Moral Defects, Aesthetic Defects, and the Imagination

Abstract

What is the moral imagination? I will first structuring representations in new manner.5 explain broadly what I mean by Some of these representations may be mental which is both complex concept and slippery images. In narrative works, many of them are. term, and then offer an account of moral imaginHowever, they can also be representations of ation. By the latter I intend to refer neither to emotions, propositions, and judgments. specifically moral uses of the imagination, nor In his recent essay The Wheel of Virtue: to the role of imagination in moral reasoning, Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge, Noel but instead to the imaginative exploration of Carroll suggests that one way works of art can emotions, propositions, and situations of moral be imaginative is by producing what we would significance. After giving an account of what I call, should they appear in philosophical texts, mean by the moral imagination, I will offer an thought experiments. Many thought experiaccount of whether and in what ways we might ments in philosophical texts are drawn from find the moral imagination ever to be morally narrative works, and narrative works are full of culpable. This will be followed by an examindetailed imaginings of particular characters, ation of the artistic significance of the moral events, and situations that cause us to put parimagination. ticular judgments, emotions, and thoughts into new patterns. Carroll argues that these imaginings can give us opportunities to engage in I. THE IMAGINATION detailed conceptual analysis, often by eminently possible cases that contradict When we speak of the imagination, we may be conventional wisdom.6 speaking of the manipulation of mental images, Sometimes artworks may simply stimulate the consideration of counterfactual proposour imaginative reflection by causing us to itions and situations, or simulation (either of think about topic or situation that we have belief in propositions, or of the experiences of previously never thought much about, and they others).' Some distinguish between fantasy and may do this without providing much in the way imagination such that the latter, and not the of guidance as to how that imagining proceeds. former, envisages a world that is interestingly Sometimes, by contrast, they may have more different from our own, but also interestingly in common with philosophical text, which accessible from it.2 My own use of the term typically not only introduces an imaginative owes much to Roger Scruton and Mark Johnson. thought experiment, but also seeks to guide the Scruton writes: Doing something imaginature of our reflection upon it.7 In the latter natively means doing it thoughtfully, where case, the artwork, just like the philosophical text, one's thought is not guided by the normal may or may not succeed in shaping the nature of processes of theoretical reasoning, but instead our response to what we are encouraged to goes beyond the obvious in some more or less imagine. However, the artwork, unlike most way.3 Johnson defines imagination as philosophical arguments, will typically affect creative reflective activity.4 A process is our response to what we imagine by encourimaginative insofar as it involves ordering or aging us to simultaneously imagine that the world