Mirrors to One Another - Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume

A compelling exploration of the convergence of Jane Austen's literary themes and characters with David Hume's views on morality and human nature.

• Argues that the normative perspectives endorsed in Jane Austen's novels are best characterized in terms of a Humean approach, and that the merits of Hume's account of ethical, aesthetic and epistemic virtue are vividly illustrated by Austen's writing.
• Illustrates how Hume and Austen complement one another, each providing a lens that allows us to expand and elaborate on the ideas of the other
• Proposes that literature may serve as a thought experiment, articulating hypothetical cases which allow the reader to test her moral intuitions
• Contributes to ongoing debates on the philosophy of literature, ethics, and emotion

E.M. Dadlez is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Central Oklahoma. She has published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the British Journal of Aesthetics, Philosophy and Literature, and Hume Studies. She is also the author of What's Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions (1997).