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Körtesi Márton

Mráz Attila

Critical Thinking, Normative Evaluation

23 November 2010

Autonomist Manifesto

Art, and narrative art in particular, has a tendency to evoke moral judgment as well as

aesthetic evaluation, which is not surprising at all considering that artistic content, especially in

narration, generally includes actions which have moral implications. The question is not whether

moral evaluation of art exists, as that cannot reasonably be denied, but rather whether moral

evaluation is legitimate or appropriate when considering art qua art. James C. Anderson and Jeffrey

T. Dean defended the stance of moderate autonomism when considering the issue, claiming that

while moral evaluation is legitimate, it is not a form of aesthetic evaluation; Noël Carroll argued, as

a moderate moralist, that moral evaluation is not only legitimate, but in some cases can have an

aesthetic impact; let us for the sake of this essay disregard further doctrines such as Berys Gaut's

ethicism, as the points raised therein will not be addressed. My thesis, going with the premise that

aesthetic evaluation and moral judgment are completely autonomous (which is a task I don't intend

to fully undertake), is that moral evaluation of art solely as art is completely inappropriate and

illegitimate. Let me first address counterarguments as presented in Carroll's reply to Anderson and

Dean to the claim that moral values do not qualify as aesthetic values in any form. In brief, the

points I intend to address are the relevance of the cultural embedment of artistic tools of expression

and the Common Reason Argument. After having addressed these points to some extent I will

attempt to define the nature and purpose of art in trying to prove the illegitimacy of moral judgment.

In the article Ethical Criticism of Art, Ella Peek refers to an argument against dismissing

moral evaluation as a form of aesthetic evaluation: “[the autonomist view] ignores the fact that

certain art forms are culturally embedded, and, as such, are inextricably bound up with important
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social values, such as moral value.” However the aesthetic value that the culturally embedded

artforms have does not depend on the manifestation of ethically commendable attitudes: aesthetic

value comes from the exploitation of structural possibilities provided by moral content, regardless

of the positivity or negativity of its moral value. A few examples for such structural possibilities

include opposites such as heaven and hell or Jesus and Satan allowing for contrast, connotations of

various symbols such as the cross, and so on (note that these examples are shorthand for various

agencies that have moral connotations, as intuition dictates that metaphorical locations and objects

cannot be morally evaluated). Naturally, full understanding of these aesthetic structures requires

some amount of knowledge of the cultural environment (in the case of the above examples, for

instance, Western culture and Christianity); however, cultural or moral knowledge does not entail

moral judgment. In fact, in radical cases, moral judgment or lack of appropriate moral knowledge

detracts from aesthetic immersion: if the audience considers both Jesus and Satan as morally

objectionable, as opposed to the Christian canon or the system of morality as explicitly presented by

the artwork, they will fail to appreciate the contrast.

Carroll also makes a so-called Common Reason Argument that Anderson and Dean

summarize thus: on his view, sometimes “the reasons for the work's being aesthetically defective

and the reasons for the work's being morally defective are the same” (pp. 156-7) and therefore the

judgment that the work is morally flawed is also an aesthetic judgment. A specific example, for

instance, could be that a Nazi officer receives the Nobel Peace Prize and the audience reacts with

laughter, outrage or ridicule instead of the reverence which the author intended the audience to

experience. The argument goes on as such: since the artwork fails to elicit the expected reaction, it

must therefore be aesthetically flawed. However, the author's intentions have no bearing on

aesthetic evaluation. Such a failure will only be the shortcoming of the author and not the aesthetic

quality of the artwork: a farce is a farce regardless of whether the author intended it to be a tragedy

or a historical piece, and should be evaluated as such.

