Stecker, Ch 11 Interaction: Ethical, Aesthetic, and Artistic Value
- Main point: Ethical value of art can be part of its artistic value and is
distinct from aesthetic value, though it can "interact" with it, the ethical
value increasing or decreasing the aesthetic value
- Example of ethical value of art: Work offers insight into an
ethical issue (that insight contributes to its ethical value)
- "Ethical-artistic value" is the type of ethical value of art that is an
aspect of its value as art
- Do aesthetic and ethical values of art interact so one has bearing on
degree of the other? (Yes, at times)
- Ways art can be ethically evaluated:
- One: Broad social consequences (intended and foreseeable or not)
- Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to reforms in the meat industry
- This was a goal of Sinclair's, an artistic goal, and it is
morally praiseworthy and better artistically for achieving
it
- Genre of "muckraking fiction" tries to achieve social impact
via artistic affect-stirring up moral emotions such as
indignation, present a vivid picture of a social problem that
readers can both understand and feel
- If achievement of ethical value is intrinsic to aims of these
works, ethical value contributes to artistic value
- If Sinclair had not intended this then this ethical value of
the book would not be part of its artistic value? I'd say
instead the book should be praised but not Sinclair
- Two: Consequences on individuals who exp it
- e.g, Some claim that violent works will (can) make audiences
more violent
- Stecker says these claims are doomed to sociological
indeterminancy, as one inconclusive study after another
seems to demonstrate
- But works can increase moral sensitivity toward issues
explored (so also decrease this sensitivity)
- Not all consequences of work relevant to ethical evaluation of
it.
- Three: Art can express an ethical judgment or point of view
(judgments/points of view actually endorsed by the work, as opposed
to those simply considered by the work)
- Work might express a reprehensible moral attitude
- Distinct from condemning a work simply because it
has a subject matter (e.g., sex)
- Distinct from a character (even the narrator) expressing
an contemptible attitude
- For the work may not endorse this
- But sometimes an artist intends to express an attitude,
and coveys the attitude through the work
- Works can express (negative) attitudes even if not intended:
Jules Vern's portrait of former slave Neb
- Vern had a residual racism (deep unconscious
commitment)
- Works can perhaps express attitudes that are not intended or
even possessed by artist
- Via carelessness
- Artist creates a work with this attitude to explore how
things look from that point of view
- Works can condone/condemn practices/institutions
- Uncle Tom's Cabin (condems slavery)
- Raphael's painting The School of Athens presents pursuit
of knowledge as a noble activity
- Works can endorse/reject set of values
- Works can put forward a type of character as
admirable/contemptible
- When we evaluate such attitudes ethically is this an evaluation of
an aspect of work's artistic value? (Stecker, yes)
- Four: Works can help us explore morally difficult (ambiguous)
matters and deserve praise for doing so
- e.g., The film "Happiness"?
- Don't have to agree with work's resolution of ethical issues
- But if it makes moral issues compelling and convinces us to
sensitively explore them, the exploration may be worthwhile
- Five: Means of the production of the work can be ethically assessed
- Tolstoy objected to vast materials lavished on artistic
productions
- Criticism at society at large, rather than particular work?
- Appalled by certain production materials/methods
- Goldfish art: Fish dipped in paint and let flop on a
canvas until died
- Artist, not work that deserves criticism
- Works produced by self-mutilation or self-inflicted
injury (e.g., Burden)
- Mortuary art: using corpses as art objects
- Something amiss in making human remains object
of aesthetic satisfaction or artistic contemplation?
