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‘God’s Truth’: Kant, Mill and Moral Epistemology in Oliver Twist
Author(s) -
Mangham Andrew
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12024
Subject(s) - epistemology , philosophy , a priori and a posteriori , mill , abstraction , key (lock) , natural (archaeology) , psychology , computer science , chemistry , history , computer security , archaeology
This essay aims to demonstrate how Dickens’s search for ‘truth’ (and his understanding of what that abstraction consists of) entered into and emerged from one of the key philosophical discussions of the early‐nineteenth century: namely whether moral knowledge is the sum of one’s experiences or whether there are such things as a priori or ‘natural’ principles of ethics that transcend human practice.