My Second Question Related to My Q&A of this Week

“Can books be characterized as being moral/immoral?”

This question is not exactly taken from my Q&A from this week, but it is defiantly an issue that I have wanted to bring up. This is primarily due to the discussion that we had during class on Friday. In the class, this question seemed be a large contention held within the body of students in our class. Although we did move on from the subject, I do not think we came to a complete agreement.

I think Shelby said it best when she stated that a book can content moral content, but the book in itself does not contain any moral value. I completely agree with this, but I should also point out that this is not to state that by book, we are referencing the actual object. No, the story In itself is actually what is being referenced. However, although many may think that the story itself can be characterized as being moral/immoral, I disagree. I agree with Jacob in that morality is characterized by actions. Accordingly, although a book may seem to encourage certain moral/immoral actions, I do not think the book can be characterized as such. It still takes the individual reading the text to interpret the book in their own way, and then make a choice in regards to how they should act.

I do agree with Nicole when she brought up the idea that all interpretations of a book are not correct (although, this is an entirely different issue). Consequently, it could be assumed that since there is only one specific type of way to interpret a book, if the book contains certain moral truths, it should not matter how the viewer interprets the book; the book would then be characterized as being moral/immoral. I do not agree with this because I still is up to the viewer how they want to fit the ideas within the book into their own structure of ideas. The book does not have any power morally until the viewer turns them into some action. For this reason, I do not agree with the idea that a book can characterized as moral/immoral.