particularly as exemplified in the Christian Gospel. The novelist John Gardner
criticized the nihilism, absurdism, and avant-gardism of contemporary art
and urged a return to moral fiction that investigates the conditions of human
fulfillment.^7 Representations, artistic and otherwise, are widely thought to
have some effect on the sensibility and behavior of those who view or read
them. Access to adult movies is regulated in order to prevent harm to minors.
In a 1973 obscenity case, Chief Justice Burger based his verdict in favor of
community regulation of the distribution of films and magazines in part on
the“assumption that commerce in obscene books, or public exhibitions
focused on obscene conduct, have a tendency to exert a corrupt and debasing
impact leading to antisocial behavior.”^8 Parents pay considerable attention to
what their children read and view, whether or not it is art, and parents and
teachers alike often seek to influence the development of sensibility, judg-
ment, and behavior in the young by putting what they take to be elevating
representations before them. Clearly, when artists make a work they are doing
something. Should not what they do be subject to moral assessment along
with all other actions? Perhaps much art is morally innocent, perhaps some is
praiseworthy, and perhaps some is dangerous. Why not look and see?
Autonomism and experimentalism
Yet exactly what the effects of reading or viewing works of art are is unclear.
As Anne Sheppard notes, the Williams Report on Obscenity and Film Censor-
ship in Britain found that“the psychological research which has been done on
the effects of obscene or violent visual material has produced only inconclu-
sive results.”^9 Noël Carroll observes that“rates of violence [are] lower in Japan
than in the United States, despite the fact that Japanese programming is much
more graphic in its depiction of gore and mayhem than American
programming.”^10
The effects of representations on audiences seem even more unclear in the
case of art. Richard Posner argues that“great literature somehow causes the
(^7) John Gardner,On Moral Fiction(New York: Harper Collins, 1978).
(^8) US Supreme Court 413 US 49 (1973), cited in Karen Hanson,“How Bad Can Good Art
Be?,”inAesthetics and Ethics, ed. Levinson, pp. 204–26 at p. 213.
(^9) Sheppard,Aesthetics, p. 140.
(^10) Noël Carroll,“Morality and Aesthetics: Historical and Conceptual Overview,”inEncyclo-
pedia of Aesthetics, ed. Kelly, vol. III, pp. 279–82 at p. 280A.
Art and morality 227