The seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, is widely recognized as one of the seminal sources of the modern liberal tradition. _Liberty, Toleration and Equality_ examines the development of Locke’s ideal of toleration, from its beginnings, to the culmination of this development in Locke’s fifteen year debate with his great antagonist, the Anglican clergyman, Jonas Proast. Locke, like Proast, was a sincere Christian, but unlike Proast, Locke was able to develop, over time, a perspective on toleration which allowed him (...) to concede liberty to competing views which he, personally, perceived to be "false and absurd". In this respect, Locke sought to affirm what has since become the basic liberal principle that liberty and toleration are only meaningful when they are accorded to views to which we ourselves are profoundly at odds. John William Tate seeks to show how Locke was able to develop this position on toleration over a long intellectual career. Tate also challenges some of the most prominent contemporary perspectives on Locke, within the academic literature, showing how these fall short of perceiving what is essential to Locke’s position. (shrink)

John Locke is widely perceived as a foundational figure within the liberal tradition. This book investigates the competing purposes that informed Locke's political philosophy, not all of which resulted in outcomes consistent with what we today understand as "liberal" ideals. Locke himself was unaware that he belonged to a "liberal" tradition. Traditions only acquire meaning in retrospect. But many have perceived the development of Locke's political philosophy as involving a smooth evolution from "authoritarian" origins to "liberal" conclusions, beginning with (...) Locke's Two Tracts on Government (1660-62) and culminating in his later political works, the Two Treatises of Government (1689) and A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). This book advances an interpretation of this development which reveals how, by the time of his mature political writings, Locke sought to advance three competing imperatives within his political philosophy, only two of which were consistent with ideals of individual liberty. The other imperative sustained purposes much more aligned with the "authoritarianism" with which Locke's political philosophy began. The result is a much more complex and variegated understanding of Locke's political philosophy, focusing on its competing purposes. Liberty, Governance and Resistance will be of interest to researchers studying Locke, liberalism, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

There is an increasingly prevalent view among some contemporary Locke scholars that Locke's political philosophy is thoroughly subordinate to theological imperatives, centered on natural law. This article challenges this point of view by critically evaluating this interpretation of Locke as advanced by some of its leading proponents. This interpretation perceives natural law as the governing principle of Locke's political philosophy, and the primary source of transition and reconciliation within it. This article advances a very different reading of Locke's political philosophy, (...) perceiving within it competing imperatives that cannot be subsumed by natural law, and are, in some respects, at odds with it. In this way, the article shows how the “theological” interpretation of Locke's political philosophy, centred on natural law, fails to account for some of that philosophy's fundamental features, and is unable to explain some of its key outcomes, with the result that this interpretation falls short of its critical ambitions. (shrink)

The political philosopher John Gray is a foremost critic of the liberal tradition. But while many have engaged with Gray concerning aspects of this tradition, few have challenged Gray’s conception of the tradition as a whole. Yet it is precisely this broader, background element in Gray’s account that is most problematic and that requires excavation if we are to reveal the deeper shortcomings of his critique as a whole. This article challenges Gray’s claim, made in 2000, that the liberal (...) tradition is capable of being understood in terms of two faces — one representing the ‘universalist’ aspects of that tradition and the other representing the more pragmatic, value-pluralist, modus vivendi aspects. By focusing on Gray’s erroneous interpretation of the key universalist figure of John Locke, we see how his dichotomous account of the liberal tradition collapses at both ends. The article then looks at Gray’s most recent defence of his critique of liberalism, in 2007, and shows how many of the errors that characterize his 2000 account are compounded in 2007 as Gray seeks to build on his earlier position in contradictory directions. In all these ways therefore, this article seeks to defend the integrity of the liberal tradition by showing how Gray’s excoriating critique falls short. (shrink)

This article challenges the claim that John Locke’s arguments for toleration are fundamentally at odds with any we might now associate with the liberal tradition. By showing how this perspective fundamentally misreads Locke on toleration, it seeks to defend Locke’s own status as one of the founding fathers of the liberal tradition.

A “recent consensus” has emerged in Locke studies that has sought to place theology at the center of Locke's political philosophy, insisting that the validity and cogency of Locke's political conclusions cannot be substantiated independently of the theology that resides at their foundation. This paper argues for the need to distance Locke from God, claiming that not only can we “bracket” the normative conclusions of Locke's political philosophy from their theological foundations, but that this was in fact Locke's own intention, (...) intent as he was to justify these conclusions to a diverse political audience often divided by faith. In other words, this “recent consensus” in Locke studies is premised on an erroneous understanding of Locke's political philosophy, even as advanced by Locke himself. Locke's own philosophical discourse bears witness to the very “bracketing” of his political conclusions from their theological foundations that these Locke scholars claim is impossible. (shrink)

This article looks at liberalism as a political tradition encompassing competing and, at times, incommensurable values. It looks in particular at the potential conflict between the values of free speech and equal respect. Both of these are foundational values for liberalism, in the sense that they arise as normative ideals from the very inception of the liberal tradition itself. Yet from the perspective of this tradition, it is by no means clear which of these values should be prioritized in those (...) instances where they come into conflict. This article insists that the only way these two values can be meaningfully weighed against each other is if their competition can be understood within the broader framework of liberalism and democracy. Within this broader framework it is possible to find criteria which enable us to choose between these values in a non-circular manner — i.e. in ways which do not already presuppose a commitment to the value we wish to support. (shrink)

