On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books

by Karen Swallow Prior

The literary battle between Fielding and Richardson changed the course of literature. Their skirmish reflected—and shaped—not only differences in literary form but also the ongoing cultural transition from the classical virtues to modern individualistic morality. The debate reflects a modern cultural shift whereby, as Alasdair MacIntyre explains in After Virtue, morality was severed from theology, replacing it with the modern notion of autonomy.10 Pamela, drawing on an earlier tradition of conduct books, promotes individual morality based on what MacIntyre calls “rules of conduct,”11 while Tom Jones is built on what was even then a crumbling theological foundation for virtue.12 The dispute between the two novelists mirrors the Enlightenment-era debate that has ultimately led to our current state of moral discourse. MacIntyre describes this state as the replacement of a transcendent basis for shared moral principles with mere individualistic emotivism.13 Paralleling this philosophical development, contemporary Christian practice, particularly as expressed in American evangelicalism, has largely experienced the replacement of orthodox doctrine with what sociologist Christian Smith terms “moralistic therapeutic deism.”