Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Is there a Real Nexus Between Ethics and Aesthetics?

  • Published:
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Aesthetics is a vexed topic in philosophy, with a long history. For my purposes, an aesthetic experience is a foundational affective response to an object, to which terms such as “ugly”, “beautiful”, “pretty” or “harmonious” are applied. These terms are derived from a Discourse of aesthetics; some remain constant, others change from generation to generation. Aesthetics and ethics have been linked in Western thought since the days of Plato and Aristotle. This essay examines what is happening to that link in contemporary experience. It emphasises the ways in which the popular media exploit aesthetic appeal to penetrate their market, and to exploit and frame intuitive responses to current and past events. Production values, the artfulness of editors and the financial interests of producers and directors thus do much to determine contemporary aesthetic and ethical judgements. That which is beautifully presented invites the ethical involvement of the audience. Events whose images are beautifully presented constitute “hyperevidence”, a pre-judged, reinforced and amplified illusion of reality and participation. Understanding how aesthetic excellence draws audiences into ethical relationship with what is presented becomes an important part of education in ethics, including bioethics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Allison, R. 2002. 9/11 wicked but a work of art, says Damien Hirst. The Guardian, 11 September.

  • Annas, G. 1995. Sex, money and bioethics: Watching “ER” and “Chicago Hope”. The Hastings Center Report 25(5): 40–43.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Audi, R. 2004. The good in the right: A theory of intuition and intrinsic value. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ayer, A.J. 1946. Language, truth and logic. London: Gollancz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baigell, M. 1997. Jewish–American artists and the Holocaust. New York: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudrillard, J. 1988. The ecstasy of communication. New York: Semiotext(e).

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudrillard, J. 2001. L’espirit du terrorisme. Le Monde, 2 November.

  • Baumgarten, A. 1961 (1750). Aesthetica. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beauchamp, T. L., ed. 1996. Intending death: The ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Upper Saddle: Prentice Hall.

  • Beauchamp, T.L., and J.F. Childress. 2001. Principles of biomedical ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell, C. 1913. Art. London: Chatto and Windus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benhabib, S., and F. Dallmayr, eds. 1990. The communicative ethics controversy. Cambridge: MIT Press.

  • Benner, P. 1997. A dialogue between virtue ethics and care ethics. Theoretical Medicine 18: 47–61.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bergsma, J., and D.C. Thomasma. 2000. Autonomy and clinical medicine: Renewing the health professional relation with the patient. In International library of ethics, law and the new medicine, ed. D.C. Thomasma, D.N. Weisstub, and T.K. Kushner. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bird, S.E. 2002. Taking it personally: Supermarket tabloids after September 11. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boorstin, D. 1992. The image: A guide to pseudo-events in America. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. 1993. The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brody, H. 1997. Who gets to tell the story? Narrative in postmodern bioethics. In Stories and their limits: Narrative approaches to bioethics, ed. H.L. Nelson. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. 1999a. The ethics of health care rationing. London: Cassell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. 1999b. The modern doctor’s dilemma: Rationing and ethics in healthcare. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 92(8): 416–421.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, A.V. 1994. Dependency: The foundational value in medical ethics. In Medicine and moral reasoning, ed. K.W.M. Fulford, G. Gillett, and J.M. Soskice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chapman, S. 1979. Advertising and psychotropic drugs: The place of myth in ideological reproduction. Social Science & Medicine 13A: 751–764.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Charon, R. 1994. Narrative contributions to medical ethics: Recognition, formulation, interpretation, and validation in the practice of the ethicist. In A matter of principle: Ferment in U.S. bioethics, ed. E.R. DuBose, R. Hamel, and L.J. O’Connell. Valley Forge: Trinity International Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charon, R., and M. Montello, eds. 2002. Stories matter: The role of narrative in medical ethics. New York: Routledge.

  • Childress, J.F. 1997. The challenges of public ethics: Reflections on NBAC’s report. Hastings Centre Report 27(5): 9–11.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Croce, B. 1992. Aesthetic as a science of expression and general linguistic. Trans. C. Lyas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cunliffe, L. 2001. After late- and postmodernism: A Wittgensteinian reconstructive and transformative aesthetics, art practice, and art education. Journal of Aesthetic Education 35(3): 1–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daiute, C., and K. Nelson. 1997. Making sense of the sense-making function of narrative evaluation. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7(1–4): 207–215.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danto, A.C. 1980. Nietzsche as philosopher. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danto, A. 1981. The transformation of the commonplace: A philosophy of art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, J.K. 2007. Intuition and the junctures of judgment in decision procedures for clinical ethics. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 28: 1–30.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dickie, G. 1974. Art and aesthetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Downie, R. S., ed. 1994. The healing arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Downie, R.S., and B. Charlton. 1992. The making of a doctor: Medical education in theory and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eaglestone, R. 2004. Charting ethics and literature: One and the same? Ethics, aesthetics, and truth. Poetics Today 25(4): 595–608.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco, U. 1986. Faith in fakes: Travels in hyperreality. Trans. W. Weaver. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco, U. 1988. The aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, C., and A.P. Bochner. 1999. Bringing emotion and personal narrative into medical social science. Health 3(2): 229–238.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fairclough, N. 1995. Media discourse. London: Edward Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • Faurisson, R. 1979. Le Monde, January 16, 13.

