Art and ethics
Moderate, epistemic and systemic
moralism
Art and Ethics
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Statements of Breton, Stockhausen, Hirst
about the supreme artwork: shooting people,
9/11.
Can these actions be considered as an
artwork?
Relations between art and morality
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Platonism or radical moralism (Republic,
books II-III and X): Art leads to immoral
behaviors
Utopism”: art as such is always morally
edifying, and lastly, emancipating (Marcuse
Adorno).
Radical autonomism or aestheticism: artistic
and moral realms are completely separate,
e.g. Oscar Wilde
Relations between art and morality
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Moderate autonomism: while some artworks,
but not all, are morally worthy or harmful,
their moral value has nothing to do with their
value as art (Posner, Beardsley, Gass).
Ethicism: a moral flaw in a work is as such an
aesthetic one (Hume, Tolstoy, Kendall
Walton, Wayne C. Booth, Berys Gaut)
Variable extreme moralism: all artworks are
morally good or bad to one or another
determined degree.
Relations between art and morality
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The problem is not whether there is a relation
between artistic and moral in a work. From my point
of view, there is. The problem, rather, is what the
nature of that relation is.
One of the most problematic issues about some
works is precisely that they can and actually do
force us to agree to world views that we consider
morally problematic. It is not a question of fictionally
assenting to particular propositions, but rather to the
entire world view expressed by the work within
which the propositions are located. This is the
reason why I think that moral considerations can
directly affect the value of a work as art.
Relations between art and morality
Moderate moralism
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Possible solution: moderate moralism (Noël
Carroll): some works, but not all, have moral
value. Sometimes, but not always, moral
flaws and virtues involve artistic flaws and
virtues, that is, we cannot sharply say that
moral features of a work as such play a direct
role in its resulting artistic value.
Moderate Moralism
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It might happen that we are not in disposition
to affirm the aesthetic goodness of a work,
due to our reaction to its moral character.
E.g.: Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Is
it only an epistemological impossibility to
evaluate the goodness of a morally
problematic work of art?
Back to Stockhausen’s claim
Moderate Moralism
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Are there moral constraints intrinsic to certain
artistic genres? Yes, e.g., tragedy.
We can extend this idea of the moral
constraints within tragedy to art in general .
Cognitive moderate moralism
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From Homer’s poetry and Icelandic sagas, which
prescribe the admiration for certain heroic virtues at
odds with forgiveness and mercy, up through
modern works like Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and
Jean Genet’s The Balcony, that al least in part show
disdain for traditional sexual morality, many
successful works, including too Robert Musil’s The
Confusions of Young Toerless, or D. W. Griffith’s
Birth of a Nation, lead us to imagine what we
consider is, in real life, ethically undesirable. But we
consider this a sign of their success.
Cognitive moderate moralism
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These works place us within the boundaries of that
moral outlook and, from that point of view, make us
more aware of those boundaries, beyond which one
must not go.
Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographical studies of
flowers, Helmut Newton’s nudes, Degas’ portraits of
brothels’ scenes, various works by Klimt, Rodin,
Goya, some Shakespearean sonnets, Ovid’s Art of
Loving, 1001 Nights, Buñuel’s Belle de Jour etc., are
eminently erotic works. Eroticism alone does not
undermine any of our shared moral convictions.
Cognitive moderate moralism
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Nor is even pornography, at least some kinds of pornography
outside of this valuation. George Bataille’s Story of the Eye,
Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, Pauline Réage’s Story of
O, Nicholson Baker’s Vox, some Kama Sutra illustrations, some
of Egon Schiele’s nudes, the work of the last Picasso, some of
Dali’s works and Hokusai’s woodcuts, among others, are
explicitly pornographic and yet they are also artistically worthy.
Again, if we turn back to the Greek-Roman world, we can find
many representations that are sexually explicit and still valuable
as art. In my opinion, any allegedly immoral character of these
works is more supposed than real. Some of them, like those of
Bataille or Oshima, show us a fictional moral universe that does
not contradict the hard core of human rights, or what we can call
a minimal ethics. Even more, they have very great epistemic
value, since they show a commitment to truth, of re-interpreting
good, and so, a very great heuristic value, insofar as they offer
moral proposals that allow us either to accept or to reject them.
