Art and Ethics: How to Be a Radical Moralist - Jones Lecture by Prof. Alessandro Giovannelli

“Art and Ethics: How to Be a Radical Moralist”

Jones Faculty Lecture by Alessandro Giovannelli, Associate Professor of Philosophy

When works of art are judged from an ethical point of view, does such a judgment ever matter to an assessment of those works’ artistic value? I claim there is at least one kind of ethical evaluation of works of art that always affects their value as art—it is the ethical evaluation that targets the “ethical perspective” the work embodies. Hence, the so-called ethical criticism of art should be considered a legitimate art-critical practice every time such criticism depends on this sort of ethical evaluation. The view I defend, the ethical fittingness thesis (EFT), by claiming that there is a systematic relationship between ethical and artistic value, subscribes to a form of moralism. Further, since the thesis maintains that such a systematic relationship obtains for works of every kind, across the realm of art, it is a form of radical moralism. My view departs from the most popular accounts on the relationship between ethical and artistic evaluation in its making no reference to audience experiences or responses, hence avoiding a number of difficulties such accounts must face. At the same time, the sort of ethical evaluation that is relevant to EFT seems to be precisely the type of evaluation the alternative accounts are preoccupied with. Certainly, it is a kind of evaluation that pervades ethical discussions of art, especially with respect to representational artworks. Hence, EFT cashes out several of the intuitions expressed by alternative accounts and entertained within actual art-critical discussions, while it enjoys a high degree of theoretical neutrality with respect to controversial theoretical issues.

The talk is sponsored by the Thomas Roy and Lura Forest Jones Faculty Lecture and Awards Fund, established in 1966 to recognize superior teaching and scholarship at Lafayette College.