Art and Morality

by José Luis Bermúdez (Editor), Sebastian Gardner (Editor)

Art and Morality is a collection of groundbreaking new papers on the theme of aesthetics and ethics, and the link between the two subjects. A group of distinguished contributors tackle the important questions that arise when one thinks about the moral dimensions of art and the aesthetic dimension of moral life.

The volume is a significant contribution to philosophical literature, opening up unexplored questions and shedding new light on more traditional debates in aesthetics. The topics explored include: the relation of aesthetic to ethical judgement; the relation of artistic experience to moral consciousness; the moral status of fiction; the concepts of sentimentality and decadence; the moral dimension of critical practice, pictorial art and music; the moral significance of tragedy; and the connections between artistic and moral issues elaborated in the writings of central figures in modern philosophy, such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

The contributors share the view that progress in aesthetics requires detailed study of the practice of criticism. This volume will appeal both to the philosophical community and to researchers in areas such as literary theory, musicology and the theory of art.

Genres: Philosophy

318 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 2002

About the author

José Luis Bermúdez is Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University, where he previously served as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and as Associate Provost for Strategic Planning. Before joining Texas A&M in 2010 he was Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Center for Programs in Arts and Sciences, and Director of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Bermúdez has more than 100 publications, including five single-author books and six edited volumes. His research interests are interdisciplinary in nature at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. His first book, The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press, 1998) analyzed the nature of self-awareness. Thinking without Words (Oxford UP, 2003) offered a model for thinking about the cognitive achievements and abilities of prelinguistic infants an nonlinguistiuc humans. Decision Theory and Rationality (Oxford UP, 2009) explores tensions in how the concept of rationality is defined and formalized in different academic disciplines. The second edition of his textbook Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind was published by Cambridge University Press in March 2014. He is the editor of the New Problems in Philosophy book series, published by Routledge. Dr Bermudez is currently completing a book on the first person in language and thought, in addition to papers in the philosophy of mind and the theory of rationality.