Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy

Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that works' ethical defects or merits have an impact on their aesthetic value. Against ethical critics, autonomists claim that moral criteria should not be part of the considerations when evaluating works of art as art. Autonomism refers to the vi...

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Main Author: Clavel-Vazquez, A
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2018
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author Clavel-Vazquez, A
author_facet Clavel-Vazquez, A
author_sort Clavel-Vazquez, A
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description Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that works' ethical defects or merits have an impact on their aesthetic value. Against ethical critics, autonomists claim that moral criteria should not be part of the considerations when evaluating works of art as art. Autonomism refers to the view that an artwork's aesthetic value is independent from its ethical value. The purpose of this paper is to examine how autonomism has been defended in the contemporary discussion in analytic aesthetics. I present three versions of autonomism: Richard Posner's radical autonomism, James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and James Harold's moderate autonomism, and Francisca Pérez Carreño's robust autonomism. I argue that robust autonomism offers a stronger argument against the ethical critic. However, I point to some difficulties for Pérez Carreño's account and conclude by suggesting how further work in autonomism might go around them.
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spelling oxford-uuid:e9436267-cb6a-4929-8ef8-f0fcd0f0a62d2022-03-27T10:52:59ZRethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchyJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:e9436267-cb6a-4929-8ef8-f0fcd0f0a62dEnglishSymplectic ElementsWiley2018Clavel-Vazquez, AAdvocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that works' ethical defects or merits have an impact on their aesthetic value. Against ethical critics, autonomists claim that moral criteria should not be part of the considerations when evaluating works of art as art. Autonomism refers to the view that an artwork's aesthetic value is independent from its ethical value. The purpose of this paper is to examine how autonomism has been defended in the contemporary discussion in analytic aesthetics. I present three versions of autonomism: Richard Posner's radical autonomism, James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and James Harold's moderate autonomism, and Francisca Pérez Carreño's robust autonomism. I argue that robust autonomism offers a stronger argument against the ethical critic. However, I point to some difficulties for Pérez Carreño's account and conclude by suggesting how further work in autonomism might go around them.
spellingShingle Clavel-Vazquez, A
Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy
title Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy
title_full Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy
title_fullStr Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy
title_full_unstemmed Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy
title_short Rethinking autonomism: Beauty in a world of moral anarchy
title_sort rethinking autonomism beauty in a world of moral anarchy
work_keys_str_mv AT clavelvazqueza rethinkingautonomismbeautyinaworldofmoralanarchy