Aesthetic Ethics

Aesthetic Ethics: Towards a Moral Imagination seeks to challenge and expand the boundaries of how we conceive ethics and morality, proposing that beauty, sublimity and emotional resonances found in the realm of the arts are essential for re-imagining a more just and compassionate world.

This volume delves into how aesthetic experiences cultivate ethical sensibilities and a deepened responsibility towards others and the world around us. Through a blend of philosophical inquiry, psychoanalytic theory and humanities scholarship, the contributors examine the transformative power of the aesthetic on ethical wisdom and practices. The volume asserts that aesthetic experiences are not merely for hedonic pleasure nor detached contemplation, but are vital to developing a moral imagination capable of confronting the complexities of human existence and social engagement. The chapters in this volume propose that engaging with art, literature, music and culture opens capacities and re-imagines possibilities. Contributors utilise case studies, theoretical explorations and analysis of artistic expressions to argue for the aesthetic as a fundamental component in the cultivation of deepened ethical relations and, ultimately, societal change.

Aesthetic Ethics hosts the voices and scholarship of significant figures across disciplines, addressing questions at the intersections of aesthetic theory, ethical psychotherapy, and the social order. Practitioners, as well as students and researchers of the humanities, the arts, politics, philosophy, psychology, psychosocial studies, sociology and social work alike will find this an illuminating and revivifying read.