The Enlightenment heritage has meant that we have tended to conceive of tradition as inevitably opposed to reason, and that the exten sion of one as a major constitutive element in social affairs, implies the retraction of the other. However, this paper attempts to conceive the relationship between tradition and reason in a more articulated context, suggesting that this dichotomy between reason and tradition may itself be what Hans-Georg Gadamer calls an 'Enlightenment prejudice'. By drawing on the work of thinkers (...) within a broad hermeneutic tradition, this paper attempts to articulate an alternative means of thinking about the relation ship between reason and tradition, which suggests that it is only when we adopt a particular Enlightenment perspective that we are hermeneutically confined to confirming Enlightenment presuppositions that there is such a dichotomy between reason and tradition. Key Words: constitutive • . Enlightenment • . justification • . legitimacy • . rational • . reason • . reflective • . tradition • . unreflective • . validity. (shrink)

Timothy Stanton is the latest in a line of Locke scholars who, in focusing on Locke's theological commitments, have sought to place these at the center of his political philosophy. Stanton insists that those who interpret Locke's political philosophy in more material terms, centered on individual liberty, government authority, and the need to reconcile both via consent, apply to it a misleading "picture" and fail to perceive its essentials. By showing that this is precisely how Locke himself intended his political (...) philosophy to be understood, with the theology substantially removed, this article shows how Stanton is profoundly mistaken in his interpretation of Locke. (shrink)

This article looks at liberalism as a political tradition encompassing competing and, at times, incommensurable values. It looks in particular at the potential conflict between the values of free speech and equal respect. Both of these are foundational values for liberalism, in the sense that they arise as normative ideals from the very inception of the liberal tradition itself. Yet from the perspective of this tradition, it is by no means clear which of these values should be prioritized in those (...) instances where they come into conflict. This article insists that the only way these two values can be meaningfully weighed against each other is if their competition can be understood within the broader framework of liberalism and democracy. Within this broader framework it is possible to find criteria which enable us to choose between these values in a non-circular manner — i.e. in ways which do not already presuppose a commitment to the value we wish to support. (shrink)

The prefix “post” in the terms “postmodern,” “postmodernism,” and “postmodernity” implies that in some way modernity has been relegated either to a historical past or a moral obsolescence. This supposed transition from modernity to postmodernity, however, is inherently ambiguous, because modernity's limits are by no means self-evident. Its finality, therefore, is by no means clear. This is due, not least, to the fact that the very meaning of modernity as either a historical epoch or a normative project is open to (...) question. Thus, the boundaries of modernity, which would have to be transcended by a distinctive postmodern period, are contested.…. (shrink)

If you can, take the chance to see this exhibition of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paintings. This survey of her works opened briefly at Tate Britain in 2020 and has n.

