Ethics and Morality in Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Introduction: Morality in Antebellum America

Ethics and morality feature strongly in Huckleberry Finn. Set against a backdrop of antebellum social stratification, the novel shows how individuals like the title character make their moral choices. Moreover, Huckleberry Finn is a coming-of-age story showing how the title character discovers his own moral voice. His deepening friendship with Jim, and the conflicts that friendship causes him due to race relations in the antebellum South, help Huckleberry Finn distinguish between the artificial morality ensconced in unjust laws and the genuine moral truths of friendship and universal human rights. Huckleberry Finn's decision-making process reflects both virtue ethics and Kantian deontological ethics.

Kantian Ethics and the Fugitive Slave Law

The Fugitive Slave Law is morally unjust from the perspective of Kantian deontological ethics. Requiring that all witnesses of runaway slaves report the transgression to the authorities, the Fugitive Slave Law upholds a morally turbid social and economic system. Yet as a white boy, Huckleberry Finn has never been taught to question the morality of slavery. He has been raised to believe that Black people are inferior to white people, which is why he continually reflects on the subversiveness of his friendship with Jim.

Even the strictest interpretation of Kantian ethics would struggle to resolve Huckleberry Finn's moral conflict. On the one hand, Huckleberry Finn associates moral righteousness with obedience to the law and the social codes that govern the only society he knows. On the other hand, the boy associates moral righteousness with human dignity and the mores of friendship. Ultimately, Huckleberry Finn realizes that there is a difference between moral righteousness and the law, particularly when the law itself is unjust. Being indoctrinated into the social system of the antebellum South makes it challenging to reach that conclusion, which is why Huckleberry Finn's conscience haunts him.

Virtue Ethics and Huck's Moral Character

Virtue ethics highlight the character's morally upright nature. Huckleberry Finn reacts to the calling of his conscience with virtue, recognizing that his conscience does not speak the truth but simply reflects the voice of a racist culture into which he was born. As a child, Huckleberry Finn is an ethically innocent creature, allowing Twain to embed virtue ethics into the story without becoming pedantic. Huckleberry Finn is still shaping his own moral character and his own moral virtue. Society threatens to impart its own set of moral standards on him, based on his race and gender, yet innately Huckleberry Finn knows that slavery is dehumanizing and that race does not determine a person's relative value, worth, or dignity.

Choosing friendship and justice over the law proves that Huckleberry Finn is morally virtuous. He does not have to learn moral virtue; in fact, he reaches his conclusions about Jim totally independently.

Conclusion: Huck's Virtue Reconsidered

Interestingly, deontological ethics does provide Huck with an alternative framework that can coincide with his virtuous character. Huck essentially rewrites the moral and social codes of the South by demonstrating that it is categorically wrong to enslave a human being. Moreover, Huck's ethical code is based on the conviction that friends must always come first, and that loyalty is owed to human decency before the law or religion. From this point of view, Huck does operate within a strict moral framework of his own making.