A. W.
EATON
Robust Immoralism
Several years after the end of the HBO series The
Sopranos, I still miss the characters. In particu-
lar, I miss the protagonist, Tony, who feels like an
old friend. This affection of mine for the fictional
mob boss gives me pause. After all, Tony Soprano
is a murderer, a liar, a thief, an extortionist, and
a womanizer; he is pathologically callous, selfish,
bigoted, racist, homophobic, and self-centered. So
why do I sympathize with him? Why do I admire
him? What makes me like him so much?
David Hume famously wrote:
where vicious manners are described, without being
marked with the proper characters of blame and disap-
probation; this must be allowed to disfigure the poem,
and to be a real deformity. I cannot, nor is it proper I
should, enter into such sentiments; and however I may
excuse the poet, on account of the manners of his age,
I never can relish the composition. . . . We are not in-
terested in the fortunes and sentiments of such rough
heroes: We are displeased to find the limits of vice and
virtue so much confounded: And . . . we cannot prevail
on ourselves to enter into his sentiments, or bear an af-
fection to characters, which we plainly discover to be
blameable.1
Insofar as Hume intends an empirical claim, he
is wrong. I—and I am hardly alone here—can
and sometimes do enter into the vicious sen-
timents of fictional characters, and I do some-
times bear a strong affection for characters whom
I plainly consider blameworthy.2 I am charmed
by Humbert Humbert and revere Milton’s
Satan. I delight in the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde
and their contemporary incarnations, Mickey and
Mallory, rooting for them as they flee the po-
lice. I am enamored of Tyler Durden and admire
Hannibal Lecter, even in their darkest moments.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70:3 Summer 2012
c 2012 The American Society for Aesthetics

Not only am I pleased “to find the limits of vice
and virtue so much confounded,” but I deliber-
ately pursue this peculiar form of pleasure.
What does this say about me and the many
other lovers of rough heroes? Perhaps that we
have a dark side that these works elicit. Or maybe
that we have especially flexible and expansive
imaginations that allow us to put ourselves in the
shoes of others whose ethical views differ starkly
from our own.
I argue that this phenomenon reveals less about
the audience than it does about the artworks.
What it reveals is a peculiar sort of aesthetic
achievement that has its basis in the immorality
of the work in question. In a nutshell, I argue that
the capacity to make an audience feel and de-
sire things inimical to their considered views and
deeply held principles is for this very reason and
to this extent an aesthetic achievement. In this
way, moral flaws of a particular kind can make
a significant contribution to a work’s aesthetic
value.
My account, which offers new arguments and
evidence for the immoralist position first pro-
posed by Daniel Jacobson, proceeds as follows.3
Section I makes a new distinction between two
very different forms that an artwork’s immorality
can take. Section II develops the Humean con-
cept of the rough hero and gives an account of the
moral flaw that attends vivid portrayals of these
heroes. Section III examines the role of imagi-
native resistance in moralism and in criticisms of
moralism. Section IV explains how the particu-
lar sort of moral flaw previously outlined can be a
significant aesthetic achievement and specifies the
conditions under which this is so. Section V con-
cludes by showing how my view improves upon ar-
guments for immoralism by Matthew Kieran and
Jacobson.
282
i. two kinds of immorality
Recent conversations in the philosophy of art
about the relationship between ethical and aes-
thetic value often appear to take for granted the
very notion that artworks are candidates for moral
assessment in the first place. Moral judgments are
directed primarily at persons and actions, but art-
works, after all, are inanimate. The fact that art-
works often represent persons and actions does
not solve the difficulty, since a moral judgment
directed at a work’s content is distinct from one
directed at the work itself. For instance, Goya’s fa-
mous painting, Third of May, 1808 (1814, Museo
del Prado, Madrid), depicts something appalling
but is not itself an appalling painting. How, if at
all, can an artwork itself be the proper object of
moral judgment and concern?
There are several different ways to answer this
question. One might locate a work’s moral va-
lence in its effects on its audience, in the artist’s
intentions, or in the conditions under which the
work was produced. Since it is not the point of
this article to argue against these positions, I sim-
ply gesture at the reasons why each is unsatisfac-
tory: the first, because a work can be misused in
ways that ought not redound to its discredit; the
second, because it accords too much authority to
artistic intention; the last, because the conditions
of production need not morally taint the product
itself.
A more promising approach, recently pursued
by Noël Carroll and Berys Gaut, among others,
locates moral valence in a work’s perspective.4
By ‘perspective’ one means the work’s evalua-
tive attitude toward diegetic elements (elements
of the world represented), such as persons, ac-
tions, events, and situations. Although ‘perspec-
tive’ might sound overly mentalistic, it can be
explained without either attributing mental states
to artworks or deferring to the psychology of
artists. An artwork manifests a perspective toward
one or more diegetic elements by prescribing to its
audience attitudes toward these elements.5 ‘Atti-
tude’ is meant to be vague in order to capture
propositional attitudes, emotions, and other af-
fective responses. A work prescribes an attitude
toward diegetic elements by imbuing them with
traits that are prompts for the attitude in ques-
tion, where a prompt is a feature (or set of fea-
tures) that aims to stimulate and elicit a particular
type of attitude under appropriate circumstances.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
A work can prompt an attitudinal response
without actually succeeding in producing that re-
sponse. This is because prompts are context de-
pendent in the sense that what serves as a cue for,
say, fear can vary diachronically and synchroni-
cally. A particular diegetic element (or feature of
a diegetic element) can be expected to elicit a par-
ticular type of attitude only for the work’s target
audience—the audience addressed by the work—
and suitably similar audiences. The very same fea-
ture’s failure to elicit that type of attitude in audi-
ences other than the target audience should not be
taken to mean that the feature is an unsuccessful
prompt (or not a prompt for that type of attitude
at all).
To sum up, an artwork’s perspective makes it a
legitimate candidate for moral concern, and this
perspective is manifest in the attitudes the work
prescribes to its audience. Consider these con-
trasting cases. Dickens’s novel David Copperfield
and The Sopranos both portray immoral charac-
ters: Uriah Heep and Tony Soprano, respectively.
Heep’s character is imbued with vivid prompts for
disgust and repulsion: he is portrayed as clammy,
slimy, and writhing. In this way, the novel offers a
disapproving perspective of a morally blamewor-
thy character, and herein lies the novel’s morally
upstanding valence. The character of Soprano, by
contrast, is given many prompts for admiration,
sympathy, and affection: he is portrayed as savvy,
charismatic, bold, daring, and resolute, to name
only a few. In this way, The Sopranos adopts an
approving perspective of its protagonist, even as
he commits heinous crimes. In the words of the
Motion Picture Production Code of the 1930s (also
known as the Hays Code), The Sopranos “throw[s]
our sympathy to the side of crime, wrongdoing, or
evil.”6 Insofar as The Sopranos endorses a morally
blameworthy character, the series is morally de-
fective. I argue, however, that this moral defect is
at the same time an aesthetic achievement.