In this comment, I reply to two objections John Tate raises against my discussion of the trajectory of Locke's ideas on toleration Tate maintains that I misunderstand the role of natural law and civil peace in Locke's thought. I defend my interpretation of the role of natural law and show that Tate is mistaken in his claim that Locke's concern to preserve civil peace conflicted with his separate concern to protect individual rights.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pragmatist Aesthetics and New Visions of the Contemporary Art Museum:The Tate Modern and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary ArtAngela Marsh (bio)John Dewey mandated the repositioning of our experience of art within the realm of the everyday, and recognized the importance of art objects principally with regard to how they operate within an experience as "carriers of meaning."1 In this quote from Art as Experience, Dewey illustrates the (...) segue between art and the perceiver, and his belief that within the profound art experience, lived dichotomies are healed:In art as an experience, actuality and possibility or ideality, the new and the old, objective material and personal response, the individual and the universal, surface and depth, sense and meaning, are integrated in an experience in which they are all transfigured from the significance that belongs to them when isolated in reflection.2Although the ephemeral nature of Dewey's definition of art-as-experience — hinged upon immediacy and the subjective heuristics of the perceiver — may seem difficult to capture and apply, the practicality of the concept, Richard Shusterman argues, lies in its "transformative potential," as a way to reconceive the place of art and its function in our world:Defining art as experience, I argue, also has value in widening the realmof art by challenging the rigid definition between art and action that is supported by definitions that define art as mimesis, poiesis, or the narrow practice as defined by the institutional art world. In other words, I argue that Dewey's definition of art as experience has a very fruitful transformational potential.3By defining art as experience, Dewey also sought to dissolve the binary structures of aesthetic rifts: art and life, high art and low art, body and mind, subject and object, self and world, emphasizing the holistic action in our engagement with art.4 But according to Dewey, the divisor of art from life and thus to blame for the aesthetic barrenness of our lived reality is the museum institution, as Shusterman describes: [End Page 91]The compartmentalization and spiritualization of art as an elevated "separate realm" set "upon a far-off pedestal," divorced from the materials and aims of other human effort, has removed art from the lives of most of us, and thus impoverished the aesthetic quality of our lives.(PA, 19)However, we must keep in mind that Art as Experience was published in 1934. Today, new approaches towards encounter and engagement within public museums are taking form and gaining momentum, with unprecedented directorial visions and mandates designed to nurture and make accessible art-based experiences among diverse audiences — where art and life can meet via multiple approaches. Theoretical synchronicities between pragmatist approaches to aesthetics and fruitful museum experiences can be suggested upon consideration of various innovative programs and approaches initiated at the Tate Modern in London and the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The overwhelming success of both venues could signify a reengagement of the general public with contemporary art, fed by "democratic," participatory approaches to exhibiting and programming art that make the museum more accessible to the various mixed publics it serves. In light of these new museological developments, Dewey's polemic oppositions between his conceptualizations of the museum experience and "art-as-experience" should be reexamined and possibly redefined.Dewey was entirely opposed to the concept of "art for art's sake." By exonerating art of any functional value — deeming it "fine" — art was elevated to a position separate from life, and thus rendered impotent to effect a lived aesthetic experience (which is how, Dewey would argue, the arts function most powerfully — as the purveyors of heightened experience). As Shusterman describes:The underlying motive for such attempts to purify art from any functionality was not to denigrate it as worthlessly useless, but to place its worth apart from and above the realm of instrumental value...and this freedom from use would be its defining and ennobling feature.(PA, 9)Dewey (and Shusterman) thus maintained that the very power construct that put the "fine" in art did so by removing the aspect of function from it. As previously stated, Dewey blamed museum institutions for removing art from its... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pragmatist Aesthetics and New Visions of the Contemporary Art Museum:The Tate Modern and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary ArtAngela Marsh (bio)John Dewey mandated the repositioning of our experience of art within the realm of the everyday, and recognized the importance of art objects principally with regard to how they operate within an experience as "carriers of meaning."1 In this quote from Art as Experience, Dewey illustrates the (...) segue between art and the perceiver, and his belief that within the profound art experience, lived dichotomies are healed:In art as an experience, actuality and possibility or ideality, the new and the old, objective material and personal response, the individual and the universal, surface and depth, sense and meaning, are integrated in an experience in which they are all transfigured from the significance that belongs to them when isolated in reflection.2Although the ephemeral nature of Dewey's definition of art-as-experience — hinged upon immediacy and the subjective heuristics of the perceiver — may seem difficult to capture and apply, the practicality of the concept, Richard Shusterman argues, lies in its "transformative potential," as a way to reconceive the place of art and its function in our world:Defining art as experience, I argue, also has value in widening the realmof art by challenging the rigid definition between art and action that is supported by definitions that define art as mimesis, poiesis, or the narrow practice as defined by the institutional art world. In other words, I argue that Dewey's definition of art as experience has a very fruitful transformational potential.3By defining art as experience, Dewey also sought to dissolve the binary structures of aesthetic rifts: art and life, high art and low art, body and mind, subject and object, self and world, emphasizing the holistic action in our engagement with art.4 But according to Dewey, the divisor of art from life and thus to blame for the aesthetic barrenness of our lived reality is the museum institution, as Shusterman describes: [End Page 91]The compartmentalization and spiritualization of art as an elevated "separate realm" set "upon a far-off pedestal," divorced from the materials and aims of other human effort, has removed art from the lives of most of us, and thus impoverished the aesthetic quality of our lives.(PA, 19)However, we must keep in mind that Art as Experience was published in 1934. Today, new approaches towards encounter and engagement within public museums are taking form and gaining momentum, with unprecedented directorial visions and mandates designed to nurture and make accessible art-based experiences among diverse audiences — where art and life can meet via multiple approaches. Theoretical synchronicities between pragmatist approaches to aesthetics and fruitful museum experiences can be suggested upon consideration of various innovative programs and approaches initiated at the Tate Modern in London and the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The overwhelming success of both venues could signify a reengagement of the general public with contemporary art, fed by "democratic," participatory approaches to exhibiting and programming art that make the museum more accessible to the various mixed publics it serves. In light of these new museological developments, Dewey's polemic oppositions between his conceptualizations of the museum experience and "art-as-experience" should be reexamined and possibly redefined.Dewey was entirely opposed to the concept of "art for art's sake." By exonerating art of any functional value — deeming it "fine" — art was elevated to a position separate from life, and thus rendered impotent to effect a lived aesthetic experience (which is how, Dewey would argue, the arts function most powerfully — as the purveyors of heightened experience). As Shusterman describes:The underlying motive for such attempts to purify art from any functionality was not to denigrate it as worthlessly useless, but to place its worth apart from and above the realm of instrumental value...and this freedom from use would be its defining and ennobling feature.(PA, 9)Dewey (and Shusterman) thus maintained that the very power construct that put the "fine" in art did so by removing the aspect of function from it. As previously stated, Dewey blamed museum institutions for removing art from its... (shrink)

A reflection on the aesthetic status of some typical objects of everyday life, and the relationship we have with them, may originate from the development of “aesthetic experience” by John Dewey and Neopragmatism. The continuity between the common practices and aesthetic ones determines the significance of ordinary objects if they are linked to a project of enrichment and fulfillment of experience. A case that thematizes the richness of these practices in the contemporary world, and also the related theoretical and (...) critical problems, is the production of skateboards. An established artist like Damien Hirst collaborates with the NYC-based streetwear brand Supreme; a new London-based brand, Palace Skateboards, and Tate realize together a few skateboard and a video. (shrink)

