Human Nature, Aesthetics and Modernist Ethics: A Review of Lee Oser's The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett

In The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Becket, Lee Oser, through analyzing five modernist authors' works, claims that the moral project of modernism is "to transform human nature through the use of art," which is an continuation of the aesthetic discourse. While attempting to revive the Aristotelian virtue ethics, Oser reevaluates the voice of the repressed modernist Arnold and promotes the concept of human nature as enduring, universal and improvable. Oser's research on the moral project of Modernism, especially the analysis of the links between aesthetic and ethics, provides a new perspective on the study of modernist literature. Key words: Lee Oser human nature aesthetics ethics modernism