I begin to make this case by drawing a distinc-
tion between two very different forms that an art-
work’s moral valence can take. I say that moral
judgment is extrinsic to a work just in case moral
judgment is not a component of the work’s per-
spective—that is, moral judgment is not among the
responses prescribed by the work—but this per-
spective is nevertheless subject to second-order
moral approval or disapproval. Consider, for in-
stance, Titian’s Rape of Europa, a painting that
prescribes an erotic response to, and in other ways
Eaton Robust Immoralism
endorses, rape.7 Although we today consider rape
morally reprehensible, the painting itself does not
invite moral disapproval of Europa’s rape. (We
are not, it should be noted, the painting’s target
audience.) But nor does the painting invite moral
approval of the event depicted; rather, taking the
painting on its own terms means suspending moral
judgment of any sort altogether.8 This is not to say
that moral judgment is misplaced in such cases,
but it does mean that when we bring our twenty-
first century moral concerns to bear in this way,
it should be done with the awareness that we are
disregarding the work’s perspective.
Moral judgment is intrinsic to a work, by con-
trast, just in case moral judgment is among the
responses prescribed by the work; that is, when
moral judgment is a component of the work’s per-
spective. Taking such a work on its own terms
means making moral judgments about characters,
actions, or other diegetic elements. Two examples
illustrate the different forms that this can take.
First, it is a requirement of properly understand-
ing and appreciating Picasso’s Guernica that the
viewer feel moral outrage at the fascist bombing
of the Basque village represented in the paint-
ing. If the painting left you feeling morally neu-
tral about the events depicted or, worse, if it led
you to approve of them, then you would have en-
tirely missed the point of the painting and, fur-
ther, would be unable to appreciate some of its
most artistically valuable features.9 Second, it is
also a requirement of properly understanding and
fully appreciating Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita that
one judge Humbert to be morally reprehensible.
If the reader for whatever reason were left feel-
ing morally neutral about Humbert or, worse, if
she morally approved of him, then she would not
only miss the point of the book, but would also
miss one of its major artistic achievements, or so I
argue.
Despite obvious differences in medium and
genre, Guernica and Lolita are similar in that
moral judgment is intrinsic to both; specifically,
each work manifests a perspective that prescribes
moral disapproval of central diegetic elements.
The works are importantly dissimilar, however,
in their overall perspectives: whereas Guernica
wholeheartedly condemns the horrific scene it de-
picts, Lolita simultaneously undermines its con-
demnation of Humbert by making him likeable,
sympathetic, and even admirable. So, whereas
Guernica is intrinsically morally laudable in its
283
condemnation of the bombing of innocents, Lolita
is intrinsically immoral in its sympathetic and com-
mending perspective of a pedophilic rapist; one
whom, I hasten to add, we are supposed to see as a
pedophilic rapist. This is an important difference:
whereas Rape of Europa is not supposed to be
immoral from the perspective of its target audi-
ence, yet happens to be immoral from a contem-
porary perspective, Lolita is supposed to be im-
moral from the perspective of its target audience.
Only in the latter case, I shall argue, can a moral
flaw of the sort outlined here also be an aesthetic
virtue.
ii. the rough hero
I begin to make the case that a moral flaw can
be an aesthetic merit in a work—that is, that an
immoral feature of an artwork can make a signif-
icant positive aesthetic contribution precisely in
virtue of its immorality—by developing the con-
cept of the rough hero mentioned by Hume in the
passage quoted at the start of this article. I argue
that the rough hero is a distinct character type that
sheds new and surprising light on the question of
the aesthetic value of immoral art.
To get a sharp sense of characteristic markers
of the rough hero, it will be useful to contrast it
with a similar and more familiar character type,
namely, the antihero. As the name suggests, the
antihero lacks traditional heroic qualities like con-
viction, courage, physical prowess, or intelligence.
Further, the antihero is plagued by human frailties
such as weakness, arrogance, cowardice, doubt,
envy, indolence, or stupidity. (Consider, for ex-
ample, Don Quixote.) But these flaws do not fa-
tally condemn the antihero in the audience’s eyes.
This is because the flaws are (a) mild in the grand
scheme of things, (b) peripheral to the core of the
hero’s personality, (c) forgivable or at least excul-
pable (because, for instance, they result from some
wrong done to her in the past), and (d) outweighed
by some virtue(s) that the antihero possesses. As
Carroll puts it: “no matter how anti-social the
[antihero] appears at first glance, he or she is
quickly revealed to be pro-social at heart. More-
over, this is how it should be if sympathy is to
take hold across a diverse audience whose like-
liest point of convergence is apt to be morality,
very generously construed.”10 We return to this
last point about sympathy shortly.
284
The rough hero is like the antihero in that he
is also a flawed protagonist. But unlike the anti-
hero, the rough hero’s flaws are, first, grievous:
he is usually a sociopath, an outlaw, a murderer,
a sex criminal, a sadist, or Satan incarnate. Sec-
ond, the rough hero’s flaws are an integral part of
his personality rather than peripheral failings or
foibles. Even his intellectual virtues—for example,
his cunning and shrewdness, his precise execution
of well-laid plans, and his ability to outsmart ad-
versaries—are inextricably tied to his morally bad
character. He is at the core a sociopath who dis-
plays a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights
and feelings of others. Third, the rough hero often
fully intends to do bad and is remorseless about
his crimes. Fourth, the audience’s forgiveness is
not prescribed, nor are we offered reasons to dis-
miss his misdeeds as the result misfortune, weak-
ness, folly, or ignorance. Finally, the rough hero’s
vices are not outweighed by some more redeem-
ing virtues; although he is not entirely bereft of
such virtues—more on this in a minute—they far
from surpass his vices in gravity or importance.
Here are some examples of types of rough hero.
The admirable devil is arguably the oldest vari-
ation of the rough hero type appearing in Milton’s
Paradise Lost (first edition 1668), a work that, de-
spite its stated purpose, prescribes our wonder,
reverential admiration, and respect for the grand
but evil being.11 Other sympathetic or admirable
devils include some versions of Mephistopheles
in the Faust legends and Woland in Nikhail Bul-
gakov’s The Master and Margarita (1941), which
was likely an inspiration for The Rolling Stones’s
“Sympathy for the Devil” (Beggar’s Banquet,
1968).12
The glorified criminal includes gangsters, gun-
slinging cowboys, bank robbers, and drug dealers.