- Works that express morally good/bad attitudes may not have positive or
negative moral value
- It may pedantically state obvious moral truths and this does no good
(like no cognitive value in "I see you still have ears"; true but of no
cognitive value)
- May express morally reprehensible attitudes and have the good
consequences of hardening us against that attitude (though work does
not deserve praise)
ETHICAL, ARTISTIC AND AESTHETIC VALUE
- Above shown how artworks can have ethical value via attitudes they
express, issues they explore and effect they have on their audiences
- When artists aim to give their works this value, and audiences expect to find
it there (thus pursuit of this value is part of artistic project underlying the
work), ethical value is an artistic value (part of art's value as art)
REASONS TO RESIST IDEA ART'S ETHICAL VALUE PART OF ITS
ARTISTIC VALUE
- One reason to object to idea ethical value is part of artistic value is if one
equates artistic and aesthetic value and claims that ethical value is
distinct from aesthetic
- Stecker and almost all agree aesthetic value and ethical value distinct
- Stecker argued against equation of artistic value and aesthetic value
- There is a sense of "aesthetic" where it is synonymous with
artistic value, but Stecker gives "aesthetic" a distinctive sense
- Not all works valuable as art are aesthetically valuable
- Sherrie Levine's photos perhaps
- Some conceptual art
- Even some that possess aesthetic value are not primarily
valuable as art in virtue of this aesthetic value
- Another reason is because one worries that ethical evaluation of art leads
to censorship to keep people from being corrupted by immoral works
- But issue of whether art should be censored and whether art has
positive and negative ethical value are separate
- People argue both that:
- Immoral art has something valuable to offer and should be
protected
- Immoral art should be protected as a matter of free speech even
if it has nothing valuable to offer
INTERACTION OF ETHICAL AND AESTHETIC VALUE
- Definition of aesthetic value/experience
- Aesthetic: experience valued for own sake in virtue of being directed
to forms, qualifies and meaningful properties of an object
- Aesthetic value of art is its capacity to deliver aesthetic experience
- Both aesthetic and ethical value exists in many works
- Does presence of one kind of value affect degree of other?
- "Interaction" is the view that presence of one kind of value affects degree
of other
- (I called this "integration" and used "independent interaction" as the
term for it being proper to ethically evaluate art but that not being
relevant to its aesthetic value.)
- "Affective response argument":
- One: A feature of a work will (or should) prevent a response the
work requires or prescribes for its audience
- The "lame" thriller that fails to make the bad characters very
menacing
- Audience won't or ought not fear for the vulnerability of the
main characters and work will fail as a thriller as did not elicit
fear for those characters
- Two: Sometimes a moral defect will be a feature that prevents (or
ought to prevent) the required response
- Three: When a work has a feature that prevents (or ought to prevent)
a response work requires from its audience, this feature is an aesthetic
defect.
- The lack of menace of bad characters is an aesthetic defect of
the thriller
- Conclusion: Thus sometimes a moral defect can be an aesthetic defect
- Sometimes a prescribed response is prevented by the work but his is not an
aesthetic defect
- War and Peace has historically factual information and provides a
theory of history that helps fill out its fictional world (so this is
aesthetic as well as cognitive)
- Stecker thinks the work fulfills its aesthetic goals, but not its
cognitive ones (bad theory of history), so there are artistic
defects (though not aesthetic ones)
- The failure to fulfil the cognitive goals don't affect its aesthetic
value (though does its artistic value)
- Iliad case where moral defect is not an aesthetic defect
- Epic poem Iliad prescribes a positive response to a morally unpalatable idea
that war/massive killing of civilians is justified in the service of honor
- Iliad account of Trojan war: Cause of war is abduction of Helen (wife
of Greek ruler) by Paris a prince of Troy; aim of war to bring Helen
home and restore honor sullied by her abduction; to accomplish this
Troy must be destroyed, men killed, women/children enslaved and
Troy's fields made barren; Greeks too must undergo huge sacrifices
(best warriors killed, and Daughter of Agamemnon, sacrificed, so
winds will blow)
- Poem presents the brutality of war as an essentially noble enterprise
- Describes events beautifully and powerfully and graphically
- Honor is a powerful moral force that can justify sacrifice of a
daughter and destruction of a city-state
- We react with horrified disapproved
- A seriously flawed weighting of moral values that leads to
unnecessary and loss of life and suffering
- But doubt it makes us think one iota less of the Iliad or interferes with our
aesthetic engagement with the work
- Nor does it make us think the work is less worthy of engagement
- Would not say work would be better if it displayed a set of values we
would approve of
- Doing this would make us lose one thing most value in poem: access
to a world with a very different outlook than ours.
