Recognition Without Sanctification: A Theory of Ethical Judgment in Literary Interpretation

Abstract This article develops fallibilist universalism as a theoretical model for ethical judgment in literary interpretation. It addresses a central problem in contemporary literary theory: the tension between relativist approaches that suspend evaluation in the name of historical situatedness and universalist approaches that risk imposing external moral standards. Against this opposition, the article argues that ethical judgment in literature is best understood as a temporally structured process of interpretation that remains both normatively oriented and open to revision. Drawing on Paul Ricœur’s account of narrative identity, Martha Nussbaum’s conception of literary ethics, and Derek Attridge’s theory of ethical reading, the article reconceptualizes interpretation as a dynamic practice in which provisional judgments are continually re-evaluated in light of unfolding narrative contexts. Within this framework, recognition of historically constituted identities does not entail their normative immunity. Rather, it becomes the condition for a form of critique that remains sensitive to context while preserving the possibility of evaluation. The article demonstrates this model through comparative readings. In Othello , interpretive certainty leads to catastrophic moral misrecognition as identity-based assumptions harden into unquestioned conclusions. In Disgrace , by contrast, ethical awareness emerges through the destabilization of interpretive frameworks and the gradual revision of judgment. These contrasting trajectories illustrate how narrative form stages the conditions under which moral understanding becomes possible and revisable. By foregrounding the temporal and fallible character of interpretation, the article proposes a theoretical account of ethical criticism that integrates recognition and critique without collapsing into either relativism or dogmatism. Literature thus emerges as a site in which ethical judgment is not suspended but continuously negotiated through processes of interpretive revision.