are well written or badly written. That is all...The only excuse for making a
useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”^17
Carroll dubs positions of this kindautonomism, and he notes that it comes
in two forms. Extreme autonomism holds that no work of art ever has any
moral value, good or bad, as Wilde’s remark suggests.^18 It is simply nonsense
to see works of art as expressing, embodying, or endorsing anymoralvalues
at all. Moderate autonomism holds in contrast that while some (but not all)
works of art are morally worthwhile or morally pernicious, their moral value
has nothing to do with their value as art. Morality and artistic value are two
independent dimensions of assessment; moral evaluation“is never aesthetic
evaluation.”^19 Posner, Beardsley, and Gass are all closer to this version of
autonomism.
A third position likewise sharply rejects didacticism and emphasizes the
obtuseness of censorship and the folly of worrying about the moral conse-
quences of the experience of art. This third position accepts, however, that
works of art often, perhaps typically, express moral values, but embraces an
open-ended moral experimentalism. Works of art, especially works of
imaginative literature, are means of marking out new eligible paths of life
and of enlarging sensibilities that are all too prone to impoverishment.
Outright cruelty apart, nearly anything goes, in life and in art. Even what
counts as cruelty may be unclear, especially between consenting adults. J. S.
Mill’s harm principle that no one is justified in interfering with another for
that other’s own good is frequently cited in order to justify this position. As
Mill himself puts it,
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He
cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for
him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinions of
others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for
remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or(^17) Oscar Wilde,“Preface,”The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Peter Ackroyd (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1982), p. 5.
(^18) See Carroll,“Morality and Aesthetics,”p. 280B and Noël Carroll,“Moderate Moralism,”
British Journal of Aesthetics36, 3 (1996), pp. 223–37.
(^19) Carroll,“Morality and Aesthetics,”p. 281B.
Art and morality 229