Anne Eaton

How, if at all, are we to distinguish between the works that we call 'art' and those that we call 'pornography'? This question gets a grip because from classical Greek vases and the frescoes of Pompeii to Renaissance mythological painting and sculpture to Modernist prints, the European artistic tradition is chock-full of art that looks a lot like pornography. In this paper I propose a way of thinking about the distinction that is grounded in art historical considerations regarding the function of erotic images in 16 th-century Italy. This exploration suggests that the root of the erotic art/pornography distinction was-at least in this context-class: in particular, the need for a special category of unsanctioned illicit images arose at the very time when print culture was beginning to threaten elite privilege. What made an erotic representation exceed the boundaries of acceptability, I suggest, was not its extreme libidinosity but, rather, its widespread availability and, thereby, its threat to one of the mechanisms of sustaining class privilege. From classical Greek vases and the frescoes of Pompeii to Renaissance mythological painting and sculpture to Modernist prints, the European artistic tradition is chock-full of art that looks a lot like pornography. 1 This is a vexing fact to the many who consider 'art' to be a commendatory, rather than purely descriptive, category. To those who think of art as a repository of our highest and most enduring values, art appeals to and brings out the best in us. According to this common way of thinking, pornography is by contrast dirty, low, and base: it speaks to and elicits the sexual animal in us. The large quantity of sexually titillating art from nearly every period in European history threatens not only to taint the hallowed category of art itself, but also throws into doubt our purported special capacity to rise above our bestial urges. How should we deal with this problem? Radically revising the canon by rejecting the 'art' status of these sexually titillating works is, for most, undesirable. A more cautious response might reserve the label 'erotic art' for canonical sexually titillating works while appending the epithet 'pornography' to the rest. But one honest look at the oversized

This chapter reviews the two primary ways in which moral issues pertaining to literature are discussed in Anglophone philosophy of art. The first half of this essay looks at the morally relevant influences that literature is thought to have on its audiences, while the second half considers various positions on the question of whether a literary work's moral character affects its artistic value. Since several extensive and incisive surveys of this terrain are already available (Carroll 2000; Gaut 2009, chapter 7), this chapter focuses on points of contention and subsequent developments. Part One: Literature's Morally Relevant Influences Moral judgment is a common feature of interpreting, appreciating, and evaluating literary works. For example, we often attribute virtues or vices to characters and praise or condemn their actions on explicitly moral grounds. Moral judgment is even written into many of the concepts we use to understand literary works: just think, for instance, of the very notion of villain. A skeptic about the moral criticism of literature might point out that the moral judgments just mentioned pertain to diegetic elements of literary works-that is, to things within the world that a literary work describes-and that these judgments may diverge starkly from moral judgments we might make about the work itself. While a literary work might, for instance, tell the story of a mean and nasty person who deliberately hurts others, this does not make the work itself mean and nasty; the moral valence of diegetic elements, our skeptic is quick to point out, is conceptually distinct from the moral valence of the work itself. Further, our skeptic persists, while it is not difficult to acknowledge the moral valence of diegetic elements-after all, persons and their conduct are paradigmatic objects of moral assessment-it is far from obvious how a literary work itself-which is inanimate-can be the proper object of moral judgment.1 By what right, if any, do we make moral judgments about literary works themselves? Although few Anglophone philosophers of art directly attend to this question, the tradition does implicitly offer a compelling answer: namely that a literary work's moral valence lies in its influence on its audience. To be more specific, most philosophers working in this tradition appear to implicitly hold that a literary work is mmally meritorious or mmally flawed insofar as it has, or aims to have, a morally salutary or mmally deleterious influence,

How do artifacts get their functions? It is typically thought that an artifact’s function depends on its maker’s intentions. I argue that this common understanding is fatally flawed.  Nor, I argue, can artifact function be understood in terms of current uses or capacities. 

Instead, I propose that we understand artifact function on the etiological model that Millikan and others have proposed for the biological realm.  This model offers a robustly normative conception of function, but it does so naturalistically by employing our best scientific theories, in particular natural selection.  To help make this case, I propose “living artifacts” (organisms designed for human purposes through artificial selection) as a bridge between the artifactual and the biological realms.

I argue that fat oppression has a significant aesthetic dimension, namely that our collective taste in bodies is geared toward aesthetic displeasure at fat. Our collective repulsion and disgust at fat is not, I argue, a mere effect of fat hatred but, rather, is an important constitutive element of the oppression of fat people. This paper first develops this new model of fat oppression and then explores some Aristotelian strategies for combating it.