ENN New Voices: Literature and Moral Philosophy: Interview with Lauren Kopajtic

In this episode, we are happy to welcome Lauren Kopajtic, whose work explores the profound connection between literature and moral philosophy. Lauren shares her insights into how novels and plays—from the works of Joanna Baillie to Jane Austen—stimulate moral imagination and contribute to moral education. Together, we discuss key ideas like “sympathetic curiosity” and the cognitive and psychological capacities that literature cultivates, helping us better understand human character and moral judgment. Lauren also highlights the philosophical influences behind her research, including the moral philosophy of Adam Smith, and how these ideas resonate in literary studies. Whether you’re a lover of literature, a student of philosophy, or simply curious about the educational power of stories, this conversation offers thought-provoking perspectives on how art shapes our ethical lives.

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References
 
Novels (recommend by Lauren)
Jane Austen: Emma (1815) and Persuasion (1817)
Frances Burney: Evelina (1778)
 
Secondary literature at the intersection of literature and philosophy
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
—————— . How Novels Think: The Limits of Individualism from 1719-1900. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Benedict, Barbara M. Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
—————— . Framing Feeling: Sentiment and Style in English Prose Fiction 1745–1800. AMS Press, 1994.
Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination. Routledge, 1997.
E. M. Dadlez. Mirrors to One Another: Emotion and Value in Jane Austen and David Hume. London: John Wiley and Sons, 2009.
Jenny Davidson. Hypocrisy and the Politics of Politeness: Manners and Morals from Locke to Austen. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
DeLucia, JoEllen. A Feminine Enlightenment: British Women Writers and the Philosophy of Progress, 1759-1820. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
François, Anne-Lise. Open Secrets: The Literature of Uncounted Experience. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.
Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Johnson, Claudia L. Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s: Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Peter Knox-Shaw, Jane Austen and the Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Wendy Anne Lee, Failures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel. Stanford University Press, 2019.
Lynch, Deidre Shauna. The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Manganaro, Thomas Salem. Against Better Judgment: Irrational Action and Literary Invention in the Long Eighteenth Century. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2022.
Marsden, Jean I. Theatres of Feeling: Affect, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century Stage, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Marshall, David. The Figure of Theater: Shaftesbury, Defoe, Adam Smith, and George Eliot. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Marshall, David. The Surprising Effects of Sympathy: Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
McKeever, Gerard Lee. Dialectics of Improvement. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Morgan, Susan. In the Meantime: Character and Perception in Jane Austen’s Fiction. University of Chicago Press, 1980.
John Mullan. Sentiment and Sensibility: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1988.
Pinch, Adela. Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Hume to Austen. Stanford University Press, 1996.
Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Patricia Spacks, Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self. University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Yousef, Nancy. Romantic Intimacy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.