MORALITY OF ART. — The question of the morality of art is debated between the opposing theses of those who tend to insert morality into the artistic function itself, and those who regard art as autonomous from morality, thus legitimizing its violation of every ethical norm.
The first tendency is represented by the “metaphysicians” (G. Flores D'Arcais, p. 141 ff.), who, insisting on the theological aspect of beauty, hold that art has the intrinsic capacity to raise us to God, from whom it derives as from its first principle; and by the “cathartics” (B. Croce, Ultimi saggi, Bari, 1935, pp. 9–10 and 62 ff.; La Poesia, ibid., 1936, pp. 167–68, 203), who recognize an intimate purifying virtue (κάθαρσις) in artistic activity, which would therefore exclude whatever may prove repellent to the moral conscience.
The second tendency is represented, on the one hand, by the “amoralists” (B. Croce, Estetica, 7th ed., ibid., 1947, p. 57 ff.), who regard art as lying beyond, or in any case indifferent to, morality; and, on the other, by the “separatists” (C. Fidler, Aforismi sull'arte, Milan, 1945, p. 76), who consider art and morality to be two autonomous activities or functions, and the artist, insofar as he is an artist, independent of 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 “cathartics,” that art is not always the “gentle” and “honest” Beatrice who inspires elevated feelings. Thus, only for the sake of an argument can it be asserted (B. Croce, Nuovi saggi di estetica, Bari, 1920, p. 130) that it is art which advises the poet to omit a word, pass over a dishonorable scene, purify the feeling of base hatred, and so forth. It was Dante’s moral sense that caused the evocation of Francesca to be cut short in the line “That day we read no further”; certainly not the aesthetic prompting of art, which instead would have persuaded him to dwell much longer on the passionate details. Likewise, it was moral restraint (as the author himself explicitly declared) that induced Manzoni to reduce the troubled story of the nun of Monza to the limits of the phrase “The unhappy woman replied.” As confirmation, it may be observed that it was not art but morality, renewed to a higher meaning by Christianity, that in the Middle Ages gave the poetry of love the courtly and almost mystical tone that detached it from classical-pagan eroticism. Moreover, the historical fact decisively disproving the cathartic function of aesthetic activity is that it offers works more or less aberrant from ethical demands which are nevertheless accepted and experienced by the consciousness of readers in the same way as others—that is, as genuine aesthetic experiences and authentic works of art.
Against the “amoralists,” who fall into the equivocation of considering artistic activity in the abstract, it must be observed that art, concretely, is always a function of personality; that is, it is always the act of an historically determined and morally oriented self. Therefore, a neutral or amoral position exists neither in the artist nor in the work of art; rather, both the conception of the former and the realization of the latter will be either moral or immoral. Art, before being a fact, is an act: a conscious act, because it is performed through the reflection involved in artistic elaboration; an assented-to act, because it is performed through adherence to aesthetic enjoyment. The artistic act is therefore an assumption of a position by one’s inner self, a deliberate pronouncement of one’s own self; hence it is a fully imputable act, making the artist morally responsible and legally censureable.
And this is also the argument that undermines the position of the “separatists”: indeed, any attempt to sever human activities from one another is futile, because it is impossible to detach them from the center of the self in which they are all unified. Morality is a mode of human action, not an action existing by and for itself, such that there could be an activity that was merely moral activity. Nor, on the other hand, can one conceive of human action that is not morally qualified—that is, that is not moral or immoral.
The problem of the morality of art is the problem of agreement between the demands of morality and 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 though morality meant neither seeing nor expressing evil.
Morality or immorality lies not in things, but in the way things are seen and expressed; therefore, morality in art does not mean failing to express evil, but expressing it morally—that is, expressing it as evil, without justifying it, exalting it, or taking pleasure in II. To express evil is not evil when it leads back to the good; and to remain silent about it is a duty only when expressing it means exalting II. There is a Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King, whose plot is based on the most shameful crime, incest with one’s own mother, which is moreover recalled quite crudely at certain points. Yet Oedipus the King is not immoral art, because everything in it is lamentation and condemnation of the crime, culminating in the terrible vengeance that the involuntary culprits inflict upon themselves; thus the drama of guilt is transformed into a tragedy of expiation, and therefore into a genuine moral exaltation.
To achieve morality in art, it is therefore sufficient to preserve the human meaning of things and portray them in the light in which they are reflected in the normal conscience. The artist cannot evade responsibility and save himself from immorality in the name of art by saying that human reality is what it is and must therefore be expressed as such; for morality does not forbid expressing human reality as it is, but 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 lawful when it is unlawful, as just when it is unjust, as good when it is evil. What makes 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 former, evil is met with pleasure and exaltation; in the latter, with repentance and detestation.
Once the concept of the morality of art is understood as requiring not the exclusion of immoral reality but rather its condemnation, the artist’s education in morality should not be intended to close his eyes to evil, but to give him a sense of evil, persuading him that the expression of evil in art is permissible only when it does not result in a glorification of evil itself, and that he must therefore somehow redeem immoral reality in his artistic expression by presenting its negativity as vividly as possible: see evil morally and express it morally. It must nevertheless be observed that the moral expression of evil does not exclude dangerous suggestiveness, since, either through youthful exuberance or through a morbid imbalance, it is possible to dwell exclusively on the immoral aspect of a work, neglecting its totality, within which it is, so to speak, redeemed. The distinction between the moral and the dangerous must therefore be maintained in art, and young people’s access to works of art regulated on this basis. Another point requiring clarification is the one-sided consideration of immorality, which is sometimes reduced to sexual abuse; whereas violence and fraud, the oppression and suppression of the innocent, theft and bloodshed are certainly immoral as well. Their exaltation in art, therefore, is likewise excluded by morality.
Finally, it should be noted that the ethical norm is experienced as a limitation only when it is not lived as a habit; for one who has made it an inner norm of life, the ethical norm is an affirmation of self and an act of freedom. Therefore, moral conformity in art must be understood from within, not from without; hence, rather than seeking to moralize art, one must seek to moralize the artist. Moreover, only when morality is an inner attitude of the artist does it fail to mortify the aesthetic quality; and only then can it truly be called the morality of art, because only then does morality become actual in a certain way as aesthetic quality.
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Amerigo De Propria