Moderate Moralism

The relation between film and morality is very subtle.Today,film is both sweet and useful,as Horatius said when evaluating poetry.People have noticed its capacity for moral influence and have become accustomed to assessing it in terms of moral or immoral.But agreeing the film’s moral evaluation does not represent that its independent and autonomous value as art should be ignored.The moral thinking of film is based on the moral thinking of art.Starting from Plato,Westerners gradually realized the close relation between morality and art.Aestheticians influenced by Immanuel Kant and others have overemphasized the art is autonomous,and the concept of the autonomy of art has dominated for thousands of years.Although people were not used to using the word autonomous to describe film when it first came out,the thinking of films soon begin to interrelate with Aestheticism.In the late 20th century,analytic aestheticians discovered a contradiction caused by watching Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will,that people were belittling this film’s moral defects but admiring its aesthetic value at the same time.Faced with this contradiction,autonomist gave a seemingly reasonable answer,that art was autonomous,and it is incoherent to assess artworks in terms of their consequences for morality.But the moralist criticized their explanations and tried to find ways in which the moral value of art affected the aesthetic value.Moderate Moralism clarifies No(?)l Carroll’s point of view in this discussion.In considering the morality of films,Carroll did not merely discuss the ways in which moral content affected the value of films from within the artworks.Carroll put forward his own Clarification based on several viewpoints criticizing that films would corrupted morality,trying to explain how films influenced morality and defending his moderate moralism.This article attempts to start from the discussion about the relation between morality and art with the perspective of analytic aesthetics,to explain the theoretical value of moderate moralism,and to explore Carroll’s attitude towards the relation between film and morality.This article consists of the introduction,five main chapters,and the conclusion.The first chapter reviews the historical confrontation of the relation between art and morality as well as historical discussion between films and morality among the academic world,explains the theoretical basis of autonomist,explores the background of moralist discussing the relation between morality and film,and finds the reason of Carroll’s moderate moral.The second chapter discusses the attitudes of analytic aestheticians towards the film Triumph of the Will,explains the attitudes of Kendall Walton,Berys Gaut,and Carroll on the relation of film and morality,and analyzes how the moral value of artwork affects their aesthetic value.The Third chapter discusses Carroll’s moderate moralism in detail,explains Carroll’s criticism of autonomism and aestheticism in “Moderate Moralism” and the attitude towards “Immoral proposition” of Triumph of the Will.Some critics claim that Carroll’s position is similar to Gaut,but the difference between their positions can be seen from their attitude of “ Immoral proposition”.The fourth chapter clarifies the discussion between A.W.Eaton and Carroll on the moderate moralism.Eaton tried to use the RHWs as an argument to complete Carroll’s moderate moralism but was criticized by Carroll.This discussion shows the change of Carroll’s attitude towards “Immoral proposition”.The fifth chapter discusses Carroll’s thinking on how films affect morality.Carroll’s thinking on the relation between film and morality is based on his own moderate moralism.While criticizing three other positions,he put forward his own Clarification and Assimilation.