Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)

ÉVA ANTAL The Rhetoric and Ethics of Reading

The Rhetoric and Ethics of Reading 67 to be universal legislation for all mankind" or in another way "I should never act in such a way that I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law" (Kant 21). In the formula, Miller calls our attention to the usage of 'as if' (als so) and 'in such a way' together with the mode of past subjunctive (cf.unreal past): to accept the Kantian categorical imperative, we should use our imagination. That is, with this a Is so we must enter the world of fiction, and having created a fictitious context, a little novel, we shall be able to tell whether or not the action is moral. Miller again emphasises that narrative or story-making gives the basic activity of the human mind together with the ability of telling stories to each other and understanding them; that is, (again) we cannot help reading. He finds that "narrative serves for Kant as the absolutely necessary bridge without which there would be no connecting between law as such and any particular ethical rule of behaviour" (Miller ER, 28). Moreover, Miller finds it is quite interesting that in his sytem, Kant regarded his third critique, Critique of Judgment (work of art), as serving as a bridge between epistemology (the work of pure reason) and ethics (the work of practical reason) separated by a deep chasm. Then, among other passages, Miller quotes a footnote from Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals

, in which Kant tries to give what he means by the expression, 'to act from respect (Achtung) for law', claiming that "respect can be regarded as the effect of the law on the subject and not as the cause of the law.

.. All respect for a person is only respect for the law of which the person provides an example

" (Miller ER, 18. Italics are mine). Here it is again expressed that in our life we are related to the ethical through finding analogies and reading stories. We can judge a person or an act as ethical, because we find him or it being analogous to the incomprehensible law: as if human beings and their life events or narrated stories were used as rhetorical figures of speech (signs) referring to the moral imperative. According to Miller, this footnote reveals the Kantian reading of ethics, as he finds that the author reads himself or re-reads his own text. As Miller says "at such moments an author turns back on himself, so to speak, turns back on a text he or she has written, re-reads it, and, it may be, performs an act which can be called an example of the ethics of reading" (Miller ER, 15). In this sentence it is revealed that this moment is not a necessity in every text, as it may happen. But for Miller, or me, the deconstructive reader, who exactly pays attention to those moments, it means a necessity, a must, and the self-reading blindness of the chosen texts becomes the insight of the German text, Gruridlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Werkausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982).