Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection

by Edited by Jerrold Levinson

• ISBN13: 9780521788052
• ISBN10: 0521788056
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-12
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This major collection of essays stands at the border of aesthetics and ethics and deals with charged issues of practical import: art and morality, the ethics of taste, and censorship. As such its potential interest is by no means confined to professional philosophers; it should also appeal to art historians and critics, literary theorists, and students of film. Prominent philosophers in both aesthetics and ethics tackle a wide array of issues. Some of the questions explored in the volume include: Can art be morally enlightening and, if so, how? If a work of art is morally better does that make it better as art? Is morally deficient art to be shunned, or even censored? Do subjects of artworks have rights as to how they are represented? Do artists have duties as artists and duties as human beings, and if so, to whom? How much tension is there between the demands of art and the demands of life?

Table of Contents

Editor's acknowledgments	vii
List of contributors	viii
Introduction: aesthetics and ethics	1	(25)
Jerrold Levinson
Three versions of objectivity: aesthetic, moral, and scientific	26	(33)
Richard W. Miller
Aesthetic value, moral value, and the ambitions of naturalism	59	(47)
Peter Railton
On consistency in one's personal aesthetics	106	(20)
Ted Cohen
Art, narrative, and moral understanding	126	(35)
Noel Carroll
Realism of character and the value of fiction	161	(21)
Gregory Currie
The ethical criticism of art	182	(22)
Berys Gaut
How bad can good art be?	204	(23)
Karen Hanson
Beauty and evil: the case of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will	227	(30)
Mary Devereaux
The naked truth	257	(26)
Arthur C. Danto
Aesthetic derogation: hate speech, pornography, and aesthetic contexts	283	(32)
Lynne Tirrell
Bibliography	315	(9)
Index of names and titles	324