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As for the second part of my thesis, to be able to judge the legitimacy of moral judgment at

all, we have to determine the nature and function of art. This is necessary as moral evaluation

presupposes either that the correct way of artistic interpretation is for the audience to impose their

own moral system on the artwork, or that the purpose of art is at least in part to impart a system of

morality on the audience. However, the first stance seems patently absurd, and the second stance is

questionable at best considering the reaction of an audience that disagrees with the moral content of

the artwork at hand: the proposed system of morality will most likely be dismissed unless the

audience already agrees with it. This might lead to the conclusion that since the morality of the

artwork is dismissed, so are its aesthetic qualities relating to moral content. However, this does not

seem to be the case when we consider Greek tragedies, for instance: while aesthetically they are

heavily dependent on moral content that is at times radically different from current moral norms, the

stereotypical audience won't consider this an aesthetic shortcoming, assuming appropriate

knowledge of the system of morality the Greek tragedy operates in.

Perhaps I am too optimistic in assuming that art should, in the majority of cases, achieve its

purpose whatever we make it out to be, but it seems counter-intuitive that its goal should be

something that is by nature unachievable at least when trying to impart radically different moral

norms on the audience. I posit that art qua art either exists to strive towards aesthetic perfection. If

we can accept this to be true, we it seems intuitive that regarding the appreciation and aesthetic

evaluation of art, moral judgment is inapplicable, art only incidentally or by necessity having

content at all.

Carroll raises the notion of an ideal or morally sensitive audience whose appreciation of and

immersion in a specific artwork will necessarily be inhibited by morally problematic content,

arguing that such lack of immersion is an aesthetic defect on the part of the artwork. However, if we

assume that aesthetic value transcends individual judgment, which is a separate issue in itself, but

seems to be backed up by intuition, the question of personal immersion or lack thereof (whether for
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moral reservations or other reasons) will have no bearing whatsoever on the aesthetic evaluation of

the artwork at hand. I might suggest the concept of a differently ideal audience: one that willingly

suspends moral judgment for more complete immersion.

In essence, my argument against the legitimacy of moral judgment of art boils down to a

separation of form and content: art being, for want of a better word, a thing of pure aesthetics, it is

unreasonable to judge it in the same terms as we would judge the thoughts depicted through it. The

aesthete's undertaking, in my eyes, is to distinguish good art from bad art, but to do that we must

first distinguish art from non-art: narrative art from everyday communication, depictive art from

pictograms, music from noise, and so on. The difference between these two cannot lie in moral

content, since, staying for the sake of simplicity with the narrative art/communication distinction,

discussions on moral issues happen every day without any of the participants or observers making

the claim that art is happening, so to say. The difference, quite possibly, is simply that such a claim

is made in the case of art by the author. Therefore, once we state that art is at hand, it should be

judged by a different set of criteria than statements of opinion, insofar as the evaluation is

concerned with artistic value. These criteria seem to me to be concerned with beauty of form, not

rightness; if any moral statement is made, evaluation is completely justified, just not in terms of

aesthetics.

Ultimately, I think, the argument between autonomism and moralism boils down to an

opposition of different definitions of art, and therefore the argument consists of nothing more than

the two factions misinterpreting any statement derived from their opponent's definition. An

autonomist will probably make the same claims I did, that art qua art is, for want of a better term,

the form at hand; moralists and various iterations will most likely argue that art is the organic thing

that is form and content together. However, since most probably the opposing factions don't accept

each other's definitions, they are no longer debating the same thing. If this is the case, the question

of moral evaluation is no longer an issue, and any artistic evaluation is an affront to artists unless
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they have the same definition of art as the critic. In fact, this revelation renders the parts of this

essay concerned with the moralist argument quite irrelevant; as a compromise I suggest that any

further excursions on the nature of art merely be called manifestos.

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Bibliography

Anderson, James C.; Dean, Jeffrey T. “Moderate Autonomism”British Journal of

Aesthetics, Vol. 38, No. 2. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Carroll, Noel. “Moderate Moralism Versus Moderate Autonomism” British Journal of

Aesthetics, Vol. 38, No. 4. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Peek, Ella. Art, Ethical Criticism of. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 4 April 2004.

Web. 23 November 2010.