Art, Ethics, and Value in the Modern European Aesthetic Tradition

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores ethics and art in the modern European context by focusing not on the arts as such, then still a nascent category, but, as did writers of the period themselves, on different spheres of value, moral and aesthetic. The division between art and value is reflected in the distinction between philosophy of art and the aesthetic, and manifest in the view of leading contributors to the tradition. In order to connect these spheres, writers also identified a mechanism, taste, manifest variously as internal sense, sentiment, and imagination, though this also raised a number of problems, including effectively substituting aesthetic value for moral value and ignoring diversity. The chapter concludes by emphasizing how writing itself, including philosophy, cannot avoid the tension between the demand that writing have a civilizing influence and the fact that art is fundamentally representational and involves deception.