“Ethics and aesthetics are one.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Source: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Ludwig Wittgenstein228

Austrian-British philosopher 1889–1951

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“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)

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

Gianni Agnelli (1921–2003) Italian businessman

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

“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 believe that painter's judgments of painting are first ethical, then aesthetic, the aesthetic judgments flowing from an ethical context. Doubtless no painter systematically thinks this way; but it does seem to me to be basically what happens when modern painters judge any new manifestations of painting... An artist's 'art' is just his consciousness, developed slowly and painstakingly with many mistakes en route. How dare they collect those ugly early Van Gogh's like trophies…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1950s, The painter and the audience' (1954), pp. 109-110

“I think that natural truths will cease to be spat at us like insults, that aesthetics will once more be linked with ethics, and that people will become aware that in casting out aesthetics that they also cast out a respect for human life, a respect for creation, a respect for spiritual values. Aesthetics was an expression of man's need to be in love with his world. The cult of ugliness is a regression. It destroys our appetite, our love for our world.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

“By this characteristically twentieth century retreat from content into form, from meaning into appearance, from ethics into aesthetics, from aqua into unda, I dulled the pain of accusing death, and hardened myself.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

“Culture is constituted by human labor, the aesthetic, and the spirit. In this regard, culture is an integrated way of life which shuns false dichotomies between sacred and so-called secular. Human labor denotes a mutuality between base and superstructure. The aesthetic argues for a norm grounded in internal beauty and ethical functionality. And the spirit is the vivifying thread woven throughout all of culture.”

Dwight Hopkins (1953) American academic

"A Black Theology of Liberation," Black Theology, v. 3, n. 1, January 2005

“[modern art is the story of certain peoples'] desire to get rid of what is dead in human experience, to get rid of concepts, whether aesthetic or metaphysical or ethical or social, that, being garbed in the costumes of the past, get in the way of their enjoyment.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Lecture at Mount Holyoke College, August 1944; later published as 'A Tour of the Sublime', in 'Tiger's Eye', 15 Dec. 1948; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory' <br class="br">1940s

“Ethics and aesthetics are one.”

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Ludwig Wittgenstein228

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