The guiding theme of these essays by aesthetician, musician, and Santayana scholar Morris Grossman is the importance of preserving the tension between what can be unified and what is disorganized, random, and miscellaneous. Grossman described this as the tension between art and morality: Art arrests a sense of change and yields moments of unguarded enjoyment and peace; but soon, shifting circumstances compel evaluation, decision, and action. According to Grossman, the best art preserves the tension between the aesthetic consummation of (...) experience and the press of morality understood as the business of navigating conflicts, making choices, and meeting needs. This concern was intimately related to his reading of George Santayana. The best philosophy, like the best art, preserves the tension between what can be ordered and what resists assimilation, and Grossman read Santayana as exemplifying this virtue in his embrace of multiple perspectives. Other scholars have noted the multiplicity or irony in Santayana's work, but Grossman was unique in taking such a style to be a substantive part of Santayana's philosophizing. (shrink)

The guiding theme of these essays by aesthetician, musician, and Santayana scholar Morris Grossman is the importance of preserving the tension between what can be unified and what is disorganized, random, and miscellaneous. Grossman described this as the tension between art and morality: Art arrests a sense of change and yields moments of unguarded enjoyment and peace; but soon, shifting circumstances compel evaluation, decision, and action. According to Grossman, the best art preserves the tension between the aesthetic consummation of (...) experience and the press of morality understood as the business of navigating conflicts, making choices, and meeting needs. This concern was intimately related to his reading of George Santayana. The best philosophy, like the best art, preserves the tension between what can be ordered and what resists assimilation, and Grossman read Santayana as exemplifying this virtue in his embrace of multiple perspectives. Other scholars have noted the multiplicity or irony in Santayana’s work, but Grossman was unique in taking such a style to be a substantive part of Santayana’s philosophizing. (shrink)

Book Information Art and Morality. Art and Morality José Luis Bermùdez and Sebastian Gardener , London : Routledge , 2003 , 303 , £50 ( cloth ) By José Luis Bermùdez. and Sebastian Gardener. Routledge. London. Pp. 303. £50 (cloth:).

Morris Grossman, the author of this captivating collection of essays Art and Morality: Essays in the Spirit of Santayana, was fond of quoting Santayana as saying, “when Peter tells you something about Paul you learn more about Peter than you do Paul.” This aphorism appears several times in this volume, and its emphatic repetition should clue us into Grossman’s approach to expository writing. While the book is ostensibly about figures from the history of philosophy and art in individual essays, (...) its real charm comes from getting a sense for Grossman’s intellectual temperament across the whole volume. One aspect of Grossman’s intellectual character which is favorably displayed portrayed in this book is his... (shrink)

_Art and Morality_ is a collection of groundbreaking new papers on the theme of aesthetics and ethics, and the link between the two subjects. A group of distinguished contributors tackle the important questions that arise when one thinks about the moral dimensions of art and the aesthetic dimension of moral life. The volume is a significant contribution to philosophical literature, opening up unexplored questions and shedding new light on more traditional debates in aesthetics. The topics explored include: the relation of (...) aesthetic to ethical judgement; the relation of artistic experience to moral consciousness; the moral status of fiction; the concepts of sentimentality and decadence; the moral dimension of critical practice, pictorial art and music; the moral significance of tragedy; and the connections between artistic and moral issues elaborated in the writings of central figures in modern philosophy, such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The contributors share the view that progress in aesthetics requires detailed study of the practice of criticism. This volume will appeal both to the philosophical community and to researchers in areas such as literary theory, musicology and the theory of art. (shrink)

A great number of works of art, it is commonly claimed, are aesthetically valuable. Some philosophers have even argued that providing an aesthetically pleasing experience is their only proper function. However, some of these artworks display or invite us to adopt an immoral point of view. Even worse, they even seem to make immoral situations delightful and appealing. The following questions thus arise: Does the alleged immorality of these works count as an aesthetic or artistic defect? Can an immoral movie (...) or novel ever be a great example of its kind? In addition to these concerns related to art evaluation, the connection between various forms of art and morality has been investigated by discussing the capacity of works of art to move us emotionally. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to defend the view that art is a relevant source of knowledge, including moral knowledge, in the absence of empirical evidence corroborating this view. In the first part, I discuss what is known as the causal question, that is, the question regarding art's impact on spectators. I argue that the alleged failure of art to impact us may be a matter of moral motivation and the particular circumstances of moral reasoning more than the cognitive (...) and ethical character of a work. To support my claim, I rely on contemporary research on moral reasoning. I conclude by sketching a wider context within which we should consider art's impact, stressing the relevance of cognitive sciences and moral psychology. (shrink)

