Jerrold Levinson

This major collection of essays stands at the border of aesthetics and ethics and deals with charged issues of practical import: art and morality, the ethics of taste, and censorship. As such its potential interest is by no means confined to professional philosophers; it should also appeal to art historians and critics, literary theorists, and students of film. Prominent philosophers in both aesthetics and ethics tackle a wide array of issues. Some of the questions explored in the volume include: Can art be morally enlightening and, if so, how? If a work of art is morally better does that make it better as art? Is morally deficient art to be shunned, or even censored? Do subjects of artworks have rights as to how they are represented? Do artists have duties as artists and duties as human beings, and if so, to whom? How much tension is there between the demands of art and the demands of life?

This essay offers a sketch of what aesthetic appreciation of music fundamentally consists in, underlining both why such engagement counts as aesthetic and why such engagement counts as appreciation, and emphasizing the role of perception of gesture in the grasp of musical expressiveness. The analysis is illustrated by a piece of chamber music of Gabriel Fauré. In the last section of the essay I address some remarks of Roger Scruton on the connection between music and dance, ones whose relevance to the appreciation of music is clear

Résumé Pouvons-nous trouver une plaisanterie raciste ou sexiste à la fois drôle et moralement condamnable? Certains répondent « non », soit en tentant de montrer que l’immoralité disparaît dans le contexte de la plaisanterie, soit en soutenant que de telles plaisanteries ne sont pas réellement drôles ou ne devraient pas être trouvées telles. L’article soutient au contraire que oui! Et c’est de la mauvaise foi que de ne pas le reconnaître. La question est alors de savoir si leur immoralité nuit à leur drôlerie et, plus largement, à leur valeur. Encore oui! Dans un dialogue critique avec les travaux de Ted Cohen, de Berys Gaut et de Noël Carroll, il montre que nous rions de ces plaisanteries lorsque nous faisons nôtres, au moins provisoirement, les stéréotypes blâmables qu’elles véhiculent et que, en même temps, nous nous sentons coupables de le faire.