The Aesthetic and the Moral Author(s): Ronald Moore Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 29, No.

2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 18-29 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333451 Accessed: 13/10/2010 10:35
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NOTES The books are Art andNonart(Rutherford, N.J.:FairleighDickinsonUniversity Press,1983),hereafterAN; BasicIssuesin Aesthetics (Belmont,Calif.:Wadsworth and the GoodLife Publishing Company, 1988), hereafter BIA; and Aesthetics AGL. N.J.:FairleighDickinsonUniversityPress,1989),hereafter (Rutherford, 2. AlthoughEatonfrequentlysummarizesher views as formalphilosophicaldefinitions, complete with "x's,""F's,""at tn's,"and "if and only ifs," neither of these is an exact quotation. There are frequent small unexplained variations among her own versions,and it seems to me that they do not always represent her own ideas completelyperspicuously.As will become clear,I have in my formulationschosen to emphasizewhat seems to me to be the most promisingversion of Eaton'stheory,as opposed to alternativeswhich she sometimesconsiders and even explicitly endorses.For her own formulations,the readershould consultAN, chapter4, BIA,pp. 93-96,14245, and AGL,pp. 146-48,where there can be found formal definitions not only of "work of art" and "aesthetic and "aesthetic but also of such relatedideas as "aestheticexperience" feature," value." andArt 3. MorrisWeitz,in "TheRole of Theoryin Aesthetics," Journal ofAesthetics Criticism 15, no. 1 (September1956):27-35,notoriouslydenied both that necessaryand sufficientconditionscouldbe given for something'sbeing a work of art and, in particular,that being an artifactwas a necessary condition of being a work of art. One of Eaton'searliest majorpapers, "Art,Artifacts,and Inten6, no. 2 (April 1969):165-69,addresses tions,"American Philosophical Quarterly these issues. See also AN, chaps.1 and 4. 4. The reader who consults Eaton'sown formulationswill note that one of the ways in which I have departedfrom them is to make explicit the invocationof the notion of the aestheticin her definitionof art.Thereis, I think,ample textual evidenceto supportthis reading. 61 (1964):571-84;and 5. See ArthurDanto, "TheArtworld," Journal of Philosophy and London: An Institutional (Ithaca Analysis GeorgeDickie,ArtandtheAesthetic: CornellUniversityPress,1974),chap. 1. 6. See RichardWollheim,"TheInstitutional Theoryof Art,"in Art andIts Objects, 2d ed. (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 1980). as aesthetic,see Art andtheAes7. ForDickie'srefusalto characterize appreciation thetic, pp. 4041. For his debunkingsof various notions of the aesthetic,see Art Forhis institutionalaccountof the aesthetic,see Artand andtheAesthetic, passim. theAesthetic, chap. 7. 8. I have defended a view like this in Gary Iseminger,"AestheticAppreciation," andArt Criticism 39, no. 4 (Summer1981):389-97. Journal ofAesthetics 9. The definitiongoes like this: "'F'is an aestheticterm at tn (names an aesthetic featureat tn) if and only if F is an intrinsicfeatureof O at tn and 'F' has been used to describea work of art at tm, and tm is prior to tn, and F is considered worthattendingto, thatis, worth perceivingor reflectingupon"(AGL p. 148). the aestheticrealm(in the 10. If one is not seeking a set of definitionsthat "reduce" needn'tbe such a bad thing. then circularity broadestsense) to the nonaesthetic, See GeorgeDickie,TheArtCircle 1984),p. 12. (New York:Haven Publications, The Aesthetic and the Moral There is a remarkable painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema that portrays the Feast of Heliogabalus. Handsomely executed, well-composed, and undeniably beautiful by the standards of its day (1888), this work depicts the murderous suffocation of a number of women by a huge volume of rose petals for the pleasure of an imperial audience. It truly is a stunning painting, so convincing in its sumptuous details that one can practically smell 1.

