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Aesthetics: The Mother of Ethics?

Author(s): Marcia Muelder EatonSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 355-364Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430923 .

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MARCIA MUELDER EATON

Aesthetics:The Motherof Ethics?

The presidentialaddress s astrangegenre;mostof us get at most one chance to practicewritingone.' It is tempting to wax nostalgic,but I shall

refrain rom that. I will only tell one story-onethat I hope has a connectionto the mainbody of

my paper.Wehaveall probablybeen askedat some time

or other what made us choose our particularfields, or when we knew that we had chosenit. Although I would not have described it atthe time as "choosingaesthetics"-for I did notknow then whataestheticswas-for me it startedin an art historycourse n college. WereadWolf-flin's Principles of Art History and spent a lot of

class time discussing his analysisof the Italian

Renaissanceandbaroque.Notonlydid thelayingout of necessaryand sufficient conditionsfasci-nate me, I also knew with all the insight of anoverachiever hatone of thequestionson the finalexamwould askwhether,using W6lfflin's defini-tion, one could claim that there was a FlemishRenaissance and baroque. I prepared for thatquestionwithgustoand wasrewardedwhen it in-deed appearedas one of the essay choicesworthtwenty-five points-on the exam. A fewdays laterI picked up the bluebookandthere,at

the end of my essay were the full twenty-fivepoints and the comment"Remarkably lear andcomprehensive reatment or a woman."

This happened long enough ago that thethoughtof filing a grievance did not enter myhead. What had alreadyentered my head andheart was a desire to treatphilosophical ques-tions about art as clearly and comprehensivelyas possible. Whatfollows is anotherattempt.

Inhis Nobel laureateaddress n 1988,the poetJosephBrodsky said, "On the whole, every newaestheticrealitymakesman'sethicalrealitymore

precise. For aesthetics is the motherof ethics."2

Many of us in this roomhave struggledto con-vince othersthat aesthetics and ethics are con-

nected; some of us have gone so far as to claim

that aesthetic and ethical value are, at leastsometimes, equally importantand serious. Butfew go so far as Brodsky does in this remark.One might even construe it as hyperbole.An-other author,AndreGide, when asked in an in-

terview whatmoralityis, responded,'A branchof aesthetics."3One senses that Gide was tryingto be outrageousor cute. I think Brodsky,how-ever, was quite serious. I want to puzzle overwhatit could possibly mean to say thataesthet-ics is the mother of ethics. In his lecture, Brod-sky did not spell outin detailwhat he meant, but

for me the phraseis enthralling.I would like todiscuss some possible interpretations nd someissues that the phrase raises.

The history of Westernphilosophy does notoffer many theories in which aesthetics is priorto ethics. Plato, of course, tells us that beautyandgoodnessareontologically quivalent.Henceneithercan be construed as the "mother"of theother. And, of course, when at the level ofhumanexperience the aesthetic is embodiedar-tistically, it is strictlyinferior o ethics for Plato.

Even when our friend Aristotle gives artisticvalue its due, it does not for him become supe-rior to or prior o ethical value.At most they areequal-as they are for his medieval champion,ThomasAquinas, who ascribesethical value todoing, aesthetic valueto making.Though good-ness andbeautyfor him aremanifestlydifferentin humanexperience,Aquinas, like Plato, doesgive themontologicalequality.But whenhe dis-cusses the conflicts that may arise when onetriesboth to do good andto create beauty,he ac-knowledges that art can have both positive and

negativeeffects on ourmoral life. These are de-The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism55:4 Fall 1997



356 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

termined extra-aesthetically by the degree towhich art leads one to God-so in this sensegoodness finally takes the primaryrole. In latercenturies,whenbeautyandgoodness arerelated,

when beauty is as beauty does, for example, themoralalmost always takes precedence.

Westernphilosophy offers us plenty of sys-tems in which the ethical and the aesthetic arefirmly separated.Kant's is the most influential.It is againstsuch views thatI (and manyothers)have argued.The formalism thathas its roots inthe Kantianseparationof the aestheticfrom theethical and cognitive has led, as Mary Dev-ereaux has succinctly summarized, o preclud-ing a full understandingof artworks,confusingthe interestsof the dominantgroupwith univer-sal interests,anddisguisingthe actualstandardsof evaluation that are employed.4Referring tosuch formalism as "radicalautonomism,"NoelCarrollhasrecently arguedthat it fails to recog-nize that a greatmanyworks of art become intel-ligible only when the audienceprovides appro-priatemoralemotion andevaluation.SFailure oelicit propermoralresponse,he argues,can beanaestheticflaw. Buteven those of us who insiston a deep connection between aesthetic andmoralvaluerarelygo so far as to saythat he aes-

thetic is in some sensepriorto the ethical.There may be assessments that require bothaesthetic and ethical reflection simultaneously.I have elsewhere suggested that sentimentalityis such a notion. But in these cases the ethicaland aesthetic areon equalfooting. Neither s themother.