- We disapprove of but respond as prescribed to pursuit of honor and warlike
virtues in the Iliad
- Work is worthy of the prescribed response in making so real to us
something normally so foreign
- Hence moral defect does not necessarily entail an aesthetic one: not
always true that a perceived moral defect entails that a work is
unworthy of a response it requires for full aesthetic engagement.
- Explanation:
- Huge distance in time and culture separating us from the world of the
poem Iliad
- Grateful to be allowed entry into the world in so effective a fashion
- Cultural distance that permits moral disapproval to have little bearing
on engagement
- Ethical viewpoint of ancient Greece is not a moral option for us and
this makes curiosity about it far greater forced than disapproval
- Cultural distance is just one factor that can lead to unyoking of our
moral reactions and aesthetic response to work's merits
- Genres where moral seriousness is simply suspended would be
another example (I'm not sure as here the work is not expressing a
moral point of view)
- When a moral defect is an aesthetic one:
- But moral defect can sometimes entail an aesthetic defect in virtue of
making a work unworthy of a prescribed response
- When a work explores ethical positions that are real options for us
- For the work to be worthy of full aesthetic (including affective)
engagement depends on it having a degree of moral
seriousness/competence
- Note: Standard is not correctness (but seriousness)
- We can believe work got it wrong without regarding it as unworthy of
a prescribed response as long as it presents an option that merits
consideration.
- Example: A work might aesthetically require a convincing clash of values
- But because it represents traditional values as merely a repressive set
of prohibitions (with no value to them)
- Its ethical defect (failure to realize the positive dimension in
traditional values)
- Is tied to its
- Aesthetic defect in failing to represent a convincing clash of values
- It's ethical defect is responsible for its aesthetic one
- This is an example of a moral defect being an aesthetic one that is
suppose to not rely on a moral defect leading to the failure of
prescribing a required affective response.
- Example: A narrator gloats over the death of a villain, vindictive pleasure
in describing his immobile body
- In addition to the "blocking a required affective response" way, an ethical
defect can lead to an aesthetic defect in other ways.
- A work embraces a moral outlook that requires sacrifices from characters
that many would find ethically unjustified
- To imaginatively engage with fictional world one has to buy into the
idea that characters face real moral dilemmas and that recommended
choices can be seen as noble
- If one can't accept this, this puts the reader in an aesthetically
intractable position
- Conclusion: An ethical flaw can in the right circumstances for the right type
of work diminish aesthetic value of work
- Can aesthetic flaws diminish ethical (artistic) value?
- Yes, when ethical goals depend on aesthetic ones (e.g., getting
audience to feel strongly and vividly imagine the story)
- If the moral goal is to explore a conflict in values or a moral dilemma
or question an aspect of society, or push for large scale political
reform (as in the Jungle)
- To achieve this moral goal, one needs to create a fictional world or
present real world in a way that is more than intellectual
- Want audience to feel the conflict by vividly imagining these values
- This is a requirement on audience's aesthetic exp; it must have a
certain character
- To achieve its ethical goals, a work must be able to deliver such
experiences
- If it fails to do this, it may fail in its ethical goals
- Example where aesthetic defect is a moral defect
- Brett Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho
- Seeks to embody excessive greed of the 1980s in U.S. by
making a serial killer a symbol of that vice
- Serial killings are so gruesome that work does not merit the
amusement needed to take it as a parody of the cutthroat
pursuit of wealth
- Novel's aim is commendable (condemnation of greed)
- Problem is that work chose wrong aesthetic means to get the
reader to feel the viciousness of greed.
- Summary
- Works have ethical aims
- Some of these are artistic and some not
- Ethical value can be part of overall artistic value
- Ethical value can also interact with work's specifically aesthetic value