This major collection of essays stands at the border of aesthetics and ethics and deals with charged issues of practical import: art and morality, the ethics of taste, and censorship. As such its potential interest is by no means confined to professional philosophers; it should also appeal to art historians and critics, literary theorists, and students of film. Prominent philosophers in both aesthetics and ethics tackle a wide array of issues. Some of the questions explored in the volume include: Can art be morally enlightening and, if so, how? If a work of art is morally better does that make it better as art? Is morally deficient art to be shunned, or even censored? Do subjects of artworks have rights as to how they are represented? Do artists have duties as artists and duties as human beings, and if so, to whom? How much tension is there between the demands of art and the demands of life?
Acknowledgements; List of contributors; 1. Introduction: aesthetics and ethics Jerrold Levinson; 2. Three versions of objectivity: moral, aesthetic, and scientific Richard W. Miller; 3. Aesthetic value, moral value, and the ambitions of naturalism Peter Railton; 4. About consistency in one's personal aesthetics Ted Cohen; 5. Art, narrative, and moral understanding Noël Carroll; 6. Realism of character and the value of fiction Gregory Currie; 7. The ethical criticism of art Berys Gaut; 8. How bad can good art be? Karen Hanson; 9. Beauty and evil: the case of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will Mary Devereaux; 10. The naked truth Arthur C. Danto; 11. Aesthetic derogation: hate speech, pornography, and the aesthetic contexts Lynne Tirrell; Bibliography; Index of names and titles.