The focus of this article will be on inserting the words of older women in prison into debates on time, agency and gendered identities in total institutions. Specifically, the article will address the complexity and contradictions of the time of ‘a mediated real’, and how this impacts on embodied identities within prison timescapes. This will be explored through looking at how prison-time as a ‘somatic identity cipher’ functions performatively in the construction of older women’s identities. The article will also examine (...) how female elders in prison become agents and negotiate techniques of discipline. The role of prison-time will be shown to be simultaneously experienced as further punishment while also being resisted as we draw out the relationship between temporality, spaces of incarceration and identification. First, we will locate the field in terms of issues of theory and method. Then we will look at performativity, identity and time in negotiating, acquiescing to and resisting the identity ‘prisoner’. This will enable us to understand the role and meaning of time in relation to how females in prison are compelled to reiterate and negotiate the identity ‘prisoner’ within the discipline of ‘the time of incarceration’. We hope to demonstrate through the voices of the women that there is no single abstract imprisoned body. These are real bodies, fleshy, sensate bodies that experience real pain; at the same time, these bodies are not simply given but also interpreted, mediated and in part constituted in social and cultural meanings. This enables us to show that the body can be both a generator and receptor of meanings. (shrink)

This discussion piece critically examines some of the key ideology that figures in Elizabeth Fricker's ‘Stating and Insinuating’, raises a number of queries about the details of Fricker's argumentation, and develops some ideas about the normative structure of testimony that relate to the themes of that paper.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experience or Interpretation:"What You See Is Not What You Read"Klaus OttmannMuseums of modern and contemporary art are growing at an unprecedented rate. New museums are being founded and existing ones are expanding exhibition spaces and acquiring more and more works of art. Concurrently, cultural institutions compete with a growing number of art fairs, biennials, galleries, and public collection spaces.Since the 1980s the focus of museums increasingly has been on (...) education and interpretation, which among other things has created a boom for audio guides and scholarly exhibition catalogs at the expense of the unmediated experience of works of art. Perhaps what is needed are exhibitions that present art again primarily as "experience," with minimal curatorial and didactic intervention. [End Page 13]I have borrowed the title of my essay from a lecture that was given by Nicolas Serota, the director of the Tate galleries in London, in 1996. His lecture was subtitled "The Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art."But the question of the presentation of art, and specifically, that of experience vs. interpretation, by no means originated in the last decades. It is at least as old a question as modern art itself, going as far back as the nineteenth-century French intellectual dispute on the museum between the poet Paul Valéry and the novelist Marcel Proust, as recounted with a sympathetic voice by the German philosopher and cultural critic Theodor Adorno in a short essay with the minimalist title "Valéry Proust Museum."There is much to be learned from reading this small text. Paul Valéry criticized the museum of his time (the Louvre) for creating confusion in the mind of the spectator by reducing the experience to the level of information only. No one would want to listen to ten orchestras at once, he argued, yet we are forced to apprehend, at the same moment, a seascape, a portrait, and a still-life, or worse, painting styles completely incompatible with each other. He warned that excess of information would lead to impoverishment of the senses, as art was becoming a matter of education. Valéry's view could be regarded as the conservative position.Marcel Proust's view was more modernist: he regarded the museum as the best place to view art. Devoid of décor and other commonplace distractions, its galleries symbolized for him the inner spaces into which the artist withdraws to create works of art.Both Valéry and Proust emphasized that art should be enjoyed. But while for Valéry art lost its vitality in the museum and effectively "died," Proust saw an afterlife of art in the museum and in the subjective stream of consciousness of the viewer.For Adorno, both views were too one-sided and extreme. Valéry's absolute unwavering contemplation of pure art takes the risk of neutralization, unless the work can point beyond itself toward a social context. Thus, a work of art is neither an embodiment of a Platonic idea, as Valéry believed, nor is it exclusively a reflection of the soul, as Proust understood it. Rather, in Adorno's view, art is a "force field" between the art and the viewer, both passive and active.In his 1931 lectures on "Art as Experience," the American philosopher John Dewey said:The trouble with existing theories [of art] is that they start from ready-made compartmentalization, or from a conception of art that "spiritualizes" it out of connection with the objects of concrete experience. The alternative, however, to such spiritualization is not a degrading... materialization of works of fine art, but a conception that discloses the way in which these works idealize qualities found in common experience.1 [End Page 14]In my book The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition, I describe the creative act as an active-passive leap that the artist is impelled to make and the viewer is challenged to repeat.Wittgenstein often spoke about the inexpressible, that which is beyond the limits of language. He called it "running against the boundaries of language." It is something any poet, musician, or painter is familiar with; they all run against boundaries of language, sound, or color... (shrink)

Presents John Locke's seventeenth-century classic work on political and social theory; and includes a history of the text, as well as notes and a bibliography.