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19

the rich,heady fragranceof the roses and hear the excited commotionof the spectators.And yet the scene is abominable,so abominablethat moral horror colors every element. In fact, this painting achieves its desired effect only by tearing apart our moral and aesthetic responses. The distance it puts between the two is the measure of its affectivepower and, if one may put it this way, its success. it is hard to resist the Looking at artworkslike TheRosesof Heliogabalus, that and are ethics aesthetics disconnected. Countless impression radically otherexamplesof aestheticallysplendidbut morallyodious (or,conversely, aestheticallydismal but morally superb)actions,events, and persons could be marshaledto support this impression.It does not astonish us that some people (Goering,de Sade, Anthony Blunt, say) have extraordinaryartistic sensibilities but defective moral sense; no more so than that some of our nicest, morallyprobativefriends and relativesare aestheticdimwits. It does not astonish us because we all recognizethat there are deep differencesbetween the human capacitiesengaged in the making of aestheticjudgments and those used in moraljudgments.Philosophershave produced imposing argumentsin support of this commonsense recognition.Ethics,they point out, has to do with action and the will to action, whereas aestheticshas to do with reflection and its requisite detachment. Ethics requires commitment, aesthetics suspends it. Ethics faces the problems of human engagement in the world of affairs, aesthetics deals with problems set by artists themselves in which the world of affairsis put out of joint. And so on. Ultimately, accordingto the prevailingline of thinking,disparityin the basis of in the judgmentsthemselves:From judgmentsleads to incommensurability the fact that something-an artwork,or an artist, say-is highly moral (or immoral)nothing at all follows regardingaestheticexcellence (or lack of it). And, conversely,from the fact that something is beautiful or ugly, elegant, sublime, graceful, dainty, dumpy, and so forth, nothing at all follows reThegardingits moralstatus.This view, which we may call the "Separation sis," has become both a canon of modem-day axiology and the dominant belief in popularthinkingabout art in society. MarciaEatonargues that the SeparationThesis is mistaken.As she sees it, some responses to things are simply moral, and others are simply aesthetic, but many responses are both moral and aesthetic at the same time, and many of the most importantlife issues are ones in which there can be no prizing apartof the multiple values involved. Against the tide of various formalisms bent on purging every value domain of contamination from others, she insists that rational choice in real life typically concerns what kind of person one wants to be, a questionin which all mannerof values are necessarilyintegrated. Eaton'sargumentin oppositionto the Separation Thesis is framedwithin and supportedby a holistic accountof human value and experience,one in which individualattention,judgment,and choice are inextricably connected

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to social institutions in the form of traditions. It is in the context of these traditions that the deep questions, the "meaning-of-life" questions, arise. The project Eaton has set herself is very ambitious. Its critical component, the attack on the Separation Thesis, makes sense only in combination with its constructive component, the defense of the theory of Tradition-based Holism. And the latter cannot be disentangled from its many implications for moral epistemology, language theory, aesthetic ontology, philosophical anthropology, and so on. In what follows, I consider each of the three main parts of this project: Eaton's argument against separatism itself, the theory of tradition this defense involves, and the lessons these two present for the life lived aesthetically, the life in which aesthetics and morals are integrated. TheArgument against Separatism Separatists' insist that moral and aesthetic features are conceptually different, different in kind, and hence incompatible or incommensurable. How can such a claim be tested? It's not like the claims that squares can't be round, that vixens can't be male, or that things can't be both blue and red all over. The conceptual incompatibility here is neither a logical nor a definitional truth. Rather, the claim seems to be that seeing things morally and seeing things aesthetically are discrete activities, requiring different modes of assessment, taking stock of different features, deploying different criteria, and so on. As a result, even in regard to the same subject matter, the two ways of seeing neither compete nor connect. According to a familiar line of argument, this conceptual disparity is most clearly manifested in the normal propensity we have to allow that moral considerations override aesthetic considerations when both are at stake (the so-called "overridingness" phenomenon). In the stock example, Gauguin's abandonment of his family is an immorality whose badness overrides the aesthetic benefit of the Tahitian paintings he produced and is therefore, on balance, a choice he should not have made. Our sense that the judgment is right, and moreover that all such "overriding" judgments are right, it is argued, reveals that there is something peculiarly compelling about the way we deploy moral values in our lives that makes them the most important values in any competition, and therefore invariably decisive. Eaton begins her assault on Separatism with a convincing attack on the overridingness thesis. She points out that nothing about the human enterprise of choosing (especially choosing a life plan) requiresmoral value considerations to be distinguished from and given priority over aesthetic value considerations. In fact, many people will admire Gauguin for his life choice, all things considered. Or, to take Eaton's wonderful example, people will simply differ as to whether it is preferable to be a moderately good harpsichordist who is moderately moral, an above-average harpsichordist who is

