Ethics and the Arts: A Critical Review of the New Moralisms

Chapter 15 1 Ethics and the Arts: A Critical Review of the New Moralisms Paul Macneill 2 3 L.15 CHANGE: ‘4,’ TO ‘4;’ 4 Introduction The relation of the arts and ethics “has been a recurrent and central concern” in Western culture from the early Greeks through to the present and continues to be of concern to philosophers, artists, writers, politicians and the public [9, p. 5]. Tolstoy’s polemical essay What is Art? (first published in 1897) argues that art is essentially moral, if not spiritual. Great art could only be created by someone who stands on a “level of the highest world outlook of his time.” It “should eliminate violence” and make accessible “feelings of brotherhood and love of one’s neighbour” [22, p. 90 & p. 166]. Although his is an extreme view, it was influential in his time.1 At the other extreme (and derided by Tolstoy) are those who claim that art and ethics are autonomous—a view that can be traced back to philosopher Immanuel Kant’s formalism in separating ethics and aesthetics [4, 6, p. 356]. Although there are variants of autonomism (or formalism)—such as ‘Art for Art’s sake’—all of them claim that morality is irrelevant to an assessment of the quality of the work of art as art [14, p. 157]. Autonomism held sway in the arts, and within the philosophy of art, for some time. In the last 20 years interest in a relationship between ethics and the arts has been revived by philosophers of art who argue that it is appropriate to judge some works of art by moral standards. Jacobson describes this as the rise of a “Humean-style moralism” in that many of its advocates develop their positions with reference to Hume’s essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ (1757) [14]. Although Hume argues for tolerance in judging the quality of a work of art from another era, he is relatively 1 For example: Tolstoy’s view influenced Stanislavsky. See Chap. 5. P. Macneill (*) Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Rd, Singapore, Singapore Centre for Values, Ethics & the Law in Medicine, Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] email: [email protected] P. Macneill (ed.), Ethics and the Arts, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-8816-8_15, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 167 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 168 P. Macneill 31 intolerant in upholding standards of “morality and decency.” For Hume, regardless of the age, “where vicious manners are described, without being marked with the proper characters of blame and disapprobation; this must be allowed to disfigure the poem, and to be a real deformity” [12]. Many of the current commentators broadly agree with Hume that expressions of morality may be a ‘deformity’ in some artworks, although they distinguish their positions from Hume in various ways. 32 15.1 33 Noël Carroll, one of the leading advocates in this field, accepts as a minimum that “there are intimate relations between at least some art and morality that call for philosophical comment.” He argues this in opposition to those who claim that morality and art are autonomous spheres of interest. Carroll identifies two forms of autonomism: radical and moderate. ‘Radical autonomism’ is the position that “art is a strictly autonomous realm of practice. It is distinct from other social realms which pursue cognitive, political or moral value [and as such] it is inappropriate or even incoherent to assess artworks in terms of their consequences for cognition, morality and politics.” ‘Moderate autonomism’ is the view that whilst an artwork may “traffic in aesthetic, moral, cognitive and political value… these various levels are independent or autonomous… from other dimensions, such as the moral dimension.” It may be appropriate to comment on these attributes, but any evaluation of the political effectiveness, or moral appropriateness of a work of art “is never relevant to its aesthetic evaluation” [1, p. 224 & p. 231; 20, p. 68]. Carroll develops a position he terms ‘moderate moralism.’ His claim is that moral issues may be so central to the structure of some works of art, and particularly those of a narrative kind, that the treatment of these issues is critical to assessing the aesthetic quality of the work of art. Carroll adds that he “does not contend that artworks should always be evaluated morally, nor that every moral defect or merit in an artwork should figure in its aesthetic evaluation.” He recognises that the moral dimension of a work of art may not be recognised at the time and in the culture when the work is first available. A highly regarded novel may go with no critique of its racist assumptions when first published. Nevertheless “even where given audiences do not detect the moral flaws in question, the artwork may still be aesthetically flawed, since in those cases the moral flaws sit like