This article examines our ethical responsibility toward artists engaged in harmful behaviors. Specifically, I demonstrate when and why we are morally obligated to withdraw our public and financial support from Artists Who Cause Harm such as Louis C.K., Terry Richardson, and Ryan Adams. Using a moral distinction presented by Philippa Foot and others, I identify this support as enabling harm when the wealth and influence that we support removes typical barriers that protect victims from harm and interposes barriers that prevent (...) victims from avoiding harm. I proceed to demonstrate that our personal support is morally significant, and we have a moral responsibility to make contributions to collective action when the cost is low or the degree of belief that others will contribute is high. Here we have both a strong belief that others will withdraw support and a relatively low cost to ourselves to do so. I acknowledge that enabling current harms is only a sufficient condition to withdrawing support from an artist and should not minimize other reasons for avoiding certain artists and their works. However, when we do believe that our support enables an artist engaged in harmful behaviors, we have an obligation to withdraw that support. (shrink)

Typically, literature is defined ontologically as linguistically-fixed texts consisting of specific words and word order. However, some have noted that this condition is too strict for linguistically-fluid works such as the Iliad where the words and word order differ in their various instances. I argue that it is not strict enough for some works of literature, such as pattern poetry and the novels of Irvin Welsh and Mark Z. Danielewski, that have a further ontological condition. In that the graphic features (...) play an artistic role in these works, those graphic features must be reproduced in an authentic copy. Using exemplars in both poetry and prose, I define these works as graphically-fixed literature and identify a sufficient condition of such works specific to their graphic features. Finally, I examine copies of graphically-fixed works that omit their graphic features as well as audiobook and Braille editions that necessarily lack graphic components. (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] essays collected in Fictional Characters, Real Problems: The Search for Ethical Content in Literature present unique perspectives on the representation of ethical concerns in literature. Edited by Garry L. Hagberg, these essays address different ways that ethical and aesthetic concerns are interwoven in works of long-form literature such as novels and theatrical works. The (...) majority of these essays also support a related claim: due to their long-form nature, these types of literary works provide a reader with ethical perspectives that are both more holistic and nuanced than is possible in typical philosophical thought experiments. Long-form literature affords the time and space to show us the breadth and depth of both our ethical motivations and their consequences.Hagberg has divided this work into... (shrink)

On reading Irvine Welsh's novel Filth for the first time, I quickly noticed that something was amiss. I followed the apparent food poisoning of amoral Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson all the way down page twenty-three. Then, as I turned the page, something entirely unexpected happened. The text became obscured by what appeared to be the black outlines of intestines. What's more, though Robertson's first-person account of his own illness was obscured, a new narrative voice appeared within the intestines: "I am (...) alive. … I am soft and weak. … I must grow. … I must eat. … I must grow strong … eat … eat … eat …".1 Welsh's novel was no longer simply words on a page. Its visual features were playing an artistic role in... (shrink)