“Bartleby, the Scrivener”

An “excusatio non petita” in the “Court of Conscience”

Abstract

In “Bartleby the Scrivener,” from the very first pages of the lawyer’s narrative, his setting out the facts, one cannot fail to sense the presence of a sort of excusatio non petita. It is as if he were seeking, a priori, to justify his behavior toward his former employee. The attorney, who by the nature of his office had never plead a case, finds himself in the paradoxical position of taking on his own defense and he does so by appealing, to use Kant’s expression, to “the court of conscience.” Following this lead, the present essay seeks to read “Bartleby” in the light of Kantian ethics and its categories, which Melville was familiar with, convinced as we are that the tale is built around questions of moral judgment and on the observance of moral obligations. Basically the ethical dimension of the tale consists in a conflict between “jus and lex,” i.e., the juridical norm and moral law, which in fact is a salient part of Kantian ethics.