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a little immoral, a below-average harpsichordist who is entirely moral, or a wonderful harpsichordist who is entirely immoral.2 If the overridingness thesis were sound, this would be an easy question; but it isn't. It would, of course, be an even easier question if all final value choices were regarded as ipsofacto moral choices;3 but then the overridingness thesis would be trivially true and thus uninteresting. As Eaton says, "What finally shows up the overridingness thesis... is the existence of real dilemmas-where we recognize that not everyone will choose the same thing, and that different choices can be equally justified."4 The underlying Separatist mistake that is exposed in this attack on overridingness is the baseless notion that values are neatly parsed in life situations. Eaton observes: Our experiences, our encounters with and in the world and the decisions we make as a result, do not typically come in separate packets, with the moral, aesthetic, economic, religious, scientific, etc. serving as viewing stands distanced from one another so that we look at the world first from one and then from another standpoint.5 There are ambiguous figures (famously, Wittgenstein's "duck-rabbit") that do work that way, letting us see them first as one thing and then as another, but never as both at once. Eaton's holistic argument here comes down to the claim that in genuine value situations we do, and sometimes must, see the different value aspects of things at the same time. She illustrates this last point at length in connection with sentimentality, a notion that is clearly used in both aesthetic and ethical contexts, and whose use in either context draws upon considerations from the other. Here, as in many similar contexts, aesthetics and morality, form and content, are inextricable.6 Eaton's argument to this point has defended the integration of various forms of value (including the moral and the aesthetic) in standard choosing situations. This descriptive claim is later conjoined, however, to prescriptive claims for which the evidence may appear less compelling. Beginning with the assertion that admiration is often not purely moral or purely aesthetic, but "an aggregation of each," she goes on to argue that value components in admiration "should not be segregated," because doing so "precludes a rational life."7 Our willingness to agree with the latter claim will hinge both on what we understand to be the demands of rationality and on what we take to be the conditions of the rejected segregation. In the present context, Eaton appears to assign reason a gatekeeper function; it selects values for informed choice. So, we may accept as rational whatever method of choice maximizes the availability to the chooser of useful, pertinent value considerations. It is Eaton's position that, because ethical and aesthetic considerations don't "block" each other (unlike the duck-rabbit), it will be rational to draw upon them both in making important life

