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MANY PHILOSOPHERS AND CRITICS have claimed that novels can provide philosophically interesting ethical theses, but few have offered plausible examples. Huckleberry Finn is often cited as an example of such a novel, but the moral lessons abstracted from it have not been for the most part very interesting, and where they have been, the interpretations in my view have not been correct. Many philosophers have also claimed following Kant that moral motivation is rationally required, that rational agents must be motivated to act on their moral judgments or must be concerned for the interests of others. I will argue here that Huck Finn shows us otherwise. I will argue against several prominent interpretations that Huck is not irrational at the crucial relevant points in the novel. In one sense he is not morally motivated either, showing directly that moral motivation in that sense is not rationally required. In another sense he is morally motivated, but the nature of his motivational state is such that it is not rationally required either. The philosophically interesting conclusion is that, since Huck Finn is a rational agent who is not morally motivated in any way that is rationally required, and since there is no other normal route to moral motivation, such motivation is itself not required of rational agents.
In the first half of the article I will argue that Huck is not irrational in being unmotivated to follow his explicit judgments of rightness and wrongness. It follows, of course, that rational agents need not be so motivated. As opposed to my view, philosophers have previously judged Huck to be irrational, subject to weakness of will, in being unable to act on his moral judgment. But their interpretation rests on incorrect analyses of weak will and of the emotions on which Huck does act. I will also argue that, surprisingly, my refutation of moral judgment internalism, the thesis that these judgments must be motivating for agents, including rational agents who sincerely make them, does not eliminate expressivism as a meta-ethical theory, the theory that moral judgments express emotions. We can save expressivism in large part despite denying motivational force to all moral judgments by drawing a distinction between core judgments and others.
In the second half of the article...