Abstract
The goal of this paper is methodological. It offers a comprehensive mapping of the theoretical positions on the ethical criticism of art, correcting omissions and inadequacies in the conceptual framework adopted in the current debate. Three principles are recommended as general guidelines: ethical amenability, basic value pluralism, and relativity to ethical dimension. Hence a taxonomy distinguishing between different versions of autonomism, moralism, and immoralism is established, by reference to criteria that are different from what emerging in the current literature. The mapping is then proved capable of (1) locating the various theories that have been proposed so far and clarifying such theories’ real commitments, (2) having the correct relationship with actual art making and art criticism practices, and (3) showing the real weight of the alleged counter-example to a moralist position of a work that succeeds artistically because of its immorality.
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Notes
This is, however, a dimension of ethical evaluation that may be quite marginal to the evaluation of literature.
As these examples suggest, artworks’ consequences can be distinguished between large- and small-scale consequences, a distinction I have investigated in (Giovannelli 2004).
An obvious difference in scope between Carroll’s theory and Gaut’s is that the former is formulated for representational works only, specifically for narratives, while the latter is meant to apply to non-representational works as well (see Gaut 1998, 193). Yet this is not the difference Carroll is referring to.
Many of the theoretical possibilities I present in this paragraph are the result of conversations with my colleague Owen McLeod and helpful suggestions by an anonymous referee.
By no means should my pointing to the range of theoretical possibilities be taken as suggesting that actual philosophical theories are, or ought to be, so specific about their claims.
Many thanks to an anonymous referee for prompting clarification on this point.
By the same token, the criteria generating my taxonomy show how Carroll (2000, 378) does make an autonomist concession after all, one that he cannot consistently make, when he allows for the possibility of immoral works that are “so subtle as to escape a morally sensitive audience.” For, if such works belong to one of the genres or kinds the moralist thesis is stated about, the claim for a systematic bearing of ethical value on artistic value is contradicted and the view is, after all, ultimately autonomist.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Jerrold Levinson, Owen McLeod, and an anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions.
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Giovannelli, A. The Ethical Criticism of Art: A New Mapping of the Territory. Philosophia 35, 117–127 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9053-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9053-0