Art, Emotion and Ethics

Can a good work of art be evil? Berys Gaut argues that artworks are always aesthetically flawed if they have a moral defect that is aesthetically relevant. He shows how moral goodness is a kind of beauty, that artworks can teach us about morality, and that it is right for emotional responses to artworks to be guided in part by moral considerations.

List of Illustrations; 1: The Long Debate; 2: Aesthetics and Ethics: Basic Concepts; 3: A Conceptual Map; 4: Autonomism; 5: Artistic and Critical Practices; 6: Questions of Character; 7: The Cognitive Argument: The Epistemic Claim; 8: The Cognitive Argument: The Aesthetic Claim; 9: Emotion and Imagination; 10: The Merited Response Argument; Bibliography; Index