An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

not sheerlyad hoc], an aesthetic merit in the work.”^44 Themerited response

argument holds all unmerited or unapt prescribed responses are artistic

defects–they undermine the coherence and plausibility of the work–and

all merited or apt responses are artistic virtues. Hence

if the prescribed responses [to a character, such as admiring, condemning,

pitying or fearing for the character] are unmeritedbecauseunethical...[then]

a work’s manifestation of ethically bad attitudes is an aesthetic defect in it.

[For example,] if a work invites us to pity some characters, but they are

unworthy of pity because of their vicious actions, then they are not pitiable,

and hence the work is aesthetically flawed.^45

More broadly, whether we find it both possible and apt to participate

imaginatively in how an author attends to andevaluatescharacters and

incidents matters to us in evaluating a work. Taking seriously the facts that

we do fear for what may happen to Anna and admire Othello’s glorious

imagination while condemning his narcissist, obtuse, jealousy“best fits

reflective critical practice.”^46 “The quality of moral attention”in a work

matters aesthetically.^47

Carroll regards his own position–moral defects in a work are only

sometimes artistic defects; moral virtues are only sometimes artistic ones–

as more moderate than the ethicism that Kieran and Gaut advocate. In fact,

however, Carroll does not show against them that failures in the engagement

and clarification of ethically significant attitudes and emotions are ever

either artistic virtues or artistically neutral. What he shows is that“artworks

can be immensely subtle in terms of their moral commitments”;^48 an art-

work may prescribe a genuinely morally reprehensible attitude toward a

character and course of action but do so incidentally, on a very small scale,

such that it is scarcely noticeable, all within a framework of overall artistic

(^44) Gaut,Art, Emotion and Ethics, p. 227. See Chapters 7 and 8 for the full development of this
argument.
(^45) Ibid., p. 233. See Chapter 10 below for the full development of this argument.
(^46) Ibid., p. 13. See Chapter 5 for the full development of this argument.
(^47) Ibid., p. 24. Gaut illustrates this point nicely outside literature by comparing the distinct-
ive qualities of attention of Rembrandt and Willem Drost in their respective Bathseba
paintings. See also Eldridge,“Introduction: Philosophy and Literature as Forms of Atten-
tion,”inThe Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, ed. Eldridge, pp. 3–15.
(^48) Carroll,“Art and Ethical Criticism,”p. 378.
236 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art