Question Is there a fundamental link between behavior we view as immoral, and behavior we view as repulsive, disgusting, or otherwise aesthetically unpleasant? It seems the terms of the latter are sometimes used to describe the former.

Accepted:
November 26, 2010

Comments

You're absolutely right that aesthetic terms are sometimes used to characterize action. Whether, however, there is an internal or conceptual or fundamental connection between judging an action in such aesthetic terms and judging it morally is a difficult question. In the early modern period, writers on ethics often divided between seeing morality in aesthetic terms and seeing it strictly in terms of moral relations. (David Gill has written on this issue in Philosophy Compass, starting from the historical question and then moving on to the more general question of whether morality is more like math or beauty--in other words, whether moral judgments are supposed to reflect eternal, immutable standards, or rather whether they are supposed to reflect one's 'taste'.) It's not clear to me, however, that there need be an opposition between characterizing an action as right or wrong and characterizing it as cruel or repulsive, for aesthetic judgments, like moral judgments, rest on reasons, and it is the fact that such judgments rest on reasons that makes it possible for them to be justified and communicated to others and, of course, argued over. Now it might seem that the aesthetic analogues of moral judgments reflect some more subjective element--one might think, for example, that like aesthetic judgments about works of art, aesthetic analogues of moral judgments require some perception of the act itself, in contrast to moral judgments, which can, as it were, be pronounced from an impartial, non-subjective point of view. If this were correct, there might be more immediacy in aesthetic than in moral characterizations of some action. I myself, however, am inclined to think that both aesthetic and moral characterizations of actions are on a par, that the aesthetic judgments are analogues of the moral judgments, and that there is no fundamental difference between them.

Question Is there a fundamental link between behavior we view as immoral, and behavior we view as repulsive, disgusting, or otherwise aesthetically unpleasant? It seems the terms of the latter are sometimes used to describe the former. Accepted:November 26, 2010

Question Is there a fundamental link between behavior we view as immoral, and behavior we view as repulsive, disgusting, or otherwise aesthetically unpleasant? It seems the terms of the latter are sometimes used to describe the former.

Accepted:
November 26, 2010