“I even believe aesthetics are like ethics. Something that is beautiful is ethical, and unethical things aren’t beautiful.”

Agnelli: The Rules of the Game, Vanity Fair (1991)

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Gianni Agnelli5

Italian businessman 1921–2003

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“Just as eunuchs will never know aesthetics as applied to the selection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists ever know ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, for happiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that is reasoned or defined.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), V : The Rationalist Dissolution

“Ethics and aesthetics are one.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Source: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“In contrast to Breton we believe that — behind the false ethical and aesthetic, indeed metaphysical understandings which are out of contact with the vital interest of "man" — we find the real, the materialistic ethics and aesthetics. One includes our needs, the other is an expression of our sensual desires. It is exactly in order to liberate the true ethics and the true aesthetics that we make use of "automatism."”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

1949 - 1958, Speech to the Penguins' (1949)

“The World and Life are one. Physiological life is of course not "Life". And neither is psychological life. Life is the world.
Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.
Ethics and Aesthetics are one.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Journal entry (24 July 1916), p. 77e
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916

“The law of aesthetics is the same as the law for our desire… Need says: "You must eat." Aesthetics says: "You can do it in a thousand different ways." Ethics: "You need a woman." Aesthetics: "Which woman do you want?" Thus the purpose of art is first and foremost ethical than aesthetic — even when the wish becomes need. The goal changes from the general to the individual from need to wish, from ethics to aesthetics.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

1949 - 1958, Speech to the Penguins' (1949)

“What I feel or believe or experience is my business, and what I do is all our businesses; and reward or punish me according to whether I play the game well — ethically and rightly — or unethically.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Harvard Law School Forum (1966)

“The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 35

“I generally believe in trying to be an ethical person by a wide variety of different ethical standards”

Holden Karnofsky (1981) American nonprofit executive

In "Staff members' personal donations for giving season 2016" https://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/09/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2016/, December 2016 <br class="br">Context: Regarding (b) ["checking boxes I want to check for considering myself a personally moral/ethical person, which is related but not identical to trying for maximum expected positive impact on the world"]: every year, I want to give a significant amount to "charity" as conventionally construed, straightforwardly helping the less fortunate. I generally believe in trying to be an ethical person by a wide variety of different ethical standards (not all of which are consequentialist). And I wouldn't feel that I were meeting this standard if I were giving nothing (or a trivial amount) to known, outstanding opportunities to help the less fortunate, for purposes of saving as much money as possible for adversarial projects (such as political campaigns) and/or more speculative projects (such as work related to artificial intelligence). I think the best giving opportunities in this category are GiveWell's top charities, so I will be giving a portion of this year's donation there, following the recommended allocation.

“Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 113
Context: Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical.

“Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponents.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

1900s, The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Context: Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponents. … So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the utopias they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded.

“I even believe aesthetics are like ethics. Something that is beautiful is ethical, and unethical things aren’t beautiful.”

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Gianni Agnelli5

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