Whenever ethics and aesthetics come into conflict, is it always aesthetics that must give way? What is so bad about killing ugly people to decrease the net ugliness in the world?

A question about art for you. If consensus could be reached on a theoretical definition of art, stating the necessary and sufficient conditions for anything to be called a work of art, would that imply a closing off of art, similar to art in say a former socialist country or a tight religious community that prescribes how art has to be? And if not, what use would the definition be? Would it have any effect on the production of art at all? Or was is the point of a theoretical definition of art? Thanks in advance.

I recently saw "Gone Girl" (spoiler alert!) and have been reading articles about the portrayal of its female antagonist, who is manipulative and psychotic. Some argue that this portrayal is problematic, since it plays into misogynistic stereotypes about women. In response, others argue that while such pernicious stereotypes do exist, it must surely be permissible to create a character who is both female and psychotic--indeed, to insist that this character type just can't exist would be sexist itself. Both arguments seem plausible to me, but I'm not sure how to reconcile them. Yes, it's bad to perpetuate negative stereotypes. At the same time, we must have some freedom to create characters that exemplify such stereotypes. Women are sometimes psychotic--we should be able to write about that. But then it seems like we never have justification to criticize any fiction at all, since this kind of defense may always be invoked in any particular case.

Philosophers: Is an artist's intention in a painting relevant to the assessment of the quality of the painting (or any work of art, for that matter)? Or is art to be assessed by itself? -Preston

Dear sir/madam I would really appreciate it if you could help me please with finding the name of some books about early concept of the relation of art and morality. what I mean is after Plato and Aristotle to the time of Kant. Or if it is possible, please give me some names of philosophers during that time and then I'll try to find their books. I want to work on the early relation of them and later show how and why they became some how separate in later years. I guess Kant has the most effect on it but I still need more resources.

A friend of mine thinks that we can define art as 'a statement of creativity'. I'm not sure I agree with him but am struggling with working out what a 'statement' is. Has any philosopher written about this question? Is it possible to define a statement?

Can you name an attribute such that all the paintings which have this attribute are good paintings?

It's possible to define what art is?

Must a given novel, piece of music, etc. give pleasure to the reader/listener before it can reasonably be considered to be a work of art? It seems to me that this really must be so; otherwise, why would anyone even bother to even finish the thing in the first place (assuming they're not forced to do so, as in school)? I guess it would be important to define exactly what we mean by pleasure; if I'm a teary-eyed mess after a performance of Tristan und Isolde, has the music given me pleasure? It has, although some detached observer might certainly be led to believe otherwise. But, as a perhaps more extreme example, am I really expected to believe (as music critics and historians do) that John Cage's 4'33'' is work of art? For me, there is no pleasure to be had anywhere. Sure, there is an intellectual component to it: I'm supposed to place the piece in the context of the development of western music history, understand it as a reaction to (or perhaps the logical extension of) what came before, consider what...

This might be a weird question, but I'm wondering if there is some kind of philosophy of fashion. Has anyone ever commented on what the goal of fashion is, what it means to express a style, or our relationship to style? I guess if you take it to be art, then the realm of aesthetics can get at some of the questions that I sense there might be well enough. I don't know very much about fashion, so how it is thought of is interesting to me, and I haven't yet come across much philosophical thought on the subject. Maybe it is not in the realm of philosophy?