Consider, for example, Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur
Penn, 1967) and their contemporary incarnations,
Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers
(Oliver Stone, 1994), Michael Corleone from The
Godfather trilogy (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972,
1974, 1990), Omar Little from the HBO series
The Wire, Gus Fring from the AMC series Break-
ing Bad, Vincent and Jules from Pulp Fiction
(Quentin Tarantino, 1994), William Munny in Un-
forgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992), many characters
in Sergio Leone’s so-called spaghetti westerns,
and, of course, Tony Soprano.
The congenial murderer includes charac-
ters such as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Patrick
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Süskind, Das Parfum, 1985), Hannibal Lecter
as played on-screen by Anthony Hopkins, and
Dexter Morgan from the Showtime series Dexter.
The likeable sex criminal includes rapists and
child molesters. The most famous example is the
charismatic and seductive Humbert (Lolita, 1955),
whose intelligence, wit, and rhetorical gifts lure us
into liking and sympathizing with him and con-
doning his actions. Other examples include Sade’s
four protagonists in The 120 Days of Sodom (1785)
and Benigno in Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar,
2002).13
The sympathetic sadist is a group that includes
Alex from A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick,
1971); the torturers of Sade’s so-called libertine
novels: Justine, Juliette, and Philosophy in the Bed-
room; and Patrick Bateman from American Psy-
cho (Bret Easton Ellis, 1991, and the film directed
by Mary Harron, 2000).14
The appealing mean-spirited person includes
protagonists who are manipulative, petty, self-
ish, ill-tempered, duplicitous, malicious, or cruel:
Becky Sharp of Vanity Fair (William Makepeace
Thackeray, 1848), Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights
(Emily Brontë, 1847), and the Underground Man
from Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dosto-
evsky, 1864).
The list is admittedly incomplete, but it never-
theless captures the variety and depth of the rough
hero type. Despite significant differences between
the works just mentioned, in each case the audi-
ence is supposed to be acutely aware of the protag-
onist’s profound and irredeemable moral flaws.
This is one important mark of the rough hero:
to use a concept developed earlier, he is intrin-
sically immoral. This means that the failure to
morally condemn the rough hero, at least on the
one hand, would mislead the audience’s intellec-
tual and emotional engagement with the work. For
instance, an unrepentant pedophile who admired
Humbert and his exploits would miss the narra-
tive mode in which the novel is written, namely
unreliable narration.15 (A different way of putting
the point is that unrepentant pedophiles are not
Lolita’s target audience.) In cases where the rough
hero is not the narrator, such as The Sopranos,
the audience who found no moral fault with him
would also fail to “get” the work because they
would fail to find it difficult to have the prescribed
positive affective responses toward the protago-
nist; in other words, it would be too easy for such
an audience to like the rough hero. Since, as I
Eaton Robust Immoralism
argue below, overcoming the audience’s imagina-
tive resistance is a major artistic achievement of
works in which the rough hero appears, the audi-
ence who failed to condemn the rough hero would
miss out on these works’ remarkable achievement.
It is not enough, then, to merely recognize that the
rough hero is morally condemnable in the eyes of
other characters; we the audience must condemn
him ourselves in order to understand and appre-
ciate the work in which he appears.
But this is far from the whole story. Although
the rough hero is supposed to be morally hate-
ful, he is also supposed to be a hero; that is,
a sympathetic, likeable, and admirable protago-
nist. Many techniques achieve this effect. First,
the rough hero is often vividly imbued with hu-
manizing and idealizing traits. For instance, the
rough hero can be affectionate, caring, and loyal
toward family, friends, children, or animals; he
can be suave, charming, and charismatic, features
that are enhanced in moving images by the use of
magnetic and often sexually attractive actors; he
can be highly learned, intelligent, perceptive, and
shrewd; he is often witty, funny, or affable.16 Sec-
ond, the rough hero’s standing can be improved
by sharp contrast with enemies who are made out
to be unlikeable and often more immoral than
the rough hero himself (for example, Clare Quilty
of Lolita or Ralph Cifaretto of The Sopranos).
Third, in some cases, the rough hero has a quasi-
moral code to which he rigidly adheres: for ex-
ample, Dexter Morgan’s “Code of Harry,” Tony
Soprano’s “rules,” Omar’s (The Wire) refusal to
“turn his gun on a citizen” (that is, on someone
who is not involved in the drug trade). Finally,
not only are we made to take the rough hero’s
side, to want him to commit crimes, and to take
a strange satisfaction in his morally repugnant
deeds, but our sympathies are also turned against
the forces of good. Consider, for instance, Bonnie
and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) where the police
are made out to be foolish, inept, and corrupt.
It is not surprising that at the film’s Hollywood
premier, at the point where Bonnie and Clyde are
gunned down, one viewer reportedly stood up and
loudly yelled, “Fucking cops!”17 These are just a
few of the techniques by which we are lured—
or as Lionel Trilling puts it, seduced—into feeling
not just fondness and concern, but also admira-
tion and respect, for an abhorrent and malevolent
character.18
Note that this is not an empirical claim about
how actual audiences in fact respond to the rough
285
hero. Rather, the point I am making is conceptual
and normative: just as we must be vividly aware
of the rough hero’s depravity in order to “get”
the work in which he appears, so we must also,
as Hume puts it, “take an interest in [his] fortunes
and sentiments” in order to be properly invested in
the work. If, for instance, I simply despised Tony
Soprano and desired his downfall, then I would
not root for him in key chase scenes and would
feel disappointment rather than relief when he
narrowly escapes from the FBI; that is, my emo-
tional engagement would be misaligned in a way
that would yield fundamental misunderstandings
of the work.
iii. moralism and imaginative resistance
We have just seen that proper engagement with
works featuring rough heroes demands that the
audience adopt conflicting attitudes, finding him
simultaneously agreeable and abhorrent, likeable
and repugnant, congenial and malevolent. Tak-
ing their cue from Hume, who thought that this
redounds to a work’s aesthetic discredit, modern-
day moralists like Carroll and Gaut argue that
works of the sort under discussion here are aes-
thetically marred, not simply because of the dis-
cord at the heart of their principal character,
but importantly because of the unwarranted re-
sponses the work prescribes.
