In perceptions of their landscapes the Latvians have denied the existence of the sublime, elevating rural and natural aspects as beautiful and good. While Latvian landscape aesthetics and ethics are based on the profound transformation of nature-landscape attitudes that occurred in Europe during the second half of the 18th century, when ideas of the beautiful, sublime, and the picturesque were debated, the existence of sublime characteristics within the borders of Latvia has not been recognized. In part the attitude derives from (...) the lack of dramatic topography in Latvia. Part of it is due to historic contrasts of sublime wonders in foreign lands with the simple rural beauties and virtues of Latvia. Travelers' observations of rural beauty in specific places reinforced such attitudes. But it is also bound up with the complex history of Latvians as an underclass during colonial rule that began during the 13th century and did not truly end until 1991. As during the 19th century, Latvians began to develop their own national traditions; they used a voluminous collection of rural folk songs on which to build subtle literary and other artistic interpretations of what is moral and beautiful in rural life, work, and landscapes. A particularly important motif in Latvian writing is earth. The ethics of work, social responsibility, and care for living things are a powerful theme. If the sublime is mentioned, it is brought into the compass of the rural and the tame. Sublime elements of nature occur as metaphors for human actions. Thoroughly imbued with the above traditions, the author, at first unselfconsciously, discovered sublime aspects in Latvian landscapes and nature during the course of the past 11 years. It is his belief that as Latvians distance themselves from past colonial rule, they will begin to see their land in a less narrow fashion and recognize its sublime characteristics. (shrink)

In perceptions of their landscapes the Latvians have denied the existence of the sublime, elevating rural and natural aspects as beautiful and good. While Latvian landscape aesthetics and ethics are based on the profound transformation of nature-landscape attitudes that occurred in Europe during the second half of the 18th century, when ideas of the beautiful, sublime, and the picturesque were debated, the existence of sublime characteristics within the borders of Latvia has not been recognized. In part the attitude derives from (...) the lack of dramatic topography in Latvia. Part of it is due to historic contrasts of sublime wonders in foreign lands with the simple rural beauties and virtues of Latvia. Travelers' observations of rural beauty in specific places reinforced such attitudes. But it is also bound up with the complex history of Latvians as an underclass during colonial rule that began during the 13th century and did not truly end until 1991. As during the 19th century, Latvians began to develop their own national traditions; they used a voluminous collection of rural folk songs on which to build subtle literary and other artistic interpretations of what is moral and beautiful in rural life, work, and landscapes. A particularly important motif in Latvian writing is earth. The ethics of work, social responsibility, and care for living things are a powerful theme. If the sublime is mentioned, it is brought into the compass of the rural and the tame. Sublime elements of nature occur as metaphors for human actions. Thoroughly imbued with the above traditions, the author, at first unselfconsciously, discovered sublime aspects in Latvian landscapes and nature during the course of the past 11 years. It is his belief that as Latvians distance themselves from past colonial rule, they will begin to see their land in a less narrow fashion and recognize its sublime characteristics. (shrink)

In perceptions of their landscapes the Latvians have denied the existence of the sublime, elevating rural and natural aspects as beautiful and good. While Latvian landscape aesthetics and ethics are based on the profound transformation of nature-landscape attitudes that occurred in Europe during the second half of the 18th century, when ideas of the beautiful, sublime, and the picturesque were debated, the existence of sublime characteristics within the borders of Latvia has not been recognized. In part the attitude derives from (...) the lack of dramatic topography in Latvia. Part of it is due to historic contrasts of sublime wonders in foreign lands with the simple rural beauties and virtues of Latvia. Travelers' observations of rural beauty in specific places reinforced such attitudes. But it is also bound up with the complex history of Latvians as an underclass during colonial rule that began during the 13th century and did not truly end until 1991. As during the 19th century, Latvians began to develop their own national traditions; they used a voluminous collection of rural folk songs on which to build subtle literary and other artistic interpretations of what is moral and beautiful in rural life, work, and landscapes. A particularly important motif in Latvian writing is earth. The ethics of work, social responsibility, and care for living things are a powerful theme. If the sublime is mentioned, it is brought into the compass of the rural and the tame. Sublime elements of nature occur as metaphors for human actions. Thoroughly imbued with the above traditions, the author, at first unselfconsciously, discovered sublime aspects in Latvian landscapes and nature during the course of the past 11 years. It is his belief that as Latvians distance themselves from past colonial rule, they will begin to see their land in a less narrow fashion and recognize its sublime characteristics. (shrink)

