The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

276 chapter 23ourselves,” or at any rate have gone through annealing experiences we thinkrelevant to our own lives. 13 In a womanly way we are fascinated by ethicalstories, finding them in literature, in autobiography, in gossip.It is a fault in Hursthouse’s philosophically sophisticated exposition ofvirtue ethics that she does not acknowledge the river of narrative in whichhumans swim. She argues persuasively that an adolescent cannot be whollyethical, that the writing of a complete ethical Code Napoléon is an unattainablegoal, that in short an educated judgment must be exercised. 14 Yethow then are we to grow into such ethical wisdom? Breadth of actual lifeexperience is clearly relevant, though commonly not sufficient. But sois breadth of hearing and watching and reading the images and stories ofour culture.A story: The prison-hardened gangbanger and thief Carl Upchurch hadbeen in solitary confinement at the federal penitentiary of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania,for two months before he noticed the little paperback book proppingup one leg of the table. “I pulled it out, excited to have foundsomething to alleviate the monotony. I turned it over and stared at the coverin disgust. It was Shakespeare’s sonnets.” He put it back. But his time in solitarywas long, and “after three more days of staring at gray, I pulled it outagain, muttering that Shakespeare was better than nothing.”I don’t pretend that Shakespeare and I immediately connected. I must have readthose damn sonnets twenty times before they started to make sense. ...I hadalmost always been contemptuous of intellect. That book of sonnets didn’t justchange my opinion—it quite literally changed my mind. ...I wanted to ask formore books, but I didn’t have a clue where to start. At least I knew that Shakespearehad written other stuff besides the sonnets, so I requested anything elsethey had by him. I . . . started plowing my way through thirty-eight plays andsome other poetry. . . . Caught up in the first flush of literary exploration,I was pretty impressed with myself. In retrospect, it was lucky I was in the cellalone....[The] guys would have burst my bubble mercilessly. 15He burst it often enough himself, in further explosions of macho violence.But gradually he emerged, through what he calls “de-niggerization.” Storyby story he remade his character. For example, this very tough guy wept hisway through Les Misérables.Religious ritual, which seems so idiotic to the secular mind, has the samefeel as Carl’s nth chance to go straight or Phil’s nth repetition of GroundhogDay. The words and motions of the mass give the faithful repeated chances