An international cast of philosophers and literary theorists addresses questions of ethics and literary criticism.

Introduction: the turn to ethics in the 1990s David Parker; Part I. Ethics, Literature and Philosophy: 1. Deepening the self: the language of ethics and the language of literature Simon Haines; 2. Martha Nussbaum and the need for novels Cora Diamond; 3. The concept of dread: sympathy and ethics in Daniel Deronda Lisabeth During; 4. Against tidiness: literature and/versus moral philosophy: a response to Cora Diamond, Martha Nussbaum and Iris Murdoch Jane Adamson; Part II. Ethics and Agency: 5. What differences can contemporary poetry make in our moral thinking? Charles Altieri; 6. Moral luck in Paris: A Moveable Feast and the ethics of autobiography Richard Freadman; 7. The unseemly profession: privacy, inviolate personality, and the ethics of life writing Paul John Eakin; 8. The patient writes back: bioethics and the pathography John Wiltshire; Part III. Politics and Ethics: 9. Literature, power and the recovery of philosophical ethics C. A. J. Coady and Seamus Miller; 10. The literary imagination in public life Martha C. Nussbaum; 11. Ethics in many different voices Annette C. Baier; 12. Common understanding and individual voices Raimond Gaita.