  • Ford, A. 2003. Karlheinz Stockhausen, broadcast interview in ABC Music Show Interviews, October 11. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission.

  • Forsey, J. 2003. The disenfranchisement of philosophical aesthetics. Journal of the History of Ideas 64(4): 581–597.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, A.W. 1993. The rhetoric of self-change: Illness experience as narrative. Sociological Quarterly 34(1): 39–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, A.W. 1995. The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, A.W. 1998. Stories of illness as care of the self: A Foucauldian dialogue. Health 2(3): 329–348.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, M. 1997. Why narrative? Hermeneutics, historical understanding, and the significance of stories. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7(1–4): 169–176.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galtung, J., and H.H. Ruge. 1973. The structure of foreign news. Journal of Peace Research 2(1): 64–91.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gee, J.P. 1999. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, V. 1986. Margaret Bourke White: A biography. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greenhalgh, T., and B. Hurwitz, eds. 1998. Narrative based medicine: Dialogue and discourse in clinical practice. London: BMJ Books.

  • Gribble, J. 1992. Literary education: A revaluation. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hammond, K.R. 1996. Human judgement and social policy: Irreducible uncertainty, inevitable error, unavoidable injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hampshire, S. 1954. Logic and appreciation. In Aesthetics and language, ed. W. Elton. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, C. 1992. Beauty and revelation in the thought of Saint Augustine. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and time. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holz, J.R., and C.R. Wright. 1979. Sociology of mass communications. Annual Review of Sociology 5: 193–217.

    Google Scholar 

  • Honderich, T., ed. 1995. The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Hume, D. 1987 (1777). Of the standard of taste. In Essays: Moral, political and literary, ed. E.F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irving, D. 1991. Hitler’s war. London: Focal Point.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jordens, C.F.C., and M. Little. 2004. “In this scenario, I do this, for these reasons”: Narrative, genre and ethical reasoning in the clinic. Social Science & Medicine 58(9): 1635–1645.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jordens, C.F.C., M. Little, K. Paul, and E.-J. Sayers. 2001. Life disruption and generic complexity: A social linguistic analysis of narratives of cancer illness. Social Science & Medicine 53(9): 1227–1236.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kant, I. 1987. Critique of judgment: Including the first introduction. Trans. W.S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karim, K.H. 2002. Making sense of the “Islamic peril”: Journalism as cultural practice. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karl, K.G. 1997. Felix Nussbaum: Art defamed, art in exile, art in resistance. New York: Overlook.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kerridge, I., M. Lowe, and J. McPhee. 1998. Ethics and law for the health professions. Katoomba: Social Science Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kertész, I. 2004. Fatelessness: A novel. Trans. T. Wilkinson. New York: Vintage International.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleinman, A. 1988. The illness narratives—suffering, healing and the human condition. USA: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lecercle, J.J. 1994. Philosophy of nonsense: The intuitions of Victorian nonsense literature. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewicki, P., M. Czyzewska, and H. Hoffman. 1987. Unconscious acquisition of complex procedural knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 13(4): 523–530.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman, M.D. 2000. Intuition: A social cognitive neuroscience approach. Psychological Bulletin 126(1): 109–137.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Little, M. 2001. Does reading poetry make you a better clinician? Internal Medicine Journal 31(1): 60–61.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Little, M. 2002. The fivefold root of an ethics of surgery. Bioethics 16(3): 183–201.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Little, M. 2003. In A Miles Little reader: Restoring humane values to medicine, ed. I. Kerridge, C. Jordens, and E.-J. Sayers. Sydney: Federation Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, M., and W. Lipworth. 2008. Focused discourse, VELiM occasional monographs. Exploratory essay series. Sydney: Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, M., and E.-J. Sayers. 2004a. The skull beneath the skin: Cancer survival and awareness of death. Psycho-oncology 13: 190–198.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Little, M., and E.-J. Sayers. 2004b. “While there’s life...”: Hope and the experience of cancer. Social Science & Medicine 59(6): 1329–1337.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, M., C.F.C. Jordens, K. Paul, E.-J. Sayers, and D. Sriskandarajah. 1999. Approval and disapproval in the narratives of patients with colorectal cancer and their carers. Health 3(4): 451–467.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, M., K. Paul, C.F.C. Jordens, and E.-J. Sayers. 2000. Vulnerability in the narratives of patients and their carers—studies of colorectal cancer. Health 4(4): 499–514.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, M., C.F. Jordens, C. McGrath, K. Montgomery, I. Kerridge, and S.M. Carter. 2007a. Pragmatic pluralism: Mutual tolerance of contested understandings between orthodox and alternative practitioners in autologous stem cell transplantation. Social Science & Medicine 64: 1512–1523.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, M., C.F.C. Jordens, C. Mcgrath, K. Montgomery, W. Lipworth and I. Kerridge. 2008. Informed consent and medical ordeal. Internal Medicine Journal 38: 624–628.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Livingston, J. 1989. Lee Miller, photographer. New York: Thames & Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mattingly, C. 1994. The concept of therapeutic emplotment. Social Science and Medicine 38(6): 811–822.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mattingly, C. 1998. Healing dramas and clinical plots: The narrative Structure of experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mattingly, C., and L. C. Garro, eds. 2000. Narrative and the cultural construction of illness. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • McChesney, R.W. 2002. The structural limitations of US journalism. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCullough, L. B., J. W. Jones, and B. A. Brody, eds. 1998. Surgical ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • McLuhan, M. 1967. The medium is the message. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • McLuhan, M. 1995. Media and cultural exchange. In The essential McLuhan, ed. E. McLuhan and F. Zingrone. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Montale, E. 1982. The second life of art: Selected essays. New York: Ecco Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, G.E. 1988. Principia ethica. New York: Prometheus Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, R. 1997. TV drama in transition: Forms, values and cultural change. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, H.L. 2001. Damaged identities, narrative repair. New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, M. 1995a. The fragility of goodness—luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, M. 1995b. Poetic justice—the literary imagination and public life. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, M. 2001. Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osbeck, L.M. 1999. Conceptual problems in the development of a psychological notion of “intuition”. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 29(3): 229.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plato. 1956. The Republic. Trans. H.D.P. Lee, ed. E.V. Rieu. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plato. 1992. Philebus. In Plato, ed. M.J. Adler. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, M. 1969. In Knowing and being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. M. Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Randall, F., and R.S. Downie. 1996. Palliative care ethics: A good companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raphael-Levine, M. 2008. The Holocaust as visual revelation. In Sherman Lectures 2008. http://www.mucjs.org/sherman08abs.htm: Centre for Jewish Studies.