Since the argument for moralism is familiar, I
offer only a brief summary.19 We begin with the
observation that representational artworks often
prescribe responses to diegetic elements. Failure
to warrant a prescribed response is one kind of
aesthetic defect; for instance, the thriller that does
not warrant a sudden and sharp feeling of excite-
ment fails to this extent and on its own terms. Some
artworks are morally flawed in the sense that they
prescribe responses that we have good moral rea-
son to reject; works featuring rough heroes, for
instance, prescribe approbatory feelings toward a
morally unworthy character. Such a work is aes-
thetically flawed, so the argument goes, in that it
prescribes a response that is unwarranted, and in
this way the work itself gives us good reason to
eschew a response upon which the work’s own
aesthetic success depends. Rather than conclude
that all moral defects are aesthetic flaws, moralists
restrict their claim to only this particular sort of
moral flaw, namely, prescribing a response that is
unwarranted on moral grounds.
286
Jacobson, drawing on his work with Justin
D’Arms, makes a trenchant criticism of this argu-
ment that has not been sufficiently appreciated.20
They convincingly show that moralism conflates
two importantly distinct ways in which a senti-
mental response to an object, in this case a work
of art, can be warranted (or unwarranted). First,
a response can be warranted in the sense that it
fits its object; that is, when the object possesses
the evaluative features that the response correctly
tracks. (Likewise, a response would be unwar-
ranted when it fails to fit its object.) Second, in a
distinct sense, a response to an object can be war-
ranted because it would be the right response to
have for reasons unrelated to whether the object
possesses features picked out by that response; for
example, for prudential or moral reasons. In such
instances, the sense in which a response is war-
ranted and so appropriate (or unwarranted and so
inappropriate) is logically distinct from epistemic
concerns about whether the work possesses the
features that the response picks out. It can be true
both that I have a reason (prudential or moral) not
to be amused by a play and that the play possesses
features correctly picked out by the response of
amusement. Conflating these two kinds of reason,
as moralists do, falls prey to what Jacobson and
D’Arms call the moralistic fallacy: a faulty infer-
ence from the claim that it is morally wrong to
have a given emotional response toward some ob-
ject to the claim that the response does not fit that
object.21 Without this inference, the argument for
moralism collapses.
The moralist might protest that her argument
does not rest simply on this inference. Rather, the
idea is that when a prescribed response does not
obtain, and this failure is due to some intrinsic fea-
ture of the work, the work is in this respect and to
this extent aesthetically marred.22
But this qualification does not circumvent Ja-
cobson’s objection, for even an intrinsic obsta-
cle can be irrelevant to the response’s fittingness.
To see how, imagine a visually beautiful paint-
ing made of putrid materials emitting an intol-
erably nauseating stench.23 Such a painting would
be almost completely inaccessible to anyone with
sound olfaction, but this would not mean that
the painting was therefore less visually beautiful.
Although the stench would block access to the
painting’s visual beauty, the work’s visual features
would remain untouched, appreciable by anyone
who could skirt the stench (perhaps by wearing an
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
oxygen mask). It would be wrong to deny that such
a painting was visually beautiful—that is, to deny
that it warranted visual pleasure—despite the fact
that the painting possessed elements inhibiting vi-
sual pleasure. Similarly, a moral flaw might impede
access to a work’s aesthetically praiseworthy fea-
tures, but the praiseworthy features would remain
appreciable by anyone willing and able to over-
look the moral blemishes. Moralism shows only
that a work’s aesthetically praiseworthy features
can be rendered inaccessible by its moral flaws,
not that a work’s moral flaws yield or amount to
aesthetic blemishes.
Moralism may have a way around this problem.
As Jacobson and D’Arms themselves note, some,
though not all, emotions have a “moral shape”:
for example, basic emotions like contempt, anger,
and guilt, to which I would add affective responses
like affection and disaffection, sympathy and an-
tipathy, and admiration.24 An affective state has
a “moral shape” just in case moral features of its
object can legitimately be invoked to support or
contest its fittingness. For instance, moral flaws in
a person (whether real or fictional) can make her
unworthy of affection, admiration, and sympathy
and, if the flaws are grievous enough, legitimately
warrant antipathy, contempt, anger, and disaffec-
tion. Taking this as a starting point, the moralist
might concede, as I think he must, that while the
immorality of a joke does not make it less funny,
the immorality of a personage (whether fictional
or not) can make her less sympathetic and like-
able, and even render her contemptible and an-
tipathetic.25 In the cases where we are prescribed
to feel sympathy, admiration, or affection for such
a character—that is, a character who does not merit
these responses precisely because she is immoral—
the work would fail to merit on moral grounds
the very responses that it itself prescribes. This
is the conclusion that the moralist wants, though its
scope would be considerably diminished (it would
not apply to, for instance, jokes).26
But what does this rejoinder mean for my ac-
count of the rough hero, which holds that we are
made to feel sympathy, admiration, and affection
for a character not only despite but sometimes
even because of his immorality? The appearance
of conflict between my account and this restricted
form of moralism disappears once one notices that
the affective responses in question have a partially,
rather than a wholly, moral shape.27 Although, as
has been observed since Aristotle, moral virtue
Eaton Robust Immoralism
in a character strongly tends to garner the audi-
ence’s sympathy, admiration, or affection, moral
virtue does not suffice to garner these (nor does
moral depravity suffice to incite their contraries).
Although a character’s moral viciousness strongly
tends to generate imaginative resistance on the au-
dience’s part to sympathy, affection, benevolence,
or admiration for the character, this imaginative
resistance can be overcome in certain rare cases.28
The rough hero, I argue in the next section, is one
such case.
Before we proceed, there are two points worth
making about the sort of morally motivated imagi-
native resistance of interest here. First, I here con-
strue imaginative resistance as reluctance, rather
than inability, to engage in a prescribed imagi-
native activity that is, from the audience’s per-
spective, morally deviant. Second, it is rarely
noted that morally motivated imaginative resis-
tance admits of degrees: the more abhorrent the
character, the greater our resistance to liking, ad-
miring, or sympathizing with her.
iv. a peculiar sort of aesthetic achievement
I have thus far isolated the specific kind of moral
defect attending the character type I call the rough
hero. This moral defect is not the mere repre-
sentation of morally corrupt characters and their
despicable actions; rather, works featuring rough
heroes are morally flawed in virtue of their per-
spective that endorses moral depravity by ren-
dering it sympathetic, likeable, praiseworthy, and
glamorous. I now argue that a moral defect of this
sort can be a significant aesthetic achievement of
two related sorts.
