Abstract

Matthes and I both hold that the central ethical harm of continuing to engage with the work of immoral artists lies in what doing so inadvertently expresses to others. (Matthes, 2021; Matthes, 2022; Willard, 2021; Willard, 2022). We also agree that there’s little wrong ethically with continuing to engage the work of immoral artists in private or within interpretive communities poised to place the ethical and the aesthetic in dialogue with each other. Matthes (2022, p. 523) notes that part of his motivation for writing the book was the countless conversations he had with friends, colleagues, and strangers about the problem of immoral artists, and my experience–—everywhere from the doctor’s office to the classroom to the bike shop—was similar. Interpretive communities reappraise immoral artists’ art together.Outside of those contexts, we both advise caution. Liao (forthcoming) suggests that doing so comes at an unrecognized cost to our aesthetic agency because the source of aesthetic value is social. In response, Matthes (2022) argues that attending to the social expression of one’s aesthetic pursuits does not compromise our aesthetic agency. This seems right. Any reasonable account of the value of aesthetic agency should presumably allow for ordinary human decency to restrain one’s public expression of one’s aesthetic loves. The proper exercise of aesthetic autonomy requires not unbridled freedom, but sensitivity to the right kinds of reasons.