Streaks of Pragmatic Moral Imagination in Post-postmodern Fiction: A Study of Deweyan Philosophy in Dave Eggers’ Heroes of the Frontiers

Although a number of theorists, critics, and philosophers have acknowledged the recent ethical turn in the novel and literary criticism since the last two decades, the quiddity of illustrated morality remains vague and needs further research. Thus, the present article endeavors to evaluate the new moral matrix in Heroes of the Frontier (2016) by Dave Eggers, indicating the end of postmodern era. Indeed, this novel demonstrates a world in which people face plights of postmodernism caused by egoism and consumerism. However, in the rest of the novel, a wondrous ethical turn occurs which has never been detected before and needs to be examined in detail. Since this is a situational, experimental, and posteriori morality, the researchers aim to study the aforementioned novel under the light of John Dewey’s pragmatic ethics based on “moral inquiry”, “experience”, “imagination”, “situation”, and “meliorism”. This research also demonstrates that moral imagination could solve the individual and social problems in postmodern society, which can lead to moral evolution, growth, self-correction, reconstruction and advent of hope.