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choices. And, because the two do affect each other (like the two flavors of sentimentality), it will be rational to draw upon them as interdependent influences. Putting things this way shifts the whole weight of argument onto the quality of "integration" (or, denial of segregation) involved. To be sure, human individuals are integral decision makers, drawing on "unpacketed" experience in choosing meaningful lives for themselves. But, in doing so, they sometimes do (and should) modify, or even nullify, certain values in deference to others, as conditions demand. Consider again The Roses of Heliogabalus.Thinking of the event depicted, we don't want aesthetic value to mitigate the moral enormity we recognize in the homicidal act; thinking of the painting itself, we don't want the immorality of the subject matter to diminish the work's aesthetic power.8 Clearly, the integration of moral and aesthetic is in practice neither a simple nor a uniform matter. As Eaton sees it, ethics and aesthetics are importantly integrated because they affect the patterning of life in unison. But unison isn't union, and in particular circumstances we may choose to heed the voice of one more than, or in preference to, the voice of the other. So, where does denial of the Separatist Thesis leave us? To find a convincing answer to this question, we must step back from acts of individual value choice to consider the wider contexts of society, culture, and tradition. We are perhaps surprised that a person could be aesthetically scrupulous in the morning and ethically unscrupulous in the afternoon.9 But we are probably less surprised that that person should prefer soap operas in the afternoon to grand opera in the evening. Why should this be? There's no beginning to answer such a question if we think of value choices like personal preferences for brands of soda pop. Aesthetic values, like moral values, identify intrinsic properties deemed worthy of perception and reflection within a culture.10 Thus, aesthetic experience, though rooted in individual response, is inevitably social, and reflective of a society's estimates of what is worthwhile.11 Cultural tradition is the glue that holds individual moral and aesthetic valuations together. The Theoryof Tradition No rational, integrated theory of value would be possible if the stuff of morality and aesthetics were a welter of feelings or attitudes that defied interpersonal communication. But there is no private moral language; there is no private aesthetic language. This point is central to Eaton's "theory of Art within Traditions." It is a great virtue of that theory that it recognizes (as few others have) the degree to which we are, as aesthetic and moral beings, conditioned by our culture's history, practices, and expectations. We don't

Eaton's Philosophy

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just knowthat reciprocatingfavors is good and that sunsets are beautiful; we are preparedto think in these termsby having grown up in the societies we have. It is in a society, a society united in language, that we develop such forms of life as permit us to see things aestheticallyand morally, and then say what we see. It is Eaton'sposition that for life to have a meaning there must be a community of meaning, and for meaning-of-lifequestions to arise there must be the traditionsand language forms that permit a person to choose to be a person of a certainkind.12 She explains that choices on this level arebuilt on "patternvirtues,"configurationsof characteristics we wish to adopt because we admire them in the lives of others. It is not so much the specific decisions we admire, nor their specific results, but the overall patternof living revealinga coordinationof values.13 Even experience itself gets contextualized and traditionallyframed in Eaton'stheory.Often, we don't grasp experiencesat the moment of experience. Reflectingon them, we discover the apt arrangements of their components by invoking patterns of meaning we find exemplified in the social and artisticpracticesof our society.14 These discovered arrangementshelp inform laterexperience.Successful living, as Eatonsees it, is largely a matter of finding and creatinga fit between experienceand pattern.We sometimes call this capacity"taste," the talentfor exemplaryliving, and it is what Eaton has in mind in saying that aesthetic and moral experience are "socially constructed."Moreover, in the enterpriseof social construction,the moral and aestheticelements typically cannot be isolated, because the patterns involved are patterns of the whole of living. The connection of individuals and their cultures is thus a deep connection:the propertiesone attends to and the values one adopts are culture-bound,and the very ways one sees, thinks,and feels about things are culture-bound.15 Eaton'sdoctrineof the inevitable grounding of fundamentallife values in tradition-framed patternsis a key element in her unified value theory. It is a doctrineof both liberationand restraint.Traditionsliberateby enabling us to select among patternsof priormeaning,and they restrainby imposing on those patternsthe limits of settled language. I daresay the question of how the restrainingforce of language is understood will seem to many to be the theory'smost vulnerableelement.Few will argue with the claim that language createsthe possibility of thinking about (and not just having) experiences. But some will quarrelwith the suggestion that the language in which value phenomenaare discussed can settle questions of what experiences count as aesthetic or moral, let alone what experiencesare valued in what way. Undeniably,a culture'svalues are transmittedin its language;so when I say, "Thesunset is beautiful,"I am affirmingmy culture'svalue traditions as reflected in its usage traditions. But we may agree that our language

