romola, I argue that it's a revealing problem for Eliot's larger view, bringing together her objections to consequentialism, her recognition of the fragility of virtue, and her account of the role of sympathy in practical deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

W.K. Clifford is widely known for his emphatic motto that it is wrong, always everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. In fact, that dictum and Clifford's condemnation of a scheming self-deceptive shipowner sum up how his ethics of belief is most often remembered and how it has been subsequently interpreted. In contrast to other recent interpretations, we argue that the motto is misleading as a guide to Clifford's position. It is best understood as essentially a rhetorical flourish. Moreover, in important ways the scheming shipowner is not stereotypical of the kind of believer Clifford thought blameworthy. A careful study of Clifford's various writings on the ethics of belief finally reveals him not to be an evidentialist in the Humean tradition. Rather, inspired by Charles Darwin's work in moral psychology, he applied an evolutionary-functional virtue ethics to the doxastic realm. This perspective allows a fruitful examination of his engagement with contemporaries like Matthew Arnold. It also allows us to recognize him as a predecessor to modern attributionist accounts of blameworthy belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on several aspects of the varieties of self-realization, art, and the self in late Victorian era. It mentions that Murray Pittock has claimed that Walter Pater "stresses the autonomy of the human spirit and the measure of own value. It also mentions that Kate Hext, has contended that Walter Pater sees autonomy as a fragile achievement, a delicate structure constantly threatened bymaterial conditions inside and outside oneself.

Critics have tended to portray sympathy in George Eliot as an alternative to moral judgments based on principles. But this account overlooks Eliot's emphasis on the way principles can be morally transformative: in particular, agents' vocations create in them the capacity to work for something other than mere self-satisfaction and thus serve as a resistance to egoism. Read against this background, sympathy appears not as an alternative to moral principles but rather as a vital check upon them. Sympathy for Eliot thus functions like the categorical imperative test in Immanuel Kant's ethics, as a form of practical reasoning that ensures selflessness in action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the argument of literary texts being interesting in part due to the expressed ideas. Although pointing out that critics are correct in thinking that literary form does contribute some peculiarity to the nature of propositional statements in texts, the author suggests that it is the very nature of narrative form that commits such texts to a particular kind of claim including propositions about agency, intention, and certain features of subjectivity.

An essay is presented on the themes of self-obligation and selfhood in the novel "The Portrait of a Lady," by Henry James. Topics discussed include the agency of the character of Isabel Archer in relation to her abusive husband, the philosophy of author Harry G. Frankfurt, and personal freedom in marriage.