Does Art Make Us Better?
February 12, 2015
THE POET and essayist Mark Anthony Signorelli examines the idea that art, particularly high culture, is not an elevating influence on human nature because some individuals who have committed great moral crimes have been either cultured people or actual artists,. He cites the example of Nazi officers who listened to Mozart.
It appears very likely to be the case that the corrosive politics of the era simply exerted such a fierce influence over that generation, that no amount of erudition or aesthetic refinement could consistently counteract it. To acknowledge the limited influence of the arts on moral behavior is not to deny that influence altogether. In his Hamburg Dramaturgy, G.E. Lessing claimed that “all species of poetry are intended to improve us,” but went on to state, “But all species of poetry cannot improve all things…what each can improve most perfectly, and better than any other species – that alone is its peculiar aim.”
If art bears a certain kind of relationship to man’s moral nature, then it will reveal its influence in a certain kind of way, and no other. We should not expect art to provide a total program of moral education, any more than we should expect any form of cultural endeavor to provide a total program of moral education.
— Comments —
Mark B. writes:
“The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a greater temptation to the ego.”
Northrop Frye, “Mythical Phase: Symbol as Archetype”