Traditionally, questions about the role of the arts in moral thought have focused on the arts’ role in the acquisition of new moral knowledge, the refinement of moral concepts, and the capacity to apply our moral view to particular situations. Here I suggest that there is an importantly different and largely overlooked role for the arts in moral thought: an ability to reconfigure the structure of our moral thought and effect what we might call a revolution in that framework. In (...) this article I explain this distinction between two kinds of change in view, suggest the second type has not been addressed by the extant literature, provide examples of this role, and argue for its importance. (shrink)

This book reconsiders the relationship between aesthetics and theological ethics. The primary question it seeks to answer is whether artistic creativity is a morally relevant activity. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Aquinas, Choi argues that the arts are the cultural medium through which we can better understand what is morally possible, and that aesthetic objects can serve as snapshots of a particular community's perspectives on the good life. Art, in other words, offers glimpses not only into (...) competing moral visions within society but also the extent to which these contested moral views are understood. The arts, in Choi's view, provide a way of assessing the limits and possibilities of moral reasoning, the contextuality of moral discernment, and the need for moral thinking that is dialogical and dialectical. (shrink)

A key point of feminist moral philosophy is that social and political conditions continue to work against women’s ability to flourish as moral agents. By pointing to how violence against women undermines both autonomy and integrity I uncover a significant means through which women are undermined in society. My focus is on violence against women as a pervasive, inescapable social condition that women can counter through self-defence training.

The discussion in this paper begins with some observations regarding a number of structural similarities between art and morality as it involves human agency. On the basis of these observations we may ask whether or not incompatibilist worries about free will are relevant to both art and morality. One approach is to claim that libertarian free will is essential to our evaluations of merit and desert in both spheres. An alternative approach, is to claim that free will is (...) required only in the sphere of morality—and that to this extent the art/morality analogy breaks down. I argue that both these incompatibilist approaches encounter significant problems and difficulties—and that incompatibilist have paid insufficient attention to these issues. However, although the analogy between art and morality may be welcomed by compatibilists, it does not pave the way for an easy or facile optimism on this subject. On the contrary, while the art/morality analogy may lend support to compatibilism it also serves to show that some worries of incompatibilism relating to the role of luck in human life cannot be easily set aside, which denies compatibilism any basis for complacent optimism on this subject. (shrink)

_Art and Authority: Moral Rights and Meaning in Contemporary Art_GOVERK. E.Oup. 2018. pp. 208. £40.00.

In his essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste,’ Hume argues that artworks with morally flawed outlooks are, to some extent, aesthetically flawed. While Hume's remarks regarding the relationship between art and morality have influenced contemporary aestheticians, Hume's own position has struck many people as incoherent. For Hume appears to entangle himself in two separate contradictions. First, Hume seems to claim both that true judges should not enter into vicious sentiments and that true judges should adopt the standpoint of an (...) artwork's intended audience. But The Iliad, say, was obviously intended for an audience that shared Homer's flawed moral outlook. Second, Hume appears to claim that our moral sentiments are both highly resistant to change and extremely fragile. This essay defends Hume against these two objections by drawing increased attention to the role that Hume's aesthetics assigns to the faculty of good sense or sound reason. (shrink)

Morris Grossman, who died in 2012 at the age of 90, was a rare combination of philosopher, musician, and composer. Inspired by American philosophy, especially the philosophy of Santayana, he wrote with originality and verve on a variety of topics. As is befitting a student of Santayana, his thought moves freely over the worlds of philosophy, art, music, literature, politics, and religion. The essays in Art and Morality: Essays in the Spirit of George Santayana, finely edited by Martin Coleman...

