Unit:
Κατεύθυνση Ιστορία και Φιλοσοφία των Επιστημών και της ΤεχνολογίαςLibrary of the School of Science
Supervisors info:
Βιρβιδάκης Στέλιος, Καθηγητής, ΕΚΠΑ, ΙΦΕ (πρώην ΜΙΘΕ)
Κιντή Βασιλική, Καθηγήτρια, ΕΚΠΑ, ΙΦΕ (πρώην ΜΙΘΕ)
Χατζημωϋσής Αντώνιος, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, ΕΚΠΑ, ΙΦΕ (πρώην ΜΙΘΕ)
Original Title:
Aesthetics and Ethics: Immoral Art
Translated title:
Aesthetics and Ethics: Immoral Art
Summary:
The present thesis focuses on the issue of the association of aesthetic and ethical values, an issue of recurrent interest in the realm of philosophical aesthetics. Since antiquity, different versions of moralism have been historically predominant. In the 19th century, Autonomism appears as the very opposite of Moralism, holding that different types of value – aesthetic, moral, cognitive, and others – are independent of each other in art. In the 20th century, Noël Carroll (1996) initiated the discussion again with ‘Moderate Moralism’, arguing that a moral defect in a work of art is sometimes an aesthetic defect. Berys Gaut (1998) in “The Ethical Criticism of Art”, proposed a stronger version of moralism called ‘Ethicism’ whereas Anderson and Dean (1998) advanced ‘Moderate Autonomism’, the view that a moral defect is never an aesthetic defect, and criticised moralists for conflating two conceptually distinct categories of criticism. Matthew Kieran (2003) offered a third alternative in his “Forbidden Knowledge: The Challenge of Immoralism,” where he argues that a moral defect is sometimes a merit in a work of art qua art due to the cognitive value of that defect. It might be thought that the latter viewpoint approaches the issue of the relation between art and morality with a view to defending the primacy of aesthetic evaluation, however, from a moralistic perspective. The present thesis offers a delineation of these positions with a focus on the question of whether it is appropriate to invoke moral considerations to appreciate art. Simply stated, can moral defects in artworks also be aesthetic defects?
Main subject category:
Science
Other subject categories:
Philosophy - Psychology
Keywords:
Aesthetics, Ethics, Autonomism, Immoral art, Value of art