First, the rough hero type sets up and then skill-
fully solves an ambitious and artistically interest-
ing problem: namely, to overcome the audience’s
imaginative resistance. In order to do this, the
rough hero must generate the imaginative resis-
tance in the first place. This is achieved by imbu-
ing a deeply immoral character with sympathetic,
likeable, and admirable traits, as discussed above.
The target audience is one who would be strongly
reluctant to direct evaluatively positive affective
states toward a morally undeserving character.
(Recall that the rough hero’s moral flaws are
grievous, and so the imaginative resistance here
will be considerable.) The challenge that works
with rough heroes set themselves, then, is to over-
287
come this substantial imaginative resistance and
make the audience feel something that it resists
feeling on moral grounds.
It takes considerable artistry and finesse to
meet this challenge. The character must be con-
vincingly monstrous or depraved yet simultane-
ously likeable, sympathetic, and even admirable.
For instance, foregrounding Humbert’s perver-
sion and brutality too much, perhaps by including
graphic sex scenes, would sabotage his charm, like-
ability, and sympathetic nature. However, mini-
mizing Humbert’s flaws too much would render
him benign. Thus, a delicate equilibrium must
be struck between the sympathetic and the mon-
strous, the attractive and the vile, the comfort-
ing and the disturbing, the praiseworthy and the
abhorrent.
In saying that the rough hero overcomes our
imaginative resistance, I mean ‘overcome’ in
something like the Hegelian sense of aufheben:
imaginative resistance is generated and sur-
mounted but in a way that nevertheless keeps that
resistance in play so that we continually feel its
pull. In this way, the rough hero trades on our
moral convictions while simultaneously turning us
against them, thereby putting us in conflict with
ourselves.
The second dimension of the rough hero’s
aesthetic achievement is that this state of dividing-
ourselves-against-ourselves that such works in-
duce in their audience is aesthetically valuable.
Unlike purely pleasurable aesthetic states, this
is a state of conflict and strife that is tinged
with displeasure due to the contradictory attitudes
elicited. We are torn between our positive feel-
ings for the rough hero, on the one hand, and
our strong disapproval of him, on the other. This
tension cannot be resolved by noting that the con-
tradictory attitudes attend to different parts of the
character—as in, “I like him in this respect but de-
spise him in a totally different respect”—because,
as noted earlier, the rough hero’s moral flaws are
an integral part of his overall personality; his bad-
ness not only touches many of the parts that we
like, admire, and find sympathetic, but we some-
times like him because of his badness. The result
is that we are pulled in opposing directions with-
out hope of relief and left to linger in a delicious
state of irresolvable conflict with ourselves.29 This
indefinitely protracted state of ambivalence is
precisely what makes certain immoral works
compelling (an important aesthetic merit). We
288
are captivated by and savor this ambivalence; it
makes these works haunt us and keep us awake at
night.
In making this case for aesthetic value of a cer-
tain kind of immorality in art, I have implicitly
conceived of an artwork as a solution to a set of
problems. An artwork, on this view, is the result of
a design process that addresses and aims to solve
a set of problems.30 I do not claim that this is the
only way to think about art, but it does have the
credential and advantage of providing the foun-
dation for much art criticism by offering a way to
appreciate and evaluate artworks on several lev-
els. First, the problem set offers a benchmark for
evaluating the work. Does it solve the problems it
set out to solve? Second, we evaluate the manner
in which the work solves its problems. How well
does the work solve its problem? Is the solution
original or hackneyed, elegant or clumsy, clever or
obvious, handily achieved or labored?
However, solving a problem well is not neces-
sarily a mark of aesthetic success. A work might
solve the problem it set for itself yet neverthe-
less be a mediocre work because the problem is
uninteresting or easy to solve. That is, we do not
just evaluate works based on whether they solve
their problems; we evaluate the problem itself.
Is it an interesting problem? Does it constitute
a genuine challenge? Is it a problem worth solv-
ing? When a work fails to provide satisfactory an-
swers to these questions, it can be a mediocre or
even bad work despite the fact that it achieves its
goals.
I have argued that a certain kind of immoral
artwork—namely, works that prescribe both moral
disapproval of and also sympathy, affection, or ad-
miration for its characters—is aesthetically good
precisely because such works solve a difficult and
interesting artistic problem, namely, to get the au-
dience to feel things that it is strongly disinclined
to feel. Further, this problem is worth solving in
that the state of ambivalence produced by such
works makes them deeply compelling, where the
power to compel is understood as an important
aesthetic property. The general conclusion I sup-
port, then, is this: an intrinsically immoral art-
work that succeeds in making its target audience
adopt its immoral perspective is to this extent
morally flawed and also for this reason (and to
this extent) aesthetically good. To set the immoral-
ism of this thesis in relief, I emphasize that it is
precisely a work’s moral flaw, namely, its endorse-
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
ment of a morally depraved character, that makes
the work so good. In this way, the very same fea-
ture of a work is both a moral blemish and an
aesthetic merit.
It is worth noting, however, that as I write this
essay there has been a veritable flood of rough
heroes in movies and television, many of which
were listed in Section II. This has prompted one
critic to suggest that the recent overabundance of
(what I call) rough heroes diminishes the genre,
although he does not explain why.31 But we are
now in a position to see the truth of the ob-
servation: with so many spellbinding models to
follow, constructing compelling rough heroes no
longer constitutes much of a challenge. As for the
audience, overexposure to what one might call
“the rough hero conundrum” erodes the imagi-
native resistance that is, I have argued, essential
to the genre’s compellingness, thereby threatening
to render these works boring rather than riveting.
As with many forms of aesthetic achievement—
consider, for instance, the case of linear perspec-
tive—the aesthetic accomplishment of the rough
hero genre is a historical phenomenon whose time
may soon pass.
v. weak immoralisms
Taken at the most general level, my position that
artworks’ moral flaws can also be aesthetic merits
is not new. Both Kieran and Jacobson have already
argued for this conclusion, although their posi-
tions differ significantly in key respects. I now ex-
plain how the view I endorse here improves upon
both.
Kieran has developed a view that he calls cog-
nitive immoralism (hereafter CI): the thesis that
when an artwork’s moral value is aesthetically rel-
evant, moral flaws enhance the work’s aesthetic
value.32 Although some proponents of moralism
have criticized CI, they have missed what I take to
be the view’s fundamental weakness.33 I briefly ex-
plain CI below and offer a new criticism that gets
at its core defect. Unlike recent critics of immoral-
ism, however, my aim is not to support moralism
but, rather, to produce a stronger and more com-
pelling version of immoralism.
