Anecdotes, I believe, reside in a space outside of ethics. That is, as a story (small story or integral story or whatever it is that makes anecdotes a subset of the genre story) it in and of itself has no duty to be ethical. An anecdote about something unethical is not unethical; a story about something ethical is not ethical. Anecdotes are amoral, perhaps one can say.
However, one can use anecdotes unethically and one can use anecdotes ethically. A talmudic friend of mind (or, rather, a friend who shares my love of Talmud), remarked recently that the Talmud is in essence a book of anecdotes. Indeed it is: and I would add that it is a book of anecdotes used ethically. Why? Because these anecdotes are used to parse, to understand, to make legible, to apply, to approach -- that is, to understand G-d.
Anecdotes can be used unethically when they are used to persuade. The Talmud itself is clear on this (chapter and verse, as it were, in later posts). The most unethical use of anecdote (or talmudic ethics) is in order to persuade oneself or others that what one is doing is actually ethical, even when it appears unethical. One should take great care not to keep a critical distance from the ethics one is studying, lest one think oneself above ethics.
2 comments:
The real question is whether any of those pigs are ethical. Clearly the wolf isn't kosher.
A fine point, anecdotes are amoral--and what a blessing that is.
Maybe, however, the Talmud uses anecdotes because G-d is in the end not understandable, not legible, not approachable. Maybe the language of analysis and argument, even in that insurmountable monument to argument and analysis,eventually breaks down and ends in story, because the argument and its institutional setting of Talmud, is, in the end, inadequate for dealing with the human condition relating to G-d. All that remains are the narratives.
On the unethical use of arguments, I need clarification. They should never be used to persuade? or there are right ways and wrong ways to use them?
And by whose eyes are we to judge the appearance of the unethical?
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