Stories can bring alive the moral universe in a very vivid, useful, engaging way.
My husband asked me once why I read so many mysteries, and part of it is just intellectual, part of it is the joy of any good book, but part of it is the moral stakes there.
Good TV is not just TV about good behavior.
Jane Austen can in fact get more drama out of morality than most other writers can get from shipwreck, battle, murder, or mayhem.
I have problems with the violence and the torture on '24.' What I'm trying to say is that that's not the only story, and I think that the cognitive complexity is as important.
I completely believe that the 'Saw' movies do have heart and soul and morals and values.
With certain rapturous exceptions, literature is the moral life.
Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.
All literature has this moral strain, but in Russian literature, it's particularly sharp.