Kieran’s argument begins from the view that
he and others call ‘aesthetic cognitivism’: the
idea that some cognitive virtues of artworks are
aesthetic virtues. More precisely, insofar as a work
Eaton Robust Immoralism
increases or deepens our knowledge in appropri-
ate ways, it is aesthetically good.
Whereas it might seem that the rough hero
genre fosters a kind of ignorance by making im-
moral characters sympathetic and likeable, Kieran
argues that prescribing immoral responses in this
manner in fact makes a positive contribution to the
audience’s understanding in several ways. First,
by providing firsthand acquaintance with perspec-
tives that are different from, and perhaps even in-
imical to, the audience’s, immoral artworks chal-
lenge us to examine our own most deeply held
beliefs and thereby help us to become more open-
minded. Second, Kieran argues, a complete un-
derstanding and appreciation of moral goodness
requires firsthand experience of moral badness,
which is precisely what immoral works offer.34
So, although it may seem that the genre of the
rough hero threatens to pervert our morally rele-
vant sentiments, according to Kieran such works
in fact enlarge our perceptual and emotional ca-
pacities and in this way offer substantial cognitive
gains. This increase in our understanding is, per
aesthetic cognitivism, an aesthetic merit.
While Kieran makes a convincing case that im-
moral art has the potential to enlarge its audi-
ence’s understanding, as an account of immoral
art’s aesthetic value the argument is unsatisfac-
tory for two reasons.
First, in failing to distinguish between intrinsi-
cally and extrinsically immoral artworks, CI cap-
tures too much. Given a sufficiently sophisticated,
self-aware, and virtuous audience in the right cir-
cumstances, any immoral work has the potential
to serve as an occasion for the kind of learn-
ing Kieran so ably describes.35 Even a work like
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) is
amenable to such an interpretation: for a twenty-
first century audience morally opposed to both
fascism and anti-Semitism, the film can help us to
see the dangerously strong appeal of charismatic
leaders and to recognize what Susan Sontag iden-
tified as our own “fascist longings.”36 However,
this benefit depends on the audience’s prior con-
demnation of Nazis, and this is not at all the film’s
target audience; put another way, Triumph does
not aim to enlighten in this manner.
In order to systematically exclude works like
Triumph of the Will, one might limit CI to only
those works that aim to deepen our understand-
ing. But this would fail to capture the deeply
troubling works that CI means to explain, for ex-
289
ample, The Sopranos, Lolita, The Godfather, or
The 120 Days of Sodom. Further, this restriction
risks including works that are aesthetically marred
by didacticism or moral righteousness: for exam-
ple, some of Charles Dickens’s novels, many of
Norman Rockwell’s paintings, or Jenny Holzer’s
Truism series.
CI’s second problem is that it disarms immoral
art by emptying it of the very thing that makes
it so disturbing and threatening, namely, its im-
morality. On Kieran’s account, the apparent men-
ace of immoral works is merely provisional since
they ultimately serve to improve their audiences
morally. After all, on Kieran’s account it is moral
knowledge that immoral art offers, and, although
its methods are oblique, immoral art arrives at its
moral lessons by first drawing the audience into
an immoral perspective, its effects coincide with
those of moral art: to make us more open-minded
and tolerant, to refine our capacities to distinguish
the good from the bad, and to instill a proper
understanding and appreciation of the human
condition.
I mean to suggest, then, that CI is not just
an anemic form of immoralism, but that it ac-
tually collapses back into moralism, the very
position that Kieran adamantly opposes.37 This
happens in two ways. First, in an attempt to
show that many highly acclaimed “immoral” art-
works are not counterexamples to their theory,
moralists employ a similar strategy to redeem
morally dubious art. Moralists argue that be-
cause so-called immoral art manifests moral un-
derstanding that yields cognitive gains, great so-
called immoral artworks like Lolita (Gaut) or The
Sopranos (Carroll) turn out upon closer inspec-
tion to be morally virtuous.38 Interpreting these
works as complex morality tales overlooks pre-
cisely what makes them compelling and unsettling,
namely, their unrepentant and irredeemable im-
morality. Like moralism, CI saps immoral art of its
threat and menace, rendering it not just benign but
even morally beneficial. Second, on CI’s account,
what makes an artwork aesthetically good is not
the immoral feature per se but, rather, the moral
insight that it yields. Despite Kieran’s claims to
the contrary, immoral art is not, on this view, valu-
able in virtue of its immoral perspective; rather,
the immoral perspective is but a means to achiev-
ing moral insight, and it is in virtue of the lat-
ter that a work has aesthetic value on Kieran’s
account.39
290
Now let us turn to Jacobson’s immoralism,
which has two prongs: (1) strong arguments
against moralism (discussed above) and (2) the
suggestion that moral flaws in an artwork can be
aesthetic merits.40 The focus throughout Jacob-
son’s provocative articles on this topic has been
(1), whereas actual arguments for (2) are sorely
lacking.
What, exactly, makes immoral art aesthetically
valuable according to Jacobson? It cannot be the
Kieran-esque answer he appears to give, namely,
that immoral art has the capacity to acquaint us
with ethical perspectives that diverge from our
own and thereby precipitate our overcoming dog-
matism.41 While surely an important humanistic
function that gives us a moral reason to engage
with immoral art, by Jacobson’s own lights this is
a decidedly nonaesthetic reason and so redounds
neither to a work’s aesthetic credit or discredit.
Jacobson briefly gestures at a more compelling
answer; namely, that good immoral art, like good
caricature, succeeds at getting us to see things ac-
cording to its perspective, even, at times, despite
our considered moral convictions.42 But he does
not explain how this applies to cases other than
caricature, nor does he tell us why this should be
considered an aesthetic achievement, nor does he
offer convincing examples of immoral artworks
that succeed in just this way.43 These are things
that I have provided in this essay, and in this way
I offer argument and support for Jacobson’s tan-
talizing suggestion.
