Immoralism and the Valence Constraint

Abstract

Immoralists hold that in at least some cases, moral flaws in artworks can increase their aesthetic value. They deny what I call the valence constraint: the view that any effect that an artwork's moral value has on its aesthetic merit must have the same valence. The immoralist offers three arguments against the valence constraint. In this paper I argue that these arguments fail, and that this failure reveals something deep and interesting about the relationship between cognitive and moral value. In the final section I offer a positive argument for the valence constraint.For the last thirty years or so, many of the philosophical discussions concerning morality and art have centered on whether a moral flaw in a work of art can render that work aesthetically worse. Those who hold that it can are usually called moralists; their traditional opponents, who hold that aesthetic value is not affected by moral value (at least not qua moral value), are called autonomists. 1 More recently, however, a third view has emerged, distinct from both of these: immoralism. 2 Immoralists hold that in at least some cases, moral flaws in artworks can increase their aesthetic value. In this paper I argue that standard arguments for immoralism fail, and that this failure reveals something deep and interesting about the relationship between cognitive and moral value.

Morality and Aesthetics of Food

“…All variants of art moralism endorse the valence constraint (Harold 2008): the claim that a feature's effect on the work's moral value must have the same valence as its effect on the work's aesthetic value, regardless of the magnitude of the effect. The valence constraint accommodates both ethicism and moderate moralism; moderate moralists simply include some effects with zero magnitude.…”

Art, Ethics, and Critical Pluralism

“…Insofar as our responses are directed at others, albeit often fictional others toward whom we cannot act, a work's intrinsic ethical value may, on some definitions, also be considered more narrowly moral. The Humean conception of a work's intrinsic ethical value is sufficiently broad to be accepted by central and opposing figures in the debate, including Berys Gaut (, 9–10), Noël Carroll (), Matthew Kieran (; ), and Daniel Jacobson (, 347), all of whom emphasize the way works of art prescribe or invite feelings, desires, judgments, or imaginings . It is also sufficiently broad to accommodate Robert Stecker's further distinction between attitudes endorsed and attitudes merely explored by a work, as well as his thought that the kind of attitude being endorsed, or the way in which a certain kind of attitude is explored, can make a difference to a work's ethical value (, 150, 159–61; ).…”

“…Following a fair amount of confusion in the current debate, a helpful and potentially comprehensive classification of views has emerged that relies on two motivating questions (Gaut , chap. 3; Jacobson ).…”

Moderate Comic Immoralism and the Genetic Approach to the Ethical Criticism of Art

“…4 In separate articles, James Harold and Robert Stecker have offered several reasons to think that this formulation of the immoralist argument, which is wedded to what we might call a perspectival approach, fails. 5 Yet because this is the way in which immoralists have argued their case, neither Harold nor Stecker have addressed, let alone lodged objections against, other ways of arguing for immoralism. Their arguments do not cut against the approach I advocate here, which argues for immoralism by identifying artistically valuable moral flaws in relevant actions undertaken in a work's creation.…”