time-bombs, ready to explode aesthetically once morally sensitive viewers, listeners and readers encounter them” [1, p. 236 & p. 234]. This point can be illustrated by Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will which is a documentary, set in Nuremberg in 1934, of a rally of the National Socialist Workers’ Party. Many critics regard the film as a masterpiece,2 and it won 26 27 28 29 30 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 The New ‘Moralisms’ 2 Devereaux regards Triumph of the Will as “masterful” [5, p. 231], Sontag as “superb” [21, p. 320], and Kieran acknowledges the film’s “numbing beauty” [16, p. 347]. Carroll himself disagrees: “Regardless of its moral standing, the film is aesthetically botched. It is uneven and ultimately boring. It is not the best example for the current debate” [3, p. 83; 2, pp. 379–381]. 15 Ethics and the Arts: A Critical Review of the New Moralisms 169 awards in Germany, Venice and Paris in the late 1930s [5, p. 230]. Yet its staging of Hitler and the Nazi party as heroic and powerful has, in hindsight, been seen as Nazi propaganda and regarded (at least by Devereaux) as “morally repugnant.” Devereaux concludes that “the highest aesthetic praise” should be withheld “from works of art that present as beautiful, attractive, and good” when on reflection they “can be seen to be evil” [5, p. 227 & p. 250]. These rallies were spectacular displays of flags, uniforms and weapons, set within cathedrals of light. Hitler and Speer were deliberate in making an aesthetic link between triumph and terror. This larger context must raise moral concern, and—from the perspective of moralism—is a factor in assessing the aesthetic value of this film. Berys Gaut, another of the advocates in this field, has a similar view to Carroll on the relationship of art and morality and agrees that a moral assessment of some artworks has a bearing on the aesthetic quality of those works. For Gaut “an artwork has an aesthetic merit in so far as it possesses an ethical merit that is aesthetically relevant” [9, p. 10; 8, p. 439]. He has developed his position, which he terms ‘ethicism,’ into a theory that aims to account for the conditions under which morality relates to aesthetics. In more exact terms: “Ethicism holds that a work is aesthetically flawed in so far as it possesses an aesthetically relevant ethical flaw and aesthetically meritorious in so far as it possess an aesthetically relevant ethical merit. The ethical flaws referred to are intrinsic ethical flaws… Intrinsic ethical flaws are ethical flaws in the attitudes that works manifest towards their subjects. So ethicism holds that works are aesthetically flawed in so far as they exhibit aesthetically relevant ethical flaws in their manifested attitudes” [9, p. 229]. The formulation is worded in this careful way to defend ‘ethicism’ from any charge of simple moralism, and to specify that the relevant moral quality relates to the attitude displayed in an artwork toward its subject, not simply because a work of art explores immoral themes, events and attitudes. What is important for Gaut is whether or not the ‘manifest author’ (the author apparent in the artwork—not necessarily the narrator) celebrates, or appears to approve of immoral behaviour and attitudes in a way that is apparently “aiming morally to corrupt its audience.” The prime examples of immoral art of this kind (to which Gaut often returns) are Marquis de Sade’s novels which are “ethically sick because of the attitudes they display of approving of, celebrating, making positive judgements about and aiming to get their readers to enjoy the sexual torture and multifarious degradation of the characters who suffer through their pages” [9, p. 10]. Gaut advances three arguments for his ethicism: ‘moral beauty’; an argument based on ‘cognitivist’ values of art; and a ‘merited response’ argument. His moral beauty claim follows Plato, St Augustine and Hume (among many) who perceived virtue as beauty. Gaut regards virtue as a “beautiful character trait” and, conversely, moral vice as “an ugly character trait.” This links to the aesthetic value of an artwork in that, “If a manifest author has a morally good character, it follows from the moral beauty view that… the work has a beautiful aspect, in so far as the author has a beautiful character” [9, p. 120 & p. 127]. Gaut’s second argument, which draws on ‘cognitivist’ values of art, recognises that artworks may display insight and understanding about the world, or insights into character, or moral understanding. They may well 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 170 P. Macneill 127 teach their audiences, and audiences may learn something from them. This is a central value of art from a humanist perspective. Knowledge gained from art could be propositional, or practical (as ‘know-how’), or phenomenal (in other words, experiential). It might also be ‘affective-cognitive’ in conveying knowledge about the emotions in certain situations and it may lead to empathy, or manifest as appreciating “how to feel” in particular contexts. The argument is that an artwork is, “aesthetically good in so far as it manifests aesthetically relevant moral understanding (and conversely for aesthetic badness and moral misunderstanding or failures to understand)” [9, pp. 136–138]. Carroll makes a similar point that artworks may contribute (positively or negatively) to our moral understanding although not necessarily by teaching something new, but by learning “how to apply those precepts to situations” and by “deepening or enlarging our emotional understanding.” Where this occurs, it is “natural and appropriate” for this to influence our evaluation of the work of art [1, pp. 29–30]. Gaut’s third support for ethicism is the ‘merited response argument.’ He argues that “prescribed responses in a work of art are not always merited. One way in which they can be unmerited is in being unethical. If the prescribed responses are unmerited, that is a failure in the work” which may be an aesthetic defect when the prescribed response is of aesthetic relevance [9, p. 233]. For example, if an artwork endorses taking pleasure in the gratuitous suffering of others, that amounts to both an ethical and an aesthetic defect, and establishes a further basis for relating morality to any aesthetic evaluation of the quality of artworks. 128 15.2 129 One of the challenges to both Carroll and Gaut is the argument that ‘immoral’ works of art may be worthy precisely because of the manner in which the immoral subject is explored aesthetically. Jacobson’s paper ‘In praise of Immoral Art’ argues that “What is properly deemed a moral defect in a work of art can contribute positively and ineliminably to its aesthetic value” [14, p. 162]. He takes an opposing view of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (as it is discussed above) in stating that “the moral defects of the flim are not aesthetic blemishes, because they are inseparable from the work’s aesthetic value.” He claims that, “Like all the best immoral art, this film is incorrigible: it can’t be sanitized… it can only be expurgated.” Jacobson is in “broad sympathy with the idea that… narrative, art can significantly contribute to something like moral understanding” but he questions the assumption that this can occur by “acquaintance with morally felicitous perspectives only.” In a world in which “many people are in the grips of some error… we need to know what they think and why” [14, pp. 192–193; 15, p. 347]. Carroll, in responding to these arguments, allows that a “moral defect in an artwork might sometimes contribute to the positive aesthetic value of an artwork,” but not in the case of Triumph of the Will. At best one could argue that “its cinematic virtues vastly outweigh whatever aesthetic costs its moral defectiveness incurs” [2, pp. 380–381]. Hamilton (in line with Jacobson) does not accept that a work is “aesthically flawed” if it is “morally 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 Challenges to ‘Moralism’: Immoral Works of Art 15 Ethics and the Arts: A Critical Review of the New Moralisms 171 line: 155 objectionable” and he cites a number of “morally reprehensible” artworks which are AFTER: “aesthetically all the better: for it makes them sparkle and ‘understanding’ crackle with life and energy.” Nor would an argument that immoral art leads peopleADD: to behave ‘of’ in morally represensible ways (assuming that could be demonstrated) be relevant to the aesthetic value of the work [10, pp. 44–48].3 Kieran claims that there may be a benefit from opening to ‘immoral’ art. However, rather than seeing this as a fundamental challenge to Gaut’s ethicisim, he proposes ‘immoralism’ as a qualification to the cognitivist conception of art. When an immoral work enhances our understanding an immoral attribute, it inverts from a negative to a positive contribution to aesthetic quality. As he puts it, “Where there is a cognitive pay off in virtue of the immoral character of a work, and this is sufficient to outweigh our reluctance to indulge in the responses sought from us, then the immoral character of the work turns out to be an artistic virtue rather than a vice. A morally problematic work can thus, artistically speaking, redeem itself” [17, p. 138]. Jacobson “is amenable to this account of aesthetic value” but he does not limit the assessment of art to “such purely instrumental effects of a work.” Rather it is “the significance of the aesthetic experience itself—what the artists can get us to see, think, and feel—that matters” [15, p. 353]. Both Jacobson and Kieran draw a distinction between our responses to events in life and toward similar events portrayed in movies and literature. Jacobson thinks it is “patently absurd” to say we respond to fiction in same way as we