Art and Morality An Introduction

Acknowledgments x
Introduction xi

1 Art, Emotion, and Morality 1
Introduction 1
Plato and the Theory of Identification 3
On Identification as a General Account of Audience/Character Emotive Engagement 13
Emotions, Art, and Criterial Prefocusing 17
An Objection: What About Moral Change? 23

2 Further Criticisms of the Effects of Emotional Engagement with Art 27
Introduction 27
Plato Redux 28
The Imitation Argument 29
Questioning the Imitation Argument 32
The Illusion Argument 34
The Economic Argument 44
Descendants of Plato 48
Saint Augustine 48
The Response Argument 49
The Pleasure Argument 51
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 53
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) 56

3 Alternative Positive Views of the Nexus of Art, Emotion, and Morality 60
Introduction 60
Empathy 61
On the Very Many Meanings of "Empathy" 62
Empathy and Sympathy 63
"What Is Empathy?" 65
On the Strong Version of the Common View of Empathy 65
Revisiting the Common View of Empathy 67
Empathy and Morality 69
Is Empathy Ethically Reliable? 72
Art, Empathy, and Moral Cultivation 75
Simulation 78
Explaining Mind-Reading 78
What Is Simulation? 79
Questioning Simulation 83
Appendix: Empathy Revisited 89
Admiration 90

4 Art, Cognition, and Morality 97
Introduction 97
Part I: For and Against: Specific Skeptical Arguments Regarding Moral Cognitivism 98
Arguments Against Moral Cognitivism 98
Skeptical Arguments Against Art as a Source of Knowledge 98
Challenging the Skeptic's Arguments Against Moral Cognitivism 104
The No-Evidence Argument 105
The Tainted-Representation Argument 109
The No-Argument Argument 110
The As-Art Argument 117
The No-Expertise Argument 121
The No-Artistic-Truths Argument 124
The Banality Argument 124
The No-Originality Argument 126
The No-Critical-Argument Argument 126
The Skeptic's Error Theory 127
Part II: Recurring Skeptical Presuppositions Reviewed and Challenged 129
Cognitively Valuable? 130

5 Autonomism 137
Introduction 137
The Emergence of Autonomism 137
Formalism 144
Aesthetic Art Theory 149
Summary 156

6 Moralism Versus Autonomism 157
Introduction 157
Extreme Moralism 157
Autonomism Redux 159
Moderate Moralism Versus Moderate Autonomism 161
Objections to Moderate Moralism and Rejoinders 167

Index 181