Mark Packerhas recently argued that someevaluative notions used morallyare in fact aes-thetic.6 He gives several examples of conductthat is deemed offensive even when no threatofpain or infringementof rightsexists. Suppose,

he says, we could use DNA painlessly extractedfrom cows orchickens to createribeye steaks orboneless breasts.Since no animalwould suffer,vegetarianargumentsagainst eating such meatlose their force. And suppose further,that wecould produce and serve human flesh in thesame way. Does all moral offensiveness disap-pear?Packeranswers,"No."But the offensive-ness, outrageousness,or at the very least the in-appropriatenessherein must lie in aestheticevaluation,since no issues of pain or rightsareinvolved.He says, "Ourconsumptionof human

flesh ... [or other] real life instances of harmless

offense, such as incest between consentingadults, are instances of behaviorthatare foundunacceptablen virtue of the actionsthemselves,i.e. for aestheticreasons."Negative responseto

harmlessoffensivenessis, he thinks, more wide-spreadandcommon than we haverealized.

Packer calls this an "aesthetic approachtomorality,"and there are ties, I think, to viewsthatI shalldiscuss later.But even if he providesa way of giving priority o aesthetics overethicsin some specific moral responses, there is stillan historical and conceptualdependence of theformer on the latterrather than the other wayround.Outrageousness,orexample, even if it isnow primarilyan aestheticresponse, s a vestigeof a moral response that originates because ofdeleteriouseffects, according o Packer.Pains orrights nfringementmayget separatedoff (noth-ing may be caused pain if I eat DNA-producedroast human thigh) but the principle againstdoing it remains, as does the emotional aver-sion. So, implicitly for Packer, he ethical doesretainits priority.And he admits that his analy-sis seems only to fit some ethical notions (likeoffensiveness), not all-so it cannot serve as ageneral argument upporting he priorityof aes-thetics over ethics.

There have been theoristswho have thoughtthat there is a causal connection between aes-thetic and ethical experiences.Tolstoy,for ex-ample, insisted thatgenuine artistic expressionis a matterof transmitting eelings and therebyspirituallyunitingcommunities.People who re-ally participate n real art aremorally mproved.Urbandesignersfrom ThomasJefferson o JaneJacobs have argued that beautiful cities makefor better citizens. When the BaltimoreAquar-ium opened a new CaribbeanReef exhibit, thecuratorsaid that she believes that when people

see how beautiful the ocean ecosystems are,they will be morelikely to take action to protectthese environments. ndeed,many ecologists doreport that the beauties of nature nitially drewthem to theirspecializations.

Unfortunately, we can find a plethora ofcounterexamples o the claim that aesthetic ex-periences make people morally better in gen-eral. SS officers in Nazi concentrationcampsoften arranged oncertsperformedby prisoners.People who love to visit forests on weekendsoften leave litter behind; and there is little evi-

dence thatartists aretypicallykinder than non-



Eaton Aesthetics: The Mother of Ethics? 357

artists. As Alan Goldman puts it, "For everyVerdithereis a Wagner."7

Evenif it were truethatpeople for whomaes-

thetic activity plays a significant role in their

lives were more ethical thanothers,the priorityof aestheticswouldnot be established.Advocat-

ing city beautification via claims about the

moral benefits presupposesethical preferences.

Saying that more fountains and neater streetswill make betterneighborspresupposesa theoryof what it is thatmakes citizens "better." ust as

claiming that eating more salmon makes one

healthier depends upon a concept of health,valuing beauty as a means to goodness presup-

poses a conceptof moralgoodness. Theoriesof

artistic genius that attributespecial ethical in-

sights to art makers, even if true, also presup-poses a concept of what it means to be ethical.Thus even those theorists who have claimed acausal connection for art and the aesthetic on

the one hand and ethical action on the other do

not providea way of giving the aesthetic theroleof mother.

Brodsky himself makes some causal claimsin his Nobel laureateaddress:"I have no wish to... darken hisevening,"he saidon thatoccasion,

with thoughtsof the tens of millions of human livesdestroyed by othermillions. ... I'll just say thatI be-

lieve-not empirically,alas, but only theoretically-

that, for someone who has read a lot of Dickens, to

shoot his like in the name of some idea is somewhat

moreproblematic han for someone who has readno

Dickens.... A literate, educatedperson,to be sure,is

fully capable,afterreadingsome political treatise or

tract,of killing his like, andeven of experiencing, n

so doing, a raptureof conviction. Lenin was literate,

Stalinwas literate,so was Hitler; as for Mao Zedong,

he even wrote verse. What all these men had in com-

mon, though, was that their hit list was longer thantheirreading ist.8

Brodsky here echoes a position taken by Wayne

Booth in the volume he entitled The Company

WeKeep. The books we read, like the friends we

surround ourselves with, say much about what

kind of people we are. But I think that Brodsky

is doing more than making a causal claim when

he says that aesthetics is the mother of ethics.He has another, a conceptual, connection inmind, I believe. What he seems to be after is a

strongsense in which the ethical comes into ex-

istence only whenan aestheticsystemis alreadyestablished.

