When I see the words "deep" and "rich" thrown into the discussion, I immediately become wary. In my experience these are "fog words" that simply obscure the fact that the writer can't really define what they are talking about. And in this book about stories or narratives there is a lot of usage of the words "rich" and "deep"; frequently juxtaposed with "meaningful". OK, I buy it that some stories are very shallow and trite, and others have a lot of detailed descriptions and psychological interpretations....but I'm not comfortable that the "rich" narrative is necessarily more accurate than the shallow version.
I've had this book sitting on my shelves for years .....it looked just a bit too intimidating.....like it was going to require some concentrated effort of my part to digest it. And that, in fact, is correct. However, it has opened up a whole new world of moral philosophy that I was (more or less) unaware of prior to this.
When I started studying philosophy, I was mystified that a lot of the arguments seemed to be founded around stories....usually just fictional..."made-up" stories such as the one by Bernard Williams about Jim, Pedro and the Indians in the jungle...where Jim is invited to save 19 of the Indians from casual execution by Pedro if he (Jim) simply executes one of the Indians. Otherwise, Pedro will execute the whole 20 of them. It's certainly a powerful story (leaving aside the racial caricatures and bias) and the fact that it captivated my philosophy ethics class...and, I take it, many others.......nobody seemingly able to figure out a good (moral) way out of the dilemma. But philosophy seems to be full of such stories with the implication that this is a valid way to DO philosophy. And the implication is that through such stories we can fumble our way to underlying and broader truths which have universal application. I confess to using a few such stories in my own Master's thesis ..... to the approval of my supervisor...but I've always felt a bit uncomfortable about using make-up stories to "demonstrate" a point. (I feel that one can always/often come up with stories which make the opposite point so how valid is this sort of argument?).
The current book is concerned about the role of such stories (or narratives) in ethics. it's particular focus seems to be on medical or bioethics but the principles range wider than this. Basically, the multiple authors seem to be "pro" the use of narrative but I gathered that there are others who are uncomfortable in reasoning from particular cases to general principles and feel that it should be the other way around. At this moment, I've just finished reading the paper by Rita Charon..titled "The ethical dimensions of literature" and freely admit that I am underwhelmed. Yes, she does the classic literary analysis of Henry Jame's novel "The wings of the dove" but apart from claims such as: "the work of literary critics enables moral philosophers to approach literary texts with the theoretical discrimination and canonical knowledge required of robust and generative study". ...I mean, really, what does that mean. And there's that word "robust" ...I put it into the same class as "deep" and "rich". It's what you say when you can't properly describe something. And then there is the casual observation that: "Any reader, ethically fit for reading this novel must have the intellectual capacity and the experience of weighing, of balancing, of trying first one and the the next perspective, as demanded by the alternation of the books centre of consciousness....". OK, I can see what she is driving at; you'll get more out of the book if you are a bit educated...but I'm not convinced about the "ethically fit" bit. Nor did I see any mechanism in Charon's paper about how one might move from reading and empathising with (fictional) characters in the book to some broad principles which might be useful to most people;....like "tell the truth" or "don't steal". (Though, of course, as soon as you state a general principle like these you start to find borderline cases and exceptions ....so it's ok to tell a lie to the axe murderer who is seeking his/her victim in your house and to re-assure him/her that the terrified victim is NOT sheltering in your house...when in fact that is a lie). And I was amused by the next author, Tom Tomlinson's observation, that "my more literary acquaintances are nice to sit down with for a chaw and a chat, but I can't say that I've noticed any generically higher level of ethical acumen among them than is found among the rest of us in the herd". I found myself in agreement with much of what Tomlinson is saying....and he is much more critical of the narrative models than the other writers (so far.....I still haven't finished the book.
Oh! just came across another "fog word".....this time it's "thick" ...for example; "In medical ethics, "process" is a THICK ethical concept with meanings and implications that function on many levels".