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conventions tell us what it means to be a sunset and what it means to be beautiful without agreeing that they tell us that sunsets are beautiful. It is intelligible within our culture for a person to claim that sunsets aren't beautiful. Tying value too tightly to tradition and tradition too tightly to language jeopardizes the prospects of judgmental autonomy and dissent that are especially valuable in both morality and aesthetics.16 No one will deny that "our languages and what we value are tightly interwoven";17 we need worry only over whether the weave gets too tight. Eaton says that "a rational life makes demands upon what we should like-what we should approve of and delight in, what we should disapprove and abhor."18As we begin to look for objects to approve and disapprove, we need to restrict our attention to things worth attending to. However, as Eaton points out, "worthiness of attention is culturally determined."19 Turning to aesthetic valuation in particular, we find it would be futile (within Eaton's theory) to rely on our own sense of aesthetic experience, because aesthetic experience is (definitionally) restricted to intrinsic features of objects worth attending to. And, if we look for independent guidance in identifying aesthetic experience, Eaton advises that we consult the language of (gasp!) art critics: "We can tell an aesthetic experience is aesthetic by seeing whether art historical and critical terminology is used to describe it."20No doubt a parallel path could be traced for the moral valuation. Some will complain these paths seem circular; others will complain that they dead-end in obscure territory. We need to be clear on what it is about the matrix of cultural tradition that brings aesthetic and ethical judgment together. On the one hand, traditions are "forms of life" (in Wittgenstein's sense), the behavioral norms that create the basis for communicative society, or civilization. Here, Eaton's claim that values in such contexts simply come "unpacketed" is empirically plausible. But, on the other hand, traditions are also institutional social arrangements through which the art enterprise is conducted (akin to Danto's and Dickie's notion of the "artworld" institution). And in those contexts, Separatism is often a popular, if not dominant, conviction. Even if we are, as Eaton argues, creatures of our cultures to a larger degree than is widely appreciated, the implications of this condition for value holism remain to be developed. Living LifeAesthetically In rejecting Separatism and supporting Tradition-based Value Holism, Eaton provides ample evidence that aesthetics and ethics can and do come together. Commendably, she takes the issue of value integration farther, arguing that lives lived well embody this value fusion: "Any fully meaningful

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life,"she says, "will be characterized by an integrationof the moral and the The pedagogical implicationsof such a view are evident. If inaesthetic."21 structing young people in aesthetics is, at the same time, teaching them something about life skills conducive to good living (in moral and perhaps other senses), then art and aestheticsgravitateto the centerof curricular imit is one to convince that aesthetic and moral But, portance. thing people values sometimes coalesce and anotherto convincethem thataestheticeducation is essential to the good life. Eaton'sthoughtful defense of the latter judgmentis the strongestelement in her aesthetictheory. In the Western world, the prevailing view of what really counts in life has changed little since Aristotle.To be human is to be rational;so what is rational is what counts. Aristotle himself would not for a moment have thought that rationality,morality, and artistic experience could be separated. But since his time the notion of rationalityhas been progressively squeezed free of its aestheticcomponent, so that moder folks are inclined to think of reason and aesthetic experienceas inimical or at the very least incongruent.Eatoninsists to the contrarythat "theaestheticallymeaningful life is rationally assertible and... our aesthetic preferencesare part of a This is a bold claim, yet one meaningfullife that exhibits rationalchoice."22 that, on the evidence that she presents,is plausiblydefensible. As has been mentioned above, rationalliving requires pattern perception. And not just any patternsare as useful as others. It is one of the great (oftenignored)virtues of artworksthat they display patternsthatcommend themselves to the organizationof life. These patternscommend themselves in two ways. First,as lessons in turning life into art, as it were: seeing artworks as sources of comparisonand reflectionas one craftsa life. And second, as lessons in handling life like art:discovering patternsthat serve, as they do in art, to organize the details of life into meaningful and coherent wholes. The preferablemethod, as Eatonsees it, is the latter;for patterning one's life artisticallyis an active, inventive exercise, requiringvalue decisions at every turn, while adopting life's lessons from an existing artistic patternis passive and derivative.There are, in either case, limits to the effectiveness of patterns in guiding experience;but they do, as Dewey tells us, provide punctuationwithout which life would be incoherent: The patternswith which we inform the real world necessarilyleave something out. Outside realities preclude our having the degree of control of real life that artistshave in the creationof their imaginary worlds. However, formationof patterns does provide us with some measureof controlin everyday experience.23 In the end, either form of deliberatepatterningenriches experiencein contrast to the unaesthetic life, in which manipulation and control are the dominantqualities.And surely Eatonis rightabout this; it is a false sense of

