Accounting for value in "The Business Man"

Studies in American Fiction, Spring, 2007 by Elizabeth Duquette

The regulative efficacy of moral examples, then, is linked to their ability to mold conduct and provide standards against which the individual can measure his behavior--which they can do as long as they are not written down. (40) "But to attempt to realise the ideal in an example," Kant continues, "as, for instance, to depict the ... wise man in a romance, is impracticable. There is indeed something absurd, and far from edifying, in such an attempt" (B598/A570). Not only "impracticable" but "absurd," giving an ideal a narrative representation meets with Kant's immediate and vehement censure. The problem with such narratives, according to Kant, is that they replace morality with imitation; rather than thinking through what should be done in a given situation, the person applies a course of action dictated by the exemplary narrative. This has the effect of impoverishing both the individual and the society in which he or she lives by undermining moral standards and replacing thought with imitation. While the exemplary ideal can play an important practical role in everyday philosophic consideration, once inserted into a narrative, into fiction, it can only participate in a negative fashion--one that is both absurd and confusing. Why is the "ideal" figure assigned a value so markedly below the one existing "in thought only"? Because, Kant insists, examples do not recognize their limits. The "natural limitations" of the example, its narrative constraints, are "constantly doing violence to the completeness of the idea" (B598/A570). Aiming for an illusion that Kant asserts is "altogether impossible," the example drags the idea down to its level, "by giving it the air of being a mere fiction" (B598/A570).

We see Poe reaching a similar conclusion in "The Business Man," albeit more satirically. In this tale, the fixed morals of the didactic life narrative reduce fiction and philosophy to a "to do do do" list. Proffit engages in a range of businesses, all of which would make their profit, hypothetically, from ignoring communal interests for personal gain. Indeed, in the organ-grinding episode, Proffit is clear that his goal is to annoy as many people as possible. Yet central to the celebration of the business man is the belief that "No man can promote his own interest without promoting that of others," as Edward Everett asserted in 1838, giving voice to an enduring American belief in the communal value of self-interest. (41) Not only is self-interest injurious to the community in "The Business Man," but Poe also questions the efficacy of assuming that one particular figure, especially one as self-interested and narrow as the celebrated self-made man, could prove the ideal representative of a nation's moral values. "The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind," Henry David Thoreau writes in Walden (1854). "Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of others?" (42) Poe anticipates Thoreau's question, replying that a world which sacrifices beauty to utility or character to accounting will turn everything of value--art, morals, philosophy--into a mere numbers game.