The ethics of aesthetic form

Through an analysis of our responses to art, my thesis links two issues at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics. The first issue concerns the possibility of gaining ethical insight through art. The second issue concerns the ethical criticism of art, or whether ethical criteria can contribute to the aesthetic evaluation of some artworks. I link these issues by showing that artworks may succeed or fail aesthetically based on whether they support responses which enrich our understanding of ethical life.; This claim rests on the premise that our responses to art have the same structure and function as our responses to real things. I give an account of emotions, in real life and in art, as felt modes of evaluation and interpretation. By focusing our attention on certain significant aspects of a situation, emotions can give us unique insight into the value that things have for us.; There is an interesting parallel between the way we learn through our emotions and the way we learn from art. Just as the way in which I respond to a situation establishes its significance for me, so the way in which an artist presents the subject of her work establishes my ability to see new significance in familiar aspects of ethical life. Emotions and artworks alike can give us new ways of understanding the world.; If an artwork prescribes an insightful response or offers an insightful perspective on its subject, then the work succeeds aesthetically in that respect. The ability of an artwork to do this depends on how the work's form, or mode of presentation and expression, qualifies its content. Ultimately, the inseparability of form and content in art confirms the interaction of aesthetic and ethical value. How a work presents its subject determines how we are prescribed to respond and how we should respond to that work. This in turn determines the ethical power of the work and its degree of aesthetic success in securing an appropriate response.