In this episode of Aesthetics Bites, Eileen John discusses some of the ways that art explores moral questions. Nigel Warburton is the interviewer. Aesthetics Bites is a series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum and Philosophy Bites and is made possible by a grant from the British Society of Aesthetics.
This is Aesthetics Bites, a series for philosophy bites.
With me, Nigel Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
Aesthetics Bites is made in association with the London Aesthetics Forum and made possible by a grant from the British Society of Aesthetics.
What is the link between art and morality?
And can art teach us anything about ethics?
Eileen John of Warwick University believes it can.
Eileen John, welcome to aesthetics bites.
I'm very happy to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on is art and morality.
Now, I know you're particularly interested in literature.
It'd be really interesting to explore how particular works of literature are informative and allow us to explore moral questions.
So can we just begin by picking out an example of a literary work that introduces moral questions?
Yeah.
Let me say I take art and morality to be really great interacting spheres, but they do different things, they have different commitments.
I'll give you an example of a work of drama, Ibsen's play the Wild Duck, that I think is a good example of art, helping us learn about morality, taking morality as a subject matter for art, and going after it in a really funny and engrossing way.
So, for those of us who aren't familiar with that play, could you just broadly sketch what goes on there?
Yes.
I don't want to spoil the plot of the play, but it's a wonderful family drama and it has a central character who tries to be a moral perfectionist.
He wants to live by the perfect moral law, for example, thou shalt not lie.
So he trundles out this perfect moral principle and basically destroys his family because of it.