John R. Schneider explores the problem that animal suffering, caused by the inherent nature of Darwinian evolution, poses to belief in theism. Examining the aesthetic aspects of this moral problem, Schneider focuses on the three prevailing approaches to it: that the Fall caused animal suffering in nature (Lapsarian Theodicy), that Darwinian evolution was the only way for God to create an acceptably good and valuable world (Only-Way Theodicy), and that evolution is the source of major, God-justifying beauty (Aesthetic Theodicy). (...) He also uses canonical texts and doctrines from Judaism and Christianity - notably the book of Job, and the doctrines of the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection - to build on insights taken from the non-lapsarian alternative approaches. Schneider thus constructs an original, God-justifying account of God and the evolutionary suffering of animals. His book enables readers to see that the Darwinian configuration of animal suffering unveiled by scientists is not as implausible on Christian theism as commonly supposed. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article: Matthew Kieran, ‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value’. Philosophy Compass 1/2 (2006): pp. 129–143, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2006.00019.x Author’s Introduction Up until fairly recently it was philosophical orthodoxy – at least within analytic aesthetics broadly construed – to hold that the appreciation and evaluation of works as art and moral considerations pertaining to them are conceptually distinct. However, following on from the idea that artistic value is (...) broader than aesthetic value, the last 15 years has seen an explosion of interest in exploring possible inter‐relations between the appreciative and ethical character of works as art. Consideration of these issues has a distinguished philosophical history but as the Compass survey article suggests (‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)Moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value.’Philosophy Compass 1.2 (2006): 129–43), it is only very recently that figures in the field have returned to it to develop more precisely what they take the relationships to be and why. Consensus is, unsurprisingly, lacking. The reinvigoration of the issues has led sophisticated formalists or autonomists to mount a more considered defence of the idea that aesthetic and literary values are indeed conceptually distinct from the justification or otherwise of the moral perspective or views endorsed in a work (Topic I). The challenges presented by such a defence are many but amongst them are appeals to critical practice (Lamarque and Olsen), scepticism about whether or not art really can give us bona fide knowledge (Stolnitz) and the recognition that truth often seems to be far removed from what it is we value in our appreciation of works (Lamarque). One way to motivate consideration of the relevance of a work’s moral character to its artistic value concerns the phenomena of imaginative resistance. At least sometimes it would seem that, as Hume originally suggested, we either cannot or will not enter imaginatively into the perspective solicited by a work due to its morally problematic character (Topic II). In some cases, it would seem that as a matter of psychological fact, we cannot do so since it is impossible for us to imagine how it could be that a certain attitude or action is morally permissible or good (Walton). The question then is whether or not this is a function of morality in particular or constraints on imaginative possibility more generally and what else is involved. At other times, the phenomena seem to be driven by a moral reluctance to allow ourselves to enter into the dramatic perspective involved (Moran) or evaluation of the attitude expressed (Stokes). Nonetheless, it is far from obvious that this is so of all the attitudes or responses we judge to be morally problematic. After all, it looks like we can and indeed often do suspend or background particular cognitive and moral commitments in engaging with all sorts of works (Nichols and Weinberg). If the moral character of a work interacts with how we appreciate and evaluate them, then the pressing question is this: is there any systematic account of the relationship available to us? One way is to consider the relationship between our emotional responses to works and their moral character (Topic III). After all, art works often solicit various emotional responses from us to follow the work and make use of moral concepts in so doing (Carroll). Indeed, whether or not a work merits the sought for emotional responses often seems to be internally related to ethical considerations (Gaut). Yet, it is not obvious that we should apply our moral concepts or respond emotionally in our imaginative engagement with works as art as we should in real life (Kieran, Jacobson). A different route is via the thought that art can convey knowledge (Topic IV). There might be particular kinds of moral knowledge art distinctively suited to conveying (Nussbaum) or it may just be that art does so particularly effectively (Carroll, Gaut, Kieran). Either way where this can be tied to the artistic means and appreciation of a work it would seem that to cultivate moral understanding contributes to the value of a work and to betray misunderstanding is a defect. Without denying the relevance of the moral character of a work some authors have wanted to claim that sometimes the immoral aspect of a work can contribute to rather than lessen its artistic value (Topic V). One route is to claim that there is no systematic theoretical account of the relationship available and what the right thing to say is depends on the particular case involved (Jacobson). Another involves the claim that this is so when the defect connects up in an appropriate way to one of the values of art. Thus, it has been claimed, only where a work reveals something which adds to intelligibility, knowledge or understanding in virtue of its morally problematic aspect can this be so (Kieran). The latter position looks like it could in principle be held whilst nonetheless maintaining that the typical or standard relationship is as the moralists would have it. Yet perhaps allowing valence change for such reasons is less a mark of principled explanation and more a function of downright inconsistency or incoherence (Harold). The topics themselves and suggested readings given below follow the structure articulated above as further amplified in the Compass survey article. The design and structure given below can be easily compressed or expanded further. Author Recommends 1 Carroll, Noël. ‘Art, Narrative and Moral Understanding.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 126–60. 2 This article develops the idea that engaging with narrative art calls on moral concepts and emotions and can thereby clarify our moral understanding. 2 Carroll, Noël. Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 4 Part IV consists of six distinct essays on questions concerning the inter‐relations between art and morality including the essay cited above and the author’s articulation and defence of moderate moralism. 3 Gaut, Berys. ‘The Ethical Criticism of Art.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 182–203. 4 Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. 7 This monograph provides the most exhaustive treatment of the issues and defends the claim that, where relevant, whenever a work is morally flawed it is of lesser value as art and wherever it is morally virtuous the work’s value as art is enhanced. Chapters 7 and 8 defend concern ethical knowledge and chapter 10 is a development of the article cited above concerning emotional responses. Chapter 3 also gives a useful conceptual map of the issues and options in the debate. 5 Jacobson, Daniel. ‘In Praise of Immoral Art.’Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155–99. 9 A wide ranging and extended treatment of relevant issues which objects to generalising moral treatments of our responses to art works and defends the idea that particular works can be better because of rather than despite their moral defects. 6 Kieran, Matthew. ‘Forbidden Knowledge: The Challenge of Cognitive Immoralism.’Art and Morality. Ed. Sebastian Gardner and José Luis Bermúdez. London: Routledge, 2003. 56–73. 