This is a tricentennial riff on the Edwardsean idea that beauty is both the first principle of being and the distinguishing perfection of God. What is really distinctive about Edwards's view of beauty is that it is an ontological reality and consists in joyfully bestowing being and beauty more than in being beautiful, in creative and beautifying activity more than in being beautiful. Edwards was also a pioneer in the way he envisaged a lively universe created by God, not out (...) of nothing or out of something, but out of the very fullness of God's own life overflowing into a world as a self-enlargement of the divine life. Edwards dares to offer a vision of God as the animating soul of the universe who governs the universe by the attractive and creative power of God's own beautifying life. What might it mean for religious ethics to take this as a description of the context for its work? The answer, in part and in brief, is that a life of true virtue, grounded in the heartfelt piety of holy affections, is a beautifying life. My aim in spinning out some Edwardsean themes is to encourage the reader to think about religious ethics outside the box within which beauty and beautifying activity play no part in defining the agenda of religious ethics. Inspired by themes unique and central to Edwards in his time, we may learn things of importance to religious ethics in our time that Edwards neither knew nor believed. (shrink)

Alison Denham examines the ways in which our engagement with literary art, and metaphorical discourse in particular, informs our moral beliefs. She considers to what extent moral and metaphorical discourses are capable of truth or falsehood, warrant or justification, and how it is that we understand these discourses. This vital new study offers a fresh view of the nature of the moral and the metaphorical, and the relations between art and morality.

Polanyi insisted that scientific knowledge was intensely personal in nature, though held with universal intent. His insights regarding the personal values of beauty and morality in science are first enunciated. These are then explored for their relevance to engineering. It is shown that the practice of engineering is also governed by aesthetics and ethics. For example, Polanyi’s three spheres of morality in science—that of the individual scientist, the scientific community and the wider society—has parallel entities in engineering. The existence of (...) shared values in engineering is also demonstrated, in aesthetics through an example that shows convergence of practitioner opinion to solutions that represent accepted models of aesthetics; and in ethics through the recognition that many professional engineering institutions hold that the safety of the public supersedes the interests of the client. Such professional consensus can be seen as justification for studying engineering aesthetics and ethics as inter-subjective disciplines. (shrink)

To "look good" and to "be good" have traditionally been considered two very different notions. Indeed, philosophers have seen aesthetic and ethical values as fundamentally separate. Now, at the crossroads of a new wave of aesthetic theory, Marcia Muelder Eaton introduces this groundbreaking work, in which a bold new concept of merit where being good and looking good are integrated into one.

This paper has three aims: to define autonomism clearly and charitably, to offer a positive argument in its favour, and to defend a larger view about what is at stake in the debate between autonomism and its critics. Autonomism is here understood as the claim that a valuer does not make an error in failing to bring her moral and aesthetic judgements together, unless she herself values doing so. The paper goes on to argue that reason does not require the (...) valuer to make coherent her aesthetic and moral evaluations. Finally, the paper shows that the denial of autonomism has realist commitments that autonomism does not have, and concludes that issues of value realism and irrealism are relevant to the debates about autonomism in ways that have not hitherto been recognized. (shrink)

Immoralists hold that in at least some cases, moral fl aws in artworks can increase their aesthetic value. They deny what I call the valence constraint: the view that any effect that an artwork’s moral value has on its aesthetic merit must have the same valence. The immoralist offers three arguments against the valence constraint. In this paper I argue that these arguments fail, and that this failure reveals something deep and interesting about the relationship between cognitive and moral value. (...) In the fi nal section I offer a positive argument for the valence constraint. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in at least some interesting cases, the moral value of a narrative work depends on the aesthetic properties of that artwork. It does not follow that a work that is aesthetically bad will be morally bad (or that it will be morally good). The argument comprises four stages. First I describe several different features of imaginative engagement with narrative artworks. Then I show that these features depend on some of the aesthetic properties of those (...) works. Third, I argue that these same features of imaginative engagement are morally salient, by virtue of inviting more or less sophisticated and reflective moral responses. Finally, I show that the overall moral value of an artwork depends in part on whether or not the prescribed response is simple or complex, passive or reflective. (shrink)

I read Sara Kofman's work on Nietzsche, Charles Mills' _The Racial Contract_, and Kodwo Eshun's Afrofuturist musicology to argue that most condemnations of "faking it" in music rest on a racially and sexually problematic fetishization of "the real.".