I disagree with Jacobson, however, in my un-
derstanding of the scope and force of the claim
that some immoral artworks are morally flawed
and aesthetically meritorious for the same rea-
sons. Although Jacobson is often taken to be a
proponent of immoralism, he repudiates this la-
bel when interpreted strictly because “an ‘ism’
implies a theory. . . [and] there is no true theory
of the relation between moral and aesthetic value,
although there are of course some true propo-
sitions about it, such as the weak claim and its
immoralist counterpart.”44 The “weak claim” re-
ferred to here is Carroll’s idea that a moral defect
in an artwork can sometimes count as an aesthetic
defect, while the “immoralist counterpart,” which
Carroll also embraces, holds that a moral defect
can count as an aesthetic merit.45 Jacobson em-
braces both of these claims; what he denies is that
they amount to a theory.46 A theory, to Jacobson’s
mind, must be “a general thesis about the relation
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
of moral and aesthetic value” that gives an ac-
count of the “systematic difference between the
role that moral defects and virtues of an artwork
play in constituting aesthetic value.”47
Jacobson makes it sound as if the only two op-
tions were (a) law-like generalizations involving
very general properties (such as “moral flaws in
artworks”) or (b) vague existential claims offer-
ing little more than trivial truths. But this is a false
dilemma. I do not propose a universal and excep-
tionless counterfactual supporting generalization
about the relation of moral and aesthetic value
tout court, nor am I simply asserting that some-
times moral defects are aesthetic merits while
other times they are not. Rather, I have shown
that something general and systematic can be said
about the aesthetic value of a specified kind of
moral defect in art. Here, by way of conclusion, is
a summary of my theory.
Some artworks have what I call an intrinsically
immoral perspective, which contrasts with an ex-
trinsically immoral perspective. I have isolated a
genre, which I call the rough hero, that is char-
acterized by an intrinsically immoral perspective
in the sense that the audience is supposed to find
a work’s principal character both morally abhor-
rent and also sympathetic, likeable, and even ad-
mirable. Such works endorse a morally abhorrent
character, and this is a moral defect. I have argued
that this particular sort of moral defect, and only
this sort, is at the same time an aesthetic achieve-
ment in that it sets up and then skillfully solves
an ambitious artistic problem and induces in its
audience a complex and enduring sort of plea-
sure. I have offered many concrete examples in
support of the following generalization that holds
ceteris paribus: an intrinsically immoral artwork
that succeeds in making its target audience adopt
its immoral perspective is to this extent morally
flawed and also for this reason, and to this extent,
aesthetically good.48
A. W. EATON
Department of Philosophy
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Illinois 60607
internet: eaton@uic.edu
1. David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” in Essays
Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller (Indianapo-
lis: Liberty Classics, 1987), p. 246.
Eaton Robust Immoralism
2. As is well known, The Sopranos enjoyed tremendous
popularity for six seasons, from January 1999 to June 2007.
It was the series’ overwhelming popularity that prompted a
flood of likeable bad guys, such as Jack Bauer of 24, Dexter
Morgan of Dexter, and Don Draper of Mad Men.
3. Daniel Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art,” Philo-
sophical Topics 25 (1997): 155–199, at pp. 172–199.
4. For Noël Carroll, see “Moderate Moralism,” The
British Journal of Aesthetics 36 (1996): 223–238; “Art, Nar-
rative and Moral Understanding,” in Aesthetics and Ethics,
ed. Jerrold Levinson (Cambridge University Press, 1998);
and “Art and Ethical Criticism: An Overview of Recent
Directions in Research,” Ethics 110 (2000): 350–387. For
Berys Gaut, see “The Ethical Criticism of Art,” in Aes-
thetics and Ethics, ed. Jerrold Levinson (Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1998), pp. 182–203; “Art and Ethics,” in
The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd ed., eds.
Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (New York:
Routledge, 2005), pp. 431–443; Art, Emotion and Ethics (Ox-
ford University Press, 2007), especially chap. 6.
5. A work can also manifest a perspective through overt
proclamation. Kendall Walton, for instance, gives the ex-
ample of a photograph of a mixed race couple entitled
“Shame!” in Kendall Walton and Michael Tanner, “Morals
in Fiction and Fictional Morality,” Proceedings of the Aris-
totelian Society, supp. vol. 68 (1994): 27–66, at p. 40. Since
art rarely operates through the controlling guidance of ex-
plicit evaluation, I do not explore this mode of manifesting
a perspective here.
6. The Motion Picture Production Code, “General
Principles,” 1930 version of the Code.
7. I make this case in A. W. Eaton, “Where Ethics and
Aesthetics Meet,” Hypatia 18 (2003): 158–188.
8. One might object that the indifference to rape pre-
scribed by the painting is itself a moral perspective. But this is
to miss the distinction I make here. The painting itself does
not prescribe moral judgment of Europa’s rape, although
the painting’s indifferent perspective can be subjected to
second-order moral assessment.
9. Here the notion of target audience is crucial.
Guernica is not addressed to hardened fascists who would,
let us imagine, support the bombing even in the face of the
human suffering depicted in the painting.
10. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), p. 182.
11. Although the poem’s stated purpose is to “Justify
the ways of God to man” (Book 1), the poem’s sympathetic
portrayal of Lucifer or Satan suggested to many perceptive
readers, like William Blake, that Milton was “of the Devil’s
party without knowing it” (William Blake, The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell [Oxford University Press, 1975], p. xvii).
12. Aimée Baldridge suggested the Bulgakov example.
13. I discuss Benigno as an example of immoralism in
A. W. Eaton, “Almodóvar’s Immoralism,” in Talk to Her,
ed. A. W. Eaton (New York: Routledge, 2008).
14. Alex, in Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel A Clock-
work Orange, however, is not an example of the rough hero
since the novel ends with Alex’s moral redemption, which
Kubrick omitted.
15. For the concept of unreliable narrator, see
Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction (University of
Chicago Press, 1961), at pp. 300–308. Humbert Humbert’s
epistemic unreliability is most often due to his moral de-
pravity. Michael Smith suggested this point.
291
16. Consider the following castings: Faye Dunnaway
and Warren Beatty as Bonnie and Clyde, Brad Pitt as Tyler
Durden, Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, Al Pacino
as Michael Corleone, and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal
Lecter.
17. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass
Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Uni-
versity of California Press, 1980), p. 199.
18. In his 1958 review of Lolita, Trilling aptly captures
this phenomenon: ‘‘we find ourselves the more shocked
when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we
have come virtually to condone the violation it presents. . . .
We have been seduced into conniving in the violation, be-
cause we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we
know to be revolting.” Griffen, August 1958, reprinted in
Nabokov: The Critical Heritage, ed. Norman Page (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 95.
19. Although both Carroll and Gaut insist that their
views diverge significantly, I agree with Jacobson that the
structure of their arguments is the same. See Daniel Ja-
cobson, “Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation,” in
Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of
Art, ed. Matthew Kieran (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006),
p. 349.
20. Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art,” pp. 172–199.
