Art

Do artists have a responsibility to ensure that their art does not have a negative impact on society, i.e. that their art does not promote discrimination or violence?

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The question of whether an artist has any moral responsibility whatsoever with regard to the content or the impact of her work is fascinating, and there are many historical examples relevant to it. (One case that leaps immediately to my mind is that of Leni Riefenstahl, treated at length by Susan Sontag in an amazing essay, "Fascinating Fascism," which I highly recommend.) Proponents of the autonomy of art--'art for art's sake'--might deny that the artist has any obligation whatsoever to anyone or anything besides her work. (The case of Gauguin, treated by the philosopher Bernard Williams in a his essay, "Moral Luck," is an instance of an artist who abjured any responsibility to anything besides his work.) On such a view, the artist should seek only to create the best art that she can, and damn the consequences of creating art with a particular content. Such a position might be buttressed by an extreme 'formalist' conception of art, according to which art consists only in the exploitation of the aesthetic possibilities of the medium in which one works, and is in fact indifferent to content. (This is not to imply that such extreme formalism has ever been endorsed, or that I endorse it!) To the contrary, it might be maintained that the artist has a duty to society to promote 'the fine and the noble'--Plato seems to espouse such a position in the Republic--and consequently the artist has a duty to ensure that her art not only does not have a negative impact on society, but even betters it in some way. A somewhat less extreme, but related, position might acknowledge that an artist does not control the impact of her art, but nevertheless require the artist, insofar as she is possible, not to create art that is inflammatory. But who is to decide? And why should the work of the artist be limited in this way? Does art matter in this way? Can art matter in this way? Should art matter in this way? These are all questions that need to be considered in order satisfactorily to address the question that you raise.

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