Ethics and aesthetics—joined at the hip?
pp. 179-187
in: Paul Macneill (ed), Ethics and the arts, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
There is a long-standing acknowledgement that there is a nexus between the "good" and the "beautiful", and Wittgenstein has even claimed that ethics and aesthetics are one and the same. Neurophysiology has recently confirmed that ethical and aesthetic judgements are made in similar parts of the brain. In the age of media, the link has become more overt. Media aesthetics concentrates on images, layouts, framing, colouring, condensing, simplifying and persuading. We derive much of our implicit ethical education from the media. Current events, soap operas, documentaries, news bulletins, whether on television, radio or in the print media, present audiences with human drama and interactions, with great attention to aesthetics. We are impressed by "good production values," which have a rhetorical function that persuades us to take mediated messages seriously, including their implied ethical stances and judgements. Ethics in contemporary culture is significantly framed by the media and shaped by their aesthetics, and constitutes a huge resource for teaching, critique and reflection. Learning to use it constructively and critically will be a major task for teachers and students of ethics in the present and future.