This volume brings together essays by leading philosophers of art who consider what can be learned from the meaning of art about society, morality, and life in general. This subject inevitably leads to discussion of other issues. Is art distinct from life? Is a concern with art's messages consistent with an appropriately aesthetic appreciation of its works? Is there anything distinctive about the manner in which art communicates its messages, or about the messages it conveys? The topic of art's (...) social and moral importance has always been a central one in aesthetics. However, whereas Plato and Schiller, for instance, viewed art as intimately implicated in a person's moral and social education, modernist theories have argued for art's autonomy and separation from worldly matters. The essays presented here provide a contemporary perspective on this long-standing debate and reveal the recent revitalization of humanist concerns in describing art and its significance. Contributors are Stephen Davies, Susan L. Feagin, T. J. Diffey, Jenefer Robinson, Gregory Currie, Peter Lamarque, Jerrold Levinson, David Novitz, Ismay Barwell, Göran Hermerén, and Richard Shusterman. (shrink)

Can a work of art be defective aesthetically as art because it is defective morally? Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain both develop Thomistic accounts of the arts based on Aquinas’s distinction between the virtues of art and prudence, but they answer this question differently. Although their answers diverge, I will argue that both accounts make a crucial assumption about the metaphysics of goodness that Aquinas denies: that moral and aesthetic goodness are distinct species, not inseparable modes, of metaphysical goodness. I (...) propose a new way to develop a Thomistic account of the arts that begins with Aquinas’s treatment of the three inseparable modes of metaphysical goodness: the virtuous, the useful, and the pleasant. This foundation seems metaphysically, methodologically, and explanatorily prior to the accounts of Gilson and Maritain, because art is a virtue, and virtue is related to goodness, and goodness is “divided” into three inseparable modes. (shrink)

Mark Twain, the great American writer of the South whose characters struggle with difficult choices, famously said: Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other. Taking Twains phrase as a starting point, this book considers how literature and art explore different systems of values and principles of conduct, and how they can teach us to cope at times of trial. Morality remains one of the most contested areas of thought and ethics in (...) the modern world, due to numerous misapprehensions and the move away from solidarity, from what we share and hold in common, particularly our inherent pursuit of virtue and consideration of principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad. Featuring essays by scholars from countries which have seen traditions of virtue and character formation perish in the course of tragic social experiments, this book highlights the role of literature and arts in educating about virtues and character, in both a regional and global context. The volume offers philosophical analysis of moral education and engages with the literary canon, discussing the ways in which virtue was taught and can still be taught with Aristotle as one of the regained tools of learning. The essays span countries from England, Spain, Italy and Belgium to the USA, Costa Rica, ancient China and Israel, with Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Central Europe receiving considerable coverage. They address themes of virtue and character formation from the Bronze Age to the present and serve as inspiring reading for educators, literary scholars, historians, ethicists, artists and active readers. (shrink)

1. There is an important argument which can be traced back to Kant's second and third Critiques , and which has been defended by a number of distinguished modern philosophers.1 It goes as follows. Moral judgments are universalizable; that is, I am logically committed to making the same moral judgment about all relevantly similar cases. If I refuse to make the same moral judgment about two relevantly similar cases, then either I believe that they are relevantly different, or I have (...) changed my moral views between examining the first case and examining the second, or I am simply irrational and not a proper subject for discussion. In contrast, however, aesthetic judgments are not universalizable; works of art are necessarily unique. If I say that a painting is aesthetically pleasing or successful or important or striking or whatever, I am not committed to making the same judgment about any relevantly similar work. Occasionally no doubt I might make the same judgment about a relevantly similar work, but I am in no way logically committed to doing so. Indeed in certain cases—the cases which are the topic of this paper—I am logically committed to making an entirely different aesthetic judgment of a relevantly similar work. Since works of art are necessarily unique, copies, fakes, forgeries, pastiches and ‘works in the style of …’, however plausible, however skilful, however close to the original, can never have the same aesthetic merit. Even if my Athena print of a Canaletto were qualitatively identical with the original, it could not have the same aesthetic merit. Even if a modern symphony reproduced perfectly the style of Mozart and even if it were in general of comparable musical quality, it could not have the same aesthetic merit as the forty-one originals. (shrink)