11 A general argument for immoralism is elaborated by outlining when, where and why a work’s morally problematic character can contribute to its artistic value for principled reasons (through enhancing moral understanding). 7 Kieran, Matthew. Revealing Art. London: Routledge, 2005. Chapter 4. 13 This chapter argues against both aestheticism and straightforward moralism about art, elaborating a defence of immoralism in relation to visual art whilst ranging over issues from pornographic art to the nature and demands of different genres in art. 8 Lamarque, Peter. ‘Cognitive Values in the Arts: Marking the Boundaries.’ Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 127–39. 15 This article concisely outlines and defends a sophisticated aestheticism that denies the importance of truth to artistic value. 9 Stolnitz, Jerome. ‘On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.’British Journal of Aesthetics 32.3 (1992): 191–200. 17 This article articulates and defends the claim that no knowledge of any interesting or significant kind can be afforded by works appreciated and evaluated as art. 10 Walton, Kendall. ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, I.’Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. 68 (1994): 27–51. 19 This article builds on some comments from Hume to develop the idea that when engaging with fictions it seems impossible imaginatively to enter into radically deviant moral attitudes. Online Materials ‘Aesthetics and Ethics: The State of the Art.’American Society of Aesthetics online (Jeffrey Dean):. ‘Art, Censorship and Morality’ downloadable podcast of Nigel Warburton interviewing Matthew Kieran at Tate Britain (BBC/ou Open2.net as part of the Ethics Bites series):. ‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)Moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value.’Philosophy Compass 1.2 (2006): 129–43 (Matthew Kieran):. ‘Ethical Criticism of Art.’Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Ella Peek):. ‘Fascinating Fascism.’New York Review of Books Piece Discussing Leni Riefenstahl (Susan Sontag):. ‘The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (1450s), Giovanni de Paolo’ (Tom Lubbock):. Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discuss Lolita (CBS):. Sample Syllabus Topic I Autonomism/aestheticism • Anderson, James C. and Jeffrey T. Dean. ‘Moderate Autonomism.’British Journal of Aesthetics 38.2 (1998): 150–66. • Beardsley, Monroe. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958. Chapter 12. • Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgement.Trans. James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1952 [1790]. • Lamarque, Peter. ‘Cognitive Values in the Arts: Marking the Boundaries.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 127–39. • ——. ‘Tragedy and Moral Value.’Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73.2 (1995): 239–49. • Lamarque, Peter and Stein Olsen. Truth, Fiction and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Chapter 10. • Stolnitz, Jerome. ‘On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.’British Journal of Aesthetics 32.3 (1992): 191–200. Topic II Imaginative Capacities, Intelligibility and Resistance • Moran, Richard. ‘The Expression of Feeling in Imagination.’Philosophical Review 103.1 (1994): 75–106. • Nichols, Shaun. ‘Just the Imagination: Why Imagining Doesn’t Behave Like Believing’. Mind & Language 21.4 (2006): 459–74. • Stokes, Dustin. ‘The Evaluative Character of Imaginative Resistance’. British Journal of Aesthetics 46.4 (2006): 387–405. • Tanner, Michael. ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, II’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 68 (1994): 51–66. • Walton, Kendall (1994). ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, I’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 68 (1994): 27–51. • Weinberg, Jonathan. ‘Configuring the Cognitive Imagination.’New Waves in Aesthetics. Eds. K. Stock and K. Thomson‐Jones. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 203–23. Topic III Moralism and Emotions • Carroll, Noël. ‘Moderate Moralism.’British Journal of Aesthetics 36.3 (1996): 223–37. • Carroll, Noël. ‘Art, Narrative and Moral Understanding.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.126–60. • Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Chapter 10. • ——. ‘The Ethical Criticism of Art.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 182–203. • Hume, David. ‘Of the Standard of Taste.’Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993 [1757]. 133–53. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Emotions, Art and Immorality.’Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Emotions. Ed. Peter Goldie. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 681–703. • Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art?. London: Penguin, 2004. Chapters 5 and 15. Topic IV Moralism and Knowledge • Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. M. Heath. London: Penguin, 1996 [367–322 BC]. • Carroll, Noël. ‘The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature and Moral Knowledge.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60.1 (2002): 3–26. • Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Chapters 7 and 8. • Gaut, Berys. ‘Art and Cognition.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 115–26. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Art, Imagination and the Cultivation of Morals.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54.4 (1996): 337–51. • Nussbaum, Martha. ‘Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Literature and the Moral Imagination.’Love’s Knowledge. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. 148–68. • Plato. The Republic. Trans. D. Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Book 10. Topic V Immoralist Contextualism • Harold, James. ‘Immoralism and the Valence Constraint.’British Journal of Aesthetics 48.1 (2008): 45–64. • Jacobson, Daniel. ‘In Praise of Immoral Art.’Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155–99. • ——. ‘Ethical Criticism and the Vices of Moderation.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 342–55. • John, Eileen. ‘Artistic Value and Moral Opportunism.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 331–41. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Forbidden Knowledge:The Challenge of Cognitive Immoralism.’Art and Morality. Ed. Sebastian Gardner and José Luis Bermúdez. London: Routledge, 2003. 56–73. • Kieran, Matthew. Revealing Art. London: Routledge, 2005. Chapter 4. • Patridge, Stephanie. ‘Moral Vices as Artistic Virtues: Eugene Onegin and Alice.’Philosophia 36.2 (2008): 181–93. Focus Questions 1 What is the strongest argument for the claim that the moral character of a work is not relevant to its artistic value? Does artistic or literary criticism tend to concern itself with the truth or morality of works? If so, in what ways? If not, why do you think this is? 2 What different explanations might there be for difficulty with or resistance to imaginatively entering into attitudes you take to be immoral? How might this relate to the way our imaginings work as contrasted with belief? How might different literary or artistic treatments of the same subject matter make a difference? 3 How do narrative works draw on our moral concepts and responses? Can we suspend our normal moral commitments or application of moral concepts in responding emotionally to art works? Should we respond emotionally to art works as we ought to respond to real world events we witness? Why? Why not? 4 How, if at all, do art works convey moral understanding? How, if at all, is this related to the kinds of moral knowledge art works can teach or reveal to us? When, where and why might this be tied to the artistic value of a work? How can we tell where a work enhances our moral understanding as opposed to misleading or distorting it? 5 What art works do you value overall as art which commend or endorse moral values and attitudes that you do not? Is appreciation of them always marred or lessened by the morally dubious aspect? If not, what explains the differences in evaluation? What, if anything, might you learn by engaging with works which endorse moral attitudes or apply moral concepts different from those you take to be justified? How, if at all, might this connect up with what makes them valuable as art? (shrink)

