Choo, Suzanne S.

Since the late 20th century, Literature education has entered an ethical turn in response to hyper globalization, the intensification of digital technology, the dangers of post-truth and rising instances of intolerance worldwide. Consequently, influential scholars have rekindled the age-old connection between Literature and ethics. After discussing this turn to ethics and highlighting the pedagogical cosmopolitanization of ethical criticism, this article uncovers the ways in which cosmopolitan ethics grounds recent conceptualizations of ethical criticism and its various strands—relational, analytical, and historical. This paper examines these strands drawing from both “Eastern” and “Western” philosophical traditions. It then offers responses to criticisms of cosmopolitan ethical criticism, namely, arguments concerning moral reductiveness and moral determinism. It demonstrates how these arguments paradoxically reinforce subjectivity to the exclusion of intersubjective accountability and further justify cosmopolitan ethical criticism as tied to its teleological and plurivocal purposes respectively. Cosmopolitan ethical criticism provides the critical tools needed to counter parochial meta-narratives which are essential for human flourishing via societies characterized by hospitality, empathy and inclusivity.