Abstract
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.
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Notes
Whether, how much, and in what way the so-called ‘ethical character’ of works might matter morally is, of course, a separate – though important – issue.
See Hume (1757). Two contemporary formulations of the affective response argument – Carroll (1996) and Gaut (1998) – have been especially influential. Cf. the steady stream of subsequent defenses, clarifications, and refinements, including Conolly (2000), Mason (2001), Dadlez (2002), and Eaton (2003).
I, p. 138. As it turns out, what Stecker identifies as the “main reason” (the one the affective response argument allegedly fails to capture) is closely related to the affective response argument. In fact, he even describes it as “a version of” that argument (I, p. 148).
For “ethicism” and “a modified version of ethicism,” see, respectively, Gaut (1998) and Eaton (2003). (“Model” talk also figures prominently in the latter.) For “cognitivism,” see Freeland (1997). For “moderate moralism” and “approach” talk, see Carroll (1996, 2000), respectively, both of which single out “radical” moralisms for harsh criticism. Kieran (2002) criticizes “extreme” moralism as a “poisonous idea,” while Kieran (2003) more modestly complains against “unqualified” moralism.
Stecker uses “interaction” and “ethical-aesthetic interaction” sometimes as names of “views” and sometimes to refer to the phenomena these views are views about – namely cases in which the ethical defects or merits of a work (allegedly) diminish or enhance its aesthetic value.
Stecker (2005a), pp. 207–213.
As Stecker (2005a) puts it, such a work might “inadvertently harden us against behavior based on such an attitude or make us aware of the great range of attitudes that may gain adherence and guide behavior” (p. 210).
Gaut (2001), p. 351.
Eaton (2003).
See I, pp. 149–50 and Bonzon (2003).
Carroll (2000), p. 377.
The term “normatively requires” here is borrowed from Broome (2004): “as a useful piece of terminology, when you ought (to F if X), I say that X normatively requires you to F” (p. 29). This is “a useful piece of terminology” insofar as there are some truths about, say, what we ought to feel in response to a thriller that are difficult to express in unambiguous – yet ordinary and comfortable – language. It would not be correct to say, for example, that, if you are imaginatively engaging with a thriller (any thriller), you ought to feel fear for its protagonists, since you might be engaging with a thriller whose protagonists are not vulnerable and whose villains are decidedly less than menacing. The problem is not that the relation between imaginatively engaging with a thriller and feeling fear for its protagonists is not governed by an ought. Rather, the problem is that the correct expression of the ought which governs that relation requires the use of cumbersome punctuation – as in “you ought (to feel fear if you are imaginatively engaging with a tragedy)” – in order to avoid the false implication that you ought to feel fear, no matter whether the thriller is thrilling or not. The language of normative requirements permits being explicit about the relation being invoked, while sidestepping the cumbersome use of overly punctuated phrases.
Griffiths (1997), p. 238.
Foot (2001), p. 72.
Ibid., pp. 72–73.
Foot’s proposal is that the appeal to the fact that one was doing what one thought was right could not have the force it is meant to have, unless it is a way of acknowledging a respect in which the act was, indeed, good – one the speaker hopes her hearers will (rightly or wrongly) decide “annuls” badness of act or purpose. However, it seems to me that the appeal may be interpreted at least as comfortably as an attempt to ameliorate blameworthiness by appealing to what the speaker wishes his hearers to treat as a responsibility-undermining factor.
“Blessed be the Lord,” Humbert cries at Lolita I.13, “she had noticed nothing!” (Nabokov (1970), p. 63). However, the evidence Humbert offers for this conclusion is famously shaky, and Nabokov opens I.13 by reminding readers that the ensuing description has been influenced by “a private talk” Humbert has had with his lawyer (p. 59).
A second point about the case of the Iliad: it is not clear that the Greeks’ evaluation of their enterprise – or, for that matter, the moral outlook of the work more generally – is quite as Stecker suggests, though he does acknowledge that the poem “by no means represents the Greeks as good and the Trojans as bad” (I, p. 146). The reader of Book X, for example, may find there that the Greeks recognize the dishonor in the night mission they nevertheless send Menelaus and Odysseus to carry out. For more on this point, see Susan Stewart’s helpful discussion of the “break” between the ethics of Book X and the ethics of “the rest of” the poem in Stewart (2002), pp. 6–7.
Stecker discusses Keller’s Bildungsroman (the German title is Der grüne Heinrich) at I, pp. 142–143 and pp. 148–149.
‘Interaction’, p. 148.
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Jauss, S.A. Affective Responses, Normative Requirements, and Ethical-Aesthetic Interaction. Philosophia 36, 285–298 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9116-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9116-2