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control that comes from turning every experience into a device of selfinterest. For real control over life's complexities requires a vision of life's potentialities that encompasses more than one's own (or anyone's own) goals. Secondly, aesthetic and moral perception are both deeply concerned with roles and role-playing. Intelligent living is a drama; it is best played with panache.24 But above all it must, like any drama (or dramatic artwork) play out a coherent pattern-a sensible beginning, middle, and end-to work well. And here again there are no better teachers than artworks themselves. Thirdly, aesthetic sensibility contributes to social and moral awareness simply by intensifying our vision of the world we see. As Eaton (drawing on Anthony Savile) astutely observes, "[A]rt doesn't just sharpen our seeing or hearing, but expands our awareness of the human situation and thus produces people who are likely to follow acceptable moral rules or strive to produce favorable results."25This is a controversial claim, but a sound one. It does imply that, despite widespread skepticism on the point, students well educated in art and aesthetics are, on balance, likely to be better prepared than others to be morally responsive individuals. And why not? As Eaton puts it, we expect profound artworks to reach their respondents where they live, so that, for example, reading a profound literary work will "make it somehow less likely that they will respond emotionally to a story about a dog's death and proceed immediately to kick their own pet."26 Perhaps so. But why? Here we must complete a circuit Eaton has almost, but not quite, closed. The reason art leads into ethics here is that it requiresa transportation of personal awareness into impersonal terrain. To understand art, one must be able to disconnect from one's interests (as Kant and his successors put it) to see through others' eyes. And that disinterested sympathetic vision is the very core of moral consciousness. Many of the advertised virtues of aesthetic attention translate cleanly into capacities of moral attention. Artworks and other aesthetic objects teach us to frame things we see so as to make coherent assessment of their composition and interrelation possible. They teach us to admire and protect what is precious because it is rare, or hard to do, or uniquely reflective of historical experience. They teach us to appreciate what is new because it extends our reach, and they teach us to protect what is old because it affirms our grasp. Every prominent aesthetic capacity is on its way to being a moral capacity. On its way, but necessarily never there. The Separatists were right to forswear translation of one value to the other; but they cannot resist the force of one of Eaton's claims for a more indirect integration: "By studying art works that present human experience subtly, we can lear to notice the very nuances that are often required if one is to make correct ethical assessments."27 The ethical awareness we most often think important to instill in our young people today is sympathetic understanding of the other-men of women, whites of blacks, old-timers of new-comers, and so on. And, as

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Eaton points out, aesthetic awareness can be an effective propaedeutic for this understanding. Art does not suddenly transform one into a Muslim or a democrat or a Marxist-though it may contribute to such transformations. It does make one experience kitchens and umbrellas and blonde hair and birches and Lincoln and the Danube differently. It also opens one to and makes one more enthusiastic about seeking what other cultures have to offer.28 This sounds to me like exactly the right form of rejoinder to Separatism, and exactly the right affirmation of aesthetic education's power to facilitate moral consciousness. In Eaton's theory, as I see it, ethics stands to aesthetics as baseball stands to golf. Baseball shouldn't be confused with golf; there are lots of differences. But there are also lots of serious and subtle connections between them. Most importantly, if one learns how to do the one, one is already part of the way toward learning the other. The demonstration that there is a similar connection between ethics and aesthetics is, I believe, Marcia Eaton's most valuable contribution to aesthetic theory, and one for which she will certainly be remembered by future generations. RonaldMoore University of Washington