  • Reber, A.S. 1989. Implicit learning and tacit knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 118(3): 219–235.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, I. 1990. Personal narratives, social careers and medical courses: analysing life trajectories in autobiographies of people with multiple sclerosis. Social Science and Medicine 30(11): 1173–1186.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. 1996. Authority and the genealogy of subjectivity. In Detraditionalization: Critical reflections on authority and identity, ed. P. Helas, S. Lash, and P. Morris. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosen, J. 2002. September 11 in the mind of American journalism. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, W.D. 1930. The right and the good. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Santayana, G. 1955 (1896). The sense of beauty: Being the outline of aesthetic theory. New York: Dover.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schopenhauer, A. 1942. Complete essays of Schopenhauer. Trans. T.B. Saunders. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seale, C. 2002. Media and health. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seamon, R. 2001. The conceptual dimension in art and the modern theory of artistic value. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59(2): 139–151.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharpe, R. 1995. Literature and philosophy. In The Oxford companion to philosophy, ed. T. Honderich. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sidgwick, H. 1962 (1907). The methods of ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simonson, P. 2002. Bioethics and the rituals of the media. The Hastings Center Report 32(1): 32–39.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sreberny, A. 2002. Trauma talk: Reconfiguring the inside and outside. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swales, J.M. 1990. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takahashi, H., M. Kato, M. Matsuura, M. Koeda, N. Yahata, T. Suhara, and Y. Okubo. 2008. Neural correlates of human virtue judgement. Cerebral Cortex Advance Access 18(8): 1886–1891.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, C. 1991. The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tolstoy, L. 1982. War and peace. Trans. R. Edmunds. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Toulmin, S. 1982. How medicine saved the life of ethics. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 25: 736–750.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Varey, J.W. 2003. American journalism on, before, and after September 11. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waisbord, S. 2002. Journalism, risk and patriotism. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walters, L., and J.G. Palmer. 1997. The ethics of human gene therapy. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wiens, A.G. 1993. Patient autonomy in care: A theoretical framework for nursing. Journal of Professional Nursing 9(2): 95–103.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wilcox, J. 1953. The beginnings of L’art pour l’art. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11(4): 360–377.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, G. 1984. The genesis of chronic illness, narrative reconstruction. Sociology of Health and Illness 6(2): 175–200.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wiltshire, J. 1998. The patient writes back: Bioethics and the illness narrative. In Renegotiating ethics in literature, philosophy, and theory, ed. J. Adamson, R. Freadman, and D. Parker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, L. 1988. Tractatus Logico-Philsophicus. Trans. C. K. Ogden. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wyatt, J.C. 2001. Management of explicit and tacit knowledge. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 94(1): 6–9.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, B. 2002. Photography, journalism and trauma. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, B., and S. Allan. 2002a. Introduction: When trauma shapes the news. In Journalism after September 11, ed. B. Zelizer and S. Allan. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, B., and S. Allan, eds. 2002b. Journalism after September 11. London: Routledge.

  • Zemach, E.M. 1971. Thirteen ways of looking at the ethics-aesthetics parallelism. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 29(3): 391–398.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney, Building K25, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

    John Miles Little

Authors
  1. John Miles Little
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John Miles Little.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Little, J.M. Is there a Real Nexus Between Ethics and Aesthetics?. Bioethical Inquiry 7, 91–102 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-010-9214-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-010-9214-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation