Self-Deception and Moral Epiphany in Flannery O’Connor
Keywords:
self-deception, Flannery O'Connor, Narrative, Ethics, Memory, Imagination
Abstract
Self-deception is an important theme in several of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. In this essay, I explore the nature and ethics of self-deception by considering the self-deceived characters in O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge and Revelation. In the first part of the essay, I look at the contribution that biased and selective modes of thinking, the construction of narratives, and acts of imagination and memory make to self-deception. Following O’Connor, I also consider the possibility of overcoming self-deception by experiencing a shocking and emotionally charged event or encounter. In the second part, I discuss the often-dangerous moral and personal consequences of self-deception. I show that self-deception can interfere with decision making, blind us to our own moral shortcomings, and enable immoral behavior.References
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About Our Pasts, New York: Harper Perennial.
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York: Vintage Books.
Kant, Immanuel (1785): Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated and edited by Mary Gregor
and Jens Timmerman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Lazar, Arela. (1999): Deceiving Oneself or Self-Deceived? On the Formation of Beliefs ‘Under the
Influence,’ «Mind» 108, pp. 265-290.
Lauria, Frederico (2018): What Does Emotion Teach Us About Self-Deception? Affective Neuroscience in
Support of Non-Intentionalism, «Ethics Forum» vol. 6, no. 4., pp. 70-94.
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McGilchrist, Iain (2009): The Master and His Emissary; The Divided Brain and the Making of the
Western World, New Haven: Yale University Press.
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by Flannery O’Connor, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965, pp. 3-23.
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New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965, pp. 191-218.
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Pears, David (1984): Motivated Irrationality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Porto, Patricia Ribeiro, Leticia Oliveira, Jair Mari, Eliane Volchan, Ivan Figueira, and Paula Ventura (2009): Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Change the Brain? A Systematic Review of Neuroimaging in Anxiety Disorders. «The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences», vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 114–25.
Shaw, Julia (2016): The Memory Illusion; Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory, London:
Penguin Random House.
Singer, Peter (1972): Famine, Affluence, and Morality, «Philosophy and Public Affairs» vol. 1, no. 1, pp.
229-243.
Zagzebski, L. (1996): Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of
Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
