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Morality of a Work and its Moral Value - Criticizing Gaut’s Ethicism -

Lee, Haewan 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Can a work of art be artistically good or bad by virtue of its moral features? I critically examine Ethicism, Berys Gaut’s version of moralism, which partly claims that artwork is aesthetically defective in so much as it is morally defective. I find this is not a coherent position to maintain as it would face difficulties in handling some intuitively unfavorable cases. However, what I find more interesting is what lies behind this incoherence which stems from unclarity concerning how to judge the moral value of an artwork. It is my belief that we are not very attentive about a possible distinction between the ‘morality of a work’ and the relevant sense of the ‘moral value of the work.’ It is legitimate to evaluate a work in terms of moral standards, for example whether a work as a whole endorses a morally problematic point of view. This determines the morality of the work. However, I argue that this so-called ‘point-of-view morality’ does not determine the moral value of the work. A work’s moral value has to do with its capacity to influence the audience in morally significant ways. In order to decide the moral value, we may have to consider the effectiveness of the moral influence and artistic choices for this goal and not merely whether it endorses a certain point of view. For example, the audience would be able to utilize the immorality of the work to reflect upon their own moral sensitivity and scope, as immoralists claim. We can also think of a moral piece of work (that has a point of view morally praiseworthy) which has no moral influence to the audience reasons being; since it is too naive, too pedantic, too predictable, etc. Therefore, utilizing consequentialist’s view on moral value, I suggest how to evaluate a work’s moral value as an artistic value, where moral and artistic evaluation is one and the same. I believe Ethicism too, in spirit, wanted to establish this but was not able to do so due to its implicit identification of a work’s ‘point-of-view morality’ with its moral value.

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