Aesthetic Blame

Abstract

One influential tradition holds that blame is a moral attitude: blame is appropriate only when the target of blame has violated a moral norm without excuse or justification. Against this, some have recently argued that agents can be blameworthy for their violation of epistemic norms even when no moral norms are thereby violated. This paper defends the appropriateness of aesthetic blame: agents can be blameworthy for their violation of aesthetic norms as such, where aesthetic norms are the norms of social practices that aim at aesthetic values. I adapt a generic account of blame as protest, which can take variable forms, and then argue that aesthetic distortion cases—cases in which an existing artwork is distorted in its presentation—most clearly warrant blame even in the absence of violations of moral norms.