"The highest form of morality...."

I have doubled the autographs I have collected from significant late twentieth century authors by getting one from Azar Nafisi last night. Her book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was the summer reading/essay response for the incoming first years here. (In fact, I helped read the many top exams and my own two students' essays were ranked 11th and 14th, though only the top ten could go to dinner with her--essay writers, that is, not essays.) Nafisi is a dynamic, engaging speaker, and it was a privilege to hear her and to speak with her however briefly. During the public Q&A, I asked her if she were to write a book called "Reading XXX in Baltimore," what three or four contemporary novels would she analyze in order to help her American audience gain empathy for the Muslim world. Surprisingly, she struggled to answer it because she didn't want to list any book that was not Iranian.
Empathy....One of the key phrases from the book, which has become a central theme of this year's forum series, is a quotation she cites from Theodor Adorno: "The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one's own home." Nafisi's thesis in her book is that only through reading literature (particularly novels) can persons develop empathy for those different from themselves. The primary sin of the characters in the four novels she taught in her clandestine class in Tehran all lacked empathy as (of course) did the Islamic Republic of Iran's regime, which so stifled their self-expression and abused their lives. For her, empathy is the highest good, fostered (only!) by literature and designed to make us uncomfortable with the comforts of our own worldview.

What do you think? How would you finish the sentence "The highest form of morality is...."

I'll give you a clue to my response after having this tumbling round in my mind for several weeks. (Don't continue to read if you would rather figure yours out alone...) Morality for Adorno and Nafisi does not exist in a God-shaped world. They do not refer to "loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind." Hence, however lovely the idea of empathy for others, it cannot thrive or even exist without the spiritual power of God in our lives. However, if we were just to be thinking about obedience to the second table of the law, loving your neighbor as yourself, then this is probably one challenging way to rephrase it. It certainly echoes the significant theme of our being "strangers in a strange land" because we cannot fit comfortably into our culture if we are followers of Jesus. Our loyalties are elsewhere, but I can only not feel at home in my own home if I have another home, the kingdom of God, whose demands on my heart and actions are greater than those posed by people living in a different home than mine (which is American middle-class culture).

The forum theme this year is "Piety and Heresy." (Guess which one is privileged!!) Chuck is going to speak at WCF later this fall after the visit of Michael Ruse who has written about creation/evolution (again, guess the perspective). I think that I am going to respond to the whole forum theme when I speak in November by raising this question of the highest form of morality.