Damned If You Do Dilemmas of Action in Literature and Popular Culture

by Hrezo, Margaret S.; Parrish, John M.; Cantor, Paul; Johnson, Joel; McWilliams Barndt, Susan; Smith, Travis D.; Turner, Charles; Waggaman, A Craig

• ISBN13: 9780739138137
• ISBN10: 0739138138
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-18
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Problems of individual moral choice have always been closely bound up with the larger normative concerns of political theory. There are several reasons for this continuing connection. First, the value conflicts involved in private moral choice are often reproduced on the public stage: for example, states may find it difficult to balance both justice and mercy in much the same way individuals do. Second, we frequently find conflicts between the values of our individual and public lives, such that the moral choice we must make is between the private good and the public good. Loosely speaking, choices that express these conflicts are what philosophers call moral dilemmas: choices in which, no matter what you do, you will forfeit some important moral good, in which wrongdoing is to some degree inescapable, in which (perhaps literally) you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Author Biography

Margaret S. Hrezo is associate professor of political science at Radford University. John M. Parrish is associate professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Moral Dilemmas and the Narrative Arts	p. 1
Dilemmas of Stability and Regime Change
The Deadwood Dilemma: Freedom versus Law	p. 21
Political Assassination in Popular Fiction and Political Thought: Trotsky, Arendt, and Stephen King	p. 41
Dilemmas of Public Leadership
On Hobbits and Hoplites: Dilemmas of Leadership in Aeschylus' The Suppliants and J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings	p. 63
Defining Dilemmas Down: The Case of 24	p. 87
Dilemmas of Institutional Evil
Modes of Moral Reasoning in Uncle Tom's Cabin	p. 113
The Problem of Slavery in Harry Potter	p. 137
Dilemmas of Community and Choice
Responsible Life in Paradise	p. 165
Amoral Dilemmas and the Temptation to Tyranny in A Simple Plan	p. 189
Index	p. 211
About the Contributors	p. 221
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