Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism

Abstract

Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism advances a new, production-oriented approach to the ethical criticism of art. Its overarching arguments are these: (1) Judgments of an artwork’s ethical value are often made in terms of how it was created, and, furthermore, this is in part because some art forms more readily lend themselves to this form of ethical appraisal. (2) Among the ways in which art is ethically criticized, this production-oriented approach more often leads to practical consequences (censure, dismissal, prosecution, shifts in policy, legislation) because its claim to objectivity is less contested than that of other sorts of ethical criticism. (3) Together, (1) and (2) constitute an approach to the ethical criticism of art that is not only tacit in many art appreciative practices, but which is rationally warranted and defensible. In short, there are many cases in which one should ethically critique artworks in terms of how they are created because this approach encompasses cases that other approaches cannot and results in plausible judgments about the works’ ethical merits and flaws.

Appreciating paintings of the virtuous: The influence of perceived artist morality on aesthetic judgment of their works.

“…First, in exploring the relationship between art and morality, we only manipulated the morality of the creator of the art (the artist). Although the artist is inextricably linked to the artwork, there are other manipulations in other literature discussing art and morality, such as ethical criticism of the way artworks is produced (Nannicelli, 2020). Future research should further explore the relationship between morality and aesthetics in this regard.…”

On the Ethics of Imagination and Ethical-Aesthetic Value Interaction in Fiction

“…Otherwise, interactionism needs to point to a different source of intrinsic ethical value or agree that only non-fictional artworks have ethical value that can interact with aesthetic value, and revise its arguments. More promising might be interactionist approaches that focus on works' consequences (Stecker 2005), production processes (Nannicelli 2020), or political value (DuBois 1926), but which have so far remained at the margins of the debate.…”

“…. Notable exceptions include JamesHarold (2020), Robert Stecker (2005 and TedNannicelli (2020), who argue that works' consequences and production processes are sometimes relevant. I come back to this in the concluding remarks.4.…”