Art and Ethics 1 - Introduction

hello YouTube today we're going to look at the relation between art and ethics and the main question here is if an art work is morally bad does that make it aesthetically bad does the moral value of an artwork influence its aesthetic value Lenny - Styles film triumph of the will is often regarded as a masterpiece in terms of its cinematic qualities but it's a piece of Nazi propaganda most of us would find the message of that film morally repulsive so does that make it a bad film does that count against its value as an artwork or when judging it is not work should we put our moral reactions to one side so that's the debate that we will be looking at so one in the first place we need some idea of what it means to say that an artwork is morally good or bad and there are three things we might have in mind here so first we might be concerned about the activities involved in the creation of the artwork if I murder somebody and then use their blood to draw a picture that artwork has a tainted history if I take pictures of women in the shower without their consent and then I use their image to create a new report rate again there are some morally questionable activities going on there so that's one sense in which in artwork might be morally bad second there's the causal thesis that artworks can cause morally good or morally bad behavior so people often criticize Quentin Tarantino movies and video games like Grand Theft Auto on the grounds that they encourage violence it's long been supposed that artworks have a positive or negative influence on people's behavior and attitudes now in this series we're not going to be concerned about either of these things we're not going to be concerned about moral questions with things preceding or following the artwork questions about how the artwork was created or about its behavioral consequences instead we'll focus on the moral properties of the artwork in itself as it were and the primary concern here is with is the artworks can Express or commend or presuppose certain attitudes and these attitudes may be morally good or bad so triumph of the will as Nazi propaganda I would assume commence a a pro-nazi attitude to the viewer the the filmmakers want to encourage you to be a Nazi I should note by the way that I've never actually seen triumph of the will I'm just using that as a famous example but I'm guessing that it probably kind of commended a pro-nazi attitude something like Doctor Who arguably commends individualism over authoritarianism we're asked to support a very rebellious and authoritarian character some songs may be anti-war or pro war or whatever this is just the trivial point that artworks have messages and those messages can be morally good or morally bad just as a person can have a particular character at hold particular attitudes and these are open to moral evaluation so an artwork can have a moral character an express particular attitudes and we can evaluate them so that's gonna be our our kind of main focus in in this series with that in mind let's outline the main views first there's radical autonomous 'm or radical a moralism according to the radical autonomist it's inappropriate to even think of artworks in moral terms art is totally outside the domain of morality our works don't even have moral features if we even have a moral reaction to an artwork we're doing something wrong so I suggested that triumph of the world is morally repugnant the radical autonomous would reject this he would say it's simply inappropriate to be concerned about moral questions we should focus entirely on the cinematography the editing the plot structure and that's all so here's a little diagram to represent the view moral questions are just it should just not even be broached now this position strikes me as being kind of obviously silly we just can't separate art from the rest of life in such a radical way there was a recent case in an artist called Florian mehnat I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly so apologies if not but but minutes created an artwork in which he put a rat in a box and had a gun pointing at the racked and after 11 days he would allow Internet users to decide whether or not to shoot the rat the artwork was called 11 days this is pretty clearly open to ethical criticism there's a significant question whether it's acceptable to kill rats for art now you might say well this example is beside the point I mentioned just a minute ago that our concern in this series is with moral questions about the artwork itself we're not concerned about actions done to create the artwork so killing rats during the creation of an artwork would be beside the point but notice that in this case is not just that the rat was killed in the creation of the artwork the killing of the rat is literally part of the artwork the killing of the rat was one of the elements of the artwork that Florian mehnat put on display to be judged by the art consumer so here's a kind of obvious case where you know we can apply moral questions to art I should know incidentally that it actually turned out that the gun was a fake the rat was never going to be harmed but we can easily imagine somebody making an artwork in which they kill animals I think there have been examples of that so with that in mind a much more plausible position is moderate autonomous 'm or moderate a moralism on this view artworks can be morally good or morally defective and the moral criticism of artworks is perfectly appropriate however moral value and the aesthetic value are totally autonomous they're totally independent being morally good doesn't make an artwork aesthetically better being morally bad doesn't make an artwork aesthetically worse by all means criticize triumph of the Wills pro-nazi message but you can't say that this message counts against it aesthetically so those are these sort of main autonomous positions now into moralism moderate moralism is the view that the moral of an artwork sometimes influences its aesthetic value moral evaluation can be aesthetic evaluation so that's moderate moralism as ethnic ISM is the stronger claim that moral value always influences aesthetic value it's been developed by Baris Gort and here's how he sums it up he says that I think is amiss the claim that if they work manifests ethically reprehensible attitudes it is to that extent aesthetically defective and if the work manifests ethically commendable attitudes it is to that extent aesthetically meritorious so moderate moralism claims that amal defect is sometimes an aesthetic defect ethic is implies that a mold defect is always an aesthetically effect the moral properties of an artwork are always among its aesthetic properties radical moral ISM is the view that the aesthetic value is is the view that aesthetic value is constrained by moral values such that if an artwork is morally good then it's aesthetically good and if an artwork is morally bad then it's aesthetically bad so although other things might be aesthetically relevant the central aesthetic value is moral value so on on ethic ISM and moderate moralism we can say that triumph of the will is a good film overall it's just that the moral badness of its message counts against it the moral value is just one consideration among many on radical moralism moral value is a kind of trump card it doesn't matter how many other virtues triumph of the will has its an aesthetically bad film I think this is an even more Serpas ition than radical a moralism but apparently some people have held it Leo Tolstoy is sometimes cited as being a radical moralist Tolstoy argued that the essential function of art was the expression of emotion and he felt that morally virtuous emotions such as religious sentiments and expressions of love and support for the unity and brotherhood of mankind and so on were of central importance expressing morally virtuous emotions is literally the point of art for Tolstoy that's little what art is for so you can kind of see how that might lead to this idea that the central to aesthetic value is moral value but I think this position is fairly silly anyway there's a little diagram of it now you could also reject autonomous in by adopting immoral ISM you could hold the different artwork is morally bad this makes it aesthetically better so the standard assumption seems to be that if more value influences aesthetic value it must be a positive correlation the better it is morally the better it is aesthetically but we might take the view that the relationship is negative moral magnet badness can make the work aesthetically good and an intuitive case of this might be comedies in humor they do seem to be cases where the moral badness of a joke makes it funnier sometimes a joke might be so offensive or outrageous that you can't help but method it this example is debatable because arguably standard examples of morally bad jokes turn out not to be morally bad so take take the joke so here's that here's an example of a potentially morally bad joke a Jewish boy asks his mother if he can borrow $20 to see a movie his mother responds $15 since when does it cost $10 to see a movie that's a plausible example of a joke which is morally bad and we might think if we find it funny that it's moral outrageousness it's part of what makes it funny but on the other hand we could argue that it's not really morally bad because although the joke presupposes a rather unpleasant stereotype about Jews we're only pretending we don't really believe the stereotype whether or not that joke counts as morally bad depends on the context and in the context of a bunch of an enlightened and unprejudiced people saying it it's not bad so we can debate this example but the point is for now there's clearly a plausible case for immoral ism about humor for the idea that humor is made funnier by being morally bad and we might wonder if this can extend to other forms of art finally we can combine moralism and immoral ism into variable ISM which is the view that sometimes more new correlates positively with aesthetic value sometimes it correlates negatively so if a what if an artwork is morally bad this can be an athletic virtue or it can be an aesthetic vice it just depends on the artwork this is a view that I find most plausible personally but anyway we can diagram the available views as follows now I don't know of any philosopher who has held any version of immoral ISM in the sense that I'm defining it people who are attracted to the idea that aesthetic value could be increased by moral dissolute tend to go for variable ism but I thought I might as well mention the whole space of possible views I'm not gonna discuss immoral ism in much detail though also I'm not going to discuss radical autonomy zhem or radical moralism any further because I think those of use are just silly so we'll focus on the more plausible moderate views the real debate then is between moderate autonomy 'sm I think ISM moderate moralism and variable ISM and that's what we will look at throughout the next few videos but that's it by way of introduction

Channel: Kane B

Views: 4,421

Rating: 4.9480519 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy, philosophy of art, ethics, aesthetics, moralism, autonomism, immoralism, art, amoralism, ethicism

Id: mpS2QuWl0O8

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2015