On Judging the Moral Value of Narrative Artworks

The Interaction of Ethics and Aesthetics in Environmental Art

“…This is true, but as Lintott acknowledges, there are some cases in which such claims overlap. As I suggested above, the reason some philosophers have objected to the production‐oriented approach to ethical criticism seems to be that this gap between claiming that the work is unethical and that the way the work was created is unethical tends to be particularly wide in the case of narrative art (for example: Harold , 261; Eaton , 282). Imagine a novelist murders a number of people for the purposes of helping him create a serial killer character in his novel.…”

“…In a previous article, I tried to forestall objections to the production‐oriented approach by showing that some cases met a test proposed by James Harold () (see Nannicelli 2014). The aim behind Harold's test is to distinguish two kinds of reasons why an artwork might be immoral—circumstantial and artistic.…”

“…On Harold's view, the artistic reasons “have to do with artistic properties of the artwork. [They] are distinguished by the role they play in judgments of the aesthetic merit of the work, in other words, in the value of the work qua work of art” (, 260). In contrast, circumstantial reasons “refer to properties that would not be appropriately cited in making judgments about the aesthetic merit of a work” (, 260).…”

“…[They] are distinguished by the role they play in judgments of the aesthetic merit of the work, in other words, in the value of the work qua work of art” (, 260). In contrast, circumstantial reasons “refer to properties that would not be appropriately cited in making judgments about the aesthetic merit of a work” (, 260). Harold's test to determine whether a reason is circumstantial is this: “For some artwork P , if P is immoral for [a circumstantial reason] (and only for these reasons), then we can imagine some artwork P* on twin‐earth that has all the same artistic properties as P , but that has been produced differently … so that none of the problematic moral considerations apply” (, 260).…”

“…In contrast, circumstantial reasons “refer to properties that would not be appropriately cited in making judgments about the aesthetic merit of a work” (, 260). Harold's test to determine whether a reason is circumstantial is this: “For some artwork P , if P is immoral for [a circumstantial reason] (and only for these reasons), then we can imagine some artwork P* on twin‐earth that has all the same artistic properties as P , but that has been produced differently … so that none of the problematic moral considerations apply” (, 260). The cogent thought behind Harold's test is that there is a relevant distinction between ethically‐evaluable aspects of the work's production that bear upon the ethical criticism of it qua artwork and ethically evaluable aspects of the work's production that do not bear upon the ethical criticism of it qua artwork.…”