* Provides a timely and philosophically significant contribution to modern aesthetics * Features some of the best contemporary work in philosophical studies on literature, moral beliefs, and thinking in art * Reflects on the significance of a moral life of engagement with works of art .

Notes on Contributors vii

Foreword xi
Garry L. Hagberg

Part I: Historical Foundations 1

1 Is Ethical Criticism a Problem? A Historical Perspective 3
Paul Guyer

Part II: Conceptions of Ethical Content 33

2 Narrative and the Ethical Life 35
Noel Carroll

3 A Nation of Madame Bovarys: On the Possibility and Desirability of Moral Improvement through Fiction 63
Joshua Landy

4 Empathy, Expression, and What Artworks Have to Teach 95
Mitchell Green

Part III: Literature and Moral Responsibility 123

5 "Solid Objects," Solid Objections: On Virginia Woolf and Philosophy 125
Paisley Livingston

6 Disgrace: Bernard Williams and J. M. Coetzee 144
Catherine Wilson

7 Facing Death Together: Camus's The Plague 163
Robert C. Solomon

Part IV: Visual Art, Artifacts, and the Ethical Response 185

8 Staying in Touch 187
Carolyn Korsmeyer

9 Susan Sontag, Diane Arbus, and the Ethical Dimensions of Photography 211
David Davies

10 Ethical Judgments in Museums 229
Ivan Gaskell

Part V: Music and Moral Relations 243

11 Cosi's Canon Quartet 245
Stephen Davies

12 Jazz Improvisation and Ethical Interaction: A Sketch of the Connections 259
Garry L. Hagberg

Index 286

Early in his philosophical career, Wittgenstein cryptically remarked that “Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.” But is “the good” really interchangeable with “the beautiful”? While aesthetics and moral values often do seem to go hand in hand, we all know that the devil is in the details. Art and Ethical Criticism explores these elusive details to shine a scholarly light on the complex relationship between the arts and morality. This groundbreaking work begins with a thorough examination of the historical roots of the concept of ethical criticism as it applies to literature, the visual arts, and music. A series of thought-provoking essays by leading philosophers then delves deeply into the complex network of interconnections between the ethical and aesthetic realms. Areas explored include ways of describing ethical content in the arts; the value of literary case-studies for moral understanding; distinct ethical issues that arise in connection with our exposure to visual art, artifacts, photography, and architecture; and the significance of moral relations as depicted in music and its performance.

The result is a multifaceted, conceptual study that probes into the sublime nature of beauty, art, and morality to reveal that ethics and aesthetics are not one and the same after all – but nor are they, according to any simple division, two. Art and Ethical Criticism is a stimulating and insightful inquiry into contemporary philosophical debates that lie at the intersection of aesthetics and moral philosophy.

"This is an excellent and genuinely useful collection of essays on a very important topic that is just beginning to receive wide attention from analytical philosophers."
–Ted Cohen, University of Chicago