approach, Carroll objects that it is biased in favor of“radical works,”where
“most artworks, including most fictions, are not morally radical. A great
many artworks, notably fictions, operate within established moral frame-
works and are not morally pernicious, though they may yet possess an
ethical dimension.”^83 The thought that genuine art should always be liberat-
ing because improvisatory and experimental is, Carroll argues,“nothing but
a pious, deeply sanctimonious wish-fulfillment fantasy”that rests on making
“art a category of commendation rather than of classification.”^84
While the thought that not all successful literary works are morally
improvisational at the levels of principle and theory is true, it is also the case
that undertaking to produce a work of literary art, as opposed to a product
determined by formula, involves an effort to see and feel originally, or
involves, as Christopher Hamilton puts it,“a person’s concrete, enacted
attempt to achieve his own style.”^85 In the development of a personal style,
it is far from clear how to distinguish the merely personal from the morally
significant. As Ted Cohen argues,
apart from questions of grammar and syntax, consider simply the question of
word choice. Is there no moral significance in the author’s choice of a
lexicon?...In Nabokov we find an exuberant, nearly ecstatic joy in the
fabulous riches of the English language. In Hemingway, by contrast, we find
only common, pedestrian words, although their composition is stunning.^86The effort to develop a personal style in relation to perplexing incidents,
scenes, or persons–as opposed to things one already recognizes and readily
copes with emotionally and evaluatively–will aim at original clarification.
As Iris Murdoch puts it,“art, at least when it is successful, condenses and
clarifies the world, directing attention upon particular things...[it] illumin-
ates accident and contingency and the general muddle of life.”^87 Given that
this illumination is, where successful, personally stylized and directed to
perplexities and muddles, no one–neither the author nor the reader–can
(^83) Carroll,“Art and Ethical Criticism,”p. 366.
(^84) Carroll,“Art, Narrative, and Moral Understanding,”p. 132.
(^85) Christopher Hamilton,“Art and Moral Education,”inArt and Morality, eds. José Luis
Bermúdez and Sebastian Gardner (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 37–55 at p. 54.
(^86) Cohen,“Literature and Morality,”inThe Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, ed.
Eldridge, pp. 486–495 at p. 493.
(^87) Murdoch,Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals,p.8.
Art and morality 243