Cognitive moderate moralism
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Here remains Kendall L. Walton’s well-known notion of the makebelieve (the background for children’s games, and within the
artistic field, of mimesis, understood in a wide sense). Had it
disappeared, the actual ethical sphere would have dissolved as
well, since what would disappear would be the possibility of
believing something a fictionally true in a fictional world. This is
so given that the events of 9/11 broke the tacit convention of
fiction: that the fictional world is a replica of the extra-fictional
world, without any possibility of their identification. And moreover,
given that these erotic and pornographic works demand such a
deep affective-cognitive exercise, I really doubt that they are
experienced or treated as pornography, in the popular sense of
the word.
Cognitive moderate moralism
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Can immoral works be valuable as art? (D. Jacobson): we can
get from them the benefit of understanding moral views different
to ours: epistemic value.
Christopher Hamilton: we can ourselves be enriched as
individuals if we learn to live with the tension between our
imagination being captured by a work of art and our moral sense
being repelled by it
Cognitive immoralism (M. Kieran): the value of a work as art can
be highlighted in virtue of its immoral character, because
imaginatively experiencing morally defective and problematic
cognitive-affective responses and attitudes can deepen one’s
understanding and appreciation.
Not hypothetical imagination, but dramatic imagination.
Cognitive moderate moralism
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several sorts of positions on artworks concerning
their relation to a moral point of view (Noël Carroll):
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Consequentialism: the belief that artworks have causal,
predictable consequences in the moral behavior of the
spectators.
Propositionalism: the work of art can contain certain
propositions explicitly or implicitly, which can be of a moral
nature, in such a way that artworks are educational, insofar
as they provide new moral (among others) propositions (or
in the weaker version, beliefs), that can be false. When the
false propositions showed by the artworks affect to moral
truths, those works are morally wrong.
Cognitive moderate moralism
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Identificationism: readers and the public in general assume the emotions of
the fictional characters. This is properly the Platonic position. So if the
emotion showed by the work is morally suspicious, the consequentialist will
predict that it will result in an immoral behavior. But the identificationist, if he
is consequentialist, will criticize the work, because in all probability, it will
produce immoral behaviors.
Clarificationism: it consists not of affirming that we can acquire new
propositional knowledge from artworks, but rather, of holding that these can
deepen our moral understanding, encouraging us to apply the moral
knowledge and emotions we already have to specific cases, in order to
review and increase our moral knowledge. By practicing our pre-existing
moral capacity in response to a work, this work can become an occasion to
increase that pre-existing moral understanding. The direction of moral
education is not from the work to the world, as suggested by porpositionalist,
but from the world to the text. This thesis, though treated as original in
Carroll, is in fact one of the interpretations that has historically been given of
Aristotle’s ancient and famous but controversial notion of the nature of
catharsis.
Systemic moderate moralism
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As the Italian philosopher Evandro Agazzi shows in
his account of the relation between science and
ethics, when we study the relation between art and
morality it is also very suitable to adopt what he
labels a systemic point of view.
The creation and display of art are exercised within
a particular social system, the “artistic system”,
which is accompanied by various other systems,
whether of social nature or not (economic, religious,
political, ecological, moral, etc.). All of these together
give rise to what Agazzi calls a “global environment”.
Systemic moderate moralism
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the artistic system receives from the surrounding
complex environment different influences in the face
of which it manifests a reaction. Some influences
are “pressures” that tend to menace the system’s
existence, and so it reacts by attempting to reestablish its own inner balance and modifying the
environment in a creative way. The artistic system
must respond to the demanding inputs from the
environment, gaining support and removing
obstacles. In other words, the art system is open
and adaptive, subjected to a feed-back loop within
its environment.