According to what Robert Stecker dubs the “ethical-aesthetic interaction” thesis, the ethical defects of a literary work can diminish its aesthetic value. Both the thesis and the only prominent argumentative strategy employed to support it the affective response argument have been hotly debated; however, Stecker has recently argued that the failure of the ARA does not undermine the thesis, since the argument “fails to indentify the main reason [the thesis] holds, when it in fact does.” I critically examine Stecker’s objection (...) to the familiar versions of the affective response argument and the line of support for ethical-aesthetic interaction he proposes to install in their place. I conclude that neither is compelling; however, an important insight can be salvaged from his positive proposal, and I argue that the insight does, in fact, point toward a novel defense of the thesis. (shrink)

This collection of essays assembles classic and contemporary texts to present the tradition of aesthetic theory and the kinds of questions and challenges that ...

This major collection of essays stands at the border of aesthetics and ethics and deals with charged issues of practical import: art and morality, the ethics of taste, and censorship. As such its potential interest is by no means confined to professional philosophers; it should also appeal to art historians and critics, literary theorists, and students of film. Prominent philosophers in both aesthetics and ethics tackle a wide array of issues. Some of the questions explored in the volume include: Can (...) art be morally enlightening and, if so, how? If a work of art is morally better does that make it better as art? Is morally deficient art to be shunned, or even censored? Do subjects of artworks have rights as to how they are represented? Do artists have duties as artists and duties as human beings, and if so, to whom? How much tension is there between the demands of art and the demands of life? (shrink)

Does the ethical value of a work of art ever contribute to its aesthetic value? I argue that when conventionally interpreted as a request for a conceptual analysis the answer to this question is indeterminate. I then propose a different interpretation of the question on which it is understood as a substantial and normative question internal to the practice of aesthetic criticism. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Psychopaths are the bugbears of moral philosophy. They are often used as examples of perfectly rational people who are nonetheless willing to do great moral wrong without regret; hence the disorder has received the epithet “moral insanity” (Pritchard 1835). But whereas philosophers have had a great deal to say about psychopaths’ glaring and often horrifying lack of moral conscience, their aesthetic capacities have received hardly any attention, and are generally assumed to be intact or even enhanced. Popular culture often portrays (...) psychopaths in ways that suggest a great gap between their amorality and their aesthetic sensitivity. In The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), Hannibal Lecter appreciates fine art, fashion, and wine, while he eats his way through his enemies. His real-life counterparts, however, do not demonstrate the same sensitivities. There is no evidence that psychopaths are capable of real aesthetic appreciation, and some evidence that they are not. In this paper, we set out the limited evidence for the psychopath’s deficient aesthetic sensitivity. The best explanations of what the psychopath lacks turn out to implicate abilities that are also thought to be central to moral thought and action: an impaired capacity for empathizing with others and deficient ability to take a disinterested attitude towards things (socalled distance). We endorse the latter explanation. Thinking about what underlies the psychopath’s deficient aesthetic understanding turns out to throw light on a difficult problem: the connection between ethics and aesthetics. (shrink)

McGinn's latest brings together moral philosophy and literary analysis in a way that illuminates both. Setting out to enrich the domain of moral reflection by showing the value of literary texts as sources of moral illumination, McGinn starts by setting out an uncompromisingly realist ethical theory, arguing that morality is an area of objective truth and genuine knowledge. He goes on to address such subjects as the nature of goodness, evil character, and the meaning of monstrosity in the context of (...) an aesthetic theory of virtue, which maintains that goodness of character is the same thing as beauty of soul. Looking at such literary works as Billy Budd, Lolita, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein, as well as examples from film and painting, Ethics, Evil, and Fiction is an original and compelling book by a leading philosopher who is also a critic and novelist. (shrink)

Some artworks manifest moral attitudes. I clarify and defend an argument to the effect that these works can be aesthetically better merely because morally good people skilfully produced them.

