A Closer Look at the Connection Between Plato, Kant, and Murdoch

Abstract

I compare Murdoch’s, Plato’s, and Kant’s views of the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. Murdoch recognizes and discusses all of the following kinds of aesthetic experiences as experiences that may promote moral transformation: beauty in nature and art, erotic experiences of beautiful people, and sublimity in art (especially tragedy) and nature. She maintains that moral training, and the sort of reformation that results from Plato’s erotic experiences of beautiful people, as well as the triumph over the ego, may all result from all or any of those kinds of experiences. Some of these experiences might be more apt than others to teach us about certain aspects of moral reformation. For example, an erotic experience of beauty might be especially capable of teaching us love for other people, insofar as it teaches us to appreciate the subjectivity of another individual. Tragedy is, perhaps, especially capable of showing us the idea of death, which has a particularly powerful impact against the ego. Like Plato, Murdoch distinguishes between good and bad art, and she argues that while bad art may lead to immoral action, good art may be used as an instrument in a person’s moral development. Unlike Plato, however, Murdoch finds a place for erotic experiences of beauty, as well as sublimity, in art. Like Kant, Murdoch argues that there is a symbolic relationship between beauty and morality. However, while Kant and Murdoch both have specific theories of sublimity, Murdoch argues that an experience of sublimity does not give rise to the recognition of one’s own faculty of reason, as Kant suggests, but rather to the recognition of other individuals, and the realization of human conflict.