The new methods, the tone, and new taste are clearly discernible first in the early articles and books of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, Kenneth Burke, and Yvor Winters, and somewhat later in Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and William K. Wimsatt. . . . Still, something tells us that there is some sense in grouping these critics together. Most obviously they are held together by their reaction against the preceding or contemporary critical schools and (...) views mentioned before. They all reject the kind of metaphorical, evocative criticism practiced by the impressionists. Tate, Blackmur, Burke, and Winters contributed to a symposium highly critical of the neo-Humanists, and others voiced their rejection elsewhere. They all had no use for Mencken and Van Wyck Brooks, particularly after Brooks became a violent enemy of all modernism. Furthermore, they were almost unanimous in their rejection of Marxism, with the single exception of Kenneth Burke, who in the thirties passed through a Marxist phase and, anyhow, after his first book moved away from his neo-critical beginnings. What, however, in the American situation mattered most was that they were united in their opposition to the prevailing methods, doctrines, and views of academic English literary scholarship. There, in a way the younger generation may find it difficult to realize, a purely philological and historical scholarship dominated all instruction, publication, and promotion. I remember that when I first came to study English literature in the Princeton graduate school in 1927, fifty years ago, no course in American literature, none in modern literature, and none in criticism was offered. Of all my learned teachers only Morris W. Croll had any interest in aesthetics or even ideas. Most of the New Critics were college teachers and had to make their way in an environment hostile to any and all criticism. Only Kenneth Burke was and remained a freelance man of letters, though he taught in later years occasionally at Bennington College and briefly at the University of Chicago. But he very early deserted the New Criticism. It took Blackmur, Tate, and Winters years to get academic recognition, often against stiff opposition, and even Ransom, R. P. Warren, and Cleanth Brooks, established in quieter places, had their troubles. Ransom's paper "Criticism, Inc." pleaded for the academic establishment of criticism, and thanks to him and others criticism is now taught in most American colleges and universities. But it was an uphill fight. I still remember vividly the acrimony of the conflict between criticism and literary history at the University of Iowa, where I was a member of the English Department from 1939 to 1946. René Wellek, Sterling Professor Emeritus of comparative literature at Yale University, is the author of Theory of Literature and of A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950. He has contributed "Notes and Exchanges Between René Wellek and Wayne C. Booth" and "A Rejoinder to Gerald Graff" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Few people understand the circumstances requiring a jihad, or "holy" war, or how Islamic militants justify their violent actions within the framework of the religious tradition of Islam. How Islam, with more than one billion followers, interprets jihad and establishes its precepts has become a critical issue for both the Muslim and the non-Muslim world. John Kelsay's timely and important work focuses (...) on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war. He traces the arguments of thinkers over the centuries who have debated the legitimacy of war through appeals to shari'a reasoning. He brings us up to the present and demonstrates how contemporary Muslims across the political spectrum continue this quest for a realistic ethics of war within the Islamic tradition. Arguing the Just War in Islam provides a systematic account of how Islam's central texts interpret jihad, guiding us through the historical precedents and Qur'anic sources upon which today's claims to doctrinal truth and legitimate authority are made. In illuminating the broad spectrum of Islam's moral considerations of the just war, Kelsay helps Muslims and non-Muslims alike make sense of the possibilities for future war and peace. (shrink)

