This major collection of essays examines issues surrounding aesthetics and ethics.

The author's purpose in this volume is to present the relevance of the ideas of Wittgenstein to those interested in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. He focuses on both the earlier work centred around the "Tractatus" and the later work of the "Philosophical Investigations".

Aesthetic and moral value are often seen to go hand in hand. They do so not only practically, such as in our everyday assessments of artworks that raise moral questions, but also theoretically, such as in Kant's theory that beauty is the symbol of morality. Some philosophers have argued that it is in the relation between aesthetic and moral value that the key to an adequate understanding of either notion lies. But difficult questions abound. Must a work of art be morally admirable in order to be aesthetically valuable? How, if at all, do our moral values shape our aesthetic judgements - and vice versa? Aesthetics and Morality is a stimulating and insightful inquiry into precisely this set of questions. Elisabeth Schellekens explores the main ideas and debates at the intersection of aesthetics and moral philosophy. She invites readers to reflect on the nature of beauty, art and morality, and provides the philosophical knowledge to render such reflection more rigorous. This original, inspiring and entertaining book sheds valuable new light on a notably complex and challenging area of thought.

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “Ethics is aesthetics.” It is unclear what such a claim might mean and whether it is true. This book explores contentious issues arising at the interface of ethics and aesthetics. The contributions reflect on the status of aesthetic en ethical judgments, the relation of aesthetic beauty and ethical goodness and art and character development. The book further considers the potential role art could play in ethical analysis and in the classroom and explores in what respects aesthetics and ethics might be intertwined and even mutually supportive.

The Meeting of Aesthetics and Ethics in the Academy provides a deep understanding of the nuances of ethics in the creative environment and contributes to the critical exploration of the nature of research ethics in higher education. Written by world-renown academics with a wealth of experience in this field, this volume explores ethical challenges and responses across a range of creative practices and disciplines including design, documentary film making, journalism, socially engaged arts and the visual arts. It addresses the complex negotiations that creative practice researchers in higher education undertake to ensure that the ethical compliance required does not undermine the research integrity and artistic aspirations. By presenting carefully considered challenges to accepted models of research, this book illustrates critical analysis through a variety of case studies and anecdotal examples that provide an insight into improved ethics practices and policies in higher education. This book is perfect for academics, ethics administrators, higher degree research candidates and supervisors looking to engage further in creative practice research and wanting to explore and understand its ethical oversight.

The essays in The Hand and the Soul explore the question of how ethical ideas guiding the design process--a concern for the environment or for social justice--relate to the beauty of our buildings, cities, and artworks. The book presents a range of viewpoints and does not ignore the perils of an easy association of ethics and aesthetics. Yet the majority of contributors, among them historians, theorists, as well practicing designers and artists, argue passionately in defense of the idea that the good and the beautiful can and should be able to find a common ground in the design disciplines. The book begins with an exploration of recent difficulties in pairing ethics and aesthetics. Can one effect a philosophical convergence of these elements, or is it dangerous to conflate moral and aesthetic terms? The discussion continues with considerations of the overlap that occurs between the fine arts and the design disciplines, the intersection of aesthetic theory and practice with sustainability and environmental science, and the concept of "open works"--projects whose design processes are flexible, nonhierarchical, and attuned to the unique features of a particular place or cultural situation. The book concludes with a look at several contrasting ideas developed in the essays and examines ethics as a desire for community, as well as a sense of responsibility, an obligation to contemplate not only what buildings offer us but also what they may take away. In juxtaposing the work of historians and theorists with that of practicing designers and artists, The Hand and the Soul, whose title is drawn from an essay by American artist Philip Guston, seeks to bridge the divide between theory and practice, between abstract ethical or aesthetic concepts and practical ways of making tangible artifacts. In a field dominated by esoteric studies and, at the other extreme, primarily illustrated works, The Hand and the Soul offers a vital discussion that is at once theoretically rigorous and grounded in the practice of art, architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism. Contributors Richard Shusterman * Joan Ockman * Howard Singerman * Robin Dripps * Nathaniel Coleman * Thomas Berding * Steven A. Moore * William Sherman * Timothy Beatley * Elissa Rosenberg * Phoebe Crisman * Sanda Iliescu * W. G. Clark

In The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics, fifteen authors reflect on the nature of friendship and love and on the complex relation between art and morality. Karl Verstrynge, Vincent Caudron, Anne Christine Habbard, and Walter Jaeschke draw from authors from Aristotle to Derrida, Montaigne to Kierkegaard, and Hegel to Blanchot to discuss friendship and love. Andreas Arndt, Paul Cobben, Paul Cruysberghs, Gerbert Faure, Simon Truwant, and Margherita Tonon focus on the connection between aesthetics and ethics in the works of Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Cassirer, and Adorno. Baldine Saint Girons, Stéphane Symons, Marlies De Munck, Stijn De Cauwer, and Willem Styfhals explore the connection between ethical and aesthetic issues in photography, film, music, literature, and the visual arts.

Rethinks the existing definitions of aesthetics and ethics and the relations between them.

In a first, theoretical part, this study analyzes what role "otherness" plays in the most influential moral-philosophical approaches to date - from Aristotle and the Neo-Aristotelians (Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum) via Kantianism and its deconstructors (Jean-Francois Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller) to the works of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas - and sheds light on its highly problematic status in Western notions of justice and aesthetics. Starting from a revised notion of the sublime, the second part uses the different theoretical approaches to interpret four American novels (Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', Herman Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor', Richard Wright's 'Native Son', and N. Scott Momaday's 'House Made of Dawn'), and examines how far the respective moral-philosophical systems carry in elucidating these texts, as well as what role literary-historical and generic strategies play in dramatizing the encounter with "otherness".

This book is the first of two volumes that, together, present for the first time a comprehensive collection of three decades of the theoretical writings of artist and theorist Bracha L Ettinger. Edited and introduced by Griselda Pollock they provide a systematic anthology of Ettinger’s path-breaking and influential concept of Matrixial subjectivity-as-encounter and jointness-in-difference, and chart her radical intervention in aesthetics, ethics and theories of subjectivity far beyond classical feminist and current gender/queer theory. This first volume includes the writings in which Ettinger elaborates her original concepts of Matrixial space-time and metramorphosis, fascinance, wit(h)nessing, resonance, transcryptum, com-passion, self-fragilization and resistance, co-emergence and copoiesis transform theories of the subject, Eros, alliance and love, sexual difference, alterity, relationality, trauma and violence. Her critical dialogue with theorists including Levinas, Lacan, Lyotard and Deleuze & Guattari, Butler, Cavarero and Irigaray is evident here. A leading authority on Matrixial theory, Griselda Pollock provides explanatory prefaces to each chapter and a lengthy introduction that situates Ettinger’s work in relation to socio-psychoanalytical theory and practice and current social and philosophical debates. Ettinger’s interlacing of psychoanalysis, ethics, and aesthetics can be seen here to address some of the deepest challenges of our social, cultural and political existence today.