Only Connect: Moral Judgment, Embodiment, and Hypocrisy in Howards End

Almost all readings of E. M. Forster’s Howards End note the famous epigraph—“Only connect…”—but it is not at all obvious how we are supposed to understand it. Connect what, exactly? Here, I propose a new interpretation: that to connect is to come to terms with one’s own embodiment. This notion ought to be of interest to moral philosophers for two reasons: first, because the failure to connect represents a significant form of moral confusion, and second, because this form of confusion is one to which moral philosophers are particularly likely to be subject.