Deeply moved by his experiences in the trenches of the First World War, the Scottish philospher John Macmurray came to challenge the conventions inherited from European traditions of thought and mounted an assault on impersonal philosophies that failed to address needs and emotional reality.

John Foster presents a penetrating investigation into the question: what is it to perceive a physical object? Is perceptual contact with a physical object, he asks, something fundamental, or does it break down into further factors? If the latter, what are these factors, and how do they combine to secure the contact? For most of the book, Foster addressed these questions in the framework of a realist view of the physical world. But the arguments which thereby unfold - arguments (...) which undermine direct realism and establish a version of the sense-datum theory - lead to the conclusion that we do no perceive physical objects at all. The only way to avoid this conclusion is by abandoning physical realism for a form of idealism, and this is the option which Foster finally embraces. The Nature of Perception makes an important contrbution to the ongoing debate: it sheds fresh light on the traditional issues, and breathes new life into positions which most current philosophers assumeto be dead. (shrink)

It was the general practice until not at all long ago to look at Turner as one of the moderns, if not as one of the founding fathers of modern art. He was a man straddling the fence between two periods, but he was looking forward. In a history of art that marches through time, forever endorsing what is about to be forgotten, wrapping up, as it were, one style to open eagerly the package of the next, such a position (...) is most enviable for, no matter where the times may be going, it is a hallmark of greatness to be ahead of one's time. There were things to be explained, of course, Turner himself, a keen pessimist, did not approved of the future and had little use for the present.1 His love of art was schooled on Reynolds' Discourses, and he remained loyal to them; his poets were Thomson and Pope and, among contemporaries, the rather frigid but delicate Samuel Rogers, a classicist par excellence. Above all, however, Turner looked back to classical antiquity for training and guidance, and for the delectation of his heart. And the poetry of the ancients, such as he could obtain it in translation, was as important to him as their art. What does one do with a declared classicist whom a historicizing hindsight feels compelled to rescue as a man of the future by making him a Romantic? It is a challenge stylistic analysis likes to meet, for it goes beneath what it declares to be the surface of a work of art to find its style, the essence that must conform to the presumed spirit of the age in question. The triumphant result of such studies in depth is a forgone conclusion as much as it is a surprise to the uninitiated. The facade of the Louvre, for example, used to suffice to make it a building in the classical style; it took the acumen of a Wölfflin to prove that it really was "baroque." The more the artist struggled not to be of his time, the more, poor man, he betrayed to the analyst that he was of his time. The Louvre facade stands convicted of being "classicizing-baroque."2 · 1. On Turner's view of the modern art of his time see John Gage, Color in Turner: Poetry and Truth , pp.97-105. On his literary education and taste see the seminal essay by Jerrold Ziff, "Turner on Poetry and Painting, " Studies in Romanticism 3 no. 4 : 193-215. Turner's poetical writings have been edited by Jack Lindsay, The Sunset Ship: The Poems of J.M.W. Turner . For the most recent and also most elegantly practical introduction to the work and life of Turner, see the catalogue of the Turner Exhibition of the Royal Academy and the Tate Gallery, Turner, 1775-1851 . · 2. This is now a commonplace of art historical teaching. See, for example, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 6th ed. Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey , p. 632. On the theory behind the application to the particular case, see Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, trans. M. D. Hottinger . Philipp Fehl, artist and art historian, is currently preparing a collection of essays, Art and Morality: Studies in the History of the Classical Tradition. He is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Farewell to Jokes: The Last Capricci of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and the Tradition of Irony in Venetian Painting" was published in Summer 1979 in Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

My aim in this study is not to praise Fischer's fine theory of moral responsibility, but to (try to) bury the “semi” in “semicompatibilism”. I think Fischer gives the Consequence Argument (CA) too much credit, and gives himself too little credit. In his book, The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer gave the CA as good a statement as it will ever get, and put his finger on what is wrong with it. Then he declared stalemate rather than victory. In my (...) view, Fischer’s view amounts to sophisticated compatibilism. It would be nice to be able to call it by its right name. In The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer develops his own version of Consequence Argument, which turns on two principles, one of which is the fixity of the past. FP: For any action Y, agent S and time t, if it is true that is S were to do Y at t, some fact about that past relative to t would not have been a fact, then S cannot at t do Y at t. I argue that the equipment needed to reject FP (and thereby defend the most plausible version of compatibilism) is needed to deal with the problem of fatalism. In addition, I argue that the rejection of FP is compatible with Fischer’s approach to Frankfurt cases and with his account of transfer principles. (shrink)

Based on a conference held Apr. 4-5, 2008 at Amherst College.

First published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"From the 1930 Reiser edition of the Ars logica, itself comprising the first two parts of the five part Cursus philosophicus of 1631-1635, by the same author.".

With good reason, most critics associate the Papacy with reaction. The lingering image is one of a Renaissance holy prince lying in state beneath twisted Bernini columns, his aquiline Medici profile turned toward heaven. Popes have historically been of, and hence often for, the well-born. Their writings have been typified by a noblesse oblige attitude toward the poor who, after all, will “always be with us.” Indeed, on the one occasion when the forces of rebellion embraced a Pope — Pius (...) IX, in the 1840s — they watched the “prince” of the Church turn back into just that. With even greater certainty ever after, the view on the Left has been that Popes will be Popes. (shrink)