do to real life [14, p. 186]. Kieran concurs and illustrates the distinction between life and fiction by our enjoyment of gangster movies, our capacity to sympathise with murderers (for example in the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice), and the way we accept the “cruelties or downright unfairness [of] comedies and satires.” Nor is this relaxation of our moral prohibitions limited to works of art. It is a feature of our imaginative activities that we sometimes “allow our moral scruples to go on holiday” for example in indulging in sexual fantasies. Kieran’s point is that “the fictional or make-believe context of a work allows us to engage with and enjoy putatively immoral imaginative activity.” This leaves us “free to contemplate events portrayed as we could or would not were the events themselves real.” Crucial however is “knowing whether or not something is fictional” [17, pp. 134–136]. Hamilton has expressed concern about the tendency of theoretical approaches (and Gaut’s theory in particular) to reduce the complexity of aesthetic and moral qualities [10, pp. 47–48]. For similar reasons Jacobson takes a strong “antitheoretical view of the relation between moral and aesthetic value” arguing that there is a false dichotomy between moralism and autonomism in that these positions “fail to exhaust the philosophical possibilities on the relation between moral and aesthetic value in works of art.” He contends that there is “no true theory of the relation between moral and aesthetic value” that adequately includes all possible artworks [15, pp. 342–343 & p. 346]. There may be a relationship in some cases, but 3 Gaut, for different reasons, does not rely on the “causal effects” of artworks in relating morality to aesthetics [9, p. 10]. He does acknowledge however that “ethicism kicks away a prop” of anticensorship [9, p. 12]. He allows that his moralist position lends potential support to censors and those who would curtail dissemination of artworks. 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 172 P. Macneill 193 the evaluations are complex and better discussed as part of any critique of a particular work of art. Kieran disagrees with Jacobson’s “anti-theory approach” from a concern that it “seems to be a restatement of the problem rather than a solution to it.” He (along with Gaut) claims that “we are owed some kind of account as to how and why the relationship can go differently in distinct cases” [17, p. 138]. He takes this further in justifying a need for theory and, in particular, Gaut’s ‘ethicism.’ 194 15.3 195 Gaut has rejected both Jacobson’s anti-theory and Kieran’s qualification to ethicism, maintaining his view that an aesthetically relevant moral flaw in a work is always an aesthetic blemish. If an artwork asks the reader to “to take up an immoral attitude” and “presents an immoral state of affairs as morally good” then the “attitude is immoral” and the work fails to teach us anything about immorality since what it presents is false [9, p. 185]. Whilst this stringent position appears “overly moralistic,” Gaut demonstrates that it can be applied sensitively [17, p. 135]. His review of Nabakov’s Lolita is a perceptive and nuanced account that illustrates how some, seemingly immoral works, are actually moral when the (manifest) author’s intentions are understood more comprehensively and subtly. The novel’s narrator, Humbert Humbert, seeks to engage the reader’s sympathy for his child sex with Lolita, and his justifications for killing Quilty, Lolita’s would-be lover. Gaut demonstrates Nabokov’s skill in developing the novel as an ethical journey over the 56 days of Humbert’s ‘memoir.’ He also traces carefully Nabokov’s use of a double seduction of the reader: first in persuading the reader to have sympathy for Humbert and (through him) to vicariously enjoy sex with a child; and secondly in seducing the reader into going along with Humbert (to some extent) in his justification for killing Quilty. His conclusion is that “the novel’s deployment of these strategies does teach us, via a particularly rich example, something about the complexity of moral and psychological judgement, of the need for fine discriminations of feeling and judgement, and of the seductive powers of art.” He makes the broader claim that his ‘ethicism’ highlights aesthetic features of this and other works “that morally neutral critical methods discern only dimly, if at all.” [9, pp. 194–202]. An advantage, it seems to me, of Gaut’s insistence that this is not an immoral work, is in underscoring the identity of the ‘moral view point’ with the “manifested author.” [9, p. 197 & p. 195]. This allows Gaut to distinguish Lolita from other cases, such de Sade’s novels or Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, where there is no redeeming feature in the manifest author’s attitude. Nevertheless, this does appear as something of a quibble in that Kieran can arrive at the same end by justifying ‘immoral’ aspects of this book in terms of the cognitive value of what the author has to teach. Gaut’s critique of Lolita, has also added complexity to his ‘merited response argument.’ To the extent that Nabokov’s is successful in leading the reader into vicariously enjoying sex with a child, and going along with Humbert in his justification for killing Quilty, it could be said that he has induced ‘unmerited’ responses. In defending ‘ethicisim’ 188 189 190 191 192 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 [AU1] 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 ‘Ethicism’ and Its Critics 15 Ethics and the Arts: A Critical Review of the New Moralisms 173 from this charge, Gaut points to “a characteristic pattern of enjoyment and recoil” by which “we are shown that we can be seduced to take a kind of enjoyment in something that we simultaneously abhor.” He distinguishes between these as ‘lowerorder’ and ‘higher-order’ prescriptions. The first response of enjoyment is “apparently prescribed” whereas the second is a “very different attitude” that is “really manifested by the work.” Abhorrence triumphs as the overall attitude of the book and as the ‘merited response’ [9, p. 197, pp. 230–231]. Jacobson points to an ambiguity in the word ‘merited’ when a prescribed response is judged as ‘unmerited.’ It could mean that it ‘lacks propriety’ in the sense that it might be inappropriate to laugh at a joke because it is racist or sexist; or it could mean a response is not prudential or strategic, in terms of how others might see one, or because one’s laughter would disturb others. Alternatively ‘unmerited’ could mean ‘unwarranted’ in the sense that laughter is not warranted because the joke is not funny. His point is that Gaut conflates these terms and that the argument that ‘prescribing an unmerited response is an aesthetic failure in the work’ relies on this conflation. Only an ‘unwarranted’ response is relevant to the aesthetic quality of an artwork. But to argue that an unwarranted response reflects on the aesthetic merit of an artwork presupposes that the aesthetic quality of the work does not warrant that response: which begs the question of the work’s aesthetic value [14, pp. 170–179; 15, pp. 349–350].4 Gaut replies that a response may be warranted, but nevertheless morally wrong. For example he does not deny that “people who took pleasure in watching public decapitations during the French Revolution enjoyed what was going on” (in other words their pleasure may have been warranted) but he asserts that they were morally wrong to have done so [9, pp. 237–239]. This can only mean that the ‘merited response argument’ is undermined as an argument necessarily linking morality to aesthetics and is exposed as a simple moral assertion: that moral criteria are relevant in judging the appropriateness of a prescribed response. Jacobson disagrees and insists that it is sufficient for the response to be warranted. This is to ask: ‘Why should we relegate a work because it leads us into a “wicked” or “morally offensive” perspective, when wickedness may be the work’s aesthetic feature?’ Guat’s ‘moral beauty’ argument also appears anaemic following his critique of Lolita. Is Nabokov (as ‘manifest author’) a morally virtuous and (therefore) a beautiful person? Or, to take a different novel, is Truman Capote, as ‘manifest author’ of In Cold Blood, beautiful in this sense? These concerns seem irrelevant to the aesthetic worth of these works. Both authors manifest as gritty, resourceful, and masterful. These are not obviously moral qualities although they are aesthetic. Admittedly ethicism does not require that all three of Gaut’s rationales function in all morally commendable (or morally reprehensible) artworks. I also accept that an observation that a “manifest author has a morally good character” may be relevant in reviewing the quality of a particular artwork, but as a ground for linking morality with ethics in a generic theory, it is insubstantial. There is a related concern that the significance of the argument depends on a strict distinction between virtue and 4 The argument is petitio principii and, as such, a logical fallacy. 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 174 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 P. Macneill beauty. This is to suggest that Gaut is overly categorical in defining qualities as moral or aesthetic. There is an ambiguity, which Hamilton points to because “the ethical and aesthetic often interpenetrate in a way which disables us from distinguishing them.” He believes that, “Gaut, like many other theorists, misses the point because he often talks as if it is perfectly clear just what the moral import of a work of art is. And if one wants to reason why this is so, the answer… is that he has a strong tendency to operate with a simplified and narrow conception of morality, according to which it is clear what is morally good and what morally bad [such as] hurting others, refusing equal treatment” [10, pp. 45–46, p.48]. This is an aspect of a more general concern that ethicism makes simplified and narrow assumptions about both morality and art. Jacobson is similarly concerned about a tendency to be “morally correct in some final way” which he associates with “Hume and the Humean moralists.” His concern is that, in “championing the ethical criticism of art,” they are unavoidably evaluating artworks in light of their “own moral commitments” [14, p. 160]. Hamilton resists Gaut’s ethicism as “surely far too strong” and simplistic. He is sceptical of cognitivist claims that art gives us moral knowledge and, even in those cases “where a work of art does effect a clarification in our moral thinking,” he sees no good reason for assuming that this understanding will be “friendly to morality.” It may lead one to hostility to morality or to despairing of other people. Alternatively a reader may reserve all her sensitivity for fictional characters with little effect on how she treats people in life. Nor is there any evidence that artists, or people who regard the arts as important, are morally advanced although, “our knowledge of art can easily flatter us into thinking it makes us morally better people.” When art does appear to contribute to moral education, it is just as likely that this observation relates to people who were already sensitive to moral concerns [10, p. 39 & pp. 43–44]. Jacobson identifies a core problem with moralism in Hume’s confident statement that, when a work describes “vicious manners” without attributing “blame and disapprobation,” then “I cannot, nor is it proper I should, enter into such sentiments” [12]. This indicates a “muddle over the distinction between psychological and normative claims [that] has infected Humean moralism from its beginnings.” Effectively, what one can feel or should feel becomes a barrier to entry and may preclude any assessment of an artwork’s aesthetic value in the same way as the “high price of opera tickets.”5 The difficulty is that one’s inability or refusal may be a “false delicacy” resulting from “prejudice or a failure of imagination.” There has been a “litany of works condemned as immoral” (including Ulysses, Huckleberry Finn, and Lolita) which “have always seemed indisputably corrupt to their critics.” Nevertheless Jacobson steps back from concluding that “built-in obstacles to the appreciation of a work never bear on its aesthetic value” [14, pp. 187–191 & p. 168]. 5 Carroll also discusses the point that if an artwork is “inaccessible to that person, he is in no position to judge the work aesthetically” [2, p. 379]. 15 Ethics and the Arts: A Critical Review of the New Moralisms 175 Discussion This discussion of a relationship between the arts and ethics, re-energised by ‘Humean-style’ moralism, has raised differing ideas about the strength and nature of moral evaluations in estimating the aesthetic value of a work of art. Although it is conceded by all the discussants, that not all moral attributes are relevant to a work’s aesthetic value, and that many non-moral attributes are also contributors, the debate has focussed on moral merits and demerits. In the broader context of appreciating artworks, we respond to moral, cognitive and affective aspects from our own perception (rather than in the object as Hume maintains). It is not that a work is morally admirable, intelligent, perceptive, and emotionally soothing, but that we may find those qualities in it. It is possible to distinguish between a moral response and a critical appraisal, and to make “fine discriminations of feeling and judgement” [9, p. 201]. This includes the possibility of having moral revulsion alongside critical admiration. The observation that one is strongly affected by a work of art may be the basis for attributing an affective power to the work and recognising this as an aesthetic value—even though one is shocked or morally affronted by it.6 This approach provides a flexible basis on which to understand differences in our responses along each of these dimensions within ourselves and to understand differences of judgment between people (some of whom may have come to similar evaluations but have given different weights to them). It is also a more constructive way of understanding the issues between autonomists (or formalists) and moralists. Formalists, such as Fry and Greenberg, were keen to promote creativity and protect art from limitations on its freedom [19, pp. 3–8]. This was, in effect, to give weight to a cognitive dimension. Moralism may have been a necessary corrective to dogmatic assertions of formalism—by pointing to the relevance (in some artworks) of moral assessments to aesthetic evaluation—but it runs a risk of overemphasising the moral dimension. One may find French