Systemic moderate moralism
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Every important change taking place inside the artistic system
produces a series of outputs that modify the environment, which
appear a series of feed-backs. These in turn determine changes
in the contents of the artistic system, which, we need to see, is
not an isolated system. Members of the artistic system must
negotiate inputs coming from the environment, attempting to
receive the highest support from the environment and avoiding, if
possible, obstacles that the environment puts in placed for artistic
activity. In this sense, the outputs of the artistic system must be
advantageous to the surrounding environment, and, as a
consequence, the art system will itself receive support and
removal of obstacles from the environment. So, the system
should prevent any form of opposition to this beneficial activity.
That is, the artistic system tries to get its own targets, but, in
order to get them, it must produce outputs which will become
inputs for any other system that is capable of offering support or
removing environmental opposition.
Systemic moderate moralism
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This system approach from Agazzi leads us to see
the problem of moral responsibility in art in terms of
optimization: every social system tends to maximize
its own essential variables. But such action, for
systemic reasons, since there art operates in an
open system, must be compatible with the
functioning of the other systems. This involves a
process of optimization that can be considered to be
optimizing the global target of the general system.
Systemic moderate moralism
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Whenever various social systems are interconnected as subsystems of a wider general system, we encounter the problem of
optimization. Every particular system tends naturally to maximize
its own essential variables, but such maximization is
incompatible with the satisfactory functioning of other subsystems, hence, with adequate functioning of the entire system.
The question, then, is how to optimize the whole system. In this
sort of framework, basic respect for the exigencies of the other
systems always constitute, in Agazzi’s terms, a moral obligation
for the members of any sub-system. Morality is thus at one and
the same time, an exigency of the overall system that matches
the individual interest of the artistic sub-system.
Systemic moderate moralism
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Ethics plays a part of this process, because the
“moral system” of art is also a part of the global
environment. For systemic exigencies, the artistic
system must take into account broader moral
imperatives, for, if it does not, it will reduce its
supports and will provoke opposition to itself from
the global environment. The relations between these
two systems, thus, is always subject to a process of
optimization that is generally valid. This is true
without there being a dominant position of any one
system above another; they are all in a situation of
reciprocal feed-back.
Systemic moderate moralism
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If, for example, we consider that art attacks some
basic moral convictions, like the right to life, society
will turn away from art and such art will end up
destroying itself. If we accept the 9/11 events as art,
art will be, without a doubt, submitted to a process
of review which can lead to its social extinction as a
result of basic subsistence needs of the global
system. It is worthwhile to note that this systemic
approach is very different from the idea of the
“artworld”, which is what is used by Dickie and
Danto. The artworld alone might allow in 9/11 to
count as art, but not this broader system.
Systemic moderate moralism
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By saying all this, I mean to argue that in order for
the global system of our civilization to exist, art must
be compatible with minimal moral principles of
mankind. But morality is subjected as well to an
evolutionary dynamics of systems. Morality then
depends on a great number of factors, among which
are some particularly relevant to our discussion,
namely, the inputs and feed-backs coming from the
artistic system. These will have an important and
legitimate role, without implying that they can force
ethics to renounce to its essential elements, say,
determining certain more or less general imperatives
for the human behavior.
Systemic epistemic moderate moralism
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Something is not art if it contravenes morality –
understanding this in a wide sense, not in the
restricted sense of individual morality, but the
broader morality by which societies are ruled, and
which all have agreed to govern over our common
life, the minimal moral code in which all our creeds
can have a place, namely what we can name
minimal aesthetics, meaning that minimal
agreement to define art through a free and rational
dialogue
Systemic epistemic moderate moralism
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The position of systemic-epistemic moderate moralism can also
explain why art must be censored. To put it another way, and
against Danto, art has to be open to public censorship, but not in
any usual sense, rather, in the same way in which a scientific
theory is open to scientific censorship or a law to sovereign
people’s censorship. With all this, we don’t intend to
disenfranchise art by tying art to philosophy, as Danto announces
in his work The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, nor
must we tie art to morality. On the contrary, I have argued here
for a necessary systemic consideration of art. Something claimed
to be art but which functions to exacerbate its status within the
overall system, perhaps by violating core standards of morality
as I think 9/11 and some other “artistic” works, will lead straight it
to its own extinction.