Aesthetics and Morality

172 Pages·2008·7.458 MB·English

by  Schellekens, Elisabeth

AESTHETICS AND MORALITY
Continuum Aesthetics
Series Editor: Derek Matravers, Open University and
University of Cambridge, UK
The Continuum Aesthetics Series looks at the aesthetic questions
and issues raised by all major art forms. Stimulating, engaging and
accessible, the series offers food for thought not only for students
of aesthetics, but also for anyone with an interest in philosophy
and the arts.
Titles available from Continuum:
Aesthetics and Architecture, Edward Winters
Aesthetics and Literature, David Davies
Aesthetics and Morality, Elisabeth Schellekens
Aesthetics and Music, Andy Hamilton
Forthcoming in 2008:
Aesthetics and Film, 3Katherine Thomson
Aesthetics and Nature, Glenn Parsons
Aesthetics and Painting, Jason Gaiger
AESTHETICS AND
MORALITY
ELISABETH SCHELLEKENS
Continuum
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Elisabeth Schellekens, 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
First published 2007
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-8524-3
PB: 0-8264-9762-4
ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-8524-3
PB: 978-0-8264-9762-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schellekens, Elisabeth.
Aesthetics and morality / Elisabeth Schellekens.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-8524-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-9762-8
1. Aesthetics. 2. Ethics. I. Title.
BH39.S3285 2008
111.85-dc22
2007019576
Typeset by Kenneth Burnley, Wirral, Cheshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Part I: The Limits of the Aesthetic
1 Disentangling the Aesthetic 13
2 The Values of Art 29
Part II: Art and Moral Value
3 Art as a Source of Understanding 45
4 Moral Convictions and Artistic Appreciation 63
5 Must Art Serve a Moral Purpose to be Good? 77
Part III: Beauty and Moral Goodness
6 Kant's Theory of Beauty, Morality and Freedom 95
7 Sensibility to Value 115
8 Beauty and Virtue of the Soul 131
Notes 147
Bibliography 151
Index 157
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Philosophical Aesthetics and Moral Philosophy are areas of inves-
tigation that have fascinated me ever since my days as a student,
and to all intents and purposes, long before that too. Many people,
both philosophers and non-philosophers, have provided me with
food for thought and shaped my reflections on the questions raised
in these fields over the years, often in ways that I am no longer
even aware of. In particular, though, I would like to express my
heartfelt gratitude to Ronald Hepburn, who first taught me Aes-
thetics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and
who opened my eyes to the richness and depth of these spheres of
enquiry.
I would like to thank Sarah Campbell and her colleagues from
Continuum Press for their help and enthusiasm for the project.
I am grateful to Derek Matravers, the Series Editor, for many
interesting conversations and exchanges on the subject. Also, Ella
Carpenter and Catherine Harris, who with their great friendship
have sustained and encouraged me throughout, and Matthew
Murphy, for the many excellent examples of immoral art. I am
particularly grateful to my family, who have taught me to see the
value of beauty and goodness, and encouraged me to pursue them
at all levels of life.
Finally, I would like to thank Guy Dammann who read the
manuscript with infinite care and in minute detail, and without
whose analytic yet sensitive understanding of the material this
book would most definitively be an inferior version of itself.
Without Guy, there would simply be neither beauty nor goodness
in my world, and thus most probably no book to speak of.
vii
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INTRODUCTION
I
Philosophical Aesthetics is a discipline with fewer natural friends
than foes. From within the academic world, it is regularly consid-
ered ancillary, charged with dealing merely with 'soft' issues.
Aesthetics, it is held, is hardly concerned with the central questions
of Philosophy, such as how we acquire knowledge of how the
world and its contents are to be divided, and thus fails to address
those areas of investigation held to be of genuine importance.
Conversely, from outside the academic environment, Aesthetics is
often considered either irrelevant or misleading. For philosophical
examination of everyday aesthetic phenomena, such as the experi-
ence of beauty or the making of an aesthetic judgement, may seem
unwarranted and uncalled for. Surely, one may say, the aesthetic is
all about the pleasure we stand to gain, the emotive experience we
may have, or the general well-being it may bring about? Applying
rigorous philosophical method to such notions can only make
them dry, dreary and perhaps even unrecognizable.
The overriding aim of this book is to show that the two ways of
viewing Aesthetics sketched above are both deeply misguided. In a
first instance, academic philosophers who are inclined to hold a
negative view of the concerns of Aesthetics are wrong to assume
that the discipline does not deal with notions that are pivotal to
philosophical analysis and interests in general. On the contrary,
Aesthetics engages directly with issues central to Metaphysics, to
the theory of knowledge (or Epistemology), and the Philosophy of
mind. Although it is certainly true that such investigations are
primarily directed at the study of aesthetic qualities, aesthetic per-
ception and aesthetic judgement - and can to that extent be said
to target a relatively small and exceptional category - exactly the
same questions apply. Further, we can nearly always learn some-
thing about the more conventional cases from looking at these
slightly unorthodox ones with which they are contrasted.
I