NOTES 1. EatonidentifiesStuartHampshireand PhilippaFoot as standard-bearers of this group. 2. MarciaEaton,"Integrating the Aestheticand the Moral,"Philosophical Studies 67, no. 3 (1992):234. 3. One might, for example, hold that as moral beings we actualizeour morality throughthe continuingprocess of weighing values of all kinds, with whatever outcomethe balancingprocessproducesbeing defined as moralchoice. 4. Eaton,"Integrating the Aestheticand the Moral,"p. 225. 5. Ibid.,p. 226. 6. Eaton's argument is brief but effective: "If the aesthetic and the ethical were truly separate, then judging that something is aestheticallyor ethically sentimentalshould involve two differentsets of criteriafor application,or two different and separableways of looking at something. Somethinglike seeing the famous duck-rabbit figure,where we can see eithera duck or a rabbitbut not both at the same time should occur.We should be able to see that somethingis ethically sentimentalor aestheticallysentimental,but not as both simultaneously. we have to look at all featuresof an obHowever, in order to use 'sentimental' ject or situation at the same time." MarciaEaton, "Laughingat the Death of Little Nell: Sentimental Art and Sentimental People," American Philosophical 279. 26, no. 4 (1989): Quarterly 7. Eaton, "Integrating the Aesthetic and the Moral,"p. 230. Essentiallythe same combinationof descriptionand prescriptionis to be found in Eaton'sAesthetics and the GoodLife(Rutherford, N.J.:FairleighDickinsonUniversityPress, 1989), at p. 175.

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8. At times the restriction against value integrationwe impose may amountto an absolute barrier.It is rational to disallow on moral grounds the aesthetic of murderas an art form(paceThomasde Quincey). appreciability andtheGood 9. Eatonpursuesthis point in Aesthetics Life,p. 164.She does so in the course of defending an argument she finds in C. S. Peirce and Norman Dahl of StuartHampshire. againstthe Separatism AestheticValues,"Arts Education 10. MarciaEaton,"Instilling 95, no. PolicyReview 2 (1993): 30. 11. Eatonfirstexplainsthe way the individualexperienceis connectedwith social, traditionalrecognitionsof worth in BasicIssuesin Aesthetics (Belmont,Calif.: Wadsworth PublishingCompany,1988),pp. 142-45. andtheGood 12. Eaton,Aesthetics p. 165. Life, the Aesthetic and the Moral,"p. 236. Eaton develops her 13. Eaton, "Integrating conceptionof the union of value in meaning-of-lifequestions in "Laughingat the Deathof LittleNell." 14. Eaton'sfullest accountof the role of (inherited)patternsin the conduct of aestheticlife is presentedin her "AnthonyPowell and the AestheticLife,"Philoso9, no. 2 (1985):166-83. phyandLiterature AestheticValues,"p. 30. 15. Eaton,"Instilling 16. Eaton anticipatesthis objectionand responds to it, in part, both in "Instilling and Art Education: AestheticValues"and in "Context, Criticism, PuttingMeanEducation 24, no. 1 (1990):100of Aesthetic ing into the Lifeof Sisyphus,"Journal raisespowerful furtherobjectionsto this line Hermstein-Smith 103.ButBarbara of defense. See MarciaEaton, "Where'sthe Spear?The Question of Aesthetic 9. British 32, no. 1 (1992): Relevance," Journal ofAesthetics Issuesin Aesthetics, 17. Eaton,Basic p. 143. andtheGood 18. Eaton,Aesthetics Life,p. 169. Issuesin Aesthetics, 19. Eaton,Basic p. 96. and the GoodLife,p. 121. More recently, Eaton has retreated 20. Eaton,Aesthetics some on the roles of terminologyand discussion in such contexts. The change reflectsher awarenessthat certaincultures(e.g., some Native Americangroups) do not talk aboutartworksand would regardit as sacrilegeto do so. She insists can do the job in such culturesthat talk that nondiscursive"specialtreatment" and Art Education," does in the rest.(See Eaton,"Context, Criticism, pp. 102-3.) One cannot help wondering whether the Barotse's wordless belly-rubbing (Wittgenstein'sparadigmaticinstance of aesthetic approval) would count as "specialtreatment." the Aestheticand the Moral," 21. Eaton,"Integrating p. 238. and 22. Ibid.,p. 236. Eatonsays that this claim is the point of chapter7 of Aesthetics where she most explicitly theGoodLife(titled "TheAesthetic and the Ethical") confrontsthe theme of this essay. Yet her most sensitive and serious treatment of the themeappearselsewhere, in journalessays where she reflectson the differencesbetween aestheticand nonaestheticliving in specific (if generally fictional)contexts. 23. Eaton,"AnthonyPowell and the AestheticLife,"p. 175. 24. Ibid.,p. 181. Issuesin Aesthetics, 25. Eaton,Basic p. 131. at the Death of LittleNell," p. 277. 26. Eaton,"Laughing 27. Ibid.,p. 279. 28. Eaton,"Where'sthe Spear?"p. 11. There is, of course, an undeniabletension between this claim and Eaton'sinsistencethat our moraland aestheticthinking are confined within a culture and bounded by language. Recently, she has argued that although "deep fluency"(includinghistoricaland linguistic familiarity)is requiredbefore one can gain access to the aesthetic (and presumably ethical)values of anotherculture,the process of acquiringsuch fluency has its rewards:"Ina multicultural incremental society, one must not only be ready to issue invitationsto partakeof one's own aestheticvalues, one must be open to

Eaton's Philosophy

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invitationsfromothers.One teacheswhat one believes will produceindividuals sufficientlyfluent to give the sustained attentionrequiredfor an aestheticpayoff. At the same time, one remainsready to do what is requiredto attainfluency in others'culturesin the hope there will be aestheticpayoffs there as well. One instills values in the hope that the favor will be returned.This is not imperialAestheticValues,"p. 34.) ism;it is democracy.("Instilling Reply to Symposiasts It is a great compliment to have one's work treated seriously by those one respects. Of course, one would not respect them if they were not critical readers, and thus under their scrutiny one is forced to attend to the weaknesses and gaps in one's own work. Fortunately these three symposiasts are respectfully critical, that is, they identify areas that need work without making one feel that one should trash everything. Thus I shall indicate how I shall try to strengthen my theories. I have also in recent years taken much satisfaction from working with educators outside of philosophy and from realizing that philosophic aesthetics is of interest to and has applications for art educators. In my response, therefore, I wish to say something about ways in which filling the gaps will have an impact on aesthetic education. All three symposiasts point out that in my earliest definitions of 'art' I considered only Eurocentric art. This ignore-ance led to a serious mistake, namely, concentrating on how discussion of artworks is central to an understanding of the nature of art. Fortunately this mistake was rectified as I benefited from the broadened discussions that have resulted from (still modest) advances in multicultural education. Upon learning that art is too sacred to talk about in some communities, 'discussed' was replaced by 'treated'-for all cultures have ways of behaving that indicate that special attention is being paid to the aesthetic properties of objects and events. My ignore-ance also prevented me from observations that would actually have strengthened my early work on characterizing 'art' and 'aesthetic'. As Feagin correctly points out, confronting objects from cultures other than one's own often gives rise to the question Is it art?-a question whose answers demand reflection on the question What is art? Furthermore, consideration of how people go about trying to answer Is it art?-in situations where it, for example, seems to have more sacred purposes than aesthetic purposes-demands attending to questions that have most recently concerned me, namely, the connections between aesthetic value and other sorts of value, especially moral and ethical value. I am grateful to Feagin for her suggestions about ways in which my theories may have applications for studio artists. One consequence of the creativity we admire in artists is the changing of traditions. Feagin says that the greatest art is influenced by traditions-and in turn it is unlikely that artists will influence traditions if they are not fully aware of them. I agree. Why