Thoughts on which to conclude.
Ethicism rests on the claim that actual responses can be had towards fictions: philosophers may debate the reality of fiction induced emotions such as pity or fear, but no one would deny the reality of pleasure or displeasure one feels toward fiction. Appeal to actual responses is important because it allows the ethicist to circumvent the objection that, since a reader cannot actually possess responses he only imagines, he cannot be held morally responsible for them. For the ethicist, this is to be denied for two reasons: first, since imagined responses are expressive of a one’s moral character, a person can be ethically condemned for his imagined responses. Second, since the attitudes manifested by works toward fictional entities implicitly manifest the same attitudes in regards to real entities of that kind, it follows that artworks can be aesthetically flawed due to the morally reprehensible character of emotions implicitly directed at real situations. These reasons force the ethicist into the uncomfortable position of adopting a discourse of moral condemnation, both in regards to works that approve of evil and the people who enjoy them: the reader aroused by scenes of sexual torture in Juliette, or the sexual relationship that transpires between a tortured prisoner and her torturer/lover’s son in La hora azul, is to that extent morally depraved, since his responses are a reflection of a corrupt character; de Sade or Cueto’s work is aesthetically defective to the extent that it fails to condemn its morally reprehensible subject matter. Though I agree that the ethical and aesthetic domains are intertwined, I find these reasons excessively moralistic. The ethicist thesis condemns representations of rape, pedophilia, sexual torture, incest—whether in the mind or in art—at face value, without considering the dark and damaged reaches of the human soul from which they spring. It is my feeling that literature, as form of rationality, is the expression of reason’s darker, subterranean other half. Perhaps the mark of a truly ethical work of fiction is that it brings this darkness to light, fully and without moral condemnation.
3 comments:
I think you're right about that. Cueto's inclusion of sex between the torture victim and the son of the torturer rubbed me the wrong way and I found it hard to see things clearly after that.
But to say that it shouldn't have been included is wrong, and I take back what I said. Because it's a dangerously slippery slope to start saying what "should" and what "shouldn't" be depicted in fiction.
And it provides some valuable material for a Freudian reading. ;)
I think you might be confusing the experience of art with the cool gaze of the clinician, which adds no moral/emotional judgement whatsoever, but merely examines and evaluates. I don't know if its possible to create or to experience art without some kind of moral response since moral judgement is often the product of an emotional reaction. (I'm totally with Hume on linking moral judgement to pleasure or pain and the indirect passions). Both the creation of art and the consumption of it are affective experiences and thus prone to some kind of moral reaction. Of course a reflective person is capable of examining those reactions and using them to gain a better understanding of himself. While I recognize that my reading of Cueto was an instinctual aversion based on a deeply ingrained feminist (not religious) morality, I can also see that there are other ways to read the text. A non-refective person might just call for prohibitions.
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