Relational Selfhood and Moral Consciousness in George Eliot’s Fiction: A Philosophical Reappraisal of Human Nature

This article offers an extended philosophical reappraisal of George Eliot’s conception of human nature, arguing that her fiction articulates a relational anthropology grounded in sympathy, moral accountability, and communal embeddedness. Engaging with the intellectual influences of Ludwig Feuerbach, John Stuart Mill, and G. W. F. Hegel, the study situates Eliot within Victorian debates concerning determinism, secularisation, gender reform, and moral psychology. Through sustained close readings of Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner, the article demonstrates that Eliot rejects both rigid determinism and radical individualism in favour of a morally situated selfhood shaped through sympathy and social interaction. Eliot’s fiction emerges as an ethical project that reconceptualises human nature as historically embedded, psychologically complex, and transformable through relational responsibility.