Abstract

James Harold’s Dangerous Art (2020) is a provocative and stimulating contribution to contemporary debates about the relationship between art and ethics—one that, I am sure, will redirect philosophical discussion in productive and important ways. In my view, the first half of Harold’s book will prove especially useful in advancing stalled debates by shifting our focus from the ethical features of artworks themselves to how those works affect us and the role they play in our communities (p. 96). Much of what Harold says strikes me as plausible and persuasive—particularly in the book’s first half, in which he focuses on the question of the ethically relevant effects of art. Therefore, in my role as critic, I will offer one suggestion for a way that Harold might refine his view on this topic—namely, by allowing that there are some cases in which what artists do in their artworks is both the proper object of ethical appraisal and closely connected to the effects their art has on us. I will then critically explore an aspect of the book that I found less convincing: Harold’s case for expressivism in Chapters 6 and 7.