Noel Carroll: Art and Ethical Criticism Carroll's position is one of moderate moralism. Objections to Ethicism/Moralism Autonomism argument: art + ethics are autonomous realms of value. This is an argument made by aestheticisim. 1. Common denomination argument: a lot of art has nothing to do with morality. E.g. orchestral music, decorative art ... these promote nothing ethical. Thus, the standard by which all art should be judged cannot be ethical. Autonomist view + essentialism - assumes that there is some unique defining feature of all art. Aesthetic experience thus excludes art from other sources of value. 2. The Argument from Cognitive Triviality Ethical criticism isolates a moral thesis associated with an artwork, and commends the artwork in light of this. But often, the moral thesis is nothing more than a number of truisms, and is in no way enlightening. Works presuppose more often than they discover. The 'essentialist' criticism can also be levelled: the discovery of knowledge cannot be unique to aesthetic value. Responses: 1. The Common Denominator The argument fails because it does not imply that ethical criticism is inappropriate for all artwork ... what about art that does have some ethical elements? e.g. Greek tragedies, George Grosz' portraits. Both clearly prescribe an ethical response. In response to the claim that there must be single criterion of value for all art, we can respond that first, this does not preclude multiple local criteria, and secondly, we can be sceptical about the existence of a 'single global criterion', given the diversity of art. The autonomist might argue that all artwork aims at the promotion of 'aesthetic experience', but it's not clear that this is true. E.g. tribal artworks designed to scare intruders. Or consider Buddhist cave paintings in Ellora. These are intended to commemorate great events + enable people to recollect certain religious events. Thus, in this case art's purpose is religious + ethical. The ethical critic can grant that not all works are suitable for ethical evaluation, and those that are still have independently evaluable features. In many cases, ethical evaluation is simply in terms of the norms of that genre, e.g. tragedy.
Moderate autonomism: Will concede that ethical criticism is valid at times, but holds that it is nevertheless distinct from aesthetic criticism. Responses to Cognitive Triviality Supposedly, ethical critics generally abstract moral theses from artworks ... they treat them as knowledge claims, and commend them because readers etc. will learn from them. But then we see that much art engages in truisms - so EC lacks an object. Response: too narrow a construal of knowledge. The criticism assumes that the relevant knowledge is propositional in form. Ethical criticism argues for 'knowledge of what it would be like' - e.g. Uncle Tom's Cabin: knowledge of what slavery was like. Relevant type of knowledge for moral reasoning because entertaining potential courses of action requires imagination. Problem: what does it take to be an instance of this kind of knowledge? And does it reduce to propositional knowledge? Second response to