American philosophydoes serve up one per-

son who could providethe strong priorrole for

aesthetics over ethics that Brodsky indicates.Charles Peirce describesaesthetics as the "sci-

ence of ideals,or of that which is objectivelyad-mirable without any ulteriorreason."In a letter

to William Jamesin 1902 he describeshow he

came rather ate to a recognitionof the unity of

the sciences of logic, ethics, andaesthetics,andof the way in which "logic must be foundedonethics, of which it is a higher development.""Even hen,"he admits,"I was for some time sostupid as not to see that ethics rests in the same

manneron a foundationof esthetics-by which,it is needless to say, I don't mean milk andwater

and sugar."9 ustexactly what he does meanin this and elsewhere in his writings-is not

completelyclear.Logic, he says, restson ethicsbecause the question "What is the end of rea-son?" s an ethicalquestion.Ethics in turnrestson aesthetics because answering the question"What conduct will achieve certain ends?" re-

quires answering the question "What are orshould our ends be?" And this last question canonly be answered n termsof intrinsicdesirabil-

ity-an aesthetic matter,he thinks. Or,to put itanotherway, the question "Whatmakesan idealideal?"requiresaesthetic evaluation.

An ultimatendof actiondeliberatelydopted-thatis to say,reasonablyadopted-must be a state of

things that reasonably recommends itself in itself

asidefromanyulterior onsideration.tmustbe anadmirabledeal, having he only kindof goodnessthatsuch an idealcan have;namely, stheticgood-ness.From hispointof view, hemorally oodis aparticularpeciesof theesthetically ood.10

However,the sort of value that Peirce has inmind here is profoundly influenced by Kant'sview of the aesthetic as grounded n feelings ofpleasure. In Peirce's descriptionof how humanunderstandingof the world arises out of hu-mans' experiencesin the world, he presentshistripartitedistinction between firstness, second-ness, andthirdness.Firstness s the qualityof thefelt world-the world as inner, subjectiveex-perience. Secondness is the relation of "bump-ing up againstthe world"-the sensationof selfcoming up againstnonself.Thirdness s the rep-




resentation of generality-the human experi-ence of making predictions. Aesthetic theorybelongs to firstness. When he discusses this as-pect of experience he gives the following exam-

ples: the taste of quinine, the color of magenta,thetragicnessof KingLear.These are,of course,not justpleasuresorpains, butthey arenonethe-less innerfeelings. Peirce says we cannotreallyuse words to name them, because this in itselfwould be artificially to divide upfirstnessby se-lecting only certain aspects of it. Experienceofthis sort is "so tender than you cannot touch itwithout spoiling it."" There are clear connec-

tions here to Kant. And thus the priorityPeircegives to aesthetics depends upon his separatingoff the feeling fromthe objectof thefeeling. Ul-

timately then, Peirce gives priorityto the aes-thetic only by separating the aesthetic com-pletely fromthe ethical. This, as I said aboveinconnection with Kant, is something thatI havetried in recentyearsto show is a misguidedwayof conceiving of aesthetic value. If this is whatBrodskywere to meanby theaestheticbeingthemotherof ethics, I want none of it. Itis-excuseme-throwing out the baby with the bath water.AndI do not thinkthatBrodskywantsthis either.

A more promising source for a view that

might provide an interpretation f what it couldmean to put aesthetics first is found in an inter-view given by Michel Foucault for an Italianmagazine,Panorama. The interview is sugges-tively entitled, 'An Aesthetic of Existence,"andimplicitly is based on his generaltheory of theway in which humanpracticesand institutionsdefine us as individuals,as communities,andasindividuals-in-communities,how names name,for instance. He suggests thatlives can be con-strued as works of art. For example, the differ-ences between the moralities of antiquityandof

Christianity,he says, are differencesin "styles"of liberty.Theformerwas "mainlyanattempt oaffirmone's libertyand to give to one's own lifea certain form in which one could recognizeoneself, be recognized by others, and whicheven posteritymighttake as an example."Thusan "elaborationof one's own life as a personalwork of art ... was at the centre ... of moral ex-

perience" n antiquity.ForChristians,"moralitytook on increasingly the form of a code orrules."12But both can be construedformally-and hence aesthetically. In our own age, as

codes areincreasinglyquestioned-both in par-

ticular and more generally (by BernardWilliams, for example)in terms of the role theyactually play in moral experience-we are in-creasingly, Foucault suggests, seeking a new

form-a different"aestheticof existence."Foucault in this interview does not provide

the details of what such searchingsorchoosingsmight entail, and I do not want to attribute ohim a view in which aesthetics is in some sensethe motherof ethics. Butsupposeonegives moreemphasis than may typically be given to theterm form in Wittgenstein'sphrase "forms oflife." Suppose that one chooses the form one'slife should take before deciding upon the con-tent.Thatis, supposeone optsforthe form Fou-cault ascribes to antiquity-decides that whatmatters is living according to patterns that canbe recognizedby othermembers of one's com-munity as representinga particular ype of per-son or character.Or suppose one opts for a lifein which one demonstrates hatone is followinga code. Whichpatternsor which code is not asimportant, one might imagine, as the fact thatone exhibitsthe style appropriateo patternedorcoded behavior. Form is in this sense priortocontent; and hence aesthetics might be con-strued as priorto ethics.

