Tone Kralj in Three Possible Worlds: Defence of the Ethical Value of Art and its Importance in Criticism

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, the main task of any critic was to ethically evaluate a given work of art, while in the early 20th century prevailed a viewpoint that ethics and aesthetics are autonomous areas with their own value. The quest for the autonomy of art finds support in the fact that many works of art have nothing to do with ethics. Even if some works of art have nothing to do with ethics and are therefore not the appropriate subject for ethical criticism, it does not mean that ethical criticism is unsuitable for all artworks. An existing ethical value of art is corroborated through a thought experiment “Tone Kralj in Three Possible Worlds”. Three different approaches, moderate autonomism, ethicism, and moderate moralism, are represented. Trial, which consists Kralj’s artworks from the first and third possible world, shows that ethicism is better than moderate moralism.