“Goodness: Altruism and the Literary Imagination” by Toni Morrison: Goodness is acquisition of morally insightful self-knowledge by protagonists

Morrison’s 2012 lecture to the Harvard Divinity School starts with the Amish community’s altruistic response to mass murder at an Amish schoolhouse in 2006; outlines standard philosophical theories of goodness and altruism; and comments on various works of fiction. Her conclusion is as follows:

“…allow me to signify my own understanding of goodness: the acquisition of self-knowledge. A satisfactory or good ending for me is when the protagonist learns something vital and morally insightful that she or he did not know at the beginning…Such insight has nothing to do with winning, and everything to do with the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge on display in the language of moral clarity — of goodness” (1).

Comment

That is what goodness means to her literary personality. It omits actual good behavior. Another personality, her social personality, would probably say that goodness entails good behavior.

If you wanted to insist that she had only one personality, you could argue that knowing right implied doing right. But in real life, knowing right without doing right is common.

Or you could argue that "knowledge on display" implies behavior, but it's knowledge on display "in the language" of goodness, not in good behavior, per se.

So her definition of goodness in terms of the self-knowledge of protagonists sounds like the specialized perspective of a writing or literary personality.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/books/toni-morrison-goodness-altruism-literary-imagination.html