This book introduces narrative justice, a new theory of aesthetic education – the thesis that the cultivation of aesthetic or artistic sensibility can both improve moral character and achieve political justice. The author argues that there is a subcategory of narrative representations that provide moral knowledge regardless of their categorisation as fiction or non-fiction, and which therefore can be employed as a means of moral improvement. McGregor applies this narrative ethics to the criminology of inhumanity, including both crimes against humanity and terrorism. Expanding on the methodology of narrative criminology, he demonstrates that narrative representations can be employed to evaluate responsibility for inhumanity, to understand the psychology of inhumanity, and to undermine inhumanity – and are thus a means to the end of opposing injustice. He concludes that the cultivation of narrative sensibility is an important tool for both moral improvement and political justice. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Preface 1 Narrative Representation 1. Narrative Representation and Non-Narrative Representation 2. Values of Narrative 3. Aesthetic Education 4. Criminal Inhumanity 5. Narrative Criminology 2 Contemporary Aesthetic Education 6. Reading, Detranscendentalisation, and Epistemological Performance 7. Literary Imagination, Ethics, and Impossibility 8. Narrative Understanding 9. Empirical Evidence 3 Narrative Ethics 10. Ethical Value and Narrativity 11. Ethicism 12. Closural Moral Order 4 Narrative Knowledge 13. Knowledge and Narrativity 14. Epistemic Criterion 15. Narrativity Criterion 5 Narrative Justice 16. Ethical Knowledge and Narrativity 17. Fascist Fictions 18. Poetic Justice? 19. Narrative Justice 6 Narrative Value 20. Hyperbolic Ethics and Deconstructive Politics 21. Literature, Empathy, and Experimentation 22. Conclusion, Coherence, and Correspondence 23. Correlation, Causation, and the Law 24. Gregory Currie and Martha Nussbaum 7 Responsibility for Inhumanity 25. Two Wars 26. Three Charges 27. Defending de Man 28. Commending Campbell 29. Silence and Deceit 30. Silence and Remorselessness 8 The Psychology of Inhumanity 31. In the Heart of the Country 32. The Person of the Torturer 33. In the Heart of the Whore 34. The Problem That Troubles the Novelist 9 Undermining Inhumanity 35. Narrative Strategies 36. White Genocide 37. Crusader 38. Reducing Violent Extremism 39. Coda: Methodology? Bibliography Index About the Author This important new book provides an original and compelling argument for a new theory of aesthetic education. Rafe McGregor proposes a model of interdisciplinary inquiry, applying a combined philosophical and critical approach to illuminate issues in a social science. The book makes an original contribution to the field of narrative criminology.
