Art and Morality

Ethics and aesthetics are both spheres in which judgements of value (good and bad) and action (right and wrong) are made. This raises the question of how if at all they are aligned or interact. Is a morally repugnant film or novel aesthetically worse that a morally admirable one? Is a virtuous action beautiful, and a vicious one ugly? There are several views on these issues. According to moralism the moral character of an artwork is relevant to its aesthetic quality. According to autonomism they are entirely distinct. According to aestheticism the ethical character of an action may make it ‘fine’ or ‘beautiful’, (or ‘unfitting’ or ‘ugly’), while in opposition to this is another version of autonomism again separating the moral and the aesthetic. These matters have come to be discussed and debated because we do sometimes criticize art from a moral perspective and also describe virtue and vice in aesthetic terms. On the other hand, the two domains can seem to stand apart, as in the case of people of refined artistic capacity or aesthetic sensibility who may nevertheless be moral monsters, and people devoid of artistic sense and aesthetic feeling yet being models of moral goodness. A middle way through these positions may lie in saying that aesthetic or moral characteristics are relevant to but do not determine judgements in the other category.