Environmental Art and the Interaction of Ethical and Aesthetic Value

Abstract

This chapter argues that (1) in contrast to the art forms already discussed, the ethical criticism of which sometimes invites the perspectivist approach and sometimes demands the production-oriented approach, the proper ethical criticism of environmental art requires the production-oriented approach; (2) the production-oriented approach to the ethical criticism of environmental artworks lends support to the moderate moralist’s claim about the interaction of ethical and aesthetic value: the presences of ethical defects in environmental artworks sometimes diminishes their aesthetic value; (3) because environmental artworks appropriate part of the natural environment as an aspect of their identity, an aesthetic flaw in an environmental artwork necessarily also creates aesthetic disvalue in the natural environment—disvalue that exists in virtue of the creation of the artwork. Insofar as the diminishment of the aesthetic value of the natural environment is ethically wrong, the aesthetic flaws of an environmental artwork necessarily constitute ethical flaws.