MORALITY OF ART. — The question of the morality of art is debated between opposing theses: those who tend to include morality within the very function of art, and those who consider art autonomous from morality, thus legitimizing the violation of every ethical norm.
Of the first tendency are the “metaphysicians” (G. Flores D’Arcais, p. 141 ff.), who, insisting on the theological aspect of the beautiful, believe that art has an intrinsic aptitude to elevate the soul to God, from whom it derives as from its first principle; and the “cathartic” theorists (B. Croce, Ultimi saggi, Bari, 1935, pp. 9-10 and 62 ff.; La Poesia, ibid. 1936, pp. 167-68, 203), who recognize an inner purifying virtue (κάθαρσις) in artistic activity, which therefore excludes whatever might prove repellent to moral conscience.
Of the second tendency are, on the one hand, the “moralists” (B. Croce, Estetica, 7th ed., ibid. 1947, p. 57 ff.), who consider art to be either beyond or, in any case, indifferent to morality; and on the other, the “separatists” (C. Fidler, Aforismi sull’arte, Milano 1945, p. 76), who regard art and morality as two autonomous activities or functions, and the artist as independent, qua artist, from morality.
These positions reflect a more or less one-sided consideration of art and morality. In particular, against the “metaphysicians” it may be observed that art is indeed a reflection of the divine, but also and above all an affirmation of the human; and against the “cathartic” theorists, that art is not always the “gentle” and “honest” Beatrice who inspires lofty sentiments. Therefore, only out of love for the thesis can it be affirmed (B. Croce, Nuovi saggi di estetica, Bari 1920, p. 130) that it will be art that advises the poet to omit an immoral word, to pass over an immoral scene, or to purify the sentiment of base hatred, etc. It was Dante’s moral sense that led him to break off the evocation of Francesca with the verse “Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante,” not, in truth, the aesthetic prompting of art, which would have counselled quite another lingering over the passionate details. Likewise, it was moral judgment (as the author himself explicitly declared) that induced Manzoni to limit the torbid tale of the nun of Monza to the restrained phrase “La sventurata rispose.” To confirm this, one may observe that it was not art, but rather morality—renewed to loftier senses by Christianity—that in the Middle Ages gave to the poetry of love that courtly and almost mystical tone which detached it from classical-pagan eroticism. Moreover, to irrefutably disprove the cathartic function of aesthetic activity, history offers examples of works that are more or less aberrant from ethical demands and yet accepted and experienced by the reader’s conscience in the same way as others, that is, as true aesthetic experiences and authentic works of art.
Against the “moralists,” who fall into the equivocation of considering artistic activity in the abstract, it must be observed that art, in concreto, is always the function of a personality, that is, it is always an act of a historically determined and morally oriented individual. Therefore, neither the artist nor the work of art can be neutral or amoral; rather, both the artist’s conception and the work’s realization will be either moral or immoral. Art, before being a fact, is an act: a conscious act, because performed in the reflection of artistic elaboration; a consenting act, because performed in adherence to aesthetic delight. Artistic act, therefore, is a taking of position of one’s inner self, a deliberate pronouncement of one’s own ego; hence a fully imputable act, which renders the artist morally responsible and legally censurable.
This is also the argument that undermines the position of the “separatists”; vain, indeed, is the attempt to sever human activities from one another, for it is impossible to detach them from the center of the ego in which they are all unified. Morality is a mode of human action, not an action in itself and for itself, so that there can be a moral activity that is solely moral activity. Nor, on the other hand, can one conceive of a human action that is not morally qualified, that is, that is neither moral nor immoral.
The problem of the morality of art is the problem of reconciling the demands of morality with the demands of art. If art must express human reality, which is necessarily a mixture of good and evil, it would seem impossible to reconcile the freedom of artistic expression with the restrictiveness of the ethical norm. The problem has been complicated and obscured by a false concept of morality, as if morality meant not seeing and not expressing evil.
Morality or immorality does not lie in things themselves, but in the way of seeing and expressing them; therefore, morality in art does not mean not expressing evil, but expressing it morally, that is, expressing it as evil, without justifying it, without exalting it, without taking complacency in II. To express evil is not evil when it redounds to good; and to remain silent about it is a duty only when expressing it would exalt II. There is a Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, which is built upon the most shameful of crimes, incest with one’s own mother, which moreover in certain passages is recalled quite crudely. And yet Oedipus Rex is not immoral art, because everything in it is deploration and reprobation of the crime, culminating in the terrible vengeance that the unwitting culprits inflict upon themselves; so that the drama of guilt is transformed into a tragedy of expiation, and thus into a true moral exaltation.
To be moral in art, therefore, it suffices to preserve the human sense of things and to portray them in the light that they reflect to the normal conscience. The artist cannot exempt himself from responsibility or save himself from immorality in the name of art, by saying that human reality is what it is and therefore must be expressed as it is; for morality does not forbid the expression of human reality as it is, but forbids expressing it as it is not, that is, as exaltation when it is perdition, as glory when it is ignominy, as honor when it is infamy, as licit when it is illicit, as just when it is unjust, as good when it is evil. What renders the revelations of the Confessions moral and the narratives of the Decameron immoral is exclusively the attitude of their respective authors toward immoral human reality: in the one, evil is complacency and exaltation; in the other, it is repentance and detestation.
Once the concept of the morality of art is posited as a requirement not of the exclusion of immoral reality but rather of its reprobation, the education of the artist to morality must not be understood as closing his eyes to evil, but as giving him a sense of evil, persuading him that the expression of evil in art is licit only when it does not result in a glorification of evil itself, and that therefore, in his artistic expression, he must in some way redeem immoral reality by presenting it in its negativity as vividly as possible: to see evil morally and to express it morally. It must be noted, however, that the moral expression of evil does not exclude dangerous suggestion, for either through the exuberance of youth or through morbid imbalance it is possible to dwell with a certain exclusivity on the immoral aspect of a work, neglecting the totality in which, so to speak, it is redeemed. Therefore, the distinction between the moral and the dangerous must be maintained in art, regulating, on this basis, the access of the young to works of art. Another point to clarify is the one-sided consideration of the immoral, which is sometimes reduced to sexual abuse; whereas violence and fraud, oppression and the suppression of the innocent, theft and bloodshed are certainly also immoral; and therefore their exaltation in art is likewise excluded by morality.
BIBL.:
Croce, B., Estetica, 7a ed., Bari 1947.
Croce, B., Ultimi saggi, Bari 1935.
Croce, B., Nuovi saggi di estetica, Bari 1920.
Croce, B., La Poesia, Bari 1936.
Fidler, C., Aforismi sull’arte, Milano 1945.
Flores D’Arcais, G., L’arte e il divino, Milano 1940.
Finally, it should be noted that the ethical norm is felt as a limit only when it is not lived as a custom; for those who have made it an inner norm of life, the ethical norm is an affirmation of self and an act of freedom. Therefore, moral adjustment in art must be understood from within, not from without; hence, rather than moralizing art, one should aim to moralize the artist. Moreover, morality does not stifle aestheticism only when it is an inner attitude of the artist; and only then can it truly be called the morality of art, because only then does morality in a certain way become aestheticism itself.