Question Should we enjoy high quality forms of art that depict an immoral situation? And should we even consider morality when evaluating art? I find myself constantly bringing this issue up whenever I watch a movie for example. Let's say there is a very well done movie that tells how great Suharto is? It's obviously a lie, what effect can this fact have on the value of the movie, as a piece of art.

Accepted:
December 24, 2010

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I just answered a similar question, and much of what I say thereis relevant here too:

http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/3749

However, what is new in your question is the idea of art (theother question concerned fiction and, given the context, Iinterpreted that as meaning popular fiction, e.g. thrillers). Theproblem is, can a work's aesthetic value be judged separately fromits moral value (or lack of it)? The usual answer, which follows Kantand others, is 'yes'. In the Critique of Judgement, Kant argues thata judgement of beauty must be disinterested, which is to say wecannot bring other types of judgement in as determining factors.'Other types', he says, includes moral judgements. His example is apalace (such as Versailles; don't forget he was writing in the periodof the French Revolution), which could be judged a beautiful piece ofarchitecture and design, but a political abomination. We can, andmust, separate out the project of coming to judge aesthetically fromthe project of coming to judge morally.

However, this could mean two things. It certainly entails that itis possible to form aesthetic evaluations separately from moralconsiderations, and even that if one wants to form aestheticevaluations, then one has todo so. But Kant's position does not entail that one shoulddo so. The 'should' is (using Kant's language) a hypotheticalimperative (If I want to judge X aesthetically, then I should bedisinterested in it morally) and not a categorical imperative (Ishould judge X aesthetically). Thus we have the case of ChinuaAchebe's famous lecture on Conrad's Heart of Darkness,in which he (i) accuses Conrad of racism and (ii) argues that forthis reason the novel is ruled out from being considered a 'greatwork of art'. Now, the first claim is, in so far as any claim aboutliterature could ever be, an empirical matter, but the second isnonempirical, one that instead has to be answered by philosophicalinquiry into the relationship of aesthetics and morality.