In this essay, I argue that it is sometimes inappropriate to appeal to moral criteria in artistic judgments, even when the moral content of an artwork contributes to its artistic value. I suggest that this is the case with artworks that (1) are “interrogative” in form, posing a question or problem that remains unresolved in the work, and (2) have moral dilemmas as a principal theme. Using Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an example of morally interrogative artwork, (...) I critique Wayne Booth’s moral defense of the novel. I argue that because Booth incorrectly attributes a moral stance to the book, he overlooks its value as a provocation to critical reflection about morality. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that it is sometimes inappropriate to appeal to moral criteria in artistic judgments, even when the moral content of an artwork contributes to its artistic value. I suggest that this is the case with interrogative artworks that have as their principal content an unresolved moral dilemma. Using Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an example of morally interrogative artwork, I critique Wayne Booth’s moral defense of the novel. I argue that because Booth incorrectly (...) attributes a moral stance to the book, he overlooks its value as a provocation to critical reflection about morality. (shrink)

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy.

Some works of architecture have remarkable aesthetic value. According to certain philosophers, part of this value derives from the appearance of such constructions to fulfil the function for which they were built. I argue that one way of understanding the connection between function and aesthetic value resides in the concept of functional beauty. I analyse a number of recent accounts of this notion, then offer a better way of understanding it. I then focus my attention on the relation between aesthetic (...) and moral values and claim that, if the notion of functional beauty makes any sense at all, then we have a pro tanto case for holding that moral defects in works of architecture can have aesthetic merits. (shrink)

A common view holds that humor and morality are antithetical: Moral flaws enhance amusement, and moral virtues detract. I reject both of these claims. If we distinguish between merely outrageous jokes and immoral jokes, the problems with the common view become apparent. What we find is that genuine morals flaws tend to inhibit amusement. Further, by looking at satire, we can see that moral virtues sometimes enhance amusement. The position I defend is called symmetric comic moralism. It is widely regarded (...) as patently absurd. I hope to correct this mistake. (shrink)

My goal in this article is to provide support for the claim that moral flaws can be detrimental to an artwork's aesthetic value. I argue that moral flaws can become aesthetic flaws when they defeat the operation of good-making aesthetic properties. I do not defend a new theory of aesthetic properties or aesthetic value; instead, I attempt to show that on both the response-dependence and the supervenience account of aesthetic properties, moral flaws with an artwork are relevant to what aesthetic (...) properties obtain. I provide a description of the main features of both theories of aesthetic properties, and then explain how moral flaws can become aesthetic flaws on either account. I address several objections to moralism about art including the "moralistic fallacy.". (shrink)

In many artworks, both aesthetic and ethical values are present, and both can contribute to the overall artistic value of a work. The question explored in this paper is: does the presence of one kind of value affect the degree of the other? For example, does a work that expresses a morally reprehensible attitude diminish the aesthetic value of a work? Let ‘interaction’ name the view that the presence of one kind of value affects the degree of the other. We (...) will argue in favour of the existence of interaction. However, we will argue further that such interaction is a contingent feature of artworks and that the most common argument that has been offered for interaction—the affective -response -argument—fails to identify the main reason why it holds, when it in fact does. (shrink)

It is often suggested that aesthetic and ethical value judgements are similar in such a way that they should be analysed in analogous manners. In this paper, I argue that the two types of judgements share four important features concerning disagreement, motivation, categoricity, and argumentation. This, I maintain, helps to explain why many philosophers have thought that aesthetic and ethical value judgements can be analysed in accordance with the same dispositional scheme which corresponds to the analogy between secondary qualities and (...) values. However, I argue that aesthetic and ethical value judgements differ as regards their fundamental structures. This scheme is mistaken as regards ethical value judgements, but it is able to account for aesthetic value judgements. This implies that aesthetic value judgements are autonomous in relation to ethical value judements and that aestheticians, not moral philosophers, are the true heirs of this renowned analogy. (shrink)

The capacity for telling stories is necessary for being moral agents. The minimal necessary features for moral agency involve the capacities necessary for articulation, and articulation is a key part of what we learn and practice through telling stories. Developing the interdependence between agency and articulation, this article offers an account of both categorical moral agency and a degree-of-sophistication account of agency. Central to these are three factors: a moral agent has (1) the capacity to represent, (2) a sense of (...) self (including a sense of self in relation to others), and (3) the normative capacity to make judgments marked by authority. Featuring an analysis of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” the article argues that Morrison portrays a moral sensibility emerging in the telling of the story, even in the absence of moral judgments within the text. Understanding the value of stories, fictional or factual, requires less attention to the moral value of the actions depicted within the story and more attention to the perspective and point of view developed in the narrative voice. Of most significance is the articulative process of the artist, the storyteller, the novelist, modeled for the reader, who must engage with that developing perspective. (shrink)