novelist Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised to be morally repugnant and observe that its affect is a sense of despair and meaninglessness (at least for some readers) [11]. In the reflective process I am advocating, these responses can be distinguished. Even if one is morally repulsed, the novel’s capacity to engender despair and meaninglessness is an aesthetic experience—albeit an uncomfortable one. From an intellectual perspective, the novel can be related to broader cultural issues. It may have captured a sense of “our atomised society” (as suggested by its cover) and Houellebecq could be seen as, “A lyric poet in the era of late capitalism” [13]. The fact that Atomised has won awards may also be considered relevant.7 In this process, no one aspect (moral, affective, or cognitive) can be assumed, in advance, to trump another, and the relative weight that is given to each of these factors is itself a part of the reflection on a particular artwork. Inherent in this proposition is that one’s aesthetic evaluation is separate from the 6 This is to side with Jacobson in valuing “the significance of the aesthetic experience itself” [15, p. 353]. 7 It was winner of the Prix Novembre prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Houellebecq’s most recent novel The Map and the Territory was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2010. 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 line:356 P. Macneill NOTE REMOVAL OF ‘a ’ question of whether one ‘likes’ the work or not. One may recognise Atomised as having aesthetic merit, for any of the above reasons, yet not be open to reading any more of Houellebecq’s novels. Resistance remains an option. There may be insufficient ‘pay-off’ (à la Kieran) for enduring the experience. Furthermore, I suggest that something like this process occurs in the public arena. Contrary to Hume’s essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ (which gives a determination of aesthetic quality to “men of delicate taste”) aesthetic evaluation, as a public reflection, is open to all in a process of continuing revision [12]. Montale’s notion of a work of art having a “second life” in “memory and everyday circulation” is a relevant aspect of this reflection [18, p. 21]. Houellebecq’s oeuvre may be forgotten in time, or alternatively it may be seen as the beginning of an emerging genre in literature that embraces life as banal emptiness, just as Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’8 was (in hindsight) a significant moment in the history of art and part of a challenge to the idea of art as an original object of beauty [7, p. 43]. Whilst general propositions about a relationship between morality and aesthetics may be of assistance, I don’t believe that one theory can adequately capture this process. Bernard Williams, in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, argues against allencompassing ethical theories and notes that not all moral reflections require theory [23, pp. 111–119]. Any relation between ethics and aesthetics is established in critical assessments of individual works of art, as Jacobson insists [15, p. 333 & p.346]. Devereaux makes the same point (in discussing “beauty and evil”) that the general issue “becomes real only insofar as it arises in particular cases” [5, p. 252]. Appeal to an overall theory of a relation between art and ethics and may divert attention from the particular moral propositions on which it relies and gives any evaluation an illusory substantiality. Jacobson has “nothing to say against a moralist who takes himself simply to be expressing, or even evangelizing for, his own evaluative convictions… the only cost of moralism is bad taste.” What he objects to are the “grander ambitions” of Humean moralists who “suggest that a there are features of our emotional engagement with art [that] lend credence to their view.” This is most evident in ethicism which displays a Humean “rectitude of that moral standard”9 as if there is one objective standard, and for all time, on which all rational people could agree. It amounts to taking prior moral standards and applying them as criteria in assessing the quality of art. Jacobson proposes a more open approach on the ground that “objectivity in ethical matters is less a view from nowhere than an ability to view things imaginatively from a variety of ethical perspectives” [14, pp. 160–161 & p. 193]. Eaton contends that, “Seeing a connection with aesthetics requires that one have a different way of thinking about ethics.” From her perspective, ethics is not a prior standard by which Fn: to 8 judge aesthetics. Rather, the relationship is synchronous, with neither aesthetics nor ethics “causally or conceptually prior.” Ethics is “more like CHANGE choosing one story over than “making an ethical decision.” Acting ethically Chap. 9’another” TO: “requires acts of‘Chap. imaginative exploration,” reference to symbols, personal myth, and 4’ fable, rather than rules or a “sheaf of principles.” In this picture, art and ethics are 176 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 8 9 See Chap. 9. Hume’s Essay [12]. 15 Ethics and the Arts: A Critical Review of the New Moralisms 177 understood as “essentially intertwined” and defined in terms of each other [6]. This view is preferable to Hume’s moral rectitude. It provides a rich, imaginative, and more nourishing understanding of both morality and aesthetics. It is flexible and able to accommodate changes in the arts, and is preferable as an attitude that allows for an open exploration of the relation between ethics and the arts. 393 Acknowledgement I am grateful to Emeritus Professor Miles Little for his thorough and helpful review of earlier versions of this chapter, for his many suggestions, and in particular for proposing a reflective approach to aesthetic evaluation as containing “something of the moral, something of the cognitive, something of the intuitive.” Any errors and distortions in this work are, of course, mine. 398 399 400 401 References 402 1. Carroll, Noël. 1996. Moderate moralism. The British Journal of Aesthetics 36(3): 223–238. 2. Carroll, Noël. 2000. Art and ethical criticism: An overview of recent directions of research. Ethics 110(2): 350–387. 3. Carroll, Noël. 2006. Ethics and aesthetics: Replies to Dickie, Stecker, and Livingston. The British Journal of Aesthetics 46(1): 82–95. 4. Carroll, Noël. 2010. At the crossroads of ethics and aesthetics. Philosophy and Literature 34(1): 248–259. 5. Devereaux, Mary. 1998. Beauty and evil: The case of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the will. In Aesthetics and ethics: Essays at the intersection, ed. J. Levinson, 227–256. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. 6. Eaton, Marcia Muelder. 1997. Aesthetics: The mother of ethics? The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55(4): 355–364. 7. Eaton, Marcia Muelder. 2006. Beauty and ugliness in and out of context. In Contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, ed. M. Kieran, 39–50. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 8. Gaut, Berys Nigel, and Dominic Lopes (eds.). 2005. The Routledge companion to aesthetics, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. 9. Gaut, Berys Nigel. 2007. Art, emotion, and ethics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. 10. Hamilton, Christopher. 2003. Art and moral education. In Art and morality, ed. J.L. Bermúdez and S. Gardner, 37–55. London/New York: Routledge. 11. Houellebecq, Michel. 2000. Atomised. London: Heinemann. 12. Hume, David, Stephen Copley, and Andrew Edgar. 1993. Selected essays, World’s classics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. 13. Jack, David. 2010. Michel Houellebecq: A lyric poet in the era of late capitalism. Colloquy Text Theory Critique 19: 15–27. 14. Jacobson, Daniel. 1997. In praise of immoral art. Philosophical Topics 25(1): 155–199. 15. Jacobson, Daniel. 2006. Ethical criticism and the vice of moderation. In Contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, 342–357. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 16. Kieran, Matthew. 1996. Art, imagination, and the cultivation of morals. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54(4): 337–351. 17. Kieran, Matthew. 2006. Art, morality and ethics: On the (im)moral character of art works and inter-relations to artistic value. Philosophy Compass 1(2): 129–143. 18. Montale, Eugenio, and Jonathan Galassi. 1982. The second life of art: Selected essays of Eugenio Montale, 1st ed. New York: Ecco Press. 19. Reeve, Charles Edward. 2000. Brushes with freedom: Painting and the ethics of formalism. Ph.D. dissertation, Faculty of the Graduate School, Cornell University. 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 394 395 396 397 178 439 440 441 442 443 444 P. Macneill 20. Schellekens, Elisabeth. 2007. Aesthetics and morality, Continuum aesthetics. London/New York: Continuum. 21. Sontag, Susan. 1982. A Susan Sontag reader. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 22. Tolstoy, Leo. 1995. What is art? Penguin classics. London: Penguin. 23. Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the limits of philosophy, Fontana master guides. London: Fontana Press. Author Query Chapter No.: 15 0002110106 Query Details Required AU1 Please check and confirm the name “Humbert Text Humbert” Author’s Response Confirm L.5 Please change ‘Introduction’ to the same style as Level 1 numbered headings (but leave un-numbered). Introduction The relation of the arts . . . L.15 CHANGE: ‘4,’ TO ‘4;’ Line: 155 AFTER: ‘understanding’ ADD: ‘of’ Line: 356 NOTE REMOVAL OF ‘a ’ Fn: 8 CHANGE ‘Chap. 9’ TO: ‘Chap. 4’ L.312 Please change ‘Discussion’ to the same style as Level 1 numbered headings (but leave un-numbered). Discussion This discussion of a . . .