This argument is fleshed out in Justin D’Arms and Daniel
Jacobson, “The Moralistic Fallacy: On the ‘Appropriateness’
of Emotions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
61 (2000): 65–90. Although Carroll appears to miss the
point when directly addressing Jacobson’s criticism (Carroll,
“Art and Ethical Criticism,” pp. 375–376), his suggestion
that some emotions have “moral warranting conditions”
could be a promising response, as discussed below. Gaut
develops precisely this line of response to Jacobson, argu-
ing that a wide range of responses, including humor, have
moral warrant conditions (Gaut, Art, Emotion and Ethics,
pp. 237–251). While I find Carroll’s and Gaut’s line of re-
sponse promising, I see two problems. First, while I agree
that some emotional and quasi-emotional responses have
what D’Arms and Jacobson call a “moral shape,” Car-
roll’s and Gaut’s formulation in terms of “moral warrant-
ing conditions” is too strong, for reasons explained below.
Second, I think that the scope of responses that have a
moral shape is considerably narrower than Gaut and Carroll
maintain.
21. D’Arms and Jacobson, “The Moralistic Fallacy,”
p. 75.
22. Noël Carroll makes this qualification in “Moderate
Moralism,” pp. 232–233. The qualification is important be-
cause it excludes factors extrinsic to the work—for example,
a fact about the judge or the circumstances in which she
encounters the work—but it nevertheless does not forestall
Jacobson’s objection, as I explain.
23. The example, which is mine, is meant to illustrate
Jacobson’s argument in “In Praise of Immoral Art,” pp.
170–179.
24. The states on the D’Arms–Jacobson list are typically
considered “basic emotions” in the psychological literature.
Nothing hangs on whether the kinds of states I would add to
this list count as emotions, feelings, or some other kind of af-
fective state; all that matters is that they are affective states
and have what D’Arms and Jacobson call a “moral shape.”
D’Arms and Jacobson explain “moral shape” in “The Moral-
istic Fallacy,” pp. 87–88.
292
25. I take it that this is what Carroll means when he says
that sympathy has “moral warranting conditions” (Carroll,
“Art and Ethical Criticism,” p. 377). As I explain below,
however, this formulation is too strong since sympathy has
only a partially moral shape.
26. Gaut argues for the moral warranting conditions of
humor in Art, Emotions, and Ethics, pp. 242–251.
27. I again draw from D’Arms and Jacobson, “The
Moralistic Fallacy,” p. 88.
28. There is now quite a large literature in aesthetics
and psychology on imaginative resistance. For an excel-
lent overview, see Tamar Gendler, “Imagination,” in The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 edition),
ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
spr2011/entries/imagination/, especially Section 5.2.
29. It would be interesting to pursue how certain as-
pects of this state as I describe it—in particular its mixture
of pain with pleasure and its protraction—are reminiscent of
Kant’s sublime.
30. This is a view championed by, among others,
Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Histori-
cal Explanation of Pictures (Yale University Press, 1983),
especially pp. 12–73.
31. Joshua Alston, “Too Much of a Bad Thing,”
Newsweek, January 12, 2009. (Most of the characters to
which Alston refers are what I call “rough heroes,” rather
than “antiheroes” as Alston describes them.)
32. Matthew Kieran, “Forbidden Knowledge: The
Challenge of Immoralism,” in Art and Morality, eds. José
Bermúdez and Sebastian Gardner (London: Routledge,
2003), pp. 56–73; Matthew Kieran, Revealing Art (London:
Routledge, 2005), pp. 148–204; and Matthew Kieran, “Art,
Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)Moral Character of Art
Works and Inter-Relations to Artistic Value,” Philosophy
Compass 1/2 (2006): 129–143.
33. Robert Stecker, “Immoralism and the Anti-
Theoretical View,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 48
(2007): 145–161; and James Harold, “Immoralism and the
Valence Constraint,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 48
(2008): 45–64.
34. See Kieran, “Forbidden Knowledge,” especially
Section III, “Experiencing what’s bad to understand the
good,” pp. 63–67; and Kieran, Revealing Art, pp. 191–192.
35. Harold, “Immoralism and the Valence Constraint,”
p. 60, makes a similar point, although he does not consider
its implications for Kieran’s CI.
36. Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” New York Re-
view of Books, February 6, 1975.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
37. Kieran forcefully concludes: “Thus cognitive im-
moralism holds and ethicism cannot but be false,” in
“Forbidden Knowledge,” p. 72.
38. Gaut, Art, Emotion and Ethics, pp. 194–202. Noël
Carroll, “Sympathy for the Devil,” in The Sopranos and
Philosophy, eds. Richard Greene and Peter Vernezze (Peru,
IL: Open Court, 2004), pp. 121–136.
39. Just as this essay goes into press, I learned of an
essay by Kieran that addresses some of the concerns outlined
here, though not, I think, my central worry. See Matthew
Kieran, “Emotions, Art and Immorality,” in The Oxford
Handbook of the Philosophy of Emotion, ed. Peter Goldie
(Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 681–703.
40. See D’Arms and Jacobson “The Moralistic Fal-
lacy,” pp. 65–90; Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art,”
pp. 155–199; Jacobson, “Ethical Criticism and the Vice of
Moderation,” pp. 342–355.
41. Daniel Jacobson, “Sir Philip Sidney’s Dilemma: On
the Ethical Function of Narrative Art,” The Journal of Aes-
thetics and Art Criticism 54 (1996): 327–336, at p. 335; also
Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art,” pp. 192–194.
42. Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art,” p. 187.
43. Much of Jacobson’s view is expressed by way of
analogy with immoral jokes—of which, alas, he also offers
no examples. Of the few examples of immoral artworks
that Jacobson does give, few are convincing, as Noël Carroll
observes (Carroll, “Art and Ethical Criticism,” p. 380,
note 34). Jacobson responds in his 2006 article with one
example, the poem “This Be the Verse” by Philip Larkin
(2003). Like Carroll, I am hard pressed to see the immoral
perspective promoted by this poem, which Jacobson simply
quotes but does not explain.
44. Jacobson, “Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Mod-
eration,” p. 346.
45. As noted above, Carroll doubts that there are com-
pelling examples. See Carroll, “Art and Ethical Criticism,”
pp. 379–380.
46. “In fact, my own view is simply that a moral defect
of an artwork can figure as an aesthetic merit: I expressly
allow that it can also be an aesthetic flaw or aesthetically
irrelevant (Jacobson 1997).” Jacobson, “Ethical Criticism
and the Vice of Moderation,” p. 346.
47. Jacobson, “Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Mod-
eration,” p. 346.
48. I would like to thank Eva Dadlez, Berys Gaut,
Daniel Jacobson, Brian Soucek, Rachel Zuckert, and anony-
mous referees for this journal for comments on earlier ver-
sions of this article.