Something along these lines is also, I think,proposedby Charles Altieri in his book Canonsand Consequences.'3 He sets out to bridge the

Kantian gap between universal ethical princi-ples and concrete moralproblems, and turnstoexpressionof the sortone finds in art for a solu-tion. "Thefullest social uses of art," he writes,

have ess to do withexposing thehistoricalconditions

of theirgenesis than withclarifyinghowtheartshelp

us understandourselvesas value-creatingagents and

makepossiblecommunitiesthatcan assess those cre-

ationswithoutrelyingoncategorical ermstraditionalto moralphilosophy. ... Personsappeal to communi-

ties not because theirdeeds meet criteria orrational-

ity butbecause the deedsembodyspecific featuresof

intentionality that an agent can project as deserving

certainevaluations from those who can be led to de-

scribe t as the agent does.14

Expressionproperlyunderstoodaccounts for astrong sense of artistic presence in works thatgoes beyondthe otherpropertiesof the work. Inart and in human action there are "expressiveimplicatures"that allow speakers "to project



Eaton Aesthetics:TheMotherof Ethics? 359

certain qualities of their own act as significantaspectsof the message."We call attention o theway we speakas well as to what we say.Wepro-ject purposiveness nto the world, thus contrib-

uting to the creationof a "publictheater"wherewe act and react to constitutive acts. LikeCharles Taylor,Altieri believes that in acting,we present a certain kind of self that reflects

second-order values. We take both first- and

third-person stances whenever we enter com-plex personal and social relationships. Simi-

larly, self-assessment is carried on in terms of

traditional orms. These forms come to us fromart, which provides "a rangeof projective sym-pathiesso that we come to appreciatewhat is in-volved in given choices."'15Expressivepatternsconstitutea grammar or action and for evalua-tion of action.A basic question or each individ-ual is "Howwill otherssee me?" But we cannotanswerthis questionwithoutknowingthe gram-mar by which others see us. And this we learnfromart,according o Altieri.

If Foucault and Altieri were insisting upon aseparationof form and content, then I wouldwant no more of them than I do of Kant andPeirce. If they claim that one can choose bareform apartfrom content, if I first choose to ex-

press myself as a code-follower and then choosethe code, for instance,then I believe the claim isa reductio ad absurdum.For it is impossible tounderstandwhat it is for something to have theform of a code withoutunderstanding onceptssuch as the function of a code, which ultimatelyrequires general and probably specific ethicalconcepts.ButI do not thinkthatthis is what theyclaim. Rather, hey represent heethical and aes-thetic as essentially intertwined, and perhapsaclearersense of Brodsky'smothermetaphorbe-gins to emerge.Inthe mother-childrelationship,

the members are not ontologically equivalent,norare theyconceptually eparate,nor is the firstcausallyrelatedbut thenseparated rom the sec-ond. Rather, they are conceptually related andthe causal connections are continuous and inbothdirections.I shallreturn o this idea shortly.

The Foucault-Altieriway of connecting aes-thetics andethics turnsto art as a source for theconstructionof the individual and of communi-ties. They are certainly not alone in so doing.Manypostmodernistshave given a great deal ofattention o the role of art in the developmentofindividual and community identities. Sharon

Welch,for instance,insists thatsolidaritygrowsin partfrom listening to stories.16Humansaremoved not only by better arguments but by'more richlytexturednarratives."She calls this

"transformativecommunication."But she ad-mitsthat aestheticobjectsareonly one sourceof

this, and thus like most postmodernistsviewsthe connection between aesthetics and ethicssynchronicallyrather than as causally or con-

ceptually prior.In the analyticalphilosophicaltradition,writ-

ers suchas HilaryPutnamand DavidWiggins'7argue that artplays a crucialrole in developingmeaningful lives. Wiggins builds on RichardTaylor's use of the Sisyphus myth to explainhow value must be added to one's life eitherbyproviding an external purpose (I am pushingthese stonesuphillto helpbuilda beautifultem-ple) or by producingan appropriate sychologi-cal state (I somehow get an injection of some-thing that produces happiness as I push myboulder).Value,accordingto Wiggins, does notexist independentlyof humanexistence;it is in-vented. In science it makes sense to seek for atruth,at least in the Peircean sense where truthexists as an ideal-the eventualagreementof allrationalpeople. Inethics, allrationalpeople will

notever agree aboutthe single best invention ofwhat counts as a meaningful life. But this doesnot mean that invention is wholly arbitraryorthatall waysof insertingvalue into one's life areequal. Inventionmustbe, as Wiggins puts it, as-sertible.One productof invention, iterature, f-fersalternatives,he says, and we can learn fromart which ways of constructing meaningfullives are assertible. In Anna Karenina, for ex-

ample, Tolstoy representsLevin's life as moreassertible than Anna's. We as readers may dis-agree. But we realize that different rational

agentsinventdifferently.Thus aestheticobjectsare a major source of teaching us how to be in-ventive.They maybe the only source-Wigginsdoes not discuss this. Whetheraesthetic objectscanbe devoid ofethical contentorwhether, venif they could, they could createethics is anotherquestion.PerhapsWiggins's view is a version ofthe causal theory. I am inclined to think it ismore subtle.

The notion of invention is clearly related toimagination-a human faculty that has oftenbeen viewed with fear and suspicionin philoso-phy, but that recently is getting a better rap.




Sabina Lovibond, for example,'8 believes that tis central to ethics, for it is required f we are todo the necessary work of projecting the goodsituations that we want to bring about. Mark

Johnson makes similar claims. In his bookMoralImagination,he arguesthat ourkey moralconcepts are metaphorical both theoreticallyandpractically. Acting morally requiresacts ofimaginative explorationof possibilities open tous in morallyproblematicsituations.'9 We se-lect and then organize significantdetails on thebasis of narrativesprovidedby our cultures.Wecriticize ourselves and others by pointing outthat certain details have been ignored n makingdecisions or that the order of the actions iswrong.

Livinga fulfilling ife in accordance ith someno-tionof humanlourishings oneof thechiefproblemswe are all trying o solve. Weeach wantverybadlyforourparticularife storiesobeexciting,meaning-ful,andexemplaryf thevaluesweprize.Moralitysthusamatter f howwellorhowpoorlywe construct(i.e. live out)a narrativehatsolvesourproblem flivinga meaningful ndsignificantife.20

In this statementwe find a numberof aesthetic

concepts,e.g., "exciting."And, like JohnDewey,Johnsonbelieves that the aestheticis whatgivesexperience coherence by unifying it. Hencemoral development entails aesthetic develop-ment."Theaestheticdimensionsof experience-including magination, motions,andconceptsare what makemeaningand the enhancementofquality possible (orcorrelatively, hedisintegra-tion and impoverishment of experience)."'21Aesthetic skills provide us with the necessarymoralskills of discernment,expression,investi-gation, creativity,and interactionof materials,

forms, and ideas.22Four decades ago, R. W Hepburn and Iris

Murdochurgeda view of moralphilosophythatwould capture concerns similar to Johnson's.Using autobiographiesas data, Hepburn de-scribedan ethic based on "inner vision" ratherthan on a moralityof choices made in specificcircumstances.Somepeople describe heirlives,andwhattheyhavetriedto do withtheir ives, interms of what Hepburncalls "personalmyth."These stories involve "interlinked ymbols, notrules, a fable, not a sheaf of principles."23On

such a view, evaluating lives morally employs

such concepts as coherence, comprehensive-ness, vividness, and harmony. Murdoch, too,suggesteda view of moralitydifferentfrom thestandard one in which moral differences are

based upon "differencesof choice, given a dis-cussable backgroundof facts."24This differentethic, she thinks, accountsfor the following:

When we apprehendand assess other people we do

not consideronly their solutions to specifiable practi-

cal problems, we consider something more elusive

which may be called their total vision of life, as

shownin theirmode of speech orsilence,their choice

of words, their assessments of others,theirconcep-

tion of their own lives, what they think attractiveor

praise-worthy,what they think funny: in short, the

configurationsof theirthoughtwhich show continu-

ally in theirreactionsand conversation.Thesethings,

which may be overtly and comprehensiblydisplayed

or inwardly elaborated and guessed at, constitute

what, making differentpoints in the two metaphors,

onemay call the textureof a man'sbeingor the nature

of his personalvision.25

This textureof being expressesa person'smoralnatureand demands a vocabularyand method-ology not providedby an ethic based solely on

independentchoices.Cora Diamondcontinues this line of thoughtby insistingthat what Murdochcalls "textureofbeing"is precisely what novels give us. (And, Iwouldadd, other kindsof art as well.) A moral-ity based on "formsof social lives"includes,forexample, Henry James's interestin the kind offurniturepeoplehave.26 taccounts or my sym-pathy with Mrs. Gereth's assessment of themoral character of her hosts in his novel TheSpoils of Poynton,whereit is impossiblefor herto sleep because of the way they have wallpa-

peredtheguestroom. It alsoexplainstheuneaseI feel abouthaving laughedwith Mrs. Gereth atthe hosts'poortaste when I am causedto reflect,laterin the novel, upon whatsuch aesthetic as-sessment,amountingas it does to snobbism,canentail. The question, Diamond argues, is nothow art helps me understand an issue moreclearly (e.g., whetherI should talk behind myhosts' back about how badly they have deco-ratedtheirhome),but"How s it that this(what-ever featureof the novel it may be) is an illumi-nating way of writing about that (whatever

feature of humanlife)."27Just as seeing a con-



Eaton Aesthetics: The Mother of Ethics? 361

nection with ethics requires hat one have a viewof aesthetics that differsfromformalism, seeinga connection with aesthetics requiresthat onehave a differentway of thinking about ethics.

But in saying that the moral entails the aes-thetic, or in identifying an aesthetic dimensionto moral development,Johnson,Hepburn,Mur-doch, and Diamonddo not, I think, go as far asBrodsky-at least if what we take Brodsky to

be saying is that the aesthetic necessarilycomesfirst, that there is no ethics without aestheticsinthe sense that first we become aestheticallyskilled and only then does moral developmentbegin. But does Brodskymean this-or does hecome closer to views in which aesthetics and

ethics are not relatedin

terms of causal prioritybutin terms of interwoven nterdependence?In the theoriesI have mentioned, we find two

main ways in which one might posit a connec-tion in which priority s given to the aestheticoverthe ethical. I do not have a satisfactory er-minology, but for lack of anything better willuse the following:

I. Formalistic PriorityAccording to this view, in making a moraldecision, one first chooses style and then

content.

II. Psychological or BehavioralCausal PriorityThe strongversion of this view asserts that:

One who fails to engage in aesthetic ac-

tivity will not be a moralperson.The weak version asserts that:

People who engage in aesthetic activityare more likely to be moral people.

Both,Ibelieve, shouldbe rejected,and if either swhat Brodsky means in saying that aesthetics is

the motherof ethics,then he is wrong.But a thirdkindof connectionhas also been suggested:

III.ConceptualInterdependenceIn order to understandmorality and thusbecome a maturemoralperson,one'sactionmust have both appropriate tyle and con-

tent, and this requiresaesthetic skills.

Inthis position neitherthe aesthetic nor the eth-ical is prior,so if priority s required or mother-hood, Brodsky's metaphor s not apt.

In the Nobel laureateaddress and elsewhere,

there definitely are statements that are consis-tentwithboththe formalistic andpsychologicalor behavioralcausal views. Brodskymaintains

that evil is "badstyle."28 n an essay on Stephen

Spender he says that we recognize charactertraits from an individual's"mdtier."29 hat weare aesthetic creatures before we are ethicalcreatures,he insists, is shownby the waythat weare directedby ouraestheticinstincts.Babiesgoto their mothers ratherthan strangersfor aes-thetic, not for moral reasons.30"Ifin ethics not'all is permitted,'it is precisely becausenot 'allis permitted'in aesthetics, because the numberof colors in the spectrum s limited."'31 rodskychampioned poetry-for-the-people and sup-

ported federal subsidies for distributionf

inex-pensive paperbackbooks because he thoughtacivilization in which artbecomes the "propertyor prerogative of a minority" is doomed.32Politicians "shouldbe asked, first of all, not how[they imagine]the courseof [their]foreign pol-icy, but about [their]attitudetoward Dickens"because, like the envoyshe describes n his latepoem titled after a Balkan dance, "Kolo,"toolittle Dickensmay lead to too muchtime spent

contemplatingewways

of creating ymmetryina future emetery.

Ihavefar more sympathywith thepsychologicalview than with the formalist view. On thosedays when I can still muster up some optimismI even believe that bringing students to loveHenry James or Bach or Michelangelo willmake them morally better.I certainly wish weheard more discussions of David Copperfieldduringpresidentialcampaigns. But I think thatthe third way of connecting aesthetics and

ethics-one that demandsa conceptual nterde-pendence-is closer to the truth, and morelikely to give an interpretation o the mothermetaphor hat enriches the studyof both ethicsand aesthetics.

Inthe Spenderessay, Brodskysays, "Youcantell a lot about a man by his choice of an epi-thet,"33 or "Living is like quoting."34But quo-tation is not just repetition of rhythms andrhymes. Epithets are chosen not just becausethey fit the space on a piece of marble or gran-ite. Werepeatnotjust the way something s said,but the sense or content of what is said. This




conception of the moral is basically Aristote-

lian. But it adds something.Becoming virtuous

involves not just imitating what good people

do-it involves quotation-attempting to copy

the way they do it. The dancer and the dancecannot be told apart.

The reason that Andre Gide could playenfant

terribleby saying that ethics is a branchof aes-

thetics is that aesthetic decisions so often seem

not to pack the punch that ethical decisionsdo. As Stuart Hampshire has written, artists'

choices are"gratuitous."35ven AlanGoldman,with whom I find myself almost always agree-ing, has said that "aesthetic disagreementsdonot involve so broad and directconflicts amongimportant interests" as do ethical disagree-

ments.36 But the views of Foucault, Alteiri,Wiggins, Hepburn, Murdoch, and Diamondbelie this attitude.Forthem, the aesthetic is not

always gratuitous, etalone frivolous.Aestheticscan become as importantas ethics not because

making an ethical decision is like choosingwallpaper,but because it is like choosing onestory over another. The story one chooses is alife story-hardly a gratuitousmatter.

Inher paper"Tasteand Moral Sense,"MarciaCavell seems initially to agree with Hampshire.

She writes:

As moral reatures e have o thinkof the effectsofouractionsonourselves ndothers;wehave o makedifficultdecisionswhichrequire s to consider ndreconsider urcommitmentsnd oftento sacrificeone moralgoodforanother;we areconfronted ithproblemsn sucha waythateven o attempto avoidthem s to incur esponsibility.o hesedimensionsfconcern ndobligationhere snothing arallelntheactivity f artistquaartist.37

And one assumes she thinks there is nothingparallel in the activity of aesthetic viewer quaaesthetic viewer. But she thinks Hampshireoverstateshis case, andin arguingfor a revisionshe comes closer to something like the concep-tualinterdependenceview. As in aestheticjudg-ments, there are many moral judgmentsthat donot involve references to principles,she asserts.And neitheraesthetic nor moraljudgmentscon-cern themselves with "anobject or event in iso-lationfromthe environmentand otherevents."38Moralists and art critics have a great deal in

common, she argues. In moraljudgments,"We

don't so muchjustify ourjudgmentsas explainthem in much the same way as the critic ex-

plains why a character s badly drawn,or how a

musical passage is more or less banal than it

seemedon a careless listening, orwhy a poem isfalse or sentimental."39Wepointto details, givenew emphasis to them, show new patternsand

relationships between them. Moral sensitivity

develops in particularcontexts. We have to pay

attentionto the tone with which something is

saidas well as to thecontent,and to the relations

between speakers, or to meanings of other

words spoken earlieror later.A similarobservation s made by R. M. Hare

in Freedomand Reason,though, like Cavell,he

ultimately seems to want to keep the aesthetic

and the ethical distinct. Moral ideals, he ob-serves, have a close resemblance to aestheticideals, as can be seen in the following example:

The eader f a Himalayanxpedition asthe choiceof either eading he final assaulton the mountain

himself, r stayingbehind tthe astcampandgivinganothermember f hispartyhe opportunity;etit is

easyto supposehatnoargumentoncerned ith heinterests f the partieswill settle the question-forthe interestsmay be preciselybalanced.Theques-

tions hatariseare ikely obe concerned,otwith heinterests f theparties, utwith dealsof whata manshouldbe.Is it better o be the sortof manwho,infaceof greatobstacles nddangers, etstothetopofthe nthhighestmountainnthe world; rthe sortofmanwhouseshis position f authorityo givea friendthisopportunitynsteadof claiming t forhimself?Thesequestions revery ike aesthetic nes. It is asif a manwereregarding is own life and character

as a workof art,andaskinghow it shouldbest becompleted.40

Decisions like this do seem to involve the sort ofthingthatCavellrightlyattributeso artcriticism.

When one attends to relationships and pat-terns of expression, one relates and arrangesspecific things.Attentionto fit andimplicationschallenges one to attendclosely to a varietyofelements,andchallengesone to develop powersof perception, reflection, and imagination. Inthis way,music andabstractart have as much toofferethics as do narrativeand representationalart. Both aesthetic and moralsensitivityare de-mandedin making judgmentssuch as "This sit-

uation calls for bold action" or "This situation



Eaton Aesthetics:TheMotherof Ethics? 363

calls for subtlety."Great music as well as greatliteraturehelps one to learn to make such dis-

tinctions. Many of my students seem to moldtheir ives on soap operas.I think I didtoo at that

age. But I unabashedlyassert now that there arebetter models for meaningful life stories than

Stella Dallas or Melrose Place. Most Bach

fugues offer moretowardbecominga reflective,matureagentthan do mostcountry-westernhits.

At the same time, one mustbe careful not to

interpret he notion of judging lives like works

of art in separatist,formalist terms. One doesnot decide what sort of person to be simply in

terms of rhythms or shapes or fit of images.There is an interdependencebetween whathave

typicallybeen takenas ethical considerationsonthe one hand and aestheticconsiderationson theother. Decisions that are open, even after allmatters of interests or rights are settled, are,nonetheless, not madein ignoranceof mattersof

interests and rights.Butif aesthetics and ethics are equal partners,

what happens to the mother metaphor?Is there

any way of holding on to it if we give up the

view that aesthetics comes first, as I think we

must, finally,do?In order to answer this question, we have to

ask ourselves what work Brodsky intends themetaphor odo. The answeris straightforward:he wants to convince his audienceof the impor-tance of art. All of us, I think, sharethis desireand additionallywould like from such a meta-phor help in convincing others of the impor-tance of aesthetics. The truthof the statementthat aesthetics is the mother of ethics dependsupon the truth of the premises upon which itrests. The argumentgoes something like this:

1. Mothersare valuableto their children.

2. Aesthetics is the mother of ethics.3. Therefore,aesthetics is valuableto ethics.

Also presupposed is a belief in the value ofethics. So aesthetics is valuableto something ofvalue.And the first premise, "Mothersare valu-able to theirchildren,"whenfilled outproducesthe realargument:

la. Mothers are valuableto their children whenand because the relationship that exists be-

tween the mother and child provides thechild with somethingof value.

2a. Aesthetics is the motherof ethics and does

relate to it in a way that provides it with

something of value.

3a. Therefore,aesthetics is valuableto ethics.

The value derivedfrom that relationshipdoes

not require biological or ontological priority.

Rather,the special relationshipcalls attention

to two featuresthatwill help us convince others

of the importance of aesthetics. First, in the

mother-child relation, each memberis defined

in terms of the other.Secondly, it is a relation-

ship in which nurturings long and deep.Are aesthetics and ethics defined in termsof

one another, and does nurturing ake place? Is

whatcharacterizeshe relationbetween hemsuch

thatone might look to aestheticsto try better tounderstand he natureof ethics? I think the an-swer to all of these questions s "yes."Whataes-theticshas to offer ethics (andotherdisciplines)is a kind of understanding hatis notgratuitous.

Still, the mother metaphor is troubling be-

cause we are left with a relationshipthat em-

phasizesa one-way direction,and I believe this

makes it misleading.The only way thatone cansay that aestheticscomes firstby definition is in

terms of barren formal propertiesor patterns.

This I reject. I would prefera metaphor hat em-phasizes the conceptualdependenceand nurtur-ing without the connotation of priority.Friend-ship, for example, or siblinghood would bebetter. But the point Brodsky makes when hesays, 'Aesthetics is the motherof ethics"seemsweakened when we replace t with 'Aesthetics isthe friend of ethics" or 'Aesthetics is the siblingof ethics." Neitherconnotesthedepthorlongev-ity of parenting.This fact in itself supports theview that metaphorsare central to the way wethinkaboutthings.

And the mothermetaphor s gendered.Howdifferent would Brodsky's point have been hadhe said that aesthetics is the father of ethics? Ihave not talked about this and time preventsdoing so here. Suffice it to say thatif this meta-phor demands accepting traditional views ofmothersas illogical servantshappy to remain inthe backgroundgetting satisfaction from wash-ing and ironing others' clothes so thatthey willlook good-I want none of it.

What I really want is to hear from others-

frommoral philosophers,educators,politicians,and so on-that aestheticsprovidesremarkably



364 The Journalof Aestheticsand Art Criticism

clear and comprehensive nurturing for an inter-

dependent.

MARCIA MUELDER EATON

Departmentof PhilosophyUniversityof Minnesota

355 FordHall

224 ChurchStreet SE

Minneapolis,Minnesota55455-0491

INTERNET: [email protected]

1. This paperwas deliveredas the PresidentialAddress at

the 54th annualmeeting of The AmericanSociety for Aes-

thetics in Montreal, Canada, on October 17, 1996. It is aprivilege to haveserved a society that has meant so much to

me professionallyandpersonally. am also honored o have

had the opportunityto address The Canadian Society forAesthetics, meetingjointly withthe A.S.A. on thatoccasion.

2. JosephBrodsky,"UncommonVisage," Poets and Writ-

ersMagazine,March-April, 1988, p. 17.

3. "Une dependance de l'esthetique," Chroniques de

lErmitage, OeuvresCompletes(Paris: NRF, 1933), vol. IV,

p. 387.4. Mary Devereaux,"Censorship,"n Ethics and the Arts:

An Anthology, d. David Fenner (New York:GarlandPub-

lishing, Inc. 1995), p. 48.5. Noel Carroll,"ModerateMoralism,"TheBritishJour-

nal of Aesthetics36 (1996): 223-238.

6. Mark Packer,"The Aesthetic Dimensionof Ethics and

Law: Some Reflections on Harmless Offense," American

PhilosophicalQuarterly33 (1996): 57ff.7. Alan Goldman, Aesthetic Value (Boulder, CO: West-

view Press, 1995), p. 149.

8. Brodsky,p. 21.

9. CharlesPeirce, Writings, .255.

10.Peirce, 5.130.11. Peirce, 1.358.12. Michel Foucault,Interviewwith AllesandroFontano,

Panorama,July,1984, in Politics,Philosophy,Culture: nter-

viewsand OtherWritings New York:Routledge,1988),p. 49.

13. Charles Altieri, Canons and Consequences (North-

western UniversityPress, 1990).

14. Ibid.,pp. 227, 228.

15. Ibid.,p. 238.

16. SharonWelch, 'An Ethics of Solidarity and Differ-

ence," in Postmodernism,Feminism,and CulturalPolitics,

ed. HenryGiroux (SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 94ff.

17.Hilary Putnam,"Literature, cience, and Reflection,"in Meaningand the MoralSciences (Boston: Routledge&

Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 87-90; David Wiggins, "Truth, n-

vention, and the Meaning of Life," Proceedings of the

BritishAcademy62 (1976): 331-378.18. SabinaLovibond, Realismand Imagination n Ethics

(Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1983).

19. Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination (University of

ChicagoPress, 1993), p. 31.20. Ibid., p. 182.

21. Ibid., p. 208.22. Ibid., pp. 210ff.23. R. W.Hepburn,"Vision and Choice in Morality,"part

I of a symposium n Proceedingsof theAristotelianSociety,

SupplementaryVolume 30 (1956): 15.24. IrisMurdoch,partII of the samesymposium,p. 40.

25. Ibid., p. 39.

26. CoraDiamond, "Havinga Rough Story AboutWhat

Moral Philosophy Is," in The Realist Spirit: Wittgenstein,

Philosophy, nd the Mind(MIT Press, 1991),pp. 374-375.

27. Ibid.,p. 379.28. Brodsky,p. 17.29. Joseph Brodsky, "English Lessons from Stephen

Spender,"The New Yorker,an.8, 1996, p. 59.30. Brodsky,"UncommonVisages," p. 17.

31. Ibid., p. 17.

32. Ibid., p. 20.33. Brodsky,"EnglishLessons," p. 62.

34. Ibid., p. 59.35. StuartHampshire,"LogicandAppreciation," n Aes-

thetics and Language, ed. William Elton (Oxford: Basil

Blackwell, 1967), p. 162.

36. Goldman, p. 145.

37.MarciaCavell,"Taste ndMoralSense," nFenner, .75.

38. Ibid., p. 293.

39. Ibid.,p. 295.

40. R. M. Hare,FreedomandReason(New York:Oxford

UniversityPress, 1965), p. 150. I am gratefulto PeterKivyfor this reference.

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