So first the confession. I am an ethical critic of literature. In other words, I hold that our

understanding of narrative works of art, like novels, is not independent of our evaluations of their ethical

outlooks. More specifically, as Wayne Booth put it, the ethical critic is committed to the claim that,

and I quote,

When responsible readers of powerful stories engage in rational inquiry about their ethical value,

they can produce results that deserve the tricky label knowledge."

It is sometimes thought that ethical criticism must be suspect

because the critic simply brings to bear her own ethical judgments and preferences to the work of art, and that can hardly

illuminate the qualities of the work itself.

I would say that criticism that proceeds in that way is simply bad criticism.

The sensitive ethical critic operates instead with the loving gaze described

by Martha Nussbaum and Love's Knowledge, a gaze that considers a work with sustained attention

and at the level of its essential particularity, which leaves the critic vulnerable to

the ethical world of the work itself. Now that vulnerability is not naivete,

but an openness to a kind of dialogue or conversation.

Admittedly, there's no external standpoint

from which to judge whether the results

of some particular act of criticism

or ethical criticism in general

deserve the tricky label knowledge. The possibility is always there

that the critic is simply presenting her ethical or aesthetic prejudices. The standard for success

for any kind of